There was, however, just at this time a little group of thinkers who objected to Newton's scheme, "because of the endless uninterrupted flux of matter from the sun in light, an expense which should destroy that orb."[384] These Hutchinsonians conceived of light as pure ether in motion springing forth from the sun, growing more dense the further it goes till it becomes air, and, striking the circumference of the universe (which is perhaps an immovable solid), is thrown back toward the sun and melted into light again. Its force as its tides of motion strike the earth and the other planets produces their constant gyrations.[385] Men like Duncan Forbes, Lord President of the Court of Sessions, and George Horne, President of Magdalen College, Oxford, as a weapon against rationalism, favored this notion that had been expounded by John Hutchinson (1674-1737) in his _Moses's Principia_ (1724).[386] They were also strongly attracted by the scriptural symbolism with which the book abounds. Leslie Stephen summarizes their doctrines as (1) extreme dislike for rationalism, (2) a fanatical respect for the letter of the Bible, and (3) an attempt to enlist the rising powers of scientific enquiry upon the side of orthodoxy.[387] This "little eddy of thought"[388] was not of much influence even at that time, but it has a certain interest as indicating the positions men have taken when on the defensive against new ideas. [Footnote 384: Forbes: _Letter_, (1755).] [Footnote 385: See Wesley: I, 136-7.] [Footnote 386: _Dict. of Nat. Biog._: "Hutchinson."] [Footnote 387: Stephen: _Hist. of Eng. Thought_: I, 390.] [Footnote 388: Ibid: 391.] CHAPTER V. THE CHURCH AND THE NEW ASTRONOMY: CONCLUSION. Astronomical thought on the Continent was more hampered, in the Catholic countries especially, by the restrictive opinions of the Church. Yet in 1757, when the decree prohibiting all books dealing with the Copernican doctrine was removed from the Index, that system had already long been adopted by the more celebrated academies of Europe, for so Mme. de Premontval claimed in 1750; and it was then reaching out to non-scientific readers, through simple accounts for "ladies and others not well versed in these somewhat technical matters."[389] The great landmark in the development of the doctrine was the publication of Newton's _Principia_ in 1687, though its effect in Europe was of course slower in being felt than it was in England. Newton's work and that of the astronomers immediately following him was influential except where the Church's prohibitions still held sway. [Footnote 389: de Premontval: _Le Méchaniste Philosophe_, 54, 72. (The Hague, 1750).]