The war on the Copernican theory, which up to that time had been carried on quietly, now flamed forth. It was declared that the doctrine was proved false by the standing still of the sun for Joshua; by the declarations that "the foundations of the earth are fixed so firm that they cannot be moved," and that the sun "runneth about from one end of heaven to the other."[40] The Dominican father, Caccini, preached a sermon from the text, "Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven?" and this wretched pun was the first of a series of sharper weapons; for before Caccini finishes, he insists that "geometry is of the devil," and that "mathematicians should be banished as the authors of all heresies;" and, for this, the Church authorities gave Caccini promotion.[41] Father Lorini proved that the doctrine was not only "heretical," but "atheistic," and besought the Inquisition to intervene. The Bishop of Fiesole screamed in rage against the Copernican system, and proposed to denounce Galileo to the grand-duke. The Archbishop of Pisa secretly sought to entrap Galileo and deliver him to the Inquisition at Rome. The Archbishop of Florence solemnly condemned the doctrines of Kopernik and Galileo as unscriptural. But by far the most terrible champion who appeared against him was Bellarmin, one of the greatest of theologians, and one of the poorest of scientists. He was earnest, sincere, learned, but made the fearful mistake for the world of applying to science, direct, literal interpretation of Scripture.[42] The weapons which men of Bellarmin's stamp used were theological. They held up before the world the dreadful consequences which must result to Christian theology were the doctrine to prevail that the heavenly bodies revolve about the sun, and not about the earth. Their most tremendous theologic engine against Galileo was the idea that his pretended discovery "vitiated the whole Christian plan of salvation." Father Lecazre declared that it "cast suspicion on the doctrine of the Incarnation." Others declared that it "upset the whole basis of theology; that, if the earth is a planet, and one among several planets, it cannot be that any such great things have been done especially for it, as the Christian doctrine teaches. If there are other planets, since God makes nothing in vain, they must be inhabited; but how can these inhabitants be descended from Adam? How can they trace back their origin to Noah's ark? How can they have been redeemed by the Saviour?"[43] Nor was this argument confined to the theologians of the Roman Church; Melanchthon, Protestant as he was, had already used it in his attacks upon the ideas of Kopernik and his school.[44] In addition to this prodigious engine of war, there was kept up a terrific fire of smaller artillery in the shape of texts and scriptural extracts.