-in such circumstances the tribunals of the Church are quite justified in branding it as an offence against religion, whether it be called by the generic name of heresy, or whether it be specified as contrary to Scripture; that is to say, tending to undermine its authority. Nay, I will go further, and say that, under such circumstances, the Church is plainly bound, in her care for the faith of the multitude, to interpose, and—without pronouncing dogmatically as to whether the view may or may not afterwards come out as a physical and scientific truth (which would exceed the limits of her authority)-to declare that it is at present rash, dangerous, false, and heretical theologically, as tending to subvert the authority of Scripture in the minds of men; to forbid its being taught as a demonstrated fact; and to reduce it to what it really is at the time, a mere hypothesis, useful to explain phenomena, but not certain as a real fact in nature; and lastly, to prevent any such public discussion of the new views, even as a mere hypothesis, as may tend to produce a mistrust of the truth of Scripture; but, at the same time, to give individuals liberty to hold it, provided they can reconcile it in their own minds with the supreme authority of Scripture, and provided they will abstain from teaching it in the manner forbidden by the Church.

And this was precisely the position in which the Copernican theory stood in the time of Galileo. It is now often taken for granted that the Copernican theory is self-evident, and that the Roman theologians of 1616 and 1633 must have been simple dolts not to recognise its truth the moment Galileo propounded it. But so far from this being the case, persons who are competent to give an opinion on such matters do not hesitate to say, that up to Galileo's time the balance of proof was positively in favour of the old system, and that even down to the days of Sir Isaac Newton there was nothing to make the Copernican system more plausible and reasonable than the Ptolemaic theory; and it is universally acknowledged that the arguments on which Galileo mainly depended for the proof of his system were utterly fallacious and false. And it is of great importance that we should bear this in mind, with reference to the retractation which he was afterwards (in 1633) obliged

to make of his published opinions. At his first condemnation, in 1616, he was not required to abjure any opinion or doctrine which he might entertain; and Cardinal Bellarmine, at his request, furnished him with a certificate to that effect; he only received a simple admonition, and promised that he would not publicly teach or defend his theory any more. But in 1633, when he was condemned for having infringed that prohibition, he was called upon to do much more than this; he was required to subscribe to the condemnation of his own theory, "with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith to abjure, curse, and detest the said errors and heresies, together with all other heresies contrary to the Catholic Church." And he did so; neither can he be justly accused of dishonesty for the act, even though it be true (as is commonly reported) that at the very moment he made such a retractation he felt the most intimate conviction in his own mind that his theory would eventually prove to be true. For he would condemn and renounce it only in the same sense in which the Inquisition and the Index had done so before; that is, simply as being accidentally contrary to the dignity and estimation of Scripture, and as being false in the sense of unproved.

Galileo's great mistake was this; he had attempted to get a theory approved as true, before he could demonstrate it to be so; and he tried to get the old theory, which was closely bound up in men's minds with the truth of Scripture, denounced as false, before he could prove that it was false. Now the Christian religion commands us to pluck out even our right eye, our dearest sense, our clearest knowledge, our most engrossing study, and cast it from us, if it be an occasion of sin to us. And it commands us to be yet more tender of the conscience of our brethren; it says that it were better to be thrown into the sea, with a millstone tied round our neck, than to scandalise a little one of Christ, even by our lawful recreations. And common sense assures us, that if it is right and necessary to sacrifice wife and children, houses and lands, in order to save our souls, it would be madness to make an exception in favour of such scientific pursuits as are found by experience to be an occasion of scandal. Now it was obvious-and, indeed, Galileo

himself confessed as much-that a new theory like that of Copernicus might easily be made the vehicle of insinuations against the authority of the Church and of holy Scripture; and after all, as we have already said, however confident he might feel as to the truth of that theory, it rested as yet but upon obscure indications and guesses; it was not yet capable of demonstration. Galileo could therefore, with the greatest propriety-nay, more, he was bound in Christian charity to his weaker brethren, and as an act of obedience to lawful authority, to-express his contrition that he had made the arguments from the solar spots and from the tides appear conclusive and necessary, when in truth they were eminently inconclusive and capable of refutation; he could also declare that he did not, and never had, held the condemned opinion to be true, that is, demonstratively proved; and he could abjure it as false and heretical, which it was in relation to the then state of Biblical interpretation. And we will venture to say, with confidence, that when he passed out of this world into the next, he was more thankful for having acted in this matter as became a good Christian, than proud of all those brilliant discoveries whereby he had made himself famous as a wise philosopher.

From the evidence, then, which we have adduced-and in stating it we believe that we have not held back a single circumstance of the slightest importance-the following appear to us to be the only legitimate conclusions. First, with reference to the distinguished individual himself with whose story we have been occupied, we think it has been clearly shown that he would never have been molested by the Inquisition or any other Roman tribunal, if he could only have been contented to rest patiently, and to smile at the suspicion and abuse of the populace, so long as he was not condemned by the Holy See; that he had nobody to thank but his own impetuous temper for any inconveniences into which his scientific discoveries may have brought him; and that those inconveniences were, after all, of the slightest possible character, consisting chiefly in a humiliating retractation of his own theories, which, if it was made in a

Christian manner, may have been an abundant source of merit to his soul. Secondly, with reference to the Catholic Church, that she acted throughout in a spirit of true prudence, moderation, and charity; respecting, on the one hand, as long as she was able, the just liberty of her more learned children in the exercise of their intellectual powers, yet, like a tender and compassionate mother, having a due regard, on the other hand, to the weakness of human nature, and protecting the faith of her simpler sons from the rude assaults to which the rashness of physical philosophers would otherwise have exposed it. In the conduct of the Church in this matter we see nothing but proofs of a profound wisdom, and an anxious love of souls; in the conduct of Galileo we see some of the ordinary imperfections of our fallen nature,- —a certain degree of over-confidence in self, an impatience of contradiction, and some self-willed obstinacy,-but all kept in check, and preserved from fatal excess, by the gentle yet powerful discipline of the Catholic faith.

N.B. The writer of this Tract has only combined and condensed the facts and arguments which have already been made public in an article of the Dublin Review for July 1838, and in another of the Rambler for January 1852. In many places he has transcribed whole sentences from them, which he could not hope to express in a form more clear and precise; but he has not thought it necessary, in a tract of this kind, to affix to these sentences the usual marks of a quotation.