[2d Ed.] [It appears to me that the different degree of toleration accorded to the heliocentric theory in the time of Copernicus and of Galileo, must be ascribed in a great measure to the controversies and alarms which had in the mean time arisen out of the Reformation in religion, and which had rendered the Romish Church more jealous of innovations in received opinions than it had previously been. It appears too that the discussion of such novel doctrines was, at that time at least, less freely tolerated in Italy than in other countries. In 1597, Kepler writes to Galileo thus: "Confide Galilæe et progredere. Si bene conjecto, pauci de præcipuis Europæ Mathematicis a nobis secedere volent; tanta vis est veritatis. Si tibi Italia minus est idonea ad publicationem et si aliqua habitures es impedimenta, forsan Germania nobis hanc libertatem concedet."--Venturi, _Mem. di Galileo_, vol. i. p. 19. I would not however be understood to assert the condemnation of new doctrines in science to be either a general or a characteristic practice of the Romish Church. Certainly the intelligent and cultivated minds of Italy, and many of the most eminent of her ecclesiastics among them, have always been the foremost in promoting and welcoming the progress of science: and, as I have stated, there were found among the Italian ecclesiastics of Galileo's time many of the earliest and most enlightened adherents of the Copernican system. The condemnation of the doctrine of the earth's motion, is, so far as I am aware, the only instance in which the Papal authority has pronounced a decree upon a point of science. And the most candid of the {281} adherents of the Romish Church condemn the assumption of authority in such matters, which in this one instance, at least, was made by the ecclesiastical tribunals. The author of the _Ages of Faith_ (book viii. p. 248) says, "A congregation, it is to be lamented, declared the new system to be opposed to Scripture, and therefore heretical." In more recent times, as I have elsewhere remarked,[27\5] the Church of Authority and the Church of Private Judgment have each its peculiar temptations and dangers, when there appears to be a discrepance between Scripture and Philosophy. [Note 27\5: _Phil. Ind. Sci._ book x. chap. 4.]