ANNUAL ADDRESS. 
9 
doctrines of Holy Scripture in many passages, both if 
taken in their literal meaning, and according to the 
interpretation of the Holy Fathers and learned theo- 
logians. 
O 
2. The second proposition is declared unanimously to 
deserve the like censure (as the first) in philosophy, 
and, as regards its theological aspect, to be at least 
erroneous in faith. 
Sixteen years later, Galileo brought out his most popular 
work, Dialogues on the Ptolemaic ancl Coper nican Systems, and 
the appearance of this book caused him to be summoned to 
Borne to answer a charge of heresy. The points upon which 
his teachings had been formerly condemned were brought up 
again, and he was compelled to abjure them explicitly. It is 
not necessary for me to go into the melancholy history in detail ; 
to paint again for you the sorrows and sufferings of the old 
philosopher, to enlarge upon the inveterateness of his enemies, 
or the bitterness of his humiliation. We are all at one in con- 
demning the treatment bestowed upon him ; we are n.ll at one 
in declaring the verdict upon him to have been wrong. 
But why was it wrong ? Wherein was it wrong ? It is 
necessary for us to look very carefully at that, as there is much 
misapprehension as to wherein the error lay. 
It is clear to all of us that the Qualifiers were utterly wrong 
in seeking to uphold the doctrine of Ptolemy that the earth is 
the centre of the universe and is immovable. But their critics 
overlook that they would have been equally wrong if they had 
substituted for the Ptolemaic theory the theory which Galileo 
was promulgating. These were the only two theories then 
before the world, and we know to-day that both were wrong. 
Two propositions were under consideration — the motion of the 
sun and the motion of the earth. 
With regard to the first, the Ptolemaic theory declared that 
the sun moved. And the sun does move, but not at all in the 
sense in which the Ptolemaist used the words. Galileo held 
that the sun was immovable and in the centre of the universe. 
This we know to be untrue, though the statement was partly 
justifiable in the limited knowledge that Galileo possessed. 
With regard to the second proposition, namely, that the earth 
was immovable we know that Ptolemy was wrong and Galileo 
right. But here again Galileo was at fault in the demonstration 
which he offered, as he gave the tides as the chief proof of the 
diurnal rotation of the earth, and refused to admit that they 
were due to the action of the moon. 
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