[147]
The Protestant Church was hardly less energetic against this new
astronomy than the mother Church. The sacred science of the first
Lutheran Reformers was transmitted as a precious legacy, and in the
next century was made much of by Calovius. His great learning and
determined orthodoxy gave him the Lutheran leadership. Utterly
refusing to look at ascertained facts, he cited the turning back of
the shadow upon King Hezekiah's dial and the standing still of the
sun for Joshua, denied the movement of the earth, and denounced the
whole new view as clearly opposed to Scripture. To this day his
arguments are repeated by sundry orthodox leaders of American
Lutheranism.
As to the other branches of the Reformed Church, we have already
seen how Calvinists, Anglicans, and, indeed, Protestant sectarians
generally, opposed the new truth.[148] In England, among the strict
churchmen, the great Dr. South denounced the Royal Society as
"irreligious," and among the Puritans the eminent John Owen declared
that Newton's discoveries were "built on fallible phenomena and
advanced by many arbitrary presumptions against evident testimonies
of Scripture.
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