"
For the final assault upon him a park of heavy artillery was at
last wheeled into place. It may be seen on all the scientific
battlefields. It consists of general denunciation; and in 1631
Father Melchior Inchofer, of the Jesuits, brought his artillery to
bear upon Galileo with this declaration: "The opinion of the
earth's motion is of all heresies the most abominable, the most
pernicious, the most scandalous; the immovability of the earth is
thrice sacred; argument against the immortality of the soul, the
existence of God, and the incarnation, should be tolerated sooner
than an argument to prove that the earth moves." From the other end
of Europe came a powerful echo.
From the shadow of the Cathedral of Antwerp, the noted theologian
Fromundus gave forth his famous treatise, the _Ant-Aristarclius_. Its
very title-page was a contemptuous insult to the memory of
Copernicus, since it paraded the assumption that the new truth was
only an exploded theory of a pagan astronomer. Fromundus declares
that "sacred Scripture fights against the Copernicans.
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