ed only for method and order. Tycho hath feigned I know not how many
subdivisions of epicycles in epicycles, &c., to calculate and express the
moon's motion: but when all is done, as a supposition, and no otherwise;
not (as he holds) hard, impenetrable, subtile, transparent, &c., or making
music, as Pythagoras maintained of old, and Robert Constantine of late, but
still, quiet, liquid, open, &c.

If the heavens then be penetrable, as these men deliver, and no lets, it
were not amiss in this aerial progress, to make wings and fly up, which
that Turk in Busbequius made his fellow-citizens in Constantinople believe
he would perform: and some new-fangled wits, methinks, should some time or
other find out: or if that may not be, yet with a Galileo's glass, or
Icaromenippus' wings in Lucian, command the spheres and heavens, and see
what is done amongst them. Whether there be generation and corruption, as
some think, by reason of ethereal comets, that in Cassiopea, 1572, that in
Cygno, 1600, that in Sagittarius, 1604, and many like, which by no means
Jul. Caesar la Galla, that Italian philosopher, in his physical disputation
with Galileis _de phenomenis in orbe lunae, cap. 9._ will admit: or that
they were created _ab initio_, and show themselves at set times. and as
[3090]Helisaeus Roeslin contends, have poles, axle-trees, circles of their
own, and regular motions. For, _non pereunt, sed minuuntur et disparent_,
[3091]Blancanus holds they come and go by fits, casting their tails still
from the sun: some of them, as a burning-glass, projects the sunbeams from
it; though not always neither: for sometimes a comet casts his tail from
Venus, as Tycho observes. And as [3092]Helisaeus Roeslin of some others,
from the moon, with little stars about them _ad stuporem astronomorum; cum
multis aliis in coelo miraculis_, all which argue with those Medicean,
Austrian, and Burbonian stars, that the heaven of the planets is
indistinct, pure, and open, in which the planets move _certis legibus ac
metis_. Examine likewise, _An coelum sit coloratum_? Whether the stars be
of that bigness, distance, as astronomers relate, so many in [3093]number,
1026, or 1725, as J. Bayerus; or as some Rabbins, 29,000 myriads; or as
Galileo discovers by his glasses, infinite, and that _via lactea_, a
confused light of small stars, like so many nails in a door: or all in a
row, like those 12,000 isles of the Maldives in the Indian ocean? Whether
the least visible s