tar in the eighth sphere be eighteen times bigger than
the earth; and as Tycho calculates, 14,000 semi-diameters distant from it?
Whether they be thicker parts of the orbs, as Aristotle delivers: or so
many habitable worlds, as Democritus? Whether they have light of their own,
or from the sun, or give light round, as Patritius discourseth? _An aeque
distent a centra mundi_? Whether light be of their essence; and that light
be a substance or an accident? Whether they be hot by themselves, or by
accident cause heat? Whether there be such a precession of the equinoxes as
Copernicus holds, or that the eighth sphere move? _An bene philosophentur_,
R. Bacon and J. Dee, _Aphorism. de multiplicatione specierum_? Whether
there be any such images ascending with each degree of the zodiac in the
east, as Aliacensis feigns? _An aqua super coelum_? as Patritius and the
schoolmen will, a crystalline [3094]watery heaven, which is [3095]
certainly to be understood of that in the middle region? for otherwise, if
at Noah's flood the water came from thence, it must be above a hundred
years falling down to us, as [3096]some calculate. Besides, _An terra sit
animata_? which some so confidently believe, with Orpheus, Hermes,
Averroes, from which all other souls of men, beasts, devils, plants,
fishes, &c. are derived, and into which again, after some revolutions, as
Plato in his Timaeus, Plotinus in his Enneades more largely discuss, they
return (see Chalcidius and Bennius, Plato's commentators), as all
philosophical matter, _in materiam primam_. Keplerus, Patritius, and some
other Neoterics, have in part revived this opinion. And that every star in
heaven hath a soul, angel or intelligence to animate or move it, &c. Or to
omit all smaller controversies, as matters of less moment, and examine that
main paradox, of the earth's motion, now so much in question: Aristarchus
Samius, Pythagoras maintained it of old, Democritus and many of their
scholars, Didacus Astunica, Anthony Fascarinus, a Carmelite, and some other
commentators, will have Job to insinuate as much, _cap. 9. ver. 4._ _Qui
commovet terram de loco suo_, &c., and that this one place of scripture
makes more for the earth's motion than all the other prove against it; whom
Pineda confutes most contradict. Howsoever, it is revived since by
Copernicus, not as a truth, but a supposition, as he himself confesseth in
the preface to pope Nicholas, but now maintained in good earnest by [3097]
Cal