The first important attack on Galileo began in 1610, when he
announced that his telescope had revealed the moons of the planet
Jupiter. The enemy saw that this took the Copernican theory out of
the realm of hypothesis, and they gave battle immediately. They
denounced both his method and its results as absurd and impious. As
to his method, professors bred in the "safe science" favoured by
the Church argued that the divinely appointed way of arriving at
the truth in astronomy was by theological reasoning on texts of
Scripture; and, as to his results, they insisted, first, that
Aristotle knew nothing of these new revelations; and, next, that
the Bible showed by all applicable types that there could be only
seven planets; that this was proved by the seven golden
candlesticks of the Apocalypse, by the seven-branched candlestick of
the tabernacle, and by the seven churches of Asia; that from
Galileo's doctrine consequences must logically result destructive
to Christian truth. Bishops and priests therefore warned their
flocks, and multitudes of the faithful besought the Inquisition to
deal speedily and sharply with the heretic.
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