paradoxes, inferences must needs follow, if it
once be granted, which Rotman, Kepler, Gilbert, Diggeus, Origanus, Galileo,
and others, maintain of the earth's motion, that 'tis a planet, and shines
as the moon doth, which contains in it [3118]"both land and sea as the moon
doth:" for so they find by their glasses that _Maculae in facie Lunae_,
"the brighter parts are earth, the dusky sea," which Thales, Plutarch, and
Pythagoras formerly taught: and manifestly discern hills and dales, and
such like concavities, if we may subscribe to and believe Galileo's
observations. But to avoid these paradoxes of the earth's motion (which the
Church of Rome hath lately [3119]condemned as heretical, as appears by
Blancanus and Fromundus's writings) our latter mathematicians have rolled
all the stones that may be stirred: and to solve all appearances and
objections, have invented new hypotheses, and fabricated new systems of the
world, out of their own Dedalaean heads. Fracastorius will have the earth
stand still, as before; and to avoid that supposition of eccentrics and
epicycles, he hath coined seventy-two homocentrics, to solve all
appearances. Nicholas Ramerus will have the earth the centre of the world,
but movable, and the eighth sphere immovable, the five upper planets to
move about the sun, the sun and moon about the earth. Of which orbs Tycho
Brahe puts the earth the centre immovable, the stars immovable, the rest
with Ramerus, the planets without orbs to wander in the air, keep time and
distance, true motion, according to that virtue which God hath given them.
[3120]Helisaeus Roeslin censureth both, with Copernicus (whose hypothesis
_de terrae motu_, Philippus Lansbergius hath lately vindicated, and
demonstrated with solid arguments in a just volume, Jansonius Caesins
[3121]hath illustrated in a sphere.) The said Johannes Lansbergius, 1633,
hath since defended his assertion against all the cavils and calumnies of
Fromundus his Anti-Aristarchus, Baptista Morinus, and Petrus Bartholinus:
Fromundus, 1634, hath written against him again, J. Rosseus of Aberdeen,
&c. (sound drums and trumpets) whilst Roeslin (I say) censures all, and
Ptolemeus himself as insufficient: one offends against natural philosophy,
another against optic principles, a third against mathematical, as not
answering to astronomical observations: one puts a great space between
Saturn's orb and the eighth sphere, another too narrow. In his own
hypothesis he makes