Yet the death of Servetus was not without advantage to the world. Men asked with amazement and indignation if the atrocities of the Inquisition were again to be revived. They saw at once that intolerance was not confined to the Romish church. In spite of all these commotions, science was making rapid progress. Copernicus lived at the same time as Luther and died two years before him. His was as brave a life as ever lived in story. For thirty-six years--at the very time the Protestant struggle was raging--he was working at that immortal book, in which he so clearly demonstrates the motions of the earth and the revolutions of the planets around the sun. But he did not dare to publish it until there was a lull in the political storm. He was then an old man in broken health. His book was in the printer's hands when he was on his death bed. He waited at death's door from day to day. At length the messenger arrived with the printed book. He received it with tears in his eyes, composed himself and died. Copernicus was followed by Tycho Brahe, Kepler and Galileo, and last, but by no means least, Isaac Newton, that scientific giant, who burst through the fetters of the ages, and taught {104} man the laws, harmony and grandeur of the Creator's works. During these troublous times Leonardo da Vinci wrote his celebrated works on mathematics and natural philosophy; and the arts of painting, sculpture and music were greatly improved under the direction of Titian, Corregio, Michael Angelo and Filippo Neri. A few years later Bruno wrote his work on the plurality of worlds. Copernicus having died soon after the publication of his works, was beyond the reach of his persecutors. Galileo was brought before the Inquisition, and after years of imprisonment, only saved his life by denying the great truths he had discovered. But Bruno heroically refused to recant, and was tortured to death February 16th, 1700, a martyr to the cause of truth. While these things were transpiring, great changes had taken place in the maritime and commercial affairs of the world. Bold navigators had sailed along the whole eastern coast of America, and a large part of the western coast. Tolerably accurate maps of the outlines of the western hemisphere, had been published as early as 1590. After these discoveries, the great centers of commerce were no longer to be found on the shores of the Mediterranean, but had shifted to the shores of the Atlantic. England by her geographical position, betwixt the two continents, and in the very center of the inhabitable portion of the earth, as well as the indomitable energy of her sons, had rapidly become the foremost commercial nation of the world. The great naval armament called the Invincible Armada, was equipped for the subjugation of England; but in the providence of God she destroyed the Armada and paralysed the influence of Spain.