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 glasses: [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, Heraclitus, 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 nobis non poterat, tam immanis est distantia inter