It is clear, however, that insofar as new science set up a direct conflict with Scriptural assumptions it gained ground but slowly and indirectly. It is difficult to-day to realize with what difficulty the Copernican and Galilean doctrine of the earth's rotation and movement round the sun found acceptance even among studious men. We have seen that Bacon finally rejected it. And as Professor Masson points out, [465] not only does Milton seem uncertain to the last concerning the truth of the Copernican system, but his friends and literary associates, the "Smectymnuans," in their answer to Bishop Hall's Humble Remonstrance (1641), had pointed to the Copernican doctrine as an unquestioned instance of a supreme absurdity. Glanvill, remarking in 1665 that "it is generally opinion'd that the Earth rests as the world's centre," avows that "for a man to go about to counter-argue this belief is as fruitless as to whistle against the winds. I shall not undertake to maintain the paradox that confronts this almost Catholic opinion. Its assertion would be entertained with the hoot of the rabble; the very mention of it as possible, is among the most ridiculous." [466] All he ventures to do is to show that the senses do not really vouch the ordinary view. Not till the eighteenth century, probably, did the common run of educated people anywhere accept the scientific teaching. On the other hand, however, there was growing up not a little Socinian and other Unitarianism, for some variety of which we have seen two men burned in 1612. Church measures had been taken against the importation of Socinian books as early as 1640. The famous Lord Falkland, slain in the Civil War, is supposed to have leant to that opinion; [467] and Chillingworth, whose Religion of Protestants (1637) was already a remarkable application of rational tests to ecclesiastical questions in defiance of patristic authority, [468] seems in his old age to have turned Socinian. [469] Violent attacks on the Trinity are noted among the heresies of 1646. [470] Colonel John Fry, one of the regicides, who in Parliament was accused of rejecting the Trinity, cleared himself by explaining that he simply objected to the terms "persons" and "subsistence," but was one of those who sought to help the persecuted Unitarian Biddle. In 1652 the Parliament ordered the destruction of a certain Socinian Catechism; and by 1655 the heresy seems to have become common. [471] It is now certain that Milton was substantially a Unitarian, [472] and that Locke and Newton were at heart no less so. [473]