'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 han