very strongest precautions against the introduction of Protestantism, where they are happily free from its admixture in their own population. To tax such conduct with narrow-mindedness and bigotry is the height of injustice. Yet these are the vulgar topics of the day, when it is desired to excite the popular mind of this country against Popery. It is made an offence and a grievance, that strangers of an alien and a hostile faith are not allowed to parade the exercise of their religion before a purely Catholic population, or to pursue their system of proselytism unchecked. Let these loud declaimers, however, inquire how the Protestant subjects of Catholic states are treated, even where the former constitute a very small minority. I defy them to produce an instance of the systematic oppression which the Catholic minorities of Protestant states are invariably forced to undergo; for observe, the Protestant persecutes whenever he has the power, and to the amount of his power; all the while making his boast of upholding the right of religious liberty. The Catholic, who makes no such boast, vindicates intolerance, or the infliction of religious disabilities, only where greater evils would accrue from a practical toleration. Let the candid and fair-minded pronounce between them.

LONDON:
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Great New Street and Fetter Lane.

Galileo and the Inquisition.

THERE are few subjects on which more has been written, and less understood, than the story of Galileo and his farfamed persecution. Every one knows that he was a very celebrated mathematician and astronomer, who flourished in Italy about two centuries and a half ago, and who taught what was then called the Copernican theory about the motion of the earth round the sun, in opposition to the Ptolemaic theory, which had almost universally prevailed before his time, and according to which it was believed that the earth was stationary, and that the sun was continually in motion; finally, it is known that this doctrine of Galileo's, which subsequent investigations and discoveries. have confirmed, met with considerable opposition and contradiction at the time that he propounded it,—that he was denounced more than once to the Roman Inquisition for teaching it, and that by that tribunal he was eventually condemned and punished. All this is perfectly true; and if it were all that Protestants are in the habit of saying about Galileo and his history, I should have had no occasion to write this tract about them. Unfortunately, however, Protestant historians have been guilty of such extravagant exaggerations in their narratives of the event, they have so ingeniously distorted and misrepresented all the real facts of the case, that it seems very desirable to put within the reach of all Catholics such a plain and true statement of them, as may suffice to refute these calumnies whenever they are repeated.

It has been asserted, for instance, by some authors, that, as a punishment for his heterodoxy, this distinguished philosopher was put to the rack; others have even gone so far as to say that his eyes were put out, so that he is entitled

to be considered a martyr of science; and a very large number tell us that he was imprisoned in the dungeons of the Inquisition, either for five years, or for three years, or for one year; for the period is made to vary according to the boldness of invention, the bigotry, or the caprice of the writer. Then, again, those who have been honest enough to tell the truth about the punishment which was inflicted on Galileo, yet have not failed to draw all sorts of false conclusions from the acknowledged fact of his condemnation; either they represent it, for instance, as one example among many which serve to indicate a temper of jealousy and opposition to science on the part of the Catholic Church, or else they urge it as a strong and indeed insuperable objection against our doctrine of the infallibility of the Church's teaching: "The Church," they say, "condemned Galileo's doctrine as false; she now admits it as true: what more need be said ?"

In what follows, I propose to take each of these points in order; and without entering into every minute detail of the history, I will briefly supply the necessary answers to these false and mischievous statements.

First, then, let us look at it only in a personal point of view, and inquire what, as a matter of fact, was the real extent and severity of the punishment inflicted on the philosopher. The actual sentence pronounced upon him by the Inquisition is expressed in these words: "We condemn you to the formal prison of the Holy Office, for a period determinable at our pleasure; and by way of salutary penance, we order you, during the next three years, to recite once a week the seven penitential psalms, reserving to ourselves the power of moderating, commuting, or taking off the whole or part of the said punishment and penance." This certainly is a very different picture from those which were set before us just now, and which alone are commonly to be met with in the works of Protestant authors. However, the sentence as it stands even now, certainly looks capable of bearing a very ugly interpretation, for there is no limit set to the period of the imprisonment except the will of the judges themselves: we condemn you to the formal prison of the Holy Office, for a period determinable

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