422 HISTORY OF FORMAL ASTRONOMY. 



knowledge that it would be immediately repeated 

 to his master. 



The ecclesiastical authorities having once de- 

 clared the doctrine of the earth's motion to be 

 contrary to scripture and heretical, long adhered 

 in form to this declaration, and did not allow the 

 Copernican system to be taught in any other way 

 than as a "hypothesis." The Padua edition of 

 Galileo's works, published in 1744, contains the 

 Dialogue which now, the editors say, "Esce final- 

 mente alia luce colle debite license ;" but they add, 

 " quanto allo Quistione principale del moto della 

 terra, anche noi ci conformiamo alia ritrazione et 

 protesta dell' autore dichiarando nella piu solenne 

 forma, che non pero ne dee ammetersi se non come 

 pura Ipotesi Mathematice, che serve a spiegare piu 

 agevolamento certi fenomeni." And in the edition 

 of Newton's Principia, published in 1760, by Le 

 Sueur and Jacquier, of the Order of Minims, the edi- 

 tors prefix to the Third Book their Dedaratio, that 

 though Newton assumes the hypothesis of the mo- 

 tion of the earth, and therefore they had used 

 similar language, they were, in doing this, assuming 

 a character which did not belong to them. " Hinc 

 alienam coacti sumus gerere personam." They add, 

 "Ca3terum latis a summis Pontificibus contra tel- 

 luris motum Decretis, nos obsequi profitemur." 



By thus making decrees against a doctrine 

 which in the course of time was established as an 



