censorship. Nor has that old conscientious consistency in hatred yet fully relented: hardly a generation since has not seen some ecclesiastic like Marini or De Bonald or Rallaye or De Gabriac, suppressing evidence, or torturing expressions, or inventing theories to blacken the memory of Galileo and save the reputation of the Church. Nay, more, there are school histories, widely used, which in the supposed interest of the Church, misrepresent in the grossest manner all these transactions in which Galileo was concerned. Sancta simplicitas! The Church has no worse enemies than those who devise and teach these perversions. They are simply rooting out, in the long run, from the minds of the more thoughtful scholars, respect for the great organization which such writings are supposed to serve. Their work is just as futile as that of writers of school histories which in the supposed Protestant interest misrepresent the Roman doctrine of indulgences[1]
The Protestant Church was hardly less energetic against the new astronomy than the mother Church had been. The sacred science of the first Lutheran Reformers was transmitted as a precious legacy, and in the next century was made much of by Calovius His great learning and determined orthodoxy gave him leadership in the Lutheran Church. Utterly refusing to look at ascertained facts, he cited the turning back of the shadow upon King Hezekiah's dial and the standing still of the sun for Joshua, denied the movement of the earth, and denounced the Copernican view as clearly opposed to Scripture. To this day his arguments are repeated by sundry orthodox leaders of American Lutheranism.
As to the other branch of the reformed Church, Turretin, Calvin's famous successor, even after Kepler and Newton had established 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,[2] In England we see similar theological efforts even after they had become utterly futile: among the strict churchmen, the great Dr. South denounced the Royaf Society as "irreligious," and among the Puritans the eminent John Owen declared that Newton's discoveries were "built on fallible phenomena and advanced by many arbitrary presump-
- ↑ For the persecutions of Galileo's memory after his death, see Gebler, Wohlwill, but especially Th. Martin, p. 243, and elsewhere. For the persecution of Galileo's memory, see Th. Martin, chapters ix and x. For documentary proofs, see L'Epinois. For a collection of the slanderous theories invented against Galileo, see Martin, final chapters and appendix. Both these authors are devoted to the Church, but, unlike Monsignor Marini, are too upright to resort to the pious fraud of suppressing documents or interpolating pretended facts.
- ↑ For Calovius, see Zoeckler, Geschichte, vol. i, pp. 684 and 763. For Calvin and Turretin, see Shields, The Final Philosophy, pp. 60, 61.
