416 A SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



sun is daily gaining ground ; the said book has been taken into careful 

 consideration, and in it has been detected a glaring violation of the 

 said order, which had been intimated to you; inasmuch as in this 

 book you have defended the said opinion, already in ^our presence 

 condemned ; although in the said book you labor with many circum- 

 locutions to produce the belief that it is left by you undecided, and 

 in express terms probable ; which is equally a very grave error, since 

 an opinion can in no way be probable which has been already declared 

 and finally determined contrary to the Divine Scripture : 



Therefore by our order you were cited to this Holy Office, where, 

 on your examination upon oath, you acknowledged the said book as 

 written and printed by you. You also confessed that you began to 

 write the said book ten or twelve years ago, after the order aforesaid 

 had been given; also, that you demanded licence to publish it, but 

 without signifying to those who granted you this permission that you 

 had been commanded not to hold, defend or teach the said doctrine 

 in any manner. 



You also confessed that the style of the said book was, in many 

 places, so composed that the reader might think the arguments 

 adduced on the false side to be so worded as more effectually to en- 

 tangle the understanding than to be easily solved, alleging in excuse, 

 that you have thus run into an error, foreign (as you say) to your in- 

 tention, from writing in the form of a dialogue, and in consequence 

 of the natural complacency which everyone feels in regard to his own 

 subtilities, and in showing himself more skilful than the generality of 

 mankind in contriving, even in favor of false propositions, ingenious 

 and apparently probable arguments. 



And, upon a convenient time having been given to you for making 

 your defense, you produced a certificate in the handwriting of His 

 Eminence the Lord Cardinal Bellarmine, procured as you said, by 

 yourself, that you might defend yourself against the calumnies of 

 your enemies, who reported that you had abjured your opinions, and 

 had been punished by the Holy Office; in which certificate it is 

 declared that you had not abjured, nor had been punished, but merely 

 that the declaration made by His Holiness, and promulgated by the 

 Holy Congregation of the Index, had been announced to you, which 

 declares that the opinion of the motion of the earth, and the stability 

 of the sun, is contrary to the Holy Scriptures, and, therefore, cannot 

 be held or defended. Wherefore, since no mention is there made of 



