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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 Bellarmins stamp used were purely theological. They held up before free gambling money the world the dreadful consequences which must result to Christian theology were the heavenly bodies proved to revolve about the sun and not about you play the card game casino 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 best online casino site doctrine of the play for fun casino game 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 Noahs ark? How can they have been redeemed by the Saviour?" Nor was this argument confined to the theologians of the Roman Church; Melanchthon, Protestant Internet Casino Craps ashe 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 Internet Casino Craps of smaller artillery in the shape of texts and scriptural extracts. But the war grew Internet Casino Craps still more bitter, and some weapons used in it are worth examining. They are very easily examined, for they are to be found on all the battlefields of science; but on that field they were used with more effect than on almost any other. These weapons are legality of online gambling the epithets "infidel" and "atheist." They have been Internet Casino Craps usedagainst Internet Casino Crapsalmost every man who has ever done anything new for his fellow-men. The list of those who have been denounced as "infidel" and "atheist" includes almost all great men of science, general scholars, inventors, and philanthropists. The purest Christian life, the noblest Christian character, have not availed to shield combatants. Christians like Isaac Newton, Pascal, Locke, Milton, and even Fenelon and Howard, have had this weapon hurled against them. Of all Internet Casino Craps proofs of the existence of a God, those of Descartes have been wrought most thoroughly into the minds of modern best casino game men; yet the Protestant theologians of Holland sought to bring him to torture and Internet Casino Craps to death by the charge of atheism, and the Roman Catholic theologians of France thwarted him during his Internet Casino Craps life and prevented any due honours to him after his death.[135] These epithets can hardly be classed with civilized weapons. They are burning arrows; they set fire to masses of popular Internet Casino Craps prejudice, always obscuring the real question, sometimes destroying the attacking party. They are poisoned weapons. They pierce the hearts of loving women; they alienate dear children; they injure a man after life is ended, for they leave Internet Casino Craps poisoned wounds free gambling online poker in the hearts of those who loved him best--fears for his eternal salvation, dread of the Divine wrath upon him. Of Internet Casino Craps course, in these Internet Casino Craps days these weapons, though often effective in vexing good men Internet Casino Craps and in scaring good women, are somewhat blunted; indeed, they not Internet Casino Craps infrequently injure the assailants more than the assailed. So it was not in the days of Galileo; they were then in all their sharpness and venom.[135b] Yet a baser warfare was waged by the Archbishop of Pisa. This man, whose cathedral derives its most enduring fame from Internet Casino Craps Galileos deduction of a great natural law from the swinging lamp before its altar, was not an archbishop after the noble mould of Borromeo and Fenelon and Cheverus. Sadly enough for the Church and humanity, he was simply a zealot and intriguer: he perfected the plan for entrapping the great astronomer. Galileo, after his discoveries had been denounced, had written to his friend Castelli and to the Grand-Duchess Christine two letters to show that his discoveries might be reconciled with Scripture. On a hint from the Inquisition casino het internet op at Rome, the archbishop sought to get hold of these letters and exhibit them as proofs that Galileo had uttered heretical views of theology and of Scripture, and thus to bring Internet Casino Craps him into the clutch of the Inquisition. The archbishop begs Castelli, therefore, to Internet Casino Craps let him see the original letter in the handwriting of Galileo. Castelli declines. The archbishop then, while, as is now revealed, writing constantly and bitterly to the Inquisition against Galileo, professes to Castelli the greatest admiration of Galileos genius and a sincere desire to Internet Casino Craps know more of his discoveries. This not succeeding, the archbishop at last throws off the mask and resorts to open attack. The whole struggle to crush Galileo and to save him would be amusing were it not casino gambling in oklahoma so Internet Casino Craps fraught with evil. There were intrigues and counter-intrigues, plots and counter-plots, lying and spying; and in the thickest of this seething, squabbling, screaming mass of priests, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, appear two popes, Paul V and Urban VIII. It is most suggestive to see in this crisis of the Church, at the tomb of the prince of the apostles, on the eve of the greatest errors in Church policy the world has known, in all the intrigues and deliberations of these consecrated leaders Internet Casino Craps of the Church, no more evidence of the guidance or presence of the Holy Spirit than in a caucus of New York politicians at Tammany Hall. But the opposing powers were too Internet Casino Craps strong. In Internet Casino Craps 1615 Galileo was summoned before the Inquisition at Rome, and Internet Casino Craps the mine which Internet Casino Craps had been so long preparing was sprung. Sundry theologians of the Inquisition having been ordered to examine two propositions which had been extracted from Galileos letters on the solar spots, solemnly considered these points during ahout a month and rendered |
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