It is such as Lactantius who would now condemn Copernicus unread, and produce authorities of the Scripture, of divines, and of councils in support of their condemnation.  I hold these authorities in reverence, but I hold that in this instance they are used for personal ends in a manner very different from the most sacred intention of the Holy Church.  I am ready to renounce any religious errors into which I may run in this discourse, and if my book be not beneficial to the Holy Church may it be torn and burnt; but I hold that I have a right to defend myself against the attacks of ignorant opponents.

The doctrine of the movement of the earth and the fixity of the sun is condemned on the ground that the Scriptures speak in many places of the sun moving and the earth standing still.  The Scriptures not being capable of lying or erring, it followeth that the position of those is erroneous and heretical who maintain that the sun is fixed and the earth in motion.

It is piously spoken that the Scriptures cannot lie.  But none will deny that they are frequently abstruse and their true meaning difficult to discover, and more than the bare words signify.  One taking the sense too literally might pervert the truth and conceive blasphemies, and give God feet, and hands, and eyes, and human affections, such as anger, repentance, forgetfulness, ignorance, whereas these expressions are employed merely to accommodate the truth to the mental capacity of the unlearned.

This being granted, I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments and demonstrations.  Nor does God less admirably discover Himself to us in nature than in Scripture, and having found the truth in nature we may use it as an aid to the true exposition of the Scriptures.  The Scriptures were intended to teach men those things which cannot be learned otherwise than by the mouth of the Holy Spirit; but we are meant to use our senses and reason in discovering for ourselves things within their scope and capacity, and hence certain sciences are neglected in the Holy Writ.

Astronomy, for instance, is hardly mentioned, and only the sun, and the moon, and Lucifer are named.  Surely, if the holy writers had intended us to derive our astronomical knowledge from the Sacred Books, they would not have left us so uninformed.  That they intentionally forbore to speak of the movements and constitution of the stars is the opinion of the most holy and most learned fathers.  And if the Holy Spirit has omitted to teach us those matters as not pertinent to our salvation, how can it be said that one view is de Fide and the other heretical?  I might here insert the opinion of an ecclesiastic raised to the degree of Eminentissimo:  That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how we shall go to Heaven, and not how the heavens go.

II.—­SCRIPTURAL AND EXPERIMENTAL TRUTH