Page:The Strange Voyage and Adventures of Domingo Gonsales, to the World in the Moon.djvu/31

Rh Earth hath no Motion, and to confirm it, are forced to attribute to every one of the celestial Bodies two Motions directly contrary to each other, one from the East to the West, to be performed in twenty-four Hours with an impetuous rapid Motion; the other from West to East in several Proportions: O incredible Supposition! that those huge Bodies of the fixed Stairs in the highest Orb, whereof they confess divers, are above an hundred Times bigger than the whole Earth, should like so many Nails in a Cart-wheel be whirled about in so short a Time; whereas it is many thousand Years, no less (say they,) than thirty thousand, before that Orb finishes his Course from West to East, which they call his natural Motion; now whereas they allow their natural Course from West to East to every one of them, therein they do well; the Moon performs it in seven and twenty Days, the Sun, Venus and Mercury in a Year or thereabout, Mars in three Years, Jupiter in twelve, and Saturn in thirty. But to attribute to these celestial Bodies contrary Motions at once, is an absurd Conceit, and much more to imagine, that the same Orb wherein the fixed Stars are, whose natural Course takes up so many thousands of Years, should be turned about every twenty-four Hours. I will not go so far as Copernicus, who makes the Sun the Center of the Earth and immoveable, neither will I be positive in any Thing, only this I say, allow the Earth its Motion, which these Eyes of mine can testify to be true, and all those Absurdities are removed, every one having only his own single and proper Motion.

But where am I? I promised an History, and am unawares turned Disputer. One Accident more befell me worth mentioning, that during my Stay I saw a kind of a reddish Cloud coming toward Rh