exclaims to these wranglers: "Try first to refute the arguments of Copernicus and his followers, and leave the task of condemning them to those to whom it belongs; but do not hope to find among the fathers, who were as discreet as they were far-seeing, or in the wisdom of Him who cannot err, those hasty conclusions to which you are led by personal interests and passions. It is doubtless true that concerning these and similar statements which are not strictly de fide, his Holiness the Pope has absolute authority to approve or condemn; but it is not in the power of any human being to make them true or false, or other than they de facto are."
This lengthy treatise concludes with a disquisition on the passage in the book of Joshua, which he treats in the same way as in the letter to Castelli.
Notwithstanding all the care Galileo exercised in this apology[1] not to give any handle to his enemies, it contained far too many liberal and merely human principles not to do the author more harm than good in the eyes of the orthodox party, both on religious and scientific questions. His opponents saw this plainly enough, and agitated against him all the more vehemently at Rome.
Ominous reports reached the astronomer, who was anxious enough before; but he could not any how learn anything definite about these attacks, only so much eked out, that something was brewing against him, and that it was intended to interdict the Copernican theory. Galileo thought he could best meet these intrigues by his personal appearance at Rome; he wanted to learn what the accusations against him were, and to show that there was nothing in them; he desired energetically to defend the new system, to aid truth in asserting her rights. So, early in December, 1615, provided with cordial letters of introduction from the Grand Duke, he set out for Rome.[2]
