186

HISTORICAL VIEW OF THE

part, whilst the profession of Christianity has been inno degree impaired.

Thus, however, was the church arrayed in mortalhostility against science, and thus ineffectual was thathostility; but, in other instances, we have noticed amore pacific spirit, and attempts at an accommodation.

Foscarinus, we have seen, sought to reconcile thechurch to the solar system, by that species of ingeniousglosses, and casuistical commentaries on the opposingtexts, which the Romish theologians knew so well howto employ in other cases, and by which any requiredsense might he put upon any passage. He at least suc-ceeded in his attempt so far as to screen himself frompersecution.

The case of Tycho Brahe affords a remarkable andnot uninstructive contrast. He in like manner pursuedthe path of reconciliation between opposing systems.But Tycho was a sincere and zealous Protestant ; and,in the extreme Protestantism of his day, he worshippedthe very letter of every part of Scripture, as devotedly asthe Romanist did the decrees of his church. Hence hewas no less scandalised at the idea of the earth’s mo-tion ; and we have seen the way in which he got rid ofthe difficulty.

Thus the monk attempted to bend Scripture to fact,and the Protestant to bend fact to Scripture; but bothattempts were equally futile. The orthodox expositionsof Foscarinus are unknown, and the pious theory ofTycho is exploded and forgotten ; the Copernicanheresy has triumphed ; yet the essential truths of Re-velation stand unimpeached and unimpeachable on therock of their proper moral evidence; whilst naturaltheology has found, in this very system, the most power-ful of all its arguments.

But still, are there not actual contradictions ? andhow are we to get over them ? The words of Galileo in his admirable letter to the Grand Duchess of Tus-cany, give a reply to which, even at the present day, wecan hardly add any thing more forcible: — “I am,’’