Page:Mathematical collections and translations, in two tomes - Salusbury (1661).djvu/135

 truth agreeth with another, and all conspire to render each other inexpugnable!

What pity it is that Guns were not used in Aristotles age, he would with help of them have easily battered down ignorance, and spoke without hæsitation of these mundane points.

I am very glad that these reasons are new unto you, that so you may not rest in the opinion of the major part of Peripateticks, who believe, that if any one forsakes the Doctrine of Aristotle, it is because they did not understand or rightly apprehend his demonstrations. But you may expect to hear of other Novelties, and you shall see the followers of this new Systeme produce against themselves observations, experiences, and reasons of farre greater force than those alledged by Aristotle, Ptolomy, and other opposers of the same conclusions, and by this means you shall come to ascertain your self that they were not induced through want of knowledge or experience to follow that opinion.

It is requisite that upon this occasion I relate unto you some accidents that befell me, so soon as I first began to hear speak of this new doctrine. Being very young, and having scarcely finished my course of Philosophy, which I left off, as being set upon other employments, there chanced to come into these parts a certain Foreigner of Rostock, whose name, as I remember, was Christianus Vurstitius, a follower of Copernicus, who in an Academy made two or three Lectures upon this point, to whom many flock't as Auditors; but I thinking they went more for the novelty of the subject than otherwise, did not go to hear him: for I had concluded with my self that that opinion could be no other than a solemn madnesse. And questioning some of those who had been there, I perceived they all made a jest thereof, execptexcept [sic] one, who told me that the businesse was not altogether to be laugh't at, and because this man was reputed by me to be very intelligent and wary, I repented that I was not there, and began from that time forward as oft as I met with any one of the Copernican perswasion, to demand of them, if they had been alwayes of the same judgment; and of as many as I examined, I found not so much as one, who told me not that he had been a long time of the contrary opinion, but to have changed it for this, as convinced by the strength of the reasons proving the same: and afterwards questioning them, one by one, to see whether they were well possest of the reasons of the other side, I found them all to be very ready and perfect in them; so that I could not truly say, that they had took up this opinion out of ignorance, vanity, or to shew the acutenesse of their wits. On the contrary, of as many of the Peripateticks and Ptolomeans as I have asked (and out of curiosity I have talked with many) what pains they had taken in the Book of Copernicus, I found very