y such
tables, which are grounded from those other suppositions. And 'tis true
they say, according to optic principles, the visible appearances of the
planets do so indeed answer to their magnitudes and orbs, and come nearest
to mathematical observations and precedent calculations, there is no
repugnancy to physical axioms, because no penetration of orbs; but then
between the sphere of Saturn and the firmament, there is such an incredible
and vast [3105]space or distance (7,000,000 semi-diameters of the earth, as
Tycho calculates) void of stars: and besides, they do so enhance the
bigness of the stars, enlarge their circuit, to solve those ordinary
objections of parallaxes and retrogradations of the fixed stars, that
alteration of the poles, elevation in several places or latitude of cities
here on earth (for, say they, if a man's eye were in the firmament, he
should not at all discern that great annual motion of the earth, but it
would still appear _punctum indivisibile_ and seem to be fixed in one
place, of the same bigness) that it is quite opposite to reason, to natural
philosophy, and all out as absurd as disproportional (so some will) as
prodigious, as that of the sun's swift motion of heavens. But _hoc posito_,
to grant this their tenet of the earth's motion: if the earth move, it is a
planet, and shines to them in the moon, and to the other planetary
inhabitants, as the moon and they do to us upon the earth: but shine she
doth, as Galileo, [3106] Kepler, and others prove, and then _per
consequens_, the rest of the planets are inhabited, as well as the moon,
which he grants in his dissertation with Galileo's _Nuncius Sidereus_,
[3107]"that there be Jovial and Saturn inhabitants," &c., and those several
planets have their several moons about them, as the earth hath hers, as
Galileo hath already evinced by his glasses: [3108]four about Jupiter, two
about Saturn (though Sitius the Florentine, Fortunius Licetus, and Jul.
Caesar le Galla cavil at it) yet Kepler, the emperor's mathematician,
confirms out of his experience, that he saw as much by the same help, and
more about Mars, Venus, and the rest they hope to find out, peradventure
even amongst the fixed stars, which Brunus and Brutius have already
averred. Then (I say) the earth and they be planets alike, moved about the
sun, the common centre of the world alike, and it may be those two green
children which [3109] Nubrigensis speaks of in his time, that fell from
he