Jeniffer electronic book

[166]
In spite, then, of all casuistry and special pleading, this sturdy
honesty ended the controversy among Catholics themselves, so far as
fair-minded men are concerned.
In recalling it at this day there stand out from its later phases
two efforts at compromise especially instructive, as showing the
embarrassment of militant theology in the nineteenth century.
The first of these was made by John Henry Newman in the days when
he was hovering between the Anglican and Roman Churches. In one of
his sermons before the University of Oxford he spoke as follows:
"Scripture says that the sun moves and the earth is stationary, and
science that the earth moves and the sun is comparatively at rest.
How can we determine which of these opposite statements is the very
truth till we know what motion is? If our idea of motion is but an
accidental result of our present senses, neither proposition is
true and both are true: neither true philosophically; both true for
certain practical purposes in the system in which they are
respectively found.


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