Page:Mathematical collections and translations, in two tomes - Salusbury (1661).djvu/362

 while imperceptible, not to say small. This being so, I demand in relation to what the Starry Sphere of Copernicus may be called over vast. In my judgment it cannot be compared, or said to be such, unlesse it be in relation to some other thing of the same kind; now let us take the very least of the same kind, which shall be the Lunar Orb; and if the Starry Orb may be so censured to be too big in respect to that of the Moon, every other magnitude that with like or greater proportion exceedeth another of the same kind, ought to be adjudged too vast, and for the same reason to be denied that they are to be found in the World; and thus an Elephant, and a Whale, shall without more ado be condemned for Chymæra's, and Poetical fictions, because that the one as being too vast in relation to an Ant, which is a Terrestrial animal, and the other in respect to the * Gudgeon, which is a Fish, and are certainly seen to be in rerum natura, would be too immeasurable; for without all dispute, the Elephant and Whale exceed the Ant and Gudgeon in a much greater proportion than the Starry Sphere doth that of the Moon, although we should fancy the said Sphere to be as big as the Copernican Systeme maketh it. Moreover, how hugely big is the Sphere of Jupiter, or that of Saturn, designed for a receptacle but for one single star; and that very small in comparison of one of the fixed? Certainly if we should assign to every one of the fixed stars for its receptacle so great a part of the Worlds space, it would be necessary to make the Orb wherein such innumerable multitudes of them reside, very many thousands of times bigger than that which serveth the purpose of Copernicus. Besides, do not you call a fixed star very small, I mean even one of the most apparent, and not one of those which shun our sight; and do we not call them so in respect of the vast space circumfused? Now if the whole Starry Sphere were one entire lucid body; who is there, that doth not know that in an infinite space there might be assigned a distance so great, as that the said lucid Sphere might from thence shew as little, yea lesse than a fixed star, now appeareth beheld from the Earth? From thence therefore we should then judg that self same thing to be little, which now from hence we esteem to be immeasurably great.

Great in my judgment, is the folly of those who would have had God to have made the World more proportinal to the narrow capacities of their reason, than to his immense, rather infinite power.

All this that you say is very true; but that upon which the adversary makes a scruple, is, to grant that a fixed star should be not onely equal to, but so much bigger than the Sun; when as they both are particular bodies situate within the