as every other heresy against the Catholic church. In
order that his offence might not go altogether unpunished, that he might
be more cautious in future, and be a warning to others to abstain from
similar delinquencies, it was also decreed that his Dialogues should be
prohibited by public edict; that he himself should be condemned to the
prison of the Inquisition during their pleasure, and that, in the
course of the next three years, he should recite once a week the seven
penitential psalms.

The ceremony of Galileo's abjuration was one of exciting interest, and
of awful formality. Clothed in the sackcloth of a repentant criminal,
the venerable sage fell upon his knees before the assembled Cardinals;
and laying his hands upon the Holy Evangelists, he invoked the Divine
aid in abjuring and detesting, and vowing never again to teach, the
doctrine of the earth's motion, and of the sun's stability. He pledged
himself that he would never again, either in words or in writing,
propagate such heresies; and he swore that he would fulfil and observe
the penances which had been inflicted upon him.[35] At the conclusion of
this ceremony, in which he recited his abjuration word for word, and
then signed it, he was conveyed, in conformity with his sentence, to the
prison of the Inquisition.

[35] It has been said, but upon what authority we cannot state,
that when Galileo rose from his knees, he stamped on the ground,
and said in a whisper to one of his friends, "_E pur si muove._"
"It does move, though."--Life of Galileo, Lib. Useful Knowledge,
part ii. p. 63.

The account which we have now given of the trial and the sentence of
Galileo, is pregnant with the deepest interest and instruction. Human
nature is here drawn in its darkest colouring; and in surveying the
melancholy picture, it is difficult to decide whether religion or
philosophy has been most degraded. While we witness the presumptuous
priest pronouncing infallible the decrees of his own erring judgment, we
see the high-minded philosopher abjuring the eternal and immutable
truths which he had himself the glory of establishing. In the ignorance
and prejudices of the age--in a too literal interpretation of the
language of Scripture--in a mistaken respect for the errors that had
become venerable from their antiquity--and in the peculiar position
which Galileo had taken among the avowed enemies of the church, we may
find the elements of an apology