In 1633 Galileo, having continued to propagate his views, was called on by the Inquisition to retract and abjure, and the formal notice to him to do so states expressly that the declaration of 1616 was made by the Pope himself, and that resistance to it was, therefore, heresy, contrary to the doctrine of the Catholic and Apostolic Church. On being brought to trial, Galileo made a formal abjuration, and on June 30th Pope Urban VIII. ordered the publication of the sentence, thereby, according to Roman ecclesiastical law, making Galileo's compulsory denial of the earth's motion binding on all Christians as a theological doctrine. Infidels have a vast deal to say about such an abominable manifestation of ecclesiastic tyranny and unscientific and unscriptural nonsense. All intelligent Roman Catholics of to-day reject the judgment of Popes Paul IV. and Urban VIII. as absurd, and scientifically and scripturally false. There is not so much as a hint at papal authority found in the three old creeds known as the Apostles', the Nicene and the Athanasian, nor in any ancient gloss upon them. Neither can we find in them any of the distinguishing special doctrines of the Church of Rome.
Christianity came from the hands of Christ and his apostles in all its perfections, and as long as infidels stop short of the New Testament itself, and short of Christ and his apostles, in their warfare, we may well believe that all their efforts to blot out Christianity will be vain. Protestants themselves have demurred as much as infidels against the errors of the Roman Catholic Church, and fully as much against the errors of each other as denominations. "Truth stands true to her God, man alone deviates."
The greatest difficulty that Christianity ever encountered is the ignorance and imperfections of its own friends. Protestant errors are many and serious. But why should the genuine be discarded on account of the existence of the counterfeit? And why should we shut our eyes to the importance of the great work of establishing truth, to the destruction of all Catholic and Protestant errors of faith and practice by becoming the advocates of false charity through the adoption of "broad-gauge religion," in a "broad-gauge church?" Infidels who, like Col. Ingersoll, assert that "no man can control his belief," had better look in a glass and see themselves as others see them, before they _strive to_ conquer a victory for the _black __ demon_ of despair, by fastening the absurd philosophy of _fatalism_ upon all the world. If men can not help their belief, who is to blame? Surely, neither Roman Catholics, nor Protestants, nor those who managed "thumbscrews" and "hot irons," and other condemned instruments of the dark ages, nor yet those who now live to be the "butt" of Colonel Ingersoll's satire and ridicule. A kind feeling for all, and unfaithfulness to the truth--never!