Although Galileo had made a narrow escape from the grasp of the inquisition, yet he was never sufficiently sensible of the lenity which he experienced. When he left Rome in 1616, under the solemn pledge of never again teaching the obnoxious doctrine, it was with an hostility against the church, suppressed but deeply cherished; and his resolution to propagate the heresy seems to have been coeval with the vow by which he renounced it. In the year 1618, when he communicated his theory of the tides to the archduke Leopold, he alludes in the most sarcastic manner to the conduct of the church. The same hostile tone, more or less, pervaded all his writings, and, while he laboured to sharpen the edge of his satire, he endeavoured to guard himself against its effects, by an affectation of the humblest deference to the decisions of theology. Had Galileo stood alone, his devotion to science might have withdrawn him from so hopeless a contest; but he was spurred on by the violence of a party. The Lyncæan Academy never scrupled to summon him from his researches. They placed him in the forlorn hope of their combat, and he at last fell a victim to the rashness of his adventure. But, whatever allowance we may make for the ardour of Galileo's temper, and the peculiarity of his position; and however we may justify and even approve of his past conduct, his visit to Urban VIII., in 1624, placed him in a new relation to the church, which demanded on his part a new and corresponding demeanour. The noble and generous reception which he met with from Urban, and the liberal declaration of cardinal Hohenzoller on the subject of the Copernican system, should have been regarded as expressions of regret for the past, and offers of conciliation for the future. Thus honoured by the head of the church, and befriended by its dignitaries, Galileo must have felt himself secure against the indignity of its lesser functionaries, and in the possession of the fullest licence to prosecute his researches and publish his discoveries, provided he avoided that dogma of the church which, even in the present day, it has not ventured to renounce. But Galileo was bound to the Romish hierarchy by even stronger ties. His son and himself were pensioners of the church, and, having accepted of its alms, they owed to it, at least, a decent and respectful allegiance. The pension thus given by Urban was not a remuneration which sovereigns sometimes award to the services of their subjects. Galileo was a foreigner at Rome. The sovereign of the papal state owed him no obligation; and hence we must regard the pension of Galileo as a donation from the Roman pontiff to science itself, and as a declaration to the Christian world, that religion was not jealous of philosophy, and that the church of Rome was willing to respect and foster even the genius of its enemies.