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 Origanus, 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