n8 GALILEO AND HIS JUDGES. 



maintain that an opinion is theologically false but 

 scientifically true ; or to state the case more accurately, 

 to maintain that it was right to condemn as contrary 

 to Scripture what has since turned out to be true 

 assuming, of course, this latter to be the fact, which 

 Dr. Ward fully admitted. It may doubtless be 

 pleaded in mitigation that the Cardinals only meant 

 that the opinion was contrary to the traditional 

 interpretation of Scripture, and that it was just 

 conceivable that the method of interpretation would 

 have to be revised hereafter ; and we have seen that 

 Bellarmine's letter to Foscarini points decidedly in 

 that direction. Nevertheless, the decree on the face 

 of it appears to imply more than this, and when 

 coupled with the subsequent condemnation of Galileo, 

 and strengthened by the repeated prohibition, even in 

 more stringent terms, of all works favouring the 

 Copernican theory, it obviously dealt as heavy a blow 

 at the doctrine of the Earth's diurnal and annual 

 movement, as could well have been done, short of a 

 dogmatic decision. It may be quite true that if 

 Galileo had been more prudent and judicious, much 

 of this would have been averted, and possibly the 

 decree of 1616 might have been modified or suspended 

 a century earlier than it actually was so. But without 

 discussing imaginary possibilities, we take the facts as 

 they stand. 



Now to give one or two specimens of Dr. Ward's 

 mode of writing on this subject. He says (after 

 stating correctly the Catholic principle that books 



