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 been attacked by the bigoted and narrow-minded as leading to infidelity.
Other great discoverers, though they may not have been charged with irreligion, have had not less obloquy of a professional and public nature to encounter.

When Dr.Harvey published his theory of the circulation of the blood, his practice fell off, [143] and the medical profession stigmatised him as a fool.

"The few good things I have been able to do," said John Hunter, "have been accomplished with the greatest difficulty, and encountered the greatest opposition." Sir Charles Bell, while employed in his important investigations as to the nervous system, which issued in one of the greatest of physiological discoveries, wrote to a friend: "If I were not so poor, and had not so many vexations to encounter, how happy would I be!" But he himself observed that his practice sensibly fell off after the publication of each successive stage of his discovery.
Thus, nearly every enlargement of the domain of knowledge, which has made us better acquainted with the heavens, with the earth, and with ourselves, has been established by the energy, the devotion, the self-sacrifice, and the courage of the great spirits of past times, who, however much they have been opposed or reviled by their contemporaries, now rank amongst those whom the enlightened of the human race most delight to honour.
Nor is the unjust intolerance displayed towards men of science in the past, without its lesson for the present.