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In one of the 12th of March in the same year, from Rome, writing to the secretary of the Grand Duke, he says, that the Congregation of the Index had determined, that the opinion of Copernicus was not in unison with the Scriptures, and that the work should be suspended donec corrigatur; but that, the correction made, nothing more would be objected to, except the intimation in the preface, that his opinion was not at variance with Scripture, and the end of the tenth chapter of the first book, where he says of his system, such is the Divine fabric of the Most High, Galileo waited upon his holiness, who received him most graciously, and declared that he and his Congregation would admit no charge of his enemies against him lightly.
In the following letter to the Grand Duke, dated Firenze, May 23, 1618, keeping to the same subject, he professes (with obvious irony) the profound submission of his weakness to the superior intelligence of his censors, and talks of his theory as a poem or a dream: but, adds he, as poets value their own fancies, so he
rancorous opposition, and the most unprovoked abuse that I have met with, has been from persons who never knew any thing of me but in the character of a philosopher."
