INDUCTION OF COPERNICUS. 397 



ments. Still, the claims of Scripture and of eccle- 

 siastical authority were asserted as paramount on 

 all subjects ; and it was obvious that many persons 

 would be disquieted or offended, with the new 

 interpretation of many scriptural expressions, which 

 the true theory would make necessary. This evil 

 Copernicus appears to have foreseen ; and this and 

 other causes long withheld him from publication. 

 He was himself an ecclesiastic; and, perhaps by 

 the patronage of his maternal uncle, was preben- 

 dary of the church of St. John at Thorn, and a 

 canon of the church of Frawenburg, in the diocese 

 of Ermeland 6 . He was a student at Bologna, a 

 professor of mathematics at Rome in the year 

 1500, and afterwards pursued his studies and ob- 

 servations at Fruemburg, at the mouth of the Vis- 

 tula 7 . His discovery of his system must have 

 occurred before 1507, for in 1543 he informs Pope 

 Paulus the Third, in his dedication, that he had 

 kept his book by him for four times the nine years 

 recommended by Horace, and then only published 

 it at the earnest entreaty of his friend Cardinal 

 Schomberg, whose letter is prefixed to the work. 

 " Though I know," he says, " that the thoughts of 

 a philosopher do not depend on the judgment of 

 the many, his, study being to seek out truth in all 

 things as far as that is permitted by God to human 

 reason : yet when I considered," he adds, " how 



6 Rheticus, Nar. p. 94. 7 Riccioli. 



