Monsignor Dini, the friend of Galileo, wrote to him thus, 2nd May 1615: “Theologians allow mathematical discussion, but only when the subject is treated as a simple hypothesis, which is alleged to have been the case with Copernicus. The same liberty will be accorded to you if you keep clear of theology.” Cardinal Barberini, also on terms of friendship with Galileo, sent word to him by Ciampoli on the 28th February of the same year, “that he was not to pass the physical and mathematical limits of the question, because the theologians maintain that it appertains to them alone to elucidate scripture.” They all advised him openly and explicitly to refrain from quoting the bible, and his pertinacity might have excited admiration had it been based on firmness of character, but his timidity and innumerable self-contradictions when directly accused of heresy gave the lie to his apparent determination and adhesion to his principles. When Cardinal Maffeo Barberini was elected pope, under the name of Urbanus, Galileo, who had long been on terms of friendship with him, went to Rome to offer his congratulations, and soon after published his celebrated work: _Dialogo intorno ai due massimi sistemi del mondo_. Unfortunately, instead of limiting himself to astronomy in this work, he enters again upon questions of theology utterly irrelevant to the main subject; but, strangely enough, in the preface to the _Dialogo_ he has the weakness to disguise his real opinions. “I come,” says he, “to defend the system of Ptolemy. As the friend of the cardinals who have condemned the doctrines of Copernicus, I highly approve their decision; a most excellent decision; a most salutary decision. They who have murmured against it, have been to blame. If I take up my pen it is out of excess of catholic zeal; this it is that moves me to reappear before the public after many years of silence.” The reader cannot but feel compassion in observing so much feeble-mindedness, unworthy of so great a genius. It may be said in his excuse that the counsels of his best friends forced him to play the miserable part with which he has been reproached, that of servile submission and the abandonment of his convictions. While expressing the liveliest interest in his works, his principal patron, the ambassador of Tuscany, thus advises him in letters of the 16th February and 9th April 1633: “Submit yourself to whatever may be demanded of you, as the only means of appeasing the rancour of him who in the excess of his anger has made this persecution a personal affair. Never mind your convictions, do not defend them, but conform to all that your enemies may assert on the question of the earth’s movement.”