lies motion.

It will be seen that it does not take much to reduce Copernicus to pure
hypothesis. No personal injury being done to the author--who indeed had
been 17 years out of {96} reach--the treatment of his book is now an
excellent joke. It is obvious that the Cardinals of the Index were a little
ashamed of their position, and made a mere excuse of a few corrections.
Their mode of dealing with chap. 8, this _problematice videtur loqui, ut
studiosis satisfiat_,[156] is an excuse to avoid corrections. But they
struck out the stinging allusion to Lactantius[157] in the preface, little
thinking, honest men, for they really believed what they said--that the
light of Lactantius would grow dark before the brightness of their own.

THE CONVOCATION AT OXFORD EQUALLY AT FAULT.

1622. I make no reference to the case of Galileo, except this. I have
pointed out (_Penny Cycl. Suppl._ "Galileo"; _Engl. Cycl._ "Motion of the
Earth") that it is clear the absurdity was the act of the _Italian_
Inquisition--for the private and personal pleasure of the Pope, who _knew_
that the course he took would not commit him as _Pope_--and not of the body
which calls itself the _Church_. Let the dirty proceeding have its right
name. The Jesuit Riccioli,[158] the stoutest and most learned
Anti-Copernican in Europe, and the Puritan Wilkins, a strong Copernican and
Pope-hater, are equally positive that the Roman _Church_ never pronounced
any decision: and this in the time immediately following the ridiculous
proceeding of the Inquisition. In like manner a decision of the Convocation
of Oxford is not a law of the _English_ Church; which is fortunate, for
that Convocation, in 1622, came to a decision quite as absurd, and a great
deal {97} more wicked than the declaration against the motion of the earth.
The second was a foolish mistake; the first was a disgusting surrender of
right feeling. The story is told without disapprobation by Anthony Wood,
who never exaggerated anything against the university of which he is
writing eulogistic history.

In 1622, one William Knight[159] put forward in a sermon preached before
the University certain theses which, looking at the state of the times, may
have been improper and possibly of seditious intent. One of them was that
the bishop might excommunicate the civil magistrate: this proposition the
clerical body could not approve, and designated it by the term
_erronea_,[160] the mildest going. But Knight als