Must not that be false which requires for its support so much imposture, so much barbarity?
The opinions thus defended by the Inquisition are now objects of derision to the whole civilized world.
One of the greatest of modern mathematicians, referring to this subject, says that the point here contested was one which is for mankind of the highest interest, because of the rank it assigns to the globe that we inhabit.

If the earth be immovable in the midst of the universe, man has a right to regard himself as the principal object of the care of Nature.
But if the earth be only one of the planets revolving round the sun, an insignificant body in the solar system, she will disappear entirely in the immensity of the heavens, in which this system, vast as it may appear to us, is nothing but an insensible point.
The triumphant establishment of the Copernican doctrine dates from the invention of the telescope.

Soon there was not to be found in all Europe an astronomer who had not accepted the heliocentric theory with its essential postulate, the double motion of the earth--movement of rotation on her axis, and a movement of revolution round the sun.
If additional proof of the latter were needed, it was furnished by Bradley's great discovery of the aberration of the fixed stars, an aberration depending partly on the progressive motion of light, and partly on the revolution of the earth.

Bradley's discovery ranked in importance with that of the precession of the equinoxes.

Roemer's discovery of the progressive motion of light, though denounced by Fontenelle as a seductive error, and not admitted by Cassini, at length forced its way to universal acceptance.
Next it was necessary to obtain correct ideas of the dimensions of the solar system, or, putting the problem under a more limited form, to determine the distance of the earth from the sun.
In the time of Copernicus it was supposed that the sun's distance could not exceed five million miles, and indeed there were many who thought that estimate very extravagant.