acceptation; and that it was in reality as difficult to
reconcile the Ptolemaic as the Copernican system to the expressions
which occur in the Bible.

A demonstration was about this time made by the opposite party, in the
person of Caccini, a Dominican friar, who made a personal attack upon
Galileo from the pulpit. This violent ecclesiastic ridiculed the
astronomer and his followers, by addressing them sarcastically in the
sacred language of Scripture--"Ye men of _Galilee_, why stand ye here
looking up into heaven?" But this species of warfare was disapproved of
even by the church; and Luigi Maraffi, the general of the Dominicans,
not only apologised to Galileo, who had transmitted to him a formal
complaint against Caccini, but expressed the acuteness of his own
feelings on being implicated in the "brutal conduct of thirty or forty
thousand monks."

From the character of Caccini, and the part which he afterwards played
in the persecution of Galileo, we can scarcely avoid the opinion that
his attack from the pulpit was intended as a snare for the unwary
philosopher. It roused Galileo from his wonted caution; and stimulated,
no doubt, by the nature of the answer which he received from Maraffi, he
published a long letter of seventy pages, defending and illustrating his
former views respecting the influence of scriptural language on the two
contending systems. As if to give the impress of royal authority to this
new appeal, he addressed it to Christian, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, the
mother of Cosmo; and in this form it seems to have excited a new
interest, as if it had expressed the opinion of the grand ducal family.
These external circumstances gave additional weight to the powerful and
unanswerable reasoning which this letter contains; and it was scarcely
possible that any man, possessed of a sound mind, and willing to learn
the truth, should refuse his assent to the judicious views of our
author. He expresses his belief that the Scriptures were designed to
instruct mankind respecting their salvation, and that the faculties of
our minds were given us for the purpose of investigating the phenomena
of nature. He considers Scripture and nature as proceeding from the same
divine author, and, therefore, incapable of speaking a different
language; and he points out the absurdity of supposing that professors
of astronomy will shut their eyes to the phenomena which they discover
in the heavens, or will refuse to believe those de