discovery is the _infidel's devil_, and a very poor devil at that. For,
when the Pope has interfered to settle a question it has often happened
that his decisions were wrong.

On March 5, 1616, the congregation of the Index published a decree
condemning as "false, unscriptural and destructive of Catholic truth," the
opinion that the earth moves round the sun. It is denied by Roman
theologians that Paul IV., who set the Index at work and agreed with its
decisions, was responsible for this decree, but the preponderance of
evidence is against them. It is known that this Pope presided in a
congregation of the Inquisition on February 25, 1616, in which, after this
same opinion, that the sun is the center of our universe, had been
described as "absurd, philosophically false and formally heretical,
because expressly contrary to holy scripture;" and the opinion that the
earth is not the center of the universe, but moves, and that daily,
"absurd, philosophically false, and, theologically considered, at least
erroneous in faith;" Cardinal Bellamine was appointed to visit Galileo,
the astronomer, and order him to give up these false opinions under pain
of imprisonment for refusal. It was thus that the congregation of the
Index took action and published its decree a week later.

In 1633 Galileo, having continued to propagate his views, was called on by
the Inquisition to retract and abjure, and the formal notice to him to do
so states expressly that the declaration of 1616 was made by the Pope
himself, and that resistance to it was, therefore, heresy, contrary to the
doctrine of the Catholic and Apostolic Church. On being brought to trial,
Galileo made a formal abjuration, and on June 30th Pope Urban VIII.
ordered the publication of the sentence, thereby, according to Roman
ecclesiastical law, making Galileo's compulsory denial of the earth's
motion binding on all Christians as a theological doctrine. Infidels have
a vast deal to say about such an abominable manifestation of ecclesiastic
tyranny and unscientific and unscriptural nonsense. All intelligent Roman
Catholics of to-day reject the judgment of Popes Paul IV. and Urban VIII.
as absurd, and scientifically and scripturally false. There is not so much
as a hint at papal authority found in the three old creeds known as the
Apostles', the Nicene and the Athanasian, nor in any ancient gloss upon
them. Neither can we find in them any of the distinguishing special
doctrines of the