Galileo, at the distance of more than a hundred years after the former, offended the church by defending the system of Copernicus, but still more in proving that the earth had a double motion, in revolving on its own centre in twenty-four hours, and also in its orbit round the sun; the former being the cause of day and night, and the latter measuring the solar year. The discovery, or rather the revival, of these and many other grand and sublime truths, drew down upon the head of this great man the implacable vengeance of an interested priesthood; and he was condemned by a wicked conclave, which calls itself holy, for daring to know and to propagate truths that are now known to every schoolboy. All that could be done for him by the wise and learned of the age was merely to save him from being burnt by the priests. He was confined for life, and died a prisoner of the Inquisition. As the sentence against him is hardly credible in the present day, we cite the following part of it:--"To assert that the earth is not immoveable in the centre of the world, is an absurd proposition, false in philosophy, heretical in religion, and contrary to the testimony of Scripture." As an instance of the malicious and inexorable nature of priestcraft, we note the curious fact, that Galileo's sentence was, in spite of the clearest light, _renewed at Rome in 1819!_ Virgilius, Bishop of Saltzberg, was condemned by the church for maintaining that the figure of the earth is spherical; and, consequently, the existence of antipodes. The learned Stephen Dolet was burnt by the Inquisition for exposing priestcraft, and asserting the unity of God. Julius Vanini was burnt by the clergy for saying that "God is both the beginning and the end, without being in need of either--in no one place, yet present everywhere; his power is his will." For these tenets did the theologians burn the innocent Vanini. The blameless life and manners of William Tyndale could not save him from the stake and fagot; his great learning enabled him to expose the frauds of the priests, and the false translations of their Scriptures: so he fell their victim, through the aid and authority of his tyrannical and blood-thirsty king. The great Descartes died in a foreign land from church persecution.