The scruples arose from the opinion, then prevalent, that the Holy Scripture taught that the earth stood still and the sun moved; that the words of the Scripture must be taken literally till the contrary is demonstrated. The unanimous explanation of the Christian centuries was also cited. As a matter of fact, however, the Christian past had not taught this to be the only true sense of the words, but at that time the words were understood that way, because no one could arrive at any other sense in those days. Under these circumstances, an error was hardly avoidable, if a decision was required. And a decision seemed to be urgent, and this is the second point we must not overlook, if we wish to judge fairly. It was a time eager for innovations, full of anti-religious ideas. A renaissance, sidling off into false humanism, was combating religious convictions, false notions were invading philosophy; in addition, Protestantism was trying to invade Italy. All this caused suspicion of any innovation apt to endanger the faith; interpretations of the Scriptures deviating from the accustomed sense were particularly distrusted. The _Galileo_ quarrel happened at an inopportune time. Indeed a sudden spread of the Copernican theory might have been accompanied by great religious dangers. Even now, after nearly three hundred years, the leaders of the anti-Christian propaganda are still pointing out that the progress of natural science has proved Holy Scripture to be erroneous, and many are impressed by the argument; many thousands would have been confused in those days by the sudden collapse of old astronomical views that were connected with unclarified religious ideas—dreading that victorious science might shatter all religious traditions. Now, if one is convinced that the damage to religion is to be estimated greater than any other, then one may also have the conviction that it was better for the nations of the new era to have their scientific progress a little delayed, than to have their most sacred possession endangered. Of course considerations of this kind will have no weight with representatives of the naturalistic view of the world. Then it can only be emphasized that a science that has no appreciation of the supernatural character of the Catholic Church cannot be in a position to render a fair judgment on many facts in the history of that Church. What we have said shows sufficiently that the condemnation of _Galileo_ was not due to any hostility to science.