Page:Galileo Galilei and the Roman Curia (IA cu31924012301754).pdf/111

 his views about the construction of the universe. He always began these discourses by carefully enumerating all the arguments for the Ptolemaic system, and then proved that they were untenable by the telling arguments with which his own observations had so abundantly supplied him; and as he not seldom added the biting sarcasm of his wit to serious demonstration, thus bringing the laugh on his side, he prepared signal defeats for the orthodox views of nature.

But by this method he obviously took a false standpoint. He would not see that the Romanists cared far more for the authority of Scripture than for the recognition of the laws of nature; that his system, running counter to orthodox interpretation of the Bible, was opposed to the interests of the Church. And as his tactics were founded upon a purely human way of looking at things, and he erroneously imagined that the true system of the universe would be of greater importance, even to the servants of the Church, than her own mysteries, it was but a natural consequence of these false premises that, instead of attaining his end, he only widened his distance from it.