NOTES TO BOOK V. 463 



more recent times, as I have elsewhere remarked the 

 Church of Authority and the Church of Private Judgment 

 have each its peculiar temptations and dangers, when there 

 appears to be a discrepance between Scripture and Philo- 

 sophy. 



But though we may acquit the popes and cardinals in 

 Galileo's time of stupidity and perverseness in rejecting 

 manifest scientific truths, I do not see how we can acquit 

 them of dissimulation and duplicity. Those persons appear 

 to me to defend in a very strange manner the conduct of 

 the ecclesiastical authorities of that period, who boast of 

 the liberality with which Copernican professors were placed 

 by them in important offices, at the very time when the 

 motion of the earth had been declared by the same 

 authorities contrary to Scripture. Such merits cannot 

 make us approve of their conduct in demanding from 

 Galileo a public recantation of the system which they 

 thus favoured in other ways, and which they had re- 

 peatedly told Galileo he might hold as much as he pleased. 

 Nor can any one, reading the plain language of the sen- 

 tence passed upon Galileo, and of the abjuration forced 

 from him, find any value in the plea which has been 

 urged, that the opinion was denominated a heresy only 

 in a wide, improper, and technical sense. 



But if we are thus unable to excuse the conduct of 

 Galileo's judges, I do not see how we can give our uncon- 

 ditional admiration to the philosopher himself. Perhaps 

 the conventional decorum which, as we have seen, was 

 required in treating of the Copernican system, may 

 excuse or explain the furtive mode of insinuating his 

 doctrines which he often employs, and which some of his 



8 Phil. Ind. Sci. Book x. Chap. 4. 



