bright, some hills
covered with snow never consuming, others were so hot that grass and
trees were burned and consumed therewith. Then looked I up to the
heavens, and behold they went so swift, that I thought they would have
sprung into thousands; likewise it was so clear and so hot, that I could
not gaze upon it, it so dimmed my sight; and had not my spirit
Mephistophiles covered me, as it were with a shadowing cloud, I had been
burnt with the extreme heat thereof; for the sky which we behold here,
when we look up from the earth, is so fast and thick as a wall, clear
and shining bright as crystal, in which is placed the sun, which casteth
forth his rays and beams over the whole world, to the uttermost confines
of the earth. But we think that the sun is very little; no, it is
altogether as big as the world; indeed the body substantial is but
little in compass, but the rays or streams that it casteth forth by
reason of the thing wherein it is placed, maketh him to extend and show
himself all over the whole world; and we think that the sun runneth his
course, and that the heavens stand still; no, it is the heavens that
moves his course, and the sun abideth perpetually in his place, he is
permanent and fixed in his place; and although we see him beginning to
ascend in the orient or east, at the highest in the meridian or south,
setting in occident or west, yet is he in the lowest in septentrio or
north, and yet he moveth not, it is the axle of the heavens that moveth,
the whole firmament being a chaos or confused thing, and for that proof
I will show this example: like as thou seest a bubble made of water and
soap blown out of a quill, it is in form of a confused mass or chaos,
and being in this form is moved at pleasure of the wind, which runneth
round about that chaos, and moveth him also round; even so the whole
firmament or chaos, wherein are placed the sun and the rest of the
planets, is turned and carried at the pleasure of the spirit of God,
which is wind. Yea, Christian reader, to the glory of God, and to the
profit of my soul, I will open unto thee a divine opinion touching the
rule of this confounded chaos, far more than my rude German author,
being possessed with the devil, was able to utter, and prove some of my
sentences before to be true; look into Genesis, into the works of God,
at the creation of the world, there shalt thou find that the spirit of
God moved upon the water, before heaven and earth were made. M