for some time, opponents of religion included the theory of the
Earth's motion in their disputations, not so much for the love, or
knowledge, of astronomy, as for the pleasure of putting the Church in
the wrong. This created a great deal of bitterness and intolerance on
both sides. Among the sufferers was Giordano Bruno, a learned
speculative philosopher, who was condemned to be burnt at the stake.

Galileo died on Christmas Day, 1642--the day of Newton's birth. The
further consideration of the grand field of discovery opened out by
Galileo with his telescopes must be now postponed, to avoid
discontinuity in the history of the intellectual development of this
period, which lay in the direction of dynamical, or physical,
astronomy.

Until the time of Kepler no one seems to have conceived the idea of
universal physical forces controlling terrestrial phenomena, and
equally applicable to the heavenly bodies. The grand discovery by
Kepler of the true relationship of the Sun to the Planets, and the
telescopic discoveries of Galileo and of those who followed him,
spread a spirit of inquiry and philosophic thought throughout Europe,
and once more did astronomy rise in estimation; and the irresistible
logic of its mathematical process of reasoning soon placed it in the
position it has ever since occupied as the foremost of the exact
sciences.

The practical application of this process of reasoning was enormously
facilitated by the invention of logarithms by Napier. He was born at
Merchistoun, near Edinburgh, in 1550, and died in 1617. By this system
the tedious arithmetical operations necessary in astronomical
calculations, especially those dealing with the trigonometrical