I feel like there were more than just a couple of themes, and McMullin actually put these all out like principles that Augustine had written hundreds of years previous and that Galileo just honed in on. Did McMullin say that Galileo wrote/asserted what he did before he knew about what Augustine had written or post? I guess it doesn't matter since they ended up saying the same things anyway.
The most important themes I saw were these, and McMullin did characterize them:
(Principle of Consistency): The proper meaning of Scripture cannot be in true conflict with the findings of human sense or reason.
(Principle of Scriptural Limitation): Since the primary concern of the Scripture is with human salvation, we should not look to Scripture for knowledge of the natural world.
*These in themselves, as McMullin stated, should have been enough for Galileo to just say what he knew and observed and leave it at that. But that's not the ballgame Galileo is playing here and he needed to play by the rules. For that, he put down a couple more themes, just to play nice (I mean, he and Augustine both genuinely believed all of these principles; it's not like Galileo's lying to save himself):
(Principle of Prudence): When trying to discern the meaning of a difficult scriptural passage, one should keep in mind that different interpretations of the text may be possible and that, in consequence, one should not rush in to premature commitment to one of these, especially since further progress in the search for the truth may later undermine this interpretation.
(Principle of Priority of Demonstration): When there is a conflict between a proven truth about the physical world and a particular reading of Scripture, an alternative reading should be sought.
A couple other things to be mentioned was that Galileo didn't believe all the Fathers were in agreement on their interpretations of Scripture. I don't know exactly if that's a theme, but it's worth noting.
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