ons is one of the
wonders of modern journalism. For the persecution of Kepler, see Heller,
Geschichte der Physik, vol. i, pp. 281 et seq; also Reuschle, Kepler und
die Astronomie, Frankfurt a. M., 1871, pp. 87 et seq. There is a poetic
justice in the fact that these two last-named books come from Wurtemberg
professors. See also The New-Englander for March, 1884, p. 178.

Yet this did not end the war. During the seventeenth century, in France,
after all the splendid proofs added by Kepler, no one dared openly teach
the Copernican theory, and Cassini, the great astronomer, never declared
for it. In 1672 the Jesuit Father Riccioli declared that there
were precisely forty-nine arguments for the Copernican theory and
seventy-seven against it. Even after the beginning of the eighteenth
century--long after the demonstrations of Sir Isaac Newton--Bossuet,
the great Bishop of Meaux, the foremost theologian that France has ever
produced, declared it contrary to Scripture.

Nor did matters seem to improve rapidly during that century. In England,
John Hutchinson, as we have seen, published in 1724 his Moses' Principia
maintaining that the Hebrew Scriptures are a perfect system of natural
philosophy, and are opposed to the Newtonian system of gravitation; and,
as we have also seen, he was followed by a long list of noted men in
the Church. In France, two eminent mathematicians published in 1748 an
edition of Newton's Principia; but, in order to avert ecclesiastical
censure, they felt obliged to prefix to it a statement absolutely false.
Three years later, Boscovich, the great mathematician of the Jesuits,
used these words: "As for me, full of respect for the Holy Scriptures
and the decree of the Holy Inquisition, I regard the earth as immovable;
nevertheless, for simplicity in explanation I will argue as if the
earth moves; for it is proved that of the two hypotheses the appearances
favour this idea."

In Germany, especially in the Protestant part of it, the war was even
more bitter, and it lasted through the first half of the eighteenth
century. Eminent Lutheran doctors of divinity flooded the country with
treatises to prove that the Copernican theory could not be reconciled
with Scripture. In the theological seminaries and in many of the
universities where clerical influence was strong they seemed to sweep
all before them; and yet at the middle of the century we find some
of the clearest-headed of them aware of the fact that t