For Sir Thomas Brown, see his Vulgar and Common Errors, book iv, chap.

v; and as to the real reason for his disbelief in the Copernican view, see Dr.Johnson's preface to his Life of Browne, vol.i, p.

xix, of his collected works.
IV.

VICTORY OF THE CHURCH OVER GALILEO.
While news of triumphant attacks upon him and upon the truth he had established were coming in from all parts of Europe, Galileo prepared a careful treatise in the form of a dialogue, exhibiting the arguments for and against the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems, and offered to submit to any conditions that the Church tribunals might impose, if they would allow it to be printed.

At last, after discussions which extended through eight years, they consented, imposing a humiliating condition--a preface written in accordance with the ideas of Father Ricciardi, Master of the Sacred Palace, and signed by Galileo, in which the Copernican theory was virtually exhibited as a play of the imagination, and not at all as opposed to the Ptolemaic doctrine reasserted in 1616 by the Inquisition under the direction of Pope Paul V.
This new work of Galileo--the Dialogo--appeared in 1632, and met with prodigious success.