It was rejected by Bacon; and the condemnation of Galileo by the Church made Descartes, who dreaded nothing so much as a collision with the ecclesiastical authorities unwilling to insist on it.
[Footnote: Cp.

Bouillier, Histoire de la philosophie cartesienne, i.

p.
42-3.] Milton's Raphael, in the Eighth Book of Paradise Lost (published 1667), does not venture to affirm the Copernican system; he explains it sympathetically, but leaves the question open.

[Footnote: Masson (Milton's Poetical Works, vol.2) observes that Milton's life (1608-74) "coincides with the period of the struggle between the two systems" (p.

90).