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Updated: May 29, 2025
Had the sun been in the middle of the heavens in the sense of rising and setting, it had hardly been necessary to check its course; but in medio coeli probably signifies in the middle or centre of the universe where it resides. I have no doubt that other passages of the Scriptures could be likewise interpreted in accordance with the Copernican system by divines with knowledge of astronomy.
Here was a mystery which they could not solve. Either the Copernican system was not true, after all, and the earth did not move in an orbit, or the stars were at such immense distances that the whole immeasurable orbit of the earth is a mere point in comparison.
When the Copernican system first made progress, what religious man would not have been tempted to uneasiness, or at least fear of scandal, from the seeming contradiction which it involved to some authoritative tradition of the Church and the declaration of Scripture?
Notwithstanding the mathematical certainty of the truth of the Copernican system of astronomy, I have never yet become extensively acquainted with any community in which I have not found many persons professing a respectable degree of intelligence, and even official members of orthodox churches, who entirely discredit its sublime teachings; and yet some of these very persons find little difficulty in believing that an old woman can transform herself into a hare, and wing her way through the air on a broomstick.
But in 1632 Galileo ventured on the publication of his work entitled "The System of the World," its object being the vindication of the Copernican doctrine. He was again summoned before the Inquisition at Rome, accused of having asserted that the earth moves round the sun. He was declared to have brought upon himself the penalties of heresy.
The inquisitors had determined to put down the new opinions; and they now inserted among the prohibited books Galileo's letters to Castelli and the Grand Duchess, Kepler's epitome of the Copernican theory, and Copernicus's own work on the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. Notwithstanding these proceedings, Galileo had an audience of the Pope, Paul V., in March 1616.
He was, as has been said, a vorticist before Descartes, an optimist before Leibnitz, a Copernican before Galileo. It would be easy to collect a hundred strange opinions of his. He was born about 1550, and was roasted alive at Rome, February 17, 1600, for the maintenance and defence of the Holy Church, and the rights and liberties of the same."
As with the Copernican astronomy, so with the Darwinian biology, we rise to a higher view of the workings of God and of the nature of Man than was ever attainable before.
Was the Copernican doctrine ever formally condemned as contrary to the Scriptures? And Didacus, discoursing on the Copernican hypothesis, concludes that the motion of the earth is not contrary to the Scriptures.
It is worth while to recall occasionally to the oblivious memory of mankind some of the striking instances in which opinions that the simplest experiment would have shown to be erroneous, continued to be entertained because nobody ever thought of trying that experiment. One of the most remarkable of these was exhibited in the Copernican controversy.
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