wretched pun upon the great astronomer's name
ushered in sharper weapons; for, before Caccini ended, he insisted that
"geometry is of the devil," and that "mathematicians should be banished
as the authors of all heresies." The Church authorities gave Caccini
promotion.

Father Lorini proved that Galileo's doctrine was not only heretical but
"atheistic," and besought the Inquisition to intervene. The Bishop
of Fiesole screamed in rage against the Copernican system, publicly
insulted Galileo, and denounced him to the Grand-Duke. The Archbishop
of Pisa secretly sought to entrap Galileo and deliver him to the
Inquisition at Rome. The Archbishop of Florence solemnly condemned the
new doctrines as unscriptural; and Paul V, while petting Galileo, and
inviting him as the greatest astronomer of the world to visit Rome, was
secretly moving the Archbishop of Pisa to pick up evidence against the
astronomer.

But by far the most terrible champion who now appeared was Cardinal
Bellarmin, one of the greatest theologians the world has known. He was
earnest, sincere, and learned, but insisted on making science conform to
Scripture. The weapons which men of Bellarmin's stamp used were purely
theological. They held up before the world the dreadful consequences
which must result to Christian theology were the heavenly bodies proved
to revolve about the sun and not about the earth. Their most tremendous
dogmatic engine was the statement that "his pretended discovery vitiates
the whole Christian plan of salvation." Father Lecazre declared "it
casts suspicion on the doctrine of the incarnation." Others declared,
"It upsets the whole basis of theology. If the earth is a planet, and
only one among several planets, it can not be that any such great things
have been done specially for it as the Christian doctrine teaches. If
there are other planets, since God makes nothing in vain, they must be
inhabited; but how can their inhabitants be descended from Adam? How
can they trace back their origin to Noah's ark? How can they have
been redeemed by the Saviour?" Nor was this argument confined to the
theologians of the Roman Church; Melanchthon, Protestant as he was, had
already used it in his attacks on Copernicus and his school.

In addition to this prodigious theological engine of war there was kept
up a fire of smaller artillery in the shape of texts and scriptural
extracts.

But the war grew still more bitter, and some weapons used in it are