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 space,
or compass 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]Origanus
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 unicum 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]space 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 latitude of cities here on earth
(for, say they, if a man’s eye were in the firmament,