hours. But certain men, either from the love of novelty, or to make a display of ingenuity, have concluded that the earth moves; and they maintain that neither the eighth sphere nor the sun revolves. . . . Now, it is a want of honesty and decency to assert such notions publicly, and the example is pernicious. It is the part of a good mind to accept the truth as revealed by God and to acquiesce in it." Melanchthon then cites passages from the Psalms and from Ecclesiastes, which he declares assert positively and clearly that the earth stands fast, and that the sun moves around it, and adds eight other proofs of his proposition that "the earth can be nowhere if not in the center of the universe," So earnest does this mildest of the Reformers become, that he suggests severe measures to restrain such impious teachings as those of Copernicus.[1]
While Lutheranism was thus condemning the theory of the earth's movement, other branches of the Protestant Church did not remain behind. Calvin himself took the lead, in his Commentary on Genesis, by condemning all who asserted that the earth is not at the center of the universe. "Who," he said, "will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?" Turretin, Calvin's famous successor, even after Kepler and Newton had virtually completed the theory of Copernicus and Galileo, put forth his compendium of theology, in which he proved, from a multitude of scriptural texts, that the heavens, sun, and moon move about the earth, which stands still in the center. In England we see similar theological efforts, even after they had become evidently hopeless. Hutchison's Moses' Principia, Dr. Samuel Pikes's Sacred Philosophy, the writings of Bishop Horne, Bishop Horsely, and President Forbes contain most earnest attacks upon the ideas of Newton; such attacks being based upon Scripture. Dr. John Owen, so famous in the annals of Puritanism, declared the Copernican system a "delusive and arbitrary hypothesis, contrary to Scripture"; and even John Wesley declared the new ideas to tend toward "infidelity."[2]
And Protestant peoples were not a whit behind Catholic in following out such teachings. The people of Elbing made them-
- ↑ See the Walsch edition of Luther's works, 1743, p. 2260; also the Tischreden; also Melanchthon's Initia Doctrinæ Physicæ. This treatise is cited under a mistaken title by the Catholic World, September, 1870. The correct title is as given above; it will be found in the Corpus Reformatorum, ed. Bretschneider, Halle, 1846. (For the above passage see vol. xiii, pp. 216, 217; also, Mädler, vol. i, p. 176; also, Lange, Geschichte des Materialismus, vol. i, p. 217; also, Prowe, Ueber die Abhängigkeit des Copernicus, Thorn, 1865, p. 4; also note, pp. 5, 6, where text is given in full.)
- ↑ On the Teachings of Protestantism as regards the Copernican theory, see citations in Canon Farrar's History of Interpretation, preface, xviii; also, Rev. Dr. Shields, of Princeton, The Final Philosophy, pp. 60, 61.
