branded Vesalius as a heretic for revealing man to man,
as it had before branded Bruno and Galileo for revealing the heavens to
man. Vesalius had the boldness to study the structure of the human body
by actual dissection, a practice until then almost entirely forbidden.
He laid the foundations of a science, but he paid for it with his
life. Condemned by the Inquisition, his penalty was commuted, by the
intercession of the Spanish king, into a pilgrimage to the Holy Land;
and when on his way back, while still in the prime of life, he died
miserably at Zante, of fever and want--a martyr to his love of science.

When the 'Novum Organon' appeared, a hue-and-cry was raised against it,
because of its alleged tendency to produce "dangerous revolutions," to
"subvert governments," and to "overturn the authority of religion;"
[142] and one Dr. Henry Stubbe [14whose name would otherwise have been
forgotten] wrote a book against the new philosophy, denouncing the
whole tribe of experimentalists as "a Bacon-faced generation." Even
the establishment of the Royal Society was opposed, on the ground that
"experimental philosophy is subversive of the Christian faith."

While the followers of Copernicus were persecuted as infidels, Kepler
was branded with the stigma of heresy, "because," said he, "I take that
side which seems to me to be consonant with the Word of God." Even the
pure and simpleminded Newton, of whom Bishop Burnet said that he had the
WHITEST SOUL he ever knew--who was a very infant in the purity of his
mind--even Newton was accused of "dethroning the Deity" by his sublime
discovery of the law of gravitation; and a similar charge was made
against Franklin for explaining the nature of the thunderbolt.

Spinoza was excommunicated by the Jews, to whom he belonged, because of
his views of philosophy, which were supposed to be adverse to religion;
and his life was afterwards attempted by an assassin for the same
reason. Spinoza remained courageous and self-reliant to the last, dying
in obscurity and poverty.

The philosophy of Descartes was denounced as leading to irreligion; the
doctrines of Locke were said to produce materialism; and in our own
day, Dr. Buckland, Mr. Sedgwick, and other leading geologists, have been
accused of overturning revelation with regard to the constitution and
history of the earth. Indeed, there has scarcely been a discovery in
astronomy, in natural history, or in physical science, that has not bee