[135]
These epithets can hardly be classed with civilized weapons. They
are burning arrows; they set fire to masses of popular prejudice,
always obscuring the real question, sometimes destroying the
attacking party. They are poisoned weapons. They pierce the hearts
of loving women; they alienate dear children; they injure a man
after life is ended, for they leave poisoned wounds in the hearts
of those who loved him best--fears for his eternal salvation, dread
of the Divine wrath upon him. Of course, in these days these
weapons, though often effective in vexing good men and in scaring
good women, are somewhat blunted; indeed, they not infrequently
injure the assailants more than the assailed. So it was not in the
days of Galileo; they were then in all their sharpness and venom.[135b]
Yet a baser warfare was waged by the Archbishop of Pisa. This man,
whose cathedral derives its most enduring fame from Galileo's
deduction of a great natural law from the swinging lamp before its
altar, was not an archbishop after the noble mould of Borromeo and
Fenelon and Cheverus.
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