In spite, then, of all casuistry and special pleading, this sturdy honesty ended the controversy among Catholics themselves, so far as fair-minded men are concerned.
In recalling it at this day there stand out from its later phases two efforts at compromise especially instructive, as showing the embarrassment of militant theology in the nineteenth century.
The first of these was made by John Henry Newman in the days when he was hovering between the Anglican and Roman Churches. In one of his sermons before the University of Oxford he spoke as follows:
"Scripture says that the sun moves and the earth is stationary, and science that the earth moves and the sun is comparatively at rest. How can we determine which of these opposite statements is the very truth till we know what motion is? If our idea of motion is but an accidental result of our present senses, neither proposition is true and both are true: neither true philosophically; both true for certain practical purposes in the system in which they are respectively found."
In all anti-theological literature there is no utterance more hopelessly skeptical. And for what were the youth of Oxford led into such bottomless depths of disbelief as to any real existence of truth or any real foundation for it? Simply to save an outworn system of interpretation into which the gifted preacher happened to be born.
The other utterance was suggested by De Bonald and developed in the Dublin Review, as is understood, by one of Newman's associates. This argument was nothing less than an attempt to retreat under the charge of deception against the Almighty himself. It is as follows: "But it may well be doubted whether the Church did retard the progress of scientific truth. What retarded it was the circumstance that God has thought fit to express many texts of Scripture in words which have every appearance of denying the earth's motion. But it is God who did this, not the Church; and, moreover, since he saw fit so to act as to retard the progress of scientific truth, it would be little to her discredit, even if it were true, that she had followed his example."
This argument, like Mr. Gosse's famous attempt to reconcile geology to Genesis—by supposing that for some inscrutable purpose God deliberately deceived the thinking world by giving to the earth all the appearances of development through long periods of time, while really creating it in six days, each of an evening and a morning—seems only to have awakened the amazed pity of thinking men. This, like the argument of Newman, was a last desperate effort of Anglican and Roman divines to save something from the wreckage of dogmatic theology.(85)
(85) For the quotation from Newman, see his Sermons on the Theory of
Religious Belief, sermon xiv, cited by Bishop Goodwin in Contemporary
Review for January, 1892. For the attempt to take the blame off the
shoulders of both Pope and cardinals and place it upon the Almighty, see
the article above cited, in the Dublin Review, September 1865, p.
419 and July, 1871, pp. 157 et seq. For a good summary of the various
attempts, and for replies to them in a spirit of judicial fairness, see
Th. Martin, Vie de Galilee, though there is some special pleading to
save the infallibility of the Pope and Church. The bibliography at the
close is very valuable. For details of Mr. Gosse's theory, as developed
in his Omphalos, see the chapter on Geology in this work. As to a still
later attempt, see Wegg-Prosser, Galileo and his Judges, London, 1889,
the main thing in it being an attempt to establish, against the honest
and honourable concessions of Catholics like Roberts and Mivart,
sundry far-fetched and wire-drawn distinctions between dogmatic and
disciplinary bulls—an attempt which will only deepen the distrust of
straightforward reasoners. The author's point of view is stated in
the words, "I have maintained that the Church has a right to lay her
restraining hand on the speculations of natural science" (p. 167).
All these well-meaning defenders of the faith but wrought into the hearts of great numbers of thinking men the idea that there is a necessary antagonism between science and religion. Like the landsman who lashes himself to the anchor of the sinking ship, they simply attached Christianity by the strongest cords of logic which they could spin to these mistaken ideas in science, and, could they have had their way, the advance of knowledge would have ingulfed both together.
On the other hand, what had science done for religion? Simply this: Copernicus, escaping persecution only by death; Giordano Bruno, burned alive as a monster of impiety; Galileo, imprisoned and humiliated as the worst of misbelievers; Kepler, accused of "throwing Christ's kingdom into confusion with his silly fancies"; Newton, bitterly attacked for "dethroning Providence," gave to religion stronger foundations and more ennobling conceptions.