128 GALILEO AND HIS JUDGES. 



and Cardinals of that age would not for a moment 

 admit. 



No personal amends, then, were made to Galileo 

 in life or in death ; but I think this was not the 

 point to which Mr. Mivart intended to allude. I 

 believe he had in his mind a different sort of re- 

 paration that, namely, supposed to be owing to 

 the injured cause of Science. If that be so, then 

 I can only say that he must have been unaware 

 of the facts above mentioned, of the proceed- 

 ings taken in Kome in 1757, in 1820, and in 

 1822. 



The adjustment of the relations of revealed Religion 

 with physical Science is often perplexing, owing 

 partly to mistaken zeal in insisting on particular 

 interpretations of certain passages in Holy Scripture, 

 and partly to the prevalence, at different times, of 

 doubtful scientific theories, which flourish for a time, 

 and then fade away because they fail to stand the 

 test of continued and rigorous investigation. 



Instances of both these will readily occur to the 

 mind, and the Copernican theory in the seventeenth 

 century will be a prominent one, as coming under the 

 first of the two heads. But it is not fair, as I have 

 already argued, to be too severe upon the men who 

 clung with tenacity to the old traditional interpreta- 

 tion of Scripture. It is, in fact, only right so to 

 cling until some just reason is shown for introducing 

 a fresh interpretation. In this case there were some 



