Page:Mathematical collections and translations, in two tomes - Salusbury (1661).djvu/350

 within the limits of humane doctrine) the reasons alledged for the true Hypothesis should not manifest themselves as concludent as those for the contrary vain and ineffectual.

It will be time therefore, that we hear the objections of the little Book of * Conclusions, or Disquisitions which Simplicius did bring with him.

Here is the Book, and this is the place where the Author first briefly describeth the Systeme of the world, according to the Hypothesis of Copernicus, saying, Terram igitur unà cum Luna, totoque hoc elementari mundo Copernicus, &c.

Forbear a little, Simplicius, for methinks that this Authour, in this first entrance, shews himself to be but very ill verst in the Hypothesis which he goeth about to confute, in regard, he saith that Copernicus maketh the Earth, together with the Moon, to describe the * grand Orb in a year moving from East to West; a thing that as it is false and impossible, so was it never affirmed by Copernicus, who rather maketh it to move the contrary way, I mean from West to East, that is, according to the order of the Signes; whereupon we come to think the same to be the annual motion of the Sun, constituted immoveable in the centre of the Zodiack. See the too adventurous confidence of this man; to undertake the confutation of anothers Doctrine, and yet to be ignorant of the primary fundamentals; upon which his adversary layeth the greatest and most important part of all the Fabrick. This is a bad beginning to gain himself credit with his Reader; but let us go on.

Having explained the Universal Systeme, he beginneth to propound his objections against this annual motion: and the first are these, which he citeth Ironically, and in derision of Copernicus, and of his followers, writing that in this phantastical Hypothesis of the World one must necessarily maintain very grosse absurdities; namely, that the Sun, Venus, and Mercury are below the Earth; and that grave matters go naturally upwards, and the light downwards; and that Christ, our Lord and Redeemer, ascended into Hell, and descended into Heaven, when he approached towards the Sun, and that when Joshuah commanded the Sun to stand still, the Earth stood still, or the Sun moved a contrary way to that of the Earth; and that when the Sun is in Cancer, the Earth runneth through Capricorn; and that the Hyemal (or Winter) Signes make the Summer, and the Æstival Winter; and that the Stars do not rise and set to the Earth, but the Earth to the Stars; and that the East beginneth in the West, and the West in the East; and, in a word, that almost the whole course of the World is inverted.

Every thing pleaseth me, except it be his having inter-