Ptolemy, admire Copernicus,
but place Aristarchus and Philolaus before him. They take great pains in
endeavoring to understand the construction of the world, and whether or
not it will perish, and at what time. They believe that the true oracle
of Jesus Christ is by the signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the
stars, which signs do not thus appear to many of us foolish ones.
Therefore they wait for the renewing of the age, and perchance for its
end.

They say that it is very doubtful whether the world was made from
nothing, or from the ruins of other worlds, or from chaos, but they
certainly think that it was made, and did not exist from eternity.
Therefore they disbelieve in Aristotle, whom they consider a logican and
not a philosopher. From analogies, they can draw many arguments against
the eternity of the world. The sun and the stars they, so to speak,
regard as the living representatives and signs of God, as the temples
and holy living altars, and they honor but do not worship them. Beyond
all other things they venerate the sun, but they consider no created
thing worthy the adoration of worship. This they give to God alone, and
thus they serve Him, that they may not come into the power of a tyrant
and fall into misery by undergoing punishment by creatures of revenge.
They contemplate and know God under the image of the Sun, and they call
it the sign of God, His face and living image, by means of which light,
heat, life, and the making of all things good and bad proceed. Therefore
they have built an altar like to the sun in shape, and the priests
praise God in the sun and in the stars, as it were His altars, and in
the heavens, His temple as it were; and they pray to good angels, who
are, so to speak, the intercessors living in the stars, their strong
abodes. For God long since set signs of their beauty in heaven, and of
His glory in the sun. They say there is but one heaven, and that the
planets move and rise of themselves when they approach the sun or are in
conjunction with it.

They assert two principles of the physics of things below, namely, that
the sun is the father, and the earth the mother; the air is an impure
part of the heavens; all fire is derived from the sun. The sea is the
sweat of earth, or the fluid of earth combusted, and fused within its
bowels, but is the bond of union between air and earth, as the blood is
of the spirit and flesh of animals. The world is a great animal, and we
live within i