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in the solar system the sun is the immovable centre, and the earth, and all the other planets in it, revolve round it. This doctrine was originally by her qualified as heresy, and it has been condemned in her most formal judicial document on such subjects to the year 1835, at which time the condemnation was surreptitiously, and to her own evident interest, withdrawn by herself.[1]
- ↑ See Hallam, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, vol. iv. pp. 28–31. I regret that a writer of such extensive learning and research as Mr. Hallam should have so little instructed himself on this subject as to write that some works of Galileo and others were put "into the Index Expurgatorius, where," he continues, "I believe, they still remain." They never were in the Index Expurgatorius, of which Rome acknowledges none as ber own, though, as appears in these pages, they were in the Prohibitory Index, from which they were all carefully, though silently, dismissed in the last Index. In a note, too, he has said of Mr. Drinkwater Bethune, that he seems to be mistaken in supposing that Galileo did not endeavour to prove his system compatible with Scripture;" and refers to the letter to the Grand Duchess of Tuscany for proof. The biographer bad, as. we have seen, referred to the very letter, and pointed to the very fact, proving its irrelevance. And in speaking of the Dublin Reviewer with respect, he seems to have allowed his complaisance to outrun his discrimination.
I may here likewise notice, how favourable an opportunity Mr. H. lost of throwing decisive light upon so dovel and interesting a subject as the Papal restrictions upon literature in vol. ii. pp. 507-510, "Iudex Expurgatorius of prohibited books" is a self-contradiction: it is much the same as to talk of administering an emetic or a cathartic to a man who is dead.
