"...nevertheless I took it as a pledge of future happiness..."

Milton visiting Galileo when a prisoner of the Inquisition. Alexander Hart, 1847.

“There it was that I found and visited the famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition, for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan and Dominican licensers thought. And though I knew that England then was groaning loudest under the prelatical yoke, nevertheless I took it as a pledge of future happiness, that other nations were so persuaded of her liberty. Yet was it beyond my hope that those worthies were then breathing in her air, who should be her leaders to such a deliverance, as shall never be forgotten by any revolution of time that this world hath to finish.”

― John Milton, Areopagitica A speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England, 1644