Page:Mathematical collections and translations, in two tomes - Salusbury (1661).djvu/291

 And first, I ask you, whether the Astronomers, in observing with their Instruments, and seeking v. gr. how great the elevation of a Star is above the Horizon, may deviate from the truth, aswell in making it too great, as too little; that is, may erroneously compute, that it is sometime higher than the truth, and sometimes lower; or else whether the errour must needs be alwayes of one kinde, to wit, that erring they alwayes make it too much, and never too little, or alwayes too little, and never too much?

I doubt not, but that it is as easie to commit an errour the one way, as the other.

I believe the Author would answer the same. Now of these two kinds of errours, which are contraries, and into which the observators of the new star may equally have fallen, applied to calculations, one sort will make the star higher, and the other lower than really it is. And because we have already agreed, that all the observations are false; upon what ground would this Author have us to accept those for most congruous with the truth, that shew the star to have been near at hand, than the others that shew it excessively remote?

By what I have, as yet, collected of the Authors mind, I see not that he doth refuse those observations, and indagations that might make the star more remote than the Moon, and also than the Sun, but only those that make it remote (as you your self have said) more than an infinite distance; the which distance, because you also do refuse it as impossible, he also passeth over, as being convicted of infinite falshood; as also those observations are of impossibility. Methinks, therefore, that if you would convince the Author, you ought to produce supputations, more exact, or more in number, or of more diligent observers, which constitute the star in such and such a distance above the Moon, or above the Sun, and to be brief, in a place possible for it to be in, like as he produceth these twelve, which all place the star beneath the Moon in places that have a being in the world, and where it is possible for it to be.

But Simplicius yours and the Authors Equivocation lyeth in this, yours in one respect, and the Authors in another; I discover by your speech that you have formed a conceit to your self, that the exorbitancies that are commited in the establishing the distance of the Star do encrease successively, according to the proportion of the errors that are made by the Instrument, in taking the observations, and that by conversion, from the greatness of the exorbitancies, may be argued the greatnesse of the error; and that thereforefore [sic] hearing it to be infered from such an observation, that the distance of the star is infinite, it is necessary, that the errour in observing was infinite, and therefore not to be amend-