responded, when the atrocious sentence was passed upon him, "Perhaps it is with greater fear that ye pass this sentence upon me than I receive it." His tormentors jocosely observed, as the flames shut him out forever from view, that he had gone to the imaginary worlds he had so wickedly feigned. This vigorous but spasmodic determination of the Church to defend herself was not without effect. It enabled her to hold fast the timid, the time-servers, the superficial. [Sidenote: Lord Bacon. Rejects the Copernican doctrine.] Among such may be mentioned Lord Bacon, who never received the Copernican system. With the audacity of ignorance, he presumed to criticize what he did not understand, and, with a superb conceit, disparaged the great Copernicus. He says, "In the system of Copernicus there are many and grave difficulties; for the threefold motion with which he encumbers the earth is a serious inconvenience, and the separation of the sun from the planets, with which he has so many affections in common, is likewise a harsh step; and the introduction of so many immovable bodies in nature, as when he makes the sun and stars immovable, the bodies which are peculiarly lucid and radiant, and his making the moon adhere to the earth in a sort of epicycle, and some other things which he assumes, are proceedings which mark a man who thinks nothing of introducing fictions of any kind into nature, provided his calculations turn out well." The more closely we examine the writings of Lord Bacon, the more unworthy does he seem to have been of the great reputation which has been awarded to him. The popular delusion to which he owes so much originated at a time when the history of science was unknown. They who first brought him into notice knew nothing of the old school of Alexandria. This boasted founder of a new philosophy could not comprehend, and would not accept, the greatest of all scientific doctrines when it was plainly set before his eyes.