The Anatomy of Melancholy Part 35

Topogr. Constant._ reckons up 155 public [2965]baths in Constantinople, of fair building; they are still [2966]frequented in that city by the Turks of all sorts, men and women, and all over Greece, and those hot countries; to absterge belike that fulsomeness of sweat, to which they are there subject.

[2967]Busbequius, in his epistles, is very copious in describing the manner of them, how their women go covered, a maid following with a box of ointment to rub them. The richer sort have private baths in their houses; the poorer go to the common, and are generally so curious in this behalf, that they will not eat nor drink until they have bathed, before and after meals some, [2968]"and will not make water (but they will wash their hands) or go to stool." Leo Afer. _l. 3._ makes mention of one hundred several baths at Fez in Africa, most sumptuous, and such as have great revenues belonging to them. Buxtorf. _cap. 14, Synagog. Jud._ speaks of many ceremonies amongst the Jews in this kind; they are very superst.i.tious in their baths, especially women.

Natural baths are praised by some, discommended by others; but it is in a divers respect. [2969]Marcus, _de Oddis in Hip. affect._ consulted about baths, condemns them for the heat of the liver, because they dry too fast; and yet by and by, [2970]in another counsel for the same disease, he approves them because they cleanse by reason of the sulphur, and would have their water to be drunk. Areteus, _c. 7._ commends alum baths above the rest; and [2971]Mercurialis, _consil. 88._ those of Lucca in that hypochondriacal pa.s.sion. "He would have his patient tarry there fifteen days together, and drink the water of them, and to be bucketed, or have the water poured on his head." John Baptista, _Sylvaticus cont. 64._ commends all the baths in Italy, and drinking of their water, whether they be iron, alum, sulphur; so doth [2972]Hercules de Saxonia. But in that they cause sweat and dry so much, he confines himself to hypochondriacal melancholy alone, excepting that of the head and the other. Trincavelius, _consil. 14.

lib. 1._ refers those [2973]Porrectan baths before the rest, because of the mixture of bra.s.s, iron, alum, and _consil. 35. l. 3._ for a melancholy lawyer, and _consil. 36._ in that hypochondriacal pa.s.sion, the [2974]baths of Aquaria, and _36. consil._ the drinking of them. Frisimelica, consulted amongst the rest in Trincavelius, _consil. 42. lib. 2._ prefers the waters of [2975]Apona before all artificial baths whatsoever in this disease, and would have one nine years affected with hypochondriacal pa.s.sions fly to them as to a [2976]holy anchor. Of the same mind is Trincavelius himself there, and yet both put a hot liver in the same party for a cause, and send him to the waters of St. Helen, which are much hotter. Monta.n.u.s, _consil.

230._ magnifies the [2977]Chalderinian baths, and _consil 237. et 239._ he exhorteth to the same, but with this caution, [2978]"that the liver be outwardly anointed with some coolers that it be not overheated." But these baths must be warily frequented by melancholy persons, or if used, to such as are very cold of themselves, for as Gabelius concludes of all Dutch baths, and especially of those of Baden, "they are good for all cold diseases, [2979]naught for choleric, hot and dry, and all infirmities proceeding of choler, inflammations of the spleen and liver." Our English baths, as they are hot, must needs incur the same censure: but D. Turner of old, and D. Jones have written at large of them. Of cold baths I find little or no mention in any physician, some speak against them: [2980]Cardan alone out of Agathinus commends "bathing in fresh rivers, and cold waters, and adviseth all such as mean to live long to use it, for it agrees with all ages and complexions, and is most profitable for hot temperatures." As for sweating, urine, bloodletting by haemrods, or otherwise, I shall elsewhere more opportunely speak of them.

Immoderate Venus in excess, as it is a cause, or in defect; so moderately used to some parties an only help, a present remedy. Peter Forestus calls it _aptissimum remedium_, a most apposite remedy, [2981]"remitting anger, and reason, that was otherwise bound." Avicenna _Fen. 3. 20._ Oribasius _med. collect. lib. 6. cap. 37._ contend out of Ruffus and others, [2982]

"that many madmen, melancholy, and labouring of the falling sickness, have been cured by this alone." Montaltus _cap. 27. de melan._ will have it drive away sorrow, and all illusions of the brain, to purge the heart and brain from ill smokes and vapours that offend them: [2983]"and if it be omitted," as Valescus supposeth, "it makes the mind sad, the body dull and heavy." Many other inconveniences are reckoned up by Mercatus, and by Rodericus a Castro, in their tracts _de melancholia virginum et monialium; ob seminis retentionem saviunt saepe moniales et virgines_, but as Platerus adds, _si nubant sanantur_, they rave single, and pine away, much discontent, but marriage mends all. Marcellus Donatus _lib. 2. med. hist.

cap. 1._ tells a story to confirm this out of Alexander Benedictus, of a maid that was mad, _ob menses inhibitos, c.u.m in officinam meritoriam incidisset, a quindecem viris eadem nocte compressa, mensium largo profluvio, quod pluribus annis ante const.i.terat, non sine magno pudore mane menti rest.i.tuta discessit_. But this must be warily understood, for as Arnoldus objects, _lib. 1. breviar. 18. cap._ _Quid coitus ad melancholic.u.m succ.u.m_? What affinity have these two? [2984]"except it be manifest that superabundance of seed, or fullness of blood be a cause, or that love, or an extraordinary desire of Venus, have gone before," or that as Lod.

Mercatus excepts, they be very flatuous, and have been otherwise accustomed unto it. Montaltus _cap. 27._ will not allow of moderate Venus to such as have the gout, palsy, epilepsy, melancholy, except they be very l.u.s.ty, and full of blood. [2985]Lodovicus Antonius _lib. med. miscet._ in his chapter of Venus, forbids it utterly to all wrestlers, ditchers, labouring men, &c.

[2986]Ficinus and [2987]Marsilius Cognatus puts Venus one of the five mortal enemies of a student: "it consumes the spirits, and weakeneth the brain." Halyabbas the Arabian, _5. Theor. cap. 36._ and Jason Pratensis make it the fountain of most diseases, [2988]"but most pernicious to them who are cold and dry:" a melancholy man must not meddle with it, but in some cases. Plutarch in his book _de san. tuend._ accounts of it as one of the three princ.i.p.al signs and preservers of health, temperance in this kind: [2989]"to rise with an appet.i.te, to be ready to work, and abstain from venery," _tria saluberrima_, are three most healthful things. We see their opposites how pernicious they are to mankind, as to all other creatures they bring death, and many feral diseases: _Immodicis brevis est aetas et rara senectus_. Aristotle gives instance in sparrows, which are _parum vivaces ob salacitatem_, [2990]short lived because of their salacity, which is very frequent, as Scoppius in Priapus will better inform you. The extremes being both bad, [2991]the medium is to be kept, which cannot easily be determined. Some are better able to sustain, such as are hot and moist, phlegmatic, as Hippocrates insinuateth, some strong and l.u.s.ty, well fed like [2992]Hercules, [2993] Proculus the emperor, l.u.s.ty Laurence, [2994]_prostibulum faeminae Messalina_ the empress, that by philters, and such kind of lascivious meats, use all means to [2995]enable themselves: and brag of it in the end, _confodi multas enim, occidi vero paucas per ventrem vidisti_, as that Spanish [2996]Celestina merrily said: others impotent, of a cold and dry const.i.tution, cannot sustain those gymnics without great hurt done to their own bodies, of which number (though they be very p.r.o.ne to it) are melancholy men for the most part.

MEMB. III.

_Air rectified. With a digression of the Air_.

As a long-winged hawk, when he is first whistled off the fist, mounts aloft, and for his pleasure fetcheth many a circuit in the air, still soaring higher and higher, till he be come to his full pitch, and in the end when the game is sprung, comes down amain, and stoops upon a sudden: so will I, having now come at last into these ample fields of air, wherein I may freely expatiate and exercise myself for my recreation, awhile rove, wander round about the world, mount aloft to those ethereal orbs and celestial spheres, and so descend to my former elements again. In which progress I will first see whether that relation of the friar of [2997]

Oxford be true, concerning those northern parts under the pole (if I meet _obiter_ with the wandering Jew, Elias Artifex, or Lucian's _Icaromenippus_, they shall be my guides) whether there be such 4. Euripes, and a great rock of loadstones, which may cause the needle in the compa.s.s still to bend that way, and what should be the true cause of the variation of the compa.s.s, [2998]is it a magnetical rock, or the pole-star, as Cardan will; or some other star in the bear, as Marsilius Ficinus; or a magnetical meridian, as Maurolieus; _Vel situs in vena terrae_, as Agricola; or the nearness of the next continent, as Cabeus will; or some other cause, as Scaliger, Cortesius, Conimbricenses, Peregrinus contend; why at the Azores it looks directly north, otherwise not? In the Mediterranean or Levant (as some observe) it varies 7. grad. by and by 12. and then 22. In the Baltic Seas, near Rasceburg in Finland, the needle runs round, if any ships come that way, though [2999]Martin Ridley write otherwise, that the needle near the Pole will hardly be forced from his direction. 'Tis fit to be inquired whether certain rules may be made of it, as _11. grad. Lond. variat. alibi 36._ &c. and that which is more prodigious, the variation varies in the same place, now taken accurately, 'tis so much after a few years quite altered from that it was: till we have better intelligence, let our Dr.

Gilbert, and Nicholas [3000]Cabeus the Jesuit, that have both written great volumes of this subject, satisfy these inquisitors. Whether the sea be open and navigable by the Pole arctic, and which is the likeliest way, that of Bartison the Hollander, under the Pole itself, which for some reasons I hold best: or by Fretum Davis, or Nova Zembla. Whether [3001]Hudson's discovery be true of a new found ocean, any likelihood of b.u.t.ton's Bay in 50. degrees, Hubberd's Hope in 60. that of _ut ultra_ near Sir Thomas Roe's welcome in Northwest Fox, being that the sea ebbs and flows constantly there 15. foot in 12. hours, as our [3002]new cards inform us that California is not a cape, but an island, and the west winds make the neap tides equal to the spring, or that there be any probability to pa.s.s by the straits of Anian to China, by the promontory of Tabin. If there be, I shall soon perceive whether [3003]Marcus Polus the Venetian's narration be true or false, of that great city of Quinsay and Cambalu; whether there be any such places, or that as [3004]Matth. Riccius the Jesuit hath written, China and Cataia be all one, the great Cham of Tartary and the king of China be the same; Xuntain and Quinsay, and the city of Cambalu be that new Peking, or such a wall 400 leagues long to part China from Tartary: whether [3005]Presbyter John be in Asia or Africa; M. Polus Venetus puts him in Asia, [3006]the most received opinion is, that he is emperor of the Abyssines, which of old was Ethiopia, now Nubia, under the equator in Africa. Whether [3007]Guinea be an island or part of the continent, or that hungry [3008]Spaniard's discovery of _Terra Australis Incognita_, or Magellanica, be as true as that of Mercurius Britannius, or his of Utopia, or his of Lucinia. And yet in likelihood it may be so, for without all question it being extended from the tropic of Capricorn to the circle Antarctic, and lying as it doth in the temperate zone, cannot choose but yield in time some flourishing kingdoms to succeeding ages, as America did unto the Spaniards. Shouten and Le Meir have done well in the discovery of the Straits of Magellan, in finding a more convenient pa.s.sage to _Mare pacific.u.m_: methinks some of our modern argonauts should prosecute the rest. As I go by Madagascar, I would see that great bird [3009]ruck, that can carry a man and horse or an elephant, with that Arabian phoenix described by [3010]Adricomius; see the pelicans of Egypt, those Scythian gryphes in Asia: and afterwards in Africa examine the fountains of Nilus, whether Herodotus, [3011]Seneca, Plin. _lib. 5. cap. 9._ Strabo. _lib. 5._ give a true cause of his annual flowing, [3012]Pagaphetta discourse rightly of it, or of Niger and Senegal; examine Cardan, [3013]Scaliger's reasons, and the rest. Is it from those Etesian winds, or melting of snow in the mountains under the equator (for Jordan yearly overflows when the snow melts in Mount Liba.n.u.s), or from those great dropping perpetual showers which are so frequent to the inhabitants within the tropics, when the sun is vertical, and cause such vast inundations in Senegal, Maragnan, Oronoco and the rest of those great rivers in Zona Torrida, which have all commonly the same pa.s.sions at set times: and by good husbandry and policy hereafter no doubt may come to be as populous, as well tilled, as fruitful, as Egypt itself or Cauchinthina? I would observe all those motions of the sea, and from what cause they proceed, from the moon (as the vulgar hold) or earth's motion, which Galileus, in the fourth dialogue of his system of the world, so eagerly proves, and firmly demonstrates; or winds, as [3014] some will.

Why in that quiet ocean of Zur, _in mari pacifico_, it is scarce perceived, in our British seas most violent, in the Mediterranean and Red Sea so vehement, irregular, and diverse? Why the current in that Atlantic Ocean should still be in some places from, in some again towards the north, and why they come sooner than go? and so from Moabar to Madagascar in that Indian Ocean, the merchants come in three weeks, as [3015]Scaliger discusseth, they return scarce in three months, with the same or like winds: the continual current is from east to west. Whether Mount Athos, Pelion, Olympus, Ossa, Caucasus, Atlas, be so high as Pliny, Solinus, Mela relate, above clouds, meteors, _ubi nec aurae nec venti spirant_ (insomuch that they that ascend die suddenly very often, the air is so subtile,) 1250 paces high, according to that measure of Dicearchus, or 78 miles perpendicularly high, as Jacobus Mazonius, _sec. 3. et 4._ expounding that place of Aristotle about Caucasus; and as [3016]Blanca.n.u.s the Jesuit contends out of Clavius and Nonius demonstrations _de Crepusculis_: or rather 32 stadiums, as the most received opinion is; or 4 miles, which the height of no mountain doth perpendicularly exceed, and is equal to the greatest depths of the sea, which is, as Scaliger holds, 1580 paces, Exer.

38, others 100 paces. I would see those inner parts of America, whether there be any such great city of Manoa, or Eldorado, in that golden empire, where the highways are as much beaten (one reports) as between Madrid and Valadolid in Spain; or any such Amazons as he relates, or gigantic Patagones in Chica; with that miraculous mountain [3017]Ybouyapab in the Northern Brazil, _cujus jugum sternitur in amoenissimam planitiem_, &c. or that of Pariacacca so high elevated in Peru. [3018]The peak of Tenerife how high it is? 70 miles, or 50 as Patricius holds, or 9 as Snellius demonstrates in his Eratosthenes: see that strange [3019]Cirknickzerksey lake in Carniola, whose waters gush so fast out of the ground, that they will overtake a swift horseman, and by and by with as incredible celerity are supped up: which Lazius and Wernerus make an argument of the Argonauts sailing under ground. And that vast den or hole called [3020]Esmellen in Muscovia, _quae visitur horriendo hiatu_, &c. which if anything casually fall in, makes such a roaring noise, that no thunder, or ordnance, or warlike engine can make the like; such another is Gilber's Cave in Lapland, with many the like. I would examine the Caspian Sea, and see where and how it exonerates itself, after it hath taken in Volga, Jaxares, Oxus, and those great rivers; at the mouth of Oby, or where? What vent the Mexican lake hath, the t.i.ticacan in Peru, or that circular pool in the vale of Terapeia, of which Acosta _l. 3. c. 16._ hot in a cold country, the spring of which boils up in the middle twenty foot square, and hath no vent but exhalation: and that of _Mare mortuum_ in Palestine, of Thrasymene, at Peruzium in Italy: the Mediterranean itself. For from the ocean, at the Straits of Gibraltar, there is a perpetual current into the Levant, and so likewise by the Thracian Bosphorus out of the Euxine or Black Sea, besides all those great rivers of Nile, Po, Rhone, &c. how is this water consumed, by the sun or otherwise? I would find out with Trajan the fountains of Danube, of Ganges, Oxus, see those Egyptian pyramids, Trajan's bridge, _Grotto de Sybilla_, Lucullus's fishponds, the temple of Nidrose, &c.

(And, if I could, observe what becomes of swallows, storks, cranes, cuckoos, nightingales, redstarts, and many other kind of singing birds, water-fowls, hawks, &c. some of them are only seen in summer, some in winter; some are observed in the [3021]snow, and at no other times, each have their seasons. In winter not a bird is in Muscovy to be found, but at the spring in an instant the woods and hedges are full of them, saith [3022]Herbastein: how comes it to pa.s.s? Do they sleep in winter, like Gesner's Alpine mice; or do they lie hid (as [3023]Olaus affirms) "in the bottom of lakes and rivers, _spiritum continentes_? often so found by fishermen in Poland and Scandia, two together, mouth to mouth, wing to wing; and when the spring comes they revive again, or if they be brought into a stove, or to the fireside." Or do they follow the sun, as Peter Martyr _legat Babylonica l. 2._ manifestly convicts, out of his own knowledge; for when he was amba.s.sador in Egypt, he saw swallows, Spanish kites, [3024]and many such other European birds, in December and January very familiarly flying, and in great abundance, about Alexandria, _ubi floridae tunc arbores ac viridaria_. Or lie they hid in caves, rocks, and hollow trees, as most think, in deep tin-mines or sea-cliffs, as [3025]Mr.

Carew gives out? I conclude of them all, for my part, as [3026]Munster doth of cranes and storks; whence they come, whither they go, _incompertum adhuc_, as yet we know not. We see them here, some in summer, some in winter; "their coming and going is sure in the night: in the plains of Asia" (saith he) "the storks meet on such a set day, he that comes last is torn in pieces, and so they get them gone." Many strange places, Isthmi, Euripi, Chersonesi, creeks, havens, promontories, straits, Lakes, baths, rocks, mountains, places, and fields, where cities have been ruined or swallowed, battles fought, creatures, sea-monsters, remora, &c. minerals, vegetals. Zoophytes were fit to be considered in such an expedition, and amongst the rest that of [3027]Harbastein his Tartar lamb, [3028]Hector Boethius goosebearing tree in the orchards, to which Cardan _lib. 7. cap.

36. de rerum varietat._ subscribes: [3029]Vertomannus wonderful palm, that [3030] fly in Hispaniola, that shines like a torch in the night, that one may well see to write; those spherical stones in Cuba which nature hath so made, and those like birds, beasts, fishes, crowns, swords, saws, pots, &c.

usually found in the metal mines in Saxony about Mansfield, and in Poland near Nokow and Pallukie, as [3031]Munster and others relate. Many rare creatures and novelties each part of the world affords: amongst the rest, I would know for a certain whether there be any such men, as Leo Suavius, in his comment on Paracelsus _de sanit. tuend_. and [3032]Gaguinus records in his description of Muscovy, "that in Lucomoria, a province in Russia, lie fast asleep as dead all winter, from the 27 of November, like frogs and swallows, benumbed with cold, but about the 24 of April in the spring they revive again, and go about their business." I would examine that demonstration of Alexander Picolomineus, whether the earth's superficies be bigger than the seas: or that of Archimedes be true, the superficies of all water is even? Search the depth, and see that variety of sea-monsters and fishes, mermaids, seamen, horses, &c. which it affords. Or whether that be true which Jorda.n.u.s Brunus scoffs at, that if G.o.d did not detain it, the sea would overflow the earth by reason of his higher site, and which Josephus Blanca.n.u.s the Jesuit in his interpretation on those mathematical places of Aristotle, foolishly fears, and in a just tract proves by many circ.u.mstances, that in time the sea will waste away the land, and all the globe of the earth shall be covered with waters; _risum teneatis amici_?

what the sea takes away in one place it adds in another. Methinks he might rather suspect the sea should in time be filled by land, trees grow up, carca.s.ses, &c. that all-devouring fire, _omnia devorans et consumens_, will sooner cover and dry up the vast ocean with sand and ashes. I would examine the true seat of that terrestrial [3033]paradise, and where Ophir was whence Solomon did fetch his gold: from Peruana, which some suppose, or that Aurea Chersonesus, as Dominicus Niger, Arias Monta.n.u.s, Goropius, and others will. I would censure all Pliny's, Solinus', Strabo's, Sir John Mandeville's, Olaus Magnus', Marcus Polus' lies, correct those errors in navigation, reform cosmographical charts, and rectify longitudes, if it were possible; not by the compa.s.s, as some dream, with Mark Ridley in his treatise of magnetical bodies, _cap. 43._ for as Cabeus _magnet philos.

lib. 3. cap. 4._ fully resolves, there is no hope thence, yet I would observe some better means to find them out.

I would have a convenient place to go down with Orpheus, Ulysses, Hercules, [3034]Lucian's Menippus, at St. Patrick's purgatory, at Trophonius' den, Hecla in Iceland, Aetna in Sicily, to descend and see what is done in the bowels of the earth: do stones and metals grow there still? how come fir trees to be [3035]digged out from tops of hills, as in our mosses, and marshes all over Europe? How come they to dig up fish bones, sh.e.l.ls, beams, ironworks, many fathoms under ground, and anchors in mountains far remote from all seas? [3036]Anno 1460 at Bern in Switzerland 50 fathom deep a ship was digged out of a mountain, where they got metal ore, in which were 48 carca.s.ses of men, with other merchandise. That such things are ordinarily found in tops of hills, Aristotle insinuates in his meteors, [3037]Pomponius Mela in his first book, _c. de Numidia_, and familiarly in the Alps, saith [3038]Blanca.n.u.s the Jesuit, the like is to be seen: came this from earthquakes, or from Noah's flood, as Christians suppose, or is there a vicissitude of sea and land, as Anaximenes held of old, the mountains of Thessaly would become seas, and seas again mountains? The whole world belike should be new moulded, when it seemed good to those all-commanding powers, and turned inside out, as we do hayc.o.c.ks in harvest, top to bottom, or bottom to top: or as we turn apples to the fire, move the world upon his centre; that which is under the poles now, should be translated to the equinoctial, and that which is under the torrid zone to the circle arctic and antarctic another while, and so be reciprocally warmed by the sun: or if the worlds be infinite, and every fixed star a sun, with his compa.s.sing planets (as Brunus and Campanella conclude) cast three or four worlds into one; or else of one world make three or four new, as it shall seem to them best. To proceed, if the earth be 21,500 miles in [3039]compa.s.s, its diameter is 7,000 from us to our antipodes, and what shall be comprehended in all that s.p.a.ce? What is the centre of the earth?

is it pure element only, as Aristotle decrees, inhabited (as [3040]

Paracelsus thinks) with creatures, whose chaos is the earth: or with fairies, as the woods and waters (according to him) are with nymphs, or as the air with spirits? Dionisiodorus, a mathematician in [3041]Pliny, that sent a letter, _ad superos_ after he was dead, from the centre of the earth, to signify what distance the same centre was from the _superficies_ of the same, viz. 42,000 stadiums, might have done well to have satisfied all these doubts. Or is it the place of h.e.l.l, as Virgil in his Aenides, Plato, Lucian, Dante, and others poetically describe it, and as many of our divines think? In good earnest, Anthony Rusca, one of the society of that Ambrosian College, in Milan, in his great volume _de Inferno, lib. 1. cap.

47._ is stiff in this tenet, 'tis a corporeal fire tow, _cap. 5. I. 2._ as he there disputes. "Whatsoever philosophers write" (saith [3042]Surius) "there be certain mouths of h.e.l.l, and places appointed for the punishment of men's souls, as at Hecla in Iceland, where the ghosts of dead men are familiarly seen, and sometimes talk with the living: G.o.d would have such visible places, that mortal men might be certainly informed, that there be such punishments after death, and learn hence to fear G.o.d." Kranzius _Dan.

hist. lib. 2. cap. 24._ subscribes to this opinion of Surius, so doth Colerus _cap. 12. lib. de immortal animae_ (out of the authority belike of St. Gregory, Durand, and the rest of the schoolmen, who derive as much from Aetna in Sicily, Lipari, Hiera, and those sulphureous vulcanian islands) making Terra del Fuego, and those frequent volcanoes in America, of which Acosta _lib. 3. cap. 24._ that fearful mount Hecklebirg in Norway, an especial argument to prove it, [3043]"where lamentable screeches and howlings are continually heard, which strike a terror to the auditors; fiery chariots are commonly seen to bring in the souls of men in the likeness of crows, and devils ordinarily go in and out." Such another proof is that place near the Pyramids in Egypt, by Cairo, as well to confirm this as the resurrection, mentioned by [3044]Kornmannus _mirac. mort. lib. 1.

cap. 30._ Camerarius _oper. suc. cap. 37._ Bredenbachius _pereg. ter.

sanct._ and some others, "where once a year dead bodies arise about March, and walk, after awhile hide themselves again: thousands of people come yearly to see them." But these and such like testimonies others reject, as fables, illusions of spirits, and they will have no such local known place, more than Styx or Phlegethon, Pluto's court, or that poetical _Infernus_, where Homer's soul was seen hanging on a tree, &c., to which they ferried over in Charon's boat, or went down at Hermione in Greece, _compendiaria ad Infernos via_, which is the shortest cut, _quia nullum a mortuis naulum eo loci exposc.u.n.t_, (saith [3045]Gerbelius) and besides there were no fees to be paid. Well then, is it h.e.l.l, or purgatory, as Bellarmine: or _Limbus patrum_, as Gallucius will, and as Rusca will (for they have made maps of it) [3046]or Ignatius parler? Virgil, sometimes bishop of Saltburg (as Aventinus _anno_ 745 relates) by Bonifacius bishop of Mentz was therefore called in question, because he held antipodes (which they made a doubt whether Christ died for) and so by that means took away the seat of h.e.l.l, or so contracted it, that it could bear no proportion to heaven, and contradicted that opinion of Austin, Basil, Lactantius that held the earth round as a trencher (whom Acosta and common experience more largely confute) but not as a ball; and Jerusalem where Christ died the middle of it; or Delos, as the fabulous Greeks feigned: because when Jupiter let two eagles loose, to fly from the world's ends east and west, they met at Delos. But that scruple of Bonifacius is now quite taken away by our latter divines: Franciscus Ribera, _in cap. 14. Apocalyps._ will have h.e.l.l a material and local fire in the centre of the earth, 200 Italian miles in diameter, as he defines it out of those words, _Exivit sanguis de terra--per stadia mille s.e.xcenta_, &c. But Lessius _lib. 13. de moribus divinis, cap. 24._ will have this local h.e.l.l far less, one Dutch mile in diameter, all filled with fire and brimstone: because, as he there demonstrates, that s.p.a.ce, cubically multiplied, will make a sphere able to hold eight hundred thousand millions of d.a.m.ned bodies (allowing each body six foot square) which will abundantly suffice; _c.u.m cerium sit, inquit, facta subductione, non futuros centies mille milliones d.a.m.nandorum._ But if it be no material fire (as Sco. Thomas, Bonaventure, Soncinas, Voscius, and others argue) it may be there or elsewhere, as Keckerman disputes _System.

Theol._ for sure somewhere it is, _certum est alicubi, etsi definitus circulus non a.s.signetur._ I will end the controversy in [3047]Austin's words, "Better doubt of things concealed, than to contend about uncertainties, where Abraham's bosom is, and h.e.l.l fire:" [3048]_Vix a mansuetis, a contentiosis nunquam invenitur_; scarce the meek, the contentious shall never find. If it be solid earth, 'tis the fountain of metals, waters, which by his innate temper turns air into water, which springs up in several c.h.i.n.ks, to moisten the earth's _superficies_, and that in a tenfold proportion (as Aristotle holds) or else these fountains come directly from the sea, by [3049]secret pa.s.sages, and so made fresh again, by running through the bowels of the earth; and are either thick, thin, hot, cold, as the matter or minerals are by which they pa.s.s; or as Peter Martyr _Ocean. Decad. lib. 9._ and some others hold, from [3050]

abundance of rain that falls, or from that ambient heat and cold, which alters that inward heat, and so _per consequens_ the generation of waters.

Or else it may be full of wind, or a sulphureous innate fire, as our meteorologists inform us, which sometimes breaking out, causeth those horrible earthquakes, which are so frequent in these days in j.a.pan, China, and oftentimes swallow up whole cities. Let Lucian's Menippus consult with or ask of Tiresias, if you will not believe philosophers, he shall clear all your doubts when he makes a second voyage.

In the mean time let us consider of that which is _sub dio_, and find out a true cause, if it be possible, of such accidents, meteors, alterations, as happen above ground. Whence proceed that variety of manners, and a distinct character (as it were) to several nations? Some are wise, subtile, witty; others dull, sad and heavy; some big, some little, as Tully de Fato, Plato in Timaeo, Vegetius and Bodine prove at large, _method. cap. 5._ some soft, and some hardy, barbarous, civil, black, dun, white, is it from the air, from the soil, influence of stars, or some other secret cause? Why doth Africa breed so many venomous beasts, Ireland none? Athens owls, Crete none? [3051]Why hath Daulis and Thebes no swallows (so Pausanius informeth us) as well as the rest of Greece, [3052]Ithaca no hares, Pontus a.s.ses, Scythia swine? whence comes this variety of complexions, colours, plants, birds, beasts, [3053]metals, peculiar almost to every place? Why so many thousand strange birds and beasts proper to America alone, as Acosta demands _lib. 4. cap. 36._ were they created in the six days, or ever in Noah's ark? if there, why are they not dispersed and found in other countries? It is a thing (saith he) hath long held me in suspense; no Greek, Latin, Hebrew ever heard of them before, and yet as differing from our European animals, as an egg and a chestnut: and which is more, kine, horses, sheep, &c., till the Spaniards brought them, were never heard of in those parts? How comes it to pa.s.s, that in the same site, in one lat.i.tude, to such as are _Perioeci_, there should be such difference of soil, complexion, colour, metal, air, &c. The Spaniards are white, and so are Italians, when as the inhabitants about [3054]_Caput bonae spei_ are blackamoors, and yet both alike distant from the equator: nay they that dwell in the same parallel line with these Negroes, as about the Straits of Magellan, are white coloured, and yet some in Presbyter John's country in Ethiopia are dun; they in Zeilan and Malabar parallel with them again black: Manamotapa in Africa, and St. Thomas Isle are extreme hot, both under the line, coal black their inhabitants, whereas in Peru they are quite opposite in colour, very temperate, or rather cold, and yet both alike elevated. Moscow in 53. degrees of lat.i.tude extreme cold, as those northern countries usually are, having one perpetual hard frost all winter long; and in 52. deg. lat. sometimes hard frost and snow all summer, as b.u.t.ton's Bay, &c., or by fits; and yet [3055]England near the same lat.i.tude, and Ireland, very moist, warm, and more temperate in winter than Spain, Italy, or France. Is it the sea that causeth this difference, and the air that comes from it: Why then is [3056]Ister so cold near the Euxine, Pontus, Bithynia, and all Thrace; _frigidas regiones_ Maginus calls them, and yet their lat.i.tude is but 42. which should be hot: [3057]

Quevira, or Nova Albion in America, bordering on the sea, was so cold in July, that our [3058]Englishmen could hardly endure it. At Noremberga in 45. lat. all the sea is frozen ice, and yet in a more southern lat.i.tude than ours. New England, and the island of Cambrial Colchos, which that n.o.ble gentleman Mr. Vaughan, or Orpheus junior, describes in his Golden Fleece, is in the same lat.i.tude with little Britain in France, and yet their winter begins not till January, their spring till May; which search he accounts worthy of an astrologer: is this from the easterly winds, or melting of ice and snow dissolved within the circle arctic; or that the air being thick, is longer before it be warm by the sunbeams, and once heated like an oven will keep itself from cold? Our climes breed lice, [3059]

Hungary and Ireland _male audiunt_ in this kind; come to the Azores, by a secret virtue of that air they are instantly consumed, and all our European vermin almost, saith Ortelius. Egypt is watered with Nilus not far from the sea, and yet there it seldom or never rains: Rhodes, an island of the same nature, yields not a cloud, and yet our islands ever dropping and inclining to rain. The Atlantic Ocean is still subject to storms, but in Del Zur, or _Mare pacifico_, seldom or never any. Is it from tropic stars, _apertio portarum_, in the dodecotemories or constellations, the moon's mansions, such aspects of planets, such winds, or dissolving air, or thick air, which causeth this and the like differences of heat and cold? Bodin relates of a Portugal amba.s.sador, that coming from [3060]Lisbon to [3061]Danzig in Spruce, found greater heat there than at any time at home. Don Garcia de Sylva, legate to Philip III., king of Spain, residing at Ispahan in Persia, 1619, in his letter to the Marquess of Bedmar, makes mention of greater cold in Ispahan, whose lat. is 31. gr. than ever he felt in Spain, or any part of Europe. The torrid zone was by our predecessors held to be uninhabitable, but by our modern travellers found to be most temperate, bedewed with frequent rains, and moistening showers, the breeze and cooling blasts in some parts, as [3062]Acosta describes, most pleasant and fertile.

Arica in Chile is by report one of the sweetest places that ever the sun shined on, _Olympus terrae_, a heaven on earth: how incomparably do some extol Mexico in Nova Hispania, Peru, Brazil, &c., in some again hard, dry, sandy, barren, a very desert, and still in the same lat.i.tude. Many times we find great diversity of air in the same [3063]country, by reason of the site to seas, hills or dales, want of water, nature of soil, and the like: as in Spain Arragon is _aspera et sicca_, harsh and evil inhabited; Estremadura is dry, sandy, barren most part, extreme hot by reason of his plains; Andalusia another paradise; Valencia a most pleasant air, and continually green; so is it about [3064]Granada, on the one side fertile plains, on the other, continual snow to be seen all summer long on the hill tops. That their houses in the Alps are three quarters of the year covered with snow, who knows not? That Tenerife is so cold at the top, extreme hot at the bottom: Mons Atlas in Africa, Liba.n.u.s in Palestine, with many such, _tantos inter ardores fidos nivibus_, [3065]Tacitus calls them, and Radzivilus _epist. 2. fol. 27._ yields it to be far hotter there than in any part of Italy: 'tis true; but they are highly elevated, near the middle region, and therefore cold, _ob paucam solarium radiorum refractionem_, as Serrarius answers, _com. in. 3. cap. Josua quaest. 5._ Abulensis _quaest.

37._ In the heat of summer, in the king's palace in Escurial, the air is most temperate, by reason of a cold blast which comes from the snowy mountains of Sierra de Cadarama hard by, when as in Toledo it is very hot: so in all other countries. The causes of these alterations are commonly by reason of their nearness (I say) to the middle region; but this diversity of air, in places equally situated, elevated and distant from the pole, can hardly be satisfied with that diversity of plants, birds, beasts, which is so familiar with us: with Indians, everywhere, the sun is equally distant, the same vertical stars, the same irradiations of planets, aspects like, the same nearness of seas, the same superficies, the same soil, or not much different. Under the equator itself, amongst the Sierras, Andes, Lanos, as Herrera, Laet, and [3066]Acosta contend, there is _tam mirabilis et inopinata varietas_, such variety of weather, _ut merito exerceat ingenia_, that no philosophy can yet find out the true cause of it. When I consider how temperate it is in one place, saith [3067]Acosta, within the tropic of Capricorn, as about Laplata, and yet hard by at Potosi, in that same alt.i.tude, mountainous alike, extreme cold; extreme hot in Brazil, &c. _Hic ego_, saith Acosta, _philosophiam Aristotelis meteorologicam vehementer irrisi, c.u.m_, &c., when the sun comes nearest to them, they have great tempests, storms, thunder and lightning, great store of rain, snow, and the foulest weather: when the sun is vertical, their rivers overflow, the morning fair and hot, noonday cold and moist: all which is opposite to us.

How comes it to pa.s.s? Scaliger _poetices l. 3. c. 16._ discourseth thus of this subject. How comes, or wherefore is this _temeraria siderum dispositio_, this rash placing of stars, or as Epicurus will, _fortuita_, or accidental? Why are some big, some little, why are they so confusedly, unequally situated in the heavens, and set so much out of order? In all other things nature is equal, proportionable, and constant; there be _justae dimensiones, et prudens partium dispositio_, as in the fabric of man, his eyes, ears, nose, face, members are correspondent, _cur non idem coelo opere omnium pulcherrimo_? Why are the heavens so irregular, _neque paribus molibus, neque paribus intervallis_, whence is this difference?

_Diversos_ (he concludes) _efficere locorum Genios_, to make diversity of countries, soils, manners, customs, characters, and const.i.tutions among us, _ut quantum vicinia ad charitatem addat, sidera distrahant ad perniciem_, and so by this means _fluvio vel monte distincti sunt dissimiles_, the same places almost shall be distinguished in manners. But this reason is weak and most insufficient. The fixed stars are removed since Ptolemy's time 26.

gr. from the first of Aries, and if the earth be immovable, as their site varies, so should countries vary, and diverse alterations would follow. But this we perceive not; as in Tully's time with us in Britain, _coelum visu foedum, et in quo facile generantur nubes_, &c., 'tis so still. Wherefore Bodine _Theat. nat. lib. 2._ and some others, will have all these alterations and effects immediately to proceed from those genii, spirits, angels, which rule and domineer in several places; they cause storms, thunder, lightning, earthquakes, ruins, tempests, great winds, floods, &c., the philosophers of Conimbra, will refer this diversity to the influence of that empyrean heaven: for some say the eccentricity of the sun is come nearer to the earth than in Ptolemy's time, the virtue therefore of all the vegetals is decayed, [3068]men grow less, &c. There are that observe new motions of the heavens, new stars, _palantia sidera_, comets, clouds, call them what you will, like those Medicean, Burbonian, Austrian planets, lately detected, which do not decay, but come and go, rise higher and lower, hide and show themselves amongst the fixed stars, amongst the planets, above and beneath the moon, at set times, now nearer, now farther off, together, asunder; as he that plays upon a sackbut by pulling it up and down alters his tones and tunes, do they their stations and places, though to us undiscerned; and from those motions proceed (as they conceive) diverse alterations. Clavius conjectures otherwise, but they be but conjectures. About Damascus in Coeli-Syria is a [3069]Paradise, by reason of the plenty of waters, _in promptu causa est_, and the deserts of Arabia barren, because of rocks, rolling seas of sands, and dry mountains _quod inaquosa_ (saith Adricomius) _montes habens asperos, saxosos, praecipites, horroris et mortis speciem prae se ferentes_, "uninhabitable therefore of men, birds, beasts, void of all green trees, plants, and fruits, a vast rocky horrid wilderness, which by no art can be manured, 'tis evident."

Bohemia is cold, for that it lies all along to the north. But why should it be so hot in Egypt, or there never rain? Why should those [3070]etesian and northeastern winds blow continually and constantly so long together, in some places, at set times, one way still, in the dog-days only: here perpetual drought, there dropping showers; here foggy mists, there a pleasant air; here [3071]terrible thunder and lightning at such set seasons, here frozen seas all the year, there open in the same lat.i.tude, to the rest no such thing, nay quite opposite is to be found? Sometimes (as in [3072]Peru) on the one side of the mountains it is hot, on the other cold, here snow, there wind, with infinite such. Fromundus in his Meteors will excuse or solve all this by the sun's motion, but when there is such diversity to such as _Perioeci_ or very near site, how can that position hold?

Who can give a reason of this diversity of meteors, that it should rain [3073]stones, frogs, mice, &c. Rats, which they call _lemmer_ in Norway, and are manifestly observed (as [3074]Munster writes) by the inhabitants, to descend and fall with some feculent showers, and like so many locusts, consume all that is green. Leo Afer speaks as much of locusts, about Fez in Barbary there be infinite swarms in their fields upon a sudden: so at Aries in France, 1553, the like happened by the same mischief, all their gra.s.s and fruits were devoured, _magna incolarum admiratione et consternatione_ (as Valleriola _obser. med. lib. 1. obser. 1._ relates) _coelum subito ob.u.mbrabant_, &c. he concludes, [3075]it could not be from natural causes, they cannot imagine whence they come, but from heaven. Are these and such creatures, corn, wood, stones, worms, wool, blood, &c. lifted up into the middle region by the sunbeams, as [3076]Baracellus the physician disputes, and thence let fall with showers, or there engendered? [3077]Cornelius Gemma is of that opinion, they are there conceived by celestial influences: others suppose they are immediately from G.o.d, or prodigies raised by art and illusions of spirits, which are princes of the air; to whom Bodin.

_lib. 2. Theat. Nat_. subscribes. In fine, of meteors in general, Aristotle's reasons are exploded by Bernardinus Telesius, by Paracelsus his principles confuted, and other causes a.s.signed, sal, sulphur, mercury, in which his disciples are so expert, that they can alter elements, and separate at their pleasure, make perpetual motions, not as Cardan, Tasneir, Peregrinus, by some magnetical virtue, but by mixture of elements; imitate thunder, like Salmoneus, snow, hail, the sea's ebbing and flowing, give life to creatures (as they say) without generation, and what not? P. Nonius Saluciensis and Kepler take upon them to demonstrate that no meteors, clouds, fogs, [3078]vapours, arise higher than fifty or eighty miles, and all the rest to be purer air or element of fire: which [3079]Cardan, [3080]Tycho, and [3081]John Pena manifestly confute by refractions, and many other arguments, there is no such element of fire at all. If, as Tycho proves, the moon be distant from us fifty and sixty semi-diameters of the earth: and as Peter Nonius will have it, the air be so angust, what proportion is there betwixt the other three elements and it? To what use serves it? Is it full of spirits which inhabit it, as the Paracelsians and Platonists hold, the higher the more n.o.ble, [3082]full of birds, or a mere vacuum to no purpose? It is much controverted between Tycho Brahe and Christopher Rotman, the landgrave of Hesse's mathematician, in their astronomical epistles, whether it be the same _Diaphanum_ clearness, matter of air and heavens, or two distinct essences? Christopher Rotman, John Pena, Jorda.n.u.s Brunus, with many other late mathematicians, contend it is the same and one matter throughout, saving that the higher still the purer it is, and more subtile; as they find by experience in the top of some hills in [3083]America; if a man ascend, he faints instantly for want of thicker air to refrigerate the heart. Acosta, _l. 3. c. 9._ calls this mountain Periacaca in Peru; it makes men cast and vomit, he saith, that climb it, as some other of those Andes do in the deserts of Chile for five hundred miles together, and for extremity of cold to lose their fingers and toes. Tycho will have two distinct matters of heaven and air; but to say truth, with some small qualification, they have one and the self-same opinion about the essence and matter of heavens; that it is not hard and impenetrable, as peripatetics hold, transparent, of a _quinta essentia_, [3084]"but that it is penetrable and soft as the air itself is, and that the planets move in it, as birds in the air, fishes in the sea." This they prove by motion of comets, and otherwise (though Claremontius in his Ant.i.tycho stiffly opposes), which are not generated, as Aristotle teacheth, in the aerial region, of a hot and dry exhalation, and so consumed: but as Anaxagoras and Democritus held of old, of a celestial matter: and as [3085]

Tycho, [3086]Eliseus, Roeslin, Thaddeus, Haggesius, Pena, Rotman, Fracastorius, demonstrate by their progress, parallaxes, refractions, motions of the planets, which interfere and cut one another's...o...b.., now higher, and then lower, as [Symbol: Mars] amongst the rest, which sometimes, as [3087]Kepler confirms by his own, and Tycho's accurate observations, comes nearer the earth than the [Symbol: Sun] and is again eftsoons aloft in Jupiter's...o...b.. and [3088]other sufficient reasons, far above the moon: exploding in the meantime that element of fire, those fict.i.tious first watery movers, those heavens I mean above the firmament, which Delrio, Lodovicus Imola, Patricius, and many of the fathers affirm; those monstrous...o...b.. of eccentrics, and _Eccentre Epicycles deserentes_.

Which howsoever Ptolemy, Alhasen, Vitellio, Purbachius, Maginus, Clavius, and many of their a.s.sociates, stiffly maintain to be real orbs, eccentric, concentric, circles aequant, &c. are absurd and ridiculous. For who is so mad to think that there should be so many circles, like subordinate wheels in a clock, all impenetrable and hard, as they feign, add and subtract at their pleasure. [3089]Maginus makes eleven heavens, subdivided into their orbs and circles, and all too little to serve those particular appearances: Fracastorius, seventy-two h.o.m.ocentrics; Tycho Brahe, Nicholas Ramerus, Heliseus Roeslin, have peculiar hypotheses of their own inventions; and they be but inventions, as most of them acknowledge, as we admit of equators, tropics, colures, circles arctic and antarctic, for doctrine's sake (though Ramus thinks them all unnecessary), they will have them supposed only for method and order. Tycho hath feigned I know not how many subdivisions of epicycles in epicycles, &c., to calculate and express the moon's motion: but when all is done, as a supposition, and no otherwise; not (as he holds) hard, impenetrable, subtile, transparent, &c., or making music, as Pythagoras maintained of old, and Robert Constantine of late, but still, quiet, liquid, open, &c.

If the heavens then be penetrable, as these men deliver, and no lets, it were not amiss in this aerial progress, to make wings and fly up, which that Turk in Busbequius made his fellow-citizens in Constantinople believe he would perform: and some new-fangled wits, methinks, should some time or other find out: or if that may not be, yet with a Galileo's gla.s.s, or Icaromenippus' wings in Lucian, command the spheres and heavens, and see what is done amongst them. Whether there be generation and corruption, as some think, by reason of ethereal comets, that in Ca.s.siopea, 1572, that in Cygno, 1600, that in Sagittarius, 1604, and many like, which by no means Jul. Caesar la Galla, that Italian philosopher, in his physical disputation with Galileis _de phenomenis in orbe lunae, cap. 9._ will admit: or that they were created _ab initio_, and show themselves at set times. and as [3090]Helisaeus Roeslin contends, have poles, axle-trees, circles of their own, and regular motions. For, _non pereunt, sed minuuntur et disparent_, [3091]Blanca.n.u.s holds they come and go by fits, casting their tails still from the sun: some of them, as a burning-gla.s.s, projects the sunbeams from it; though not always neither: for sometimes a comet casts his tail from Venus, as Tycho observes. And as [3092]Helisaeus Roeslin of some others, from the moon, with little stars about them _ad stuporem astronomorum; c.u.m multis aliis in coelo miraculis_, all which argue with those Medicean, Austrian, and Burbonian stars, that the heaven of the planets is indistinct, pure, and open, in which the planets move _certis legibus ac metis_. Examine likewise, _An coelum sit coloratum_? Whether the stars be of that bigness, distance, as astronomers relate, so many in [3093]number, 1026, or 1725, as J. Bayerus; or as some Rabbins, 29,000 myriads; or as Galileo discovers by his gla.s.ses, infinite, and that _via lactea_, a confused light of small stars, like so many nails in a door: or all in a row, like those 12,000 isles of the Maldives in the Indian ocean? Whether the least visible star in the eighth sphere be eighteen times bigger than the earth; and as Tycho calculates, 14,000 semi-diameters distant from it?

Whether they be thicker parts of the orbs, as Aristotle delivers: or so many habitable worlds, as Democritus? Whether they have light of their own, or from the sun, or give light round, as Patritius discourseth? _An aeque distent a centra mundi_? Whether light be of their essence; and that light be a substance or an accident? Whether they be hot by themselves, or by accident cause heat? Whether there be such a precession of the equinoxes as Copernicus holds, or that the eighth sphere move? _An bene philosophentur_, R. Bacon and J. Dee, _Aphorism. de multiplicatione specierum_? Whether there be any such images ascending with each degree of the zodiac in the east, as Aliacensis feigns? _An aqua super coelum_? as Patritius and the schoolmen will, a crystalline [3094]watery heaven, which is [3095]

certainly to be understood of that in the middle region? for otherwise, if at Noah's flood the water came from thence, it must be above a hundred years falling down to us, as [3096]some calculate. Besides, _An terra sit animata_? which some so confidently believe, with Orpheus, Hermes, Averroes, from which all other souls of men, beasts, devils, plants, fishes, &c. are derived, and into which again, after some revolutions, as Plato in his Timaeus, Plotinus in his Enneades more largely discuss, they return (see Chalcidius and Bennius, Plato's commentators), as all philosophical matter, _in materiam primam_. Keplerus, Patritius, and some other Neoterics, have in part revived this opinion. And that every star in heaven hath a soul, angel or intelligence to animate or move it, &c. Or to omit all smaller controversies, as matters of less moment, and examine that main paradox, of the earth's motion, now so much in question: Aristarchus Samius, Pythagoras maintained it of old, Democritus and many of their scholars, Didacus Astunica, Anthony Fascarinus, a Carmelite, and some other commentators, will have Job to insinuate as much, _cap. 9. ver. 4._ _Qui commovet terram de loco suo_, &c., and that this one place of scripture makes more for the earth's motion than all the other prove against it; whom Pineda confutes most contradict. Howsoever, it is revived since by Copernicus, not as a truth, but a supposition, as he himself confesseth in the preface to pope Nicholas, but now maintained in good earnest by [3097]

Calcagninus, Telesius, Kepler, Rotman, Gilbert, Digges, Galileo, Campanella, and especially by [3098]Lansbergius, _naturae, rationi, et veritati consentaneum_, by Origa.n.u.s, and some [3099]others of his followers. For if the earth be the centre of the world, stand still, and the heavens move, as the most received [3100]opinion is, which they call _inordinatam coeli dispositionem_, though stiffly maintained by Tycho, Ptolemeus, and their adherents, _quis ille furor_? &c. what fury is that, saith [3101]Dr. Gilbert, _satis animose_, as Cabeus notes, that shall drive the heavens about with such incomprehensible celerity in twenty-four hours, when as every point of the firmament, and in the equator, must needs move (so [3102]Clavius calculates) 176,660 in one 246th part of an hour, and an arrow out of a bow must go seven times about the earth, whilst a man can say an Ave Maria, if it keep the same s.p.a.ce, or compa.s.s the earth 1884 times in an hour, which is _supra humanam cogitationem_, beyond human conceit: _ocyor et jaculo, et ventos, aequante sagitta_. A man could not ride so much ground, going 40 miles a day, in 2904 years, as the firmament goes in 23 hours: or so much in 203 years, as the firmament in one minute: _quod incredibile videtur_: and the [3103]pole-star, which to our thinking scarce moveth out of his place, goeth a bigger circuit than the sun, whose diameter is much larger than the diameter of the heaven of the sun, and 20,000 semi-diameters of the earth from us, with the rest of the fixed stars, as Tycho proves. To avoid therefore these impossibilities, they ascribe a triple motion to the earth, the sun immovable in the centre of the whole world, the earth centre of the moon, alone, above [Symbol: Mars]

and [Symbol: Mercury], beneath [Symbol: Saturn], [Symbol: Jupiter], [Symbol: Mars] (or as [3104]Origa.n.u.s and others will, one single motion to the earth, still placed in the centre of the world, which is more probable) a single motion to the firmament, which moves in 30 or 26 thousand years; and so the planets, Saturn in 30 years absolves his sole and proper motion, Jupiter in 12, Mars in 3, &c. and so solve all appearances better than any way whatsoever: calculate all motions, be they in _longum_ or _latum_, direct, stationary, retrograde, ascent or descent, without epicycles, intricate eccentrics, &c. _rectius commodiusque per unic.u.m motum terrae_, saith Lansbergius, much more certain than by those Alphonsine, or any such tables, which are grounded from those other suppositions. And 'tis true they say, according to optic principles, the visible appearances of the planets do so indeed answer to their magnitudes and orbs, and come nearest to mathematical observations and precedent calculations, there is no repugnancy to physical axioms, because no penetration of orbs; but then between the sphere of Saturn and the firmament, there is such an incredible and vast [3105]s.p.a.ce or distance (7,000,000 semi-diameters of the earth, as Tycho calculates) void of stars: and besides, they do so enhance the bigness of the stars, enlarge their circuit, to solve those ordinary objections of parallaxes and retrogradations of the fixed stars, that alteration of the poles, elevation in several places or lat.i.tude of cities here on earth (for, say they, if a man's eye were in the firmament, he should not at all discern that great annual motion of the earth, but it would still appear _punctum indivisibile_ and seem to be fixed in one place, of the same bigness) that it is quite opposite to reason, to natural philosophy, and all out as absurd as disproportional (so some will) as prodigious, as that of the sun's swift motion of heavens. But _hoc posito_, to grant this their tenet of the earth's motion: if the earth move, it is a planet, and shines to them in the moon, and to the other planetary inhabitants, as the moon and they do to us upon the earth: but shine she doth, as Galileo, [3106] Kepler, and others prove, and then _per consequens_, the rest of the planets are inhabited, as well as the moon, which he grants in his dissertation with Galileo's _Nuncius Sidereus_, [3107]"that there be Jovial and Saturn inhabitants," &c., and those several planets have their several moons about them, as the earth hath hers, as Galileo hath already evinced by his gla.s.ses: [3108]four about Jupiter, two about Saturn (though Sitius the Florentine, Fortunius Licetus, and Jul.

Caesar le Galla cavil at it) yet Kepler, the emperor's mathematician, confirms out of his experience, that he saw as much by the same help, and more about Mars, Venus, and the rest they hope to find out, peradventure even amongst the fixed stars, which Brunus and Brutius have already averred. Then (I say) the earth and they be planets alike, moved about the sun, the common centre of the world alike, and it may be those two green children which [3109] Nubrigensis speaks of in his time, that fell from heaven, came from thence; and that famous stone that fell from heaven in Aristotle's time, olymp. 84, _anno tertio, ad Capuas Fluenta_, recorded by Laertius and others, or Ancile or buckler in Numa's time, recorded by Festus. We may likewise insert with Campanella and Brunus, that which Pythagoras, Aristarchus, Samius, Herac.l.i.tus, Epicurus, Melissus, Democritus, Leucippus maintained in their ages, there be [3110]infinite worlds, and infinite earths or systems, _in infinito aethere_, which [3111]Eusebius collects out of their tenets, because infinite stars and planets like unto this of ours, which some stick not still to maintain and publicly defend, _sperabundus expecto innumerabilium mundorum in aeternitate per ambulationem_, &c. (Nic. Hill. Londinensis _philos.

Epicur._) For if the firmament be of such an incomparable bigness, as these Copernical giants will have it, _infinitum, aut infinito proximum_, so vast and full of innumerable stars, as being infinite in extent, one above another, some higher, some lower, some nearer, some farther off, and so far asunder, and those so huge and great, insomuch that if the whole sphere of Saturn, and all that is included in it, _totum aggregatum_ (as Fromundus of Louvain in his tract, _de immobilitate terrae_ argues) _evehatur inter stellas, videri a n.o.bis non poterat, tam immanis est distantia inter tellurem et fixas, sed instar puncti_, &c. If our world be small in respect, why may we not suppose a plurality of worlds, those infinite stars visible in the firmament to be so many suns, with particular fixed centres; to have likewise their subordinate planets, as the sun hath his dancing still round him? which Cardinal Cusa.n.u.s, Walkarinus, Brunus, and some others have held, and some still maintain, _Animae, Aristotelismo innutritae, et minutis speculationibus a.s.suetae, secus forsan_, &c. Though they seem close to us, they are infinitely distant, and so _per consequens_, there are infinite habitable worlds: what hinders? Why should not an infinite cause (as G.o.d is) produce infinite effects? as Nic. Hill.

_Democrit. philos._ disputes: Kepler (I confess) will by no means admit of Brunus's infinite worlds, or that the fixed stars should be so many suns, with their compa.s.sing planets, yet the said [3112]Kepler between jest and earnest in his perspectives, lunar geography, [3113] & _somnio suo, dissertat. c.u.m nunc. sider._ seems in part to agree with this, and partly to contradict; for the planets, he yields them to be inhabited, he doubts of the stars; and so doth Tycho in his astronomical epistles, out of a consideration of their vast.i.ty and greatness, break out into some such like speeches, that he will never believe those great and huge bodies were made to no other use than this that we perceive, to illuminate the earth, a point insensible in respect of the whole. But who shall dwell in these vast bodies, earths, worlds, [3114] "if they be inhabited? rational creatures?"

as Kepler demands, "or have they souls to be saved? or do they inhabit a better part of the world than we do? Are we or they lords of the world? And how are all things made for man?" _Difficile est nodum hunc expedire, eo quod nondum omnia quae huc pertinent explorata habemus_: 'tis hard to determine: this only he proves, that we are in _praecipuo mundi sinu_, in the best place, best world, nearest the heart of the sun. [3115]Thomas Campanella, a Calabrian monk, in his second book _de sensu rerum, cap. 4_, subscribes to this of Kepler; that they are inhabited he certainly supposeth, but with what kind of creatures he cannot say, he labours to prove it by all means: and that there are infinite worlds, having made an apology for Galileo, and dedicates this tenet of his to Cardinal Cajeta.n.u.s.

Others freely speak, mutter, and would persuade the world (as [3116]Marinus Marcenus complains) that our modern divines are too severe and rigid against mathematicians; ignorant and peevish, in not admitting their true demonstrations and certain observations, that they tyrannise over art, science, and all philosophy, in suppressing their labours (saith Pomponatius), forbidding them to write, to speak a truth, all to maintain their superst.i.tion, and for their profit's sake. As for those places of Scripture which oppugn it, they will have spoken _ad captum vulgi_, and if rightly understood, and favourably interpreted, not at all against it; and as Otho Gasman, _Astrol. cap. 1. part. 1._ notes, many great divines, besides Porphyrius, Proclus, Simplicius, and those heathen philosophers, _doctrina et aetate venerandi, Mosis Genesin mundanam popularis nescio cujus ruditatis, quae longa absit a vera Philosophorum eruditione, insimulant_: for Moses makes mention but of two planets, [Symbol: Sun] and [Symbol: Moon-3/4], no four elements, &c. Read more on him, in [3117]Grossius and Junius. But to proceed, these and such like insolent and bold attempts, prodigious paradoxes, inferences must needs follow, if it once be granted, which Rotman, Kepler, Gilbert, Diggeus, Origa.n.u.s, Galileo, and others, maintain of the earth's motion, that 'tis a planet, and shines as the moon doth, which contains in it [3118]"both land and sea as the moon doth:" for so they find by their gla.s.ses that _Maculae in facie Lunae_, "the brighter parts are earth, the dusky sea," which Thales, Plutarch, and Pythagoras formerly taught: and manifestly discern hills and dales, and such like concavities, if we may subscribe to and believe Galileo's observations. But to avoid these paradoxes of the earth's motion (which the Church of Rome hath lately [3119]condemned as heretical, as appears by Blanca.n.u.s and Fromundus's writings) our latter mathematicians have rolled all the stones that may be stirred: and to solve all appearances and objections, have invented new hypotheses, and fabricated new systems of the world, out of their own Dedalaean heads. Fracastorius will have the earth stand still, as before; and to avoid that supposition of eccentrics and epicycles, he hath coined seventy-two h.o.m.ocentrics, to solve all appearances. Nicholas Ramerus will have the earth the centre of the world, but movable, and the eighth sphere immovable, the five upper planets to move about the sun, the sun and moon about the earth. Of which orbs Tycho Brahe puts the earth the centre immovable, the stars immovable, the rest with Ramerus, the planets without orbs to wander in the air, keep time and distance, true motion, according to that virtue which G.o.d hath given them.

[3120]Helisaeus Roeslin censureth both, with Copernicus (whose hypothesis _de terrae motu_, Philippus Lansbergius hath lately vindicated, and demonstrated with solid arguments in a just volume, Jansonius Caesins [3121]hath ill.u.s.trated in a sphere.) The said Johannes Lansbergius, 1633, hath since defended his a.s.sertion against all the cavils and calumnies of Fromundus his Anti-Aristarchus, Baptista Morinus, and Petrus Bartholinus: Fromundus, 1634, hath written against him again, J. Rosseus of Aberdeen, &c. (sound drums and trumpets