In the first place, the meaning which any generation puts upon the phrases of Scripture, depends, more than is at first sight supposed upon the received philosophy of the time. Hence, while men imagine that they are contending for Revelation, they are, in fact, contending for their own interpretation of Revelation, unconsciously adapted to what they believe to be rationally probable. And the new interpretation, which the new philosophy requires, and which appears to the older school to be a fatal violence done to the authority of religion, is accepted by their successors without the dangerous results which were apprehended. When the language of Scripture, invested with its new meaning, has become familiar to men, it is found that the ideas which it calls up, are quite as reconcilable as the former ones were with the soundest religious views. And the world then looks back with surprise at the error of those who thought that the essence of Revelation was involved in their own arbitrary version of some collateral circumstance. At the present day we can hardly conceive how reasonable men should have imagined that religious reflections on the stability of the earth, and the beauty and use of the luminaries which revolve round it, would be interfered with by its being acknowledged that this rest and motion are apparent only. In the next place, we may observe that those who thus adhere tenaciously to the traditionary or arbitrary mode of understanding Scriptural expressions of physical events, are always strongly condemned by succeeding generations. They are looked upon with contempt by the world at large, who cannot enter into the obsolete difficulties with which they encumbered themselves; and with pity by the more considerate and serious, who know how much sagacity and rightmindedness are requisite for the conduct of philosophers and religious men on such occasions; but who know also how weak and vain is the attempt {287} to get rid of the difficulty by merely denouncing the new tenets as inconsistent with religious belief, and by visiting the promulgators of them with severity such as the state of opinions and institutions may allow. The prosecutors of Galileo are still up to the scorn and aversion of mankind: although, as we have seen, they did not act till it seemed that their position compelled them to do so, and then proceeded with all the gentleness and moderation which were compatible with judicial forms. _Sect._ 5.--_The Heliocentric Theory confirmed on Physical considerations.--_(_Prelude to Kepler's Astronomical Discoveries._)