space between Saturn’s orb and the eighth sphere,
another too narrow. In his own hypothesis he
makes the earth as before the universal centre, the
sun to the five upper planets, to the eighth sphere
he ascribes diurnal motion, eccentrics, and epicycles
to the seven planets, which hath been formerly exploded;
and so, Dum vitant stulti vitia in contraria currunt,
[3122]as a tinker stops one hole and makes two, he
corrects them, and doth worse himself: reforms
some, and mars all. In the mean time, the world
is tossed in a blanket amongst them, they hoist the
earth up and down like a ball, make it stand and go
at their pleasures: one saith the sun stands,
another he moves; a third comes in, taking them all
at rebound, and lest there should any paradox be wanting,
he [3123]finds certain spots and clouds in the sun,
by the help of glasses, which multiply (saith Keplerus)
a thing seen a thousand times bigger in plano,
and makes it come thirty-two times nearer to the eye
of the beholder: but see the demonstration of
this glass in [3124]Tarde, by means of which, the
sun must turn round upon his own centre, or they about
the sun. Fabricius puts only three, and those
in the sun: Apelles 15, and those without the
sun, floating like the Cyanean Isles in the Euxine
sea. [3125]Tarde, the Frenchman, hath observed thirty-three,
and those neither spots nor clouds, as Galileo, Epist.
ad Valserum, supposeth, but planets concentric
with the sun, and not far from him with regular motions.
[3126]Christopher Shemer, a German Suisser Jesuit,
Ursica Rosa, divides them in maculas et
faculas, and will have them to be fixed in
Solis superficie: and to absolve their periodical
and regular motion in twenty-seven or twenty-eight
days, holding withal the rotation of the sun upon
his centre; and all are so confident, that they have
made schemes and tables of their motions. The
[3127]Hollander, in his dissertatiuncula cum Apelle,
censures all; and thus they disagree amongst themselves,
old and new, irreconcilable in their opinions; thus
Aristarchus, thus Hipparchus, thus Ptolemeus, thus
Albateginus, thus Alfraganus, thus Tycho, thus Ramerus,
thus Roeslinus, thus Fracastorius, thus Copernicus
and his adherents, thus Clavius and Maginus, &c.,
with their followers, vary and determine of these
celestial orbs and bodies: and so whilst these
men contend about the sun and moon, like the philosophers
in Lucian, it is to be feared, the sun and moon will
hide themselves, and be as much offended as [3128]she
was with those, and send another messenger to Jupiter,
by some new-fangled Icaromenippus, to make an end
of all those curious controversies, and scatter them
abroad.