222
HISTORY OF PRINTING.
About this time, Dr. Buckenham, prior of the BlacUHois, preaching at Cambridge, with great pomp and prolixity, showed- the dangerous ten- dency of having the scriptures in English, and the heretical opinions of Latimer, who had just become a staunch supporter of the reformers. " If that heresy," said he, " should prevail, we should soon see an end of every thing useful among us. The ploughman residing that if he put his hand to the plough, and should happen to look back, he was unfit for the kingdom of God, would soon lay aside his labour ; the baker, likewise, reading that a little leaven will corrupt the whole lump, would give us very insipid bread ; the simple man likewise finding himself commanded to pluck out his eyes, in a few years we should have the nation full of blind beggars."
1516. ZHed, Trithemius, the celebrated abbot of Spanheim. He had amassed about 2000 manuscripts, a literary treasure, which excited such general attention, that princes and eminent men travelled to visit Trithemius and his library. He was fond of improving steganographv, or the art of secret writina ; having publishea several curious books on Uiis subject, they were con- demned, as works full of diabolical mysteries ; and Frederic II., elector palatine, ordered Tri- themius's original work, which was in his library, to be publicly burnt.
The following extracts will show to the reader that those who have laboured most zealously to instruct mankind, have been the very individuals who have suffered most from ignorance; and the discoverers of new arts and sciences have hardly ever lived to see them accepted by the world.
Gabriel Naude, in his apology for those great men who have been accused of magic, has re- corded a melancholy numoer of the most emi- nent scholars, who have found, that to have been successful in their studies was a success which harassed them with continual persecution, a prison or a grave !
Virgilius, bishop of Saltzburg, having asserted that there existed antipodes, the archbishop of Mentz declared him a heretic, and consigned him to the flames.
Galileo was condemned at Rome publicly to disavow sentiments, the truth of woich must have been to him abundantly manifest. " Are these then my judges?" he exclaimed in retir- ing from the mquisitors, whose ignorance asto- nished him. In 1997 he wrote to Kepler, stating that he had made many discoveries which he durst not publish, " owing to the fools who wor- thipped previom sj/stetm." The priests preached against nim, and to their eternal disgrace, in the year 1632, he was arraigned and tortured, and at the age of seventy made to abjure, publicly on his knees, and to curse his own book and doc- trines, and sentenced for the next three years to remain in prison, and to repeat once a week the seven penitential psalms. To all this he sub- mitted, to escape the fate of Bruno, who for similar opinions had been burnt at Rome but thirty-two years before. Milton visited him in
prison, and tells us, he was then poor and old. The confessor of his widow, taking advantage of her piety, perused the manuscripts of this great philosopher, and destroyed such as in his judg- ment were not fit to be known to the world !
Cornelius Agrippa, a learned physician, and friend of Trithemius, Erasmus, Melancthon, and other eminent scholars, and who also held various state offices at Mentz, was compelled to fly his country, and the enjoyment of a large income, merely for having displayed a few philosophical experiments, which now every scnool-boy can perform ; but more particularly having attacked the then prevailing opinion, that St. Anne had three husbands, he was obliged to fly from place to place. The people beheld him as an object of horror; and when he walked, he found the streets empty at his approach. He died in an hospital in the year 1534.
In those times, it was a common opinion to suspect every great man of an intercourse with some familiar spirit. The favourite black dog of Agrippa was supposed to be a demon. When Urban Grandier, another victim to the age, was led to the stake, a large fly settled on his head : a monk, who had heard that Beelzebub signifies in Hebrew the God of Flies, reported that he saw this spirit come to take possession of him. Mr. De Langear, a French minister, who em- ployed many spies, was frequentlr accused of diabolical communication. Sixtus v., Marechal Faber, Roger Bacon, Ctesar Borgia, his son Alexander VI., and others, like Socrates, had their diabolical attendant.
Jerome Cardan, an eminent astrologer asd mathematician, and who died at Rome in the year 1576, was believed to be a maeician. An able naturalist, who happened to know some- thing of the arcana of nature, was immediately suspected of magic. Even the learned them- selves, who had not applied to natural philoso- phy, seem to have acted with the same feelings as the most ignorant ; for when Albert, usuaUy called the Great, an epithet he owed to his name De Groot, constructed an ingenious pitee of mechanism, which sent forth distinct vocal sounds, Thomas Aquinas was so much terrified at it, that he struck it with his staff, and, to the mortification of Albert, annihilated the curious labour of thirty years !
Descartes was horribly persecuted in Holland, when he first published his opinions. Voetius, a bigot of great influence at Utrecht, accused him of atheism, and had even projected in his mind to have this philosopher burnt at Utrecht in an extraordinaff fire, which, kindled on an eminence, might be observed by the seven pro- vinces. This persecution of science and genius lasted till the close of the seventeenth century.
With a noble perception of his own genius, lord Bacon, in his prophetic will, thus expresses himself: — " For my name and memory, I leave • / it to men's charitanle speeches, and to foreign nations, and the next siges." Before the times of Galileo and Hervey the world believed in the stagnation of the blood, and the diurnal im-
Digitizedby VjOOQIC
