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 Cusanus, Walkarinus, Brunus, and some others have held, and some still maintain, Animae, Aristotelismo innutritae, et minutis speculationibus assuetae, 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 God 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 compassing planets, yet the said [3112]Kepler between jest and earnest in his perspectives, lunar geography, [3113] & somnio suo, dissertat. cum 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 vastity 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 Cajetanus.  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 superstition, and for their profit’s sake.  As for those places of Scripture which oppugn it, they will have spoken ad captum vulgi,