The doctrine of the movement of the earth and the fixity of the sun is condemned on the ground that the Scriptures speak in many places of the sun moving and the earth standing still. The Scriptures not being capableof lying or erring, it followeth that the position of those is erroneous and heretical who maintain that the sun is fixed and the earth in motion.
It is piously spoken that the Scriptures cannot lie. But none will deny that they are frequently abstruse and their true meaning difficult to discover, and more than the bare words signify. One taking the sense too literally might pervert the truth and conceive blasphemies, and give God feet, and hands, and eyes, and human affections, such as anger, repentance, forgetfulness, ignorance, whereas these expressions are employed merely to accommodate the truth to the mental capacity of the unlearned.
This being granted, I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments and demonstrations. Nor does God less admirably discover Himself to us in nature than in Scripture, and having found the truth in nature we may use it as an aid to the true exposition of the Scriptures. The Scriptures were intended to teach men those things which cannot be learned otherwise than by the mouth of the Holy Spirit; but we are meant to use our senses and reason in discovering for ourselves things within their scope and capacity, and hence certain sciences are neglected in the Holy Writ.
Astronomy, for instance, is hardly mentioned, and only the sun, and the moon, and Lucifer are named. Surely, if the holy writers had intended us to derive our astronomical knowledge from the Sacred Books, they would not have left us so uninformed. That they intentionally forbore to speak of the movements and constitution of the stars is the opinion of the most holy and most learned fathers. And if the Holy Spirit has omitted to teach us those matters as not pertinent to our salvation, how can it be said that one view is de Fide and the other heretical? I might here insert the opinion of an ecclesiastic raised to the degree of Eminentissimo:That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how we shall go to Heaven, and not how the heavens go.
II.--Scriptural and Experimental Truth
Since the Holy Writ is true, and all truth agrees with truth, the truth of Holy Writ cannot be contrary to the truth obtained by reason and experiment. This being true, it is the business of the judicious expositor to find the true meaning of scriptural passages which must accord with the conclusions of observation and experiment, and care must be taken that the work of exposition do not fall into foolish and ignorant hands. It must be remembered that there are very few men capable of understanding both the sacred Scriptures and science, and that there are many with a superficial knowledge of the Scriptures and with no knowledge of science who would fain arrogate to themselves the power of decreeing upon all questions of nature. As St. Jerome writes: "The talking old woman, the dotard, the garrulous sophist, all venture upon, lacerate, teach, before they have learnt. Others, induced by pride, dive into hard words, and philosophate among women touching the Holy Scriptures. Others (oh, shameful!) learn of women what they teach to men."
I will not rank among these same secular writers any theologists whom I repute to be men of profound learning and sober manners, and therefore hold in great esteem and veneration; yet it vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment. It is true that theology is the queen of all the sciences, but queen only in the sense that she deals with high matters revealed in noble ways, and if she condescends not to study the more humble matters of the inferior sciences she ought not to arrogate to herself the right to judge them; for this would be as if anautocratic prince, being neither physician nor architect, should undertake to administer medicines and erect buildings to the danger of the lives of his subjects.
Again, to command the professors of astronomy to confute their own observations is to enjoin an impossibility, for it is to command them not to see what they do see, and not to understand what they do understand, and to find what they do not discover. I would entreat the wise and prudent fathers to consider the difference between matters of opinion and matters of demonstration, for demonstrated conclusions touching the things of nature and of the heavens cannot be changed with the same facility as opinions touching what is lawful in a contract, bargain, or bill of exchange. Your highness knows what happened to the late professor of mathematics in the University of Pisa--how, believing that the Copernican doctrine was false, he started to confute it, but in his study became convinced of its truth.
In order to suppress the Copernican doctrine, it would be necessary not only to prohibit the book of Copernicus and the writings of authors who agree with him, but to interdict the whole science of astronomy, and even to forbid men to look at the sky lest they might see Mars and Venus at very varying distances from the earth, and discover Venus at one time crescent, at another time round, or make other observations irreconcilable with the Ptolemaic system.
It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved. The prohibition of astronomy would be an open contempt of a hundred texts of the Holy Scriptures, which teach us that the glory and the greatness of Almighty God are admirably discerned in all His works, and divinely read in the open book of the heavens.