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NICOLAUS COPERNICUS (1473-1543), founder of Heliocentric Cosmology

1. “To know the mighty works of God, to comprehend His wisdom and majesty and power, to appreciate, in degree, the wonderful working of His laws, surely all this must be a pleasing and acceptable mode of worship to the Most High, to whom ignorance cannot be more gratifying than knowledge.” (Copernicus, as cited in Neff 1952, 191-192; and in Hubbard 1905, v).

2. “Not the Grace received by Paul do I desire,

Nor the good will with which Thou forgavest Peter,

Only that which Thou didst grant the thief on the cross,

That mercy I ask of Thee.”

(Copernicus, as cited in Trepatschko 1994, Vol. 44).

3. In his revolutionary work De revolutionibus orbium caelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, 1543), Copernicus wrote:

“For who, after applying himself to things which he sees established in the best order and directed by Divine ruling, would not through diligent contemplation of them and through a certain habituation be awakened to that which is best and would not admire the Artificer of all things, in Whom is all happiness and every good? For the divine Psalmist surely did not say gratuitously that he took pleasure in the workings of God and rejoiced in the works of His hands, unless by means of these things as by some sort of vehicle we are transported to the contemplation of the highest good.” (Copernicus, 1873, 10-11).