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Directorium Inquisitorum of Nicolas Eymeric.[1] Nothing more is necessary for the matter of science, and Rome's condemnation of it in the present case; and any demur or quibbling on the point is only not childish, because it wants the simplicity of childhood, confining ourselves even to the doings of the Inquisition which is the least part. Quite enough seems to have been said on this part of the subject. If, then, to the sentence of the Inquisition, during the lifetime of Galileo, we add the explicit condemnations of the Index, as they have been stated, from that time to the year 1835, it is not too much to say, that if the Church of Rome has the power, by any acts of her own, to make herself responsible, then assuredly, by what she has done through these two great organs of her authority, she has made herself responsible for a solemn, explicit, and self-binding condemnation of the doctrine, now, and for a long time universally received, that
- ↑ See, in the Roman edition of 1587, part ii., Quæst. de Her. Pravit. Quæst. ii. p. 233, where the fourth definition of an heretical proposition is, that it is contrary to Scripture — contra Sacram Scripturam. What is found in Quæst. iv. pp. 376, seqq. will teach the reader the three degrees of comparison in suspicion of heresy. That de vehementi occupies the middle place, and answers to magna.
