But by far the most terrible champion who now appeared was Cardinal
Bellarmin, one of the greatest theologians the world has known. He
was earnest, sincere, and learned, but insisted on making science
conform to Scripture. The weapons which men of Bellarmin's stamp
used were purely theological. They held up before the world the
dreadful consequences which must result to Christian theology were
the heavenly bodies proved to revolve about the sun and not about
the earth. Their most tremendous dogmatic engine was the statement
that "his pretended discovery vitiates the whole Christian plan of
salvation." Father Lecazre declared "it casts suspicion on the
doctrine of the incarnation." Others declared, "It upsets the
whole basis of theology. If the earth is a planet, and only one
among several planets, it can not be that any such great things
have been done specially 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 their 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?" Nor was this argument
confined to the theologians of the Roman Church; Melanchthon,
Protestant as he was, had already used it in his attacks on
Copernicus and his school.
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