many things
according to the common received opinion that their times had of them."
Even Copernicus himself, knowing the power of custom, and unwilling to
create confusion in our comprehension, continues to talk of the rising
and setting of the sun and stars and of variations in the obliquity of
the zodiac. Whence it is to be noted how necessary it is to accommodate
our discourse to our accustomed manner of understanding.

In the next place, the common consent of the fathers to a natural
proposition should authorise it only if it have been discussed and
debated with all possible diligence, and this question was in those
times totally buried.

Besides, it is not enough to say that the fathers accept the Ptolemaic
doctrine; it is necessary to prove that they condemned the Copernican.
Was the Copernican doctrine ever formally condemned as contrary to the
Scriptures? And Didacus, discoursing on the Copernican hypothesis,
concludes that the motion of the earth is not contrary to the
Scriptures.

Let my opponents, therefore, apply themselves to examine the arguments
of Copernicus and others; and let them not hope to find such rash and
impetuous decisions in the wary and holy fathers, or in the absolute
wisdom of him that cannot err, as those into which they have suffered
themselves to be hurried by prejudice or personal feeling. His holiness
has certainly an absolute power of admitting or condemning propositions
not directly _de Fide_, but it is not in the power of any creature to
make them true or false otherwise than of their own nature and _de
facto_ they are.

In my judgment it would be well first to examine the truth of the fact
(over which none hath power) before invoking supreme authority; for if
it be not possible that a conclusion should be declared heretical while
we are not certain but that it may be true, their pains are vain who
pretend to condemn the doctrine of the mobility of the earth and the
fixity of the sun, unless they have first demonstrated the doctrine to
be impossible and false.

Let us now consider how we may interpret the command of Joshua that the
sun should stand still.

According to the Ptolemaic system, the sun moves from east to west
through the ecliptic, and therefore the standing still of the sun would
shorten and not lengthen the day. Indeed, in order to lengthen the day
on this system it would be necessary not to hold the sun, but to
accelerate its pace about three hundred and sixt