The Anatomy of Melancholy · Chapter 63Air rectified. With a digression of the Air. (2)
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Who can give a reason of this diversity of meteors, that it should rain [3073]stones, frogs, mice, &c. Rats, which they call lemmer in Norway, and are manifestly observed (as [3074]Munster writes) by the inhabitants, to descend and fall with some feculent showers, and like so many locusts, consume all that is green. Leo Afer speaks as much of locusts, about Fez in Barbary there be infinite swarms in their fields upon a sudden: so at Aries in France, 1553, the like happened by the same mischief, all their grass and fruits were devoured, magna incolarum admiratione et consternatione (as Valleriola obser. med. lib. 1. obser. 1. relates) coelum subito obumbrabant, &c. he concludes, [3075]it could not be from natural causes, they cannot imagine whence they come, but from heaven. Are these and such creatures, corn, wood, stones, worms, wool, blood, &c. lifted up into the middle region by the sunbeams, as [3076]Baracellus the physician disputes, and thence let fall with showers, or there engendered? [3077]Cornelius Gemma is of that opinion, they are there conceived by celestial influences: others suppose they are immediately from God, or prodigies raised by art and illusions of spirits, which are princes of the air; to whom Bodin. lib. 2. Theat. Nat. subscribes. In fine, of meteors in general, Aristotle's reasons are exploded by Bernardinus Telesius, by Paracelsus his principles confuted, and other causes assigned, sal, sulphur, mercury, in which his disciples are so expert, that they can alter elements, and separate at their pleasure, make perpetual motions, not as Cardan, Tasneir, Peregrinus, by some magnetical virtue, but by mixture of elements; imitate thunder, like Salmoneus, snow, hail, the sea's ebbing and flowing, give life to creatures (as they say) without generation, and what not? P. Nonius Saluciensis and Kepler take upon them to demonstrate that no meteors, clouds, fogs, [3078]vapours, arise higher than fifty or eighty miles, and all the rest to be purer air or element of fire: which [3079]Cardan, [3080]Tycho, and [3081]John Pena manifestly confute by refractions, and many other arguments, there is no such element of fire at all. If, as Tycho proves, the moon be distant from us fifty and sixty semi-diameters of the earth: and as Peter Nonius will have it, the air be so angust, what proportion is there betwixt the other three elements and it? To what use serves it? Is it full of spirits which inhabit it, as the Paracelsians and Platonists hold, the higher the more noble, [3082]full of birds, or a mere vacuum to no purpose? It is much controverted between Tycho Brahe and Christopher Rotman, the landgrave of Hesse's mathematician, in their astronomical epistles, whether it be the same Diaphanum clearness, matter of air and heavens, or two distinct essences? Christopher Rotman, John Pena, Jordanus Brunus, with many other late mathematicians, contend it is the same and one matter throughout, saving that the higher still the purer it is, and more subtile; as they find by experience in the top of some hills in [3083]America; if a man ascend, he faints instantly for want of thicker air to refrigerate the heart. Acosta, l. 3. c. 9. calls this mountain Periacaca in Peru; it makes men cast and vomit, he saith, that climb it, as some other of those Andes do in the deserts of Chile for five hundred miles together, and for extremity of cold to lose their fingers and toes. Tycho will have two distinct matters of heaven and air; but to say truth, with some small qualification, they have one and the self-same opinion about the essence and matter of heavens; that it is not hard and impenetrable, as peripatetics hold, transparent, of a quinta essentia, [3084]“but that it is penetrable and soft as the air itself is, and that the planets move in it, as birds in the air, fishes in the sea.” This they prove by motion of comets, and otherwise (though Claremontius in his Antitycho stiffly opposes), which are not generated, as Aristotle teacheth, in the aerial region, of a hot and dry exhalation, and so consumed: but as Anaxagoras and Democritus held of old, of a celestial matter: and as [3085] Tycho, [3086]Eliseus, Roeslin, Thaddeus, Haggesius, Pena, Rotman, Fracastorius, demonstrate by their progress, parallaxes, refractions, motions of the planets, which interfere and cut one another's orbs, now higher, and then lower, as ♂ amongst the rest, which sometimes, as [3087]Kepler confirms by his own, and Tycho's accurate observations, comes nearer the earth than the ☉ and is again eftsoons aloft in Jupiter's orb; and [3088]other sufficient reasons, far above the moon: exploding in the meantime that element of fire, those fictitious first watery movers, those heavens I mean above the firmament, which Delrio, Lodovicus Imola, Patricius, and many of the fathers affirm; those monstrous orbs of eccentrics, and Eccentre Epicycles deserentes. Which howsoever Ptolemy, Alhasen, Vitellio, Purbachius, Maginus, Clavius, and many of their associates, stiffly maintain to be real orbs, eccentric, concentric, circles aequant, &c. are absurd and ridiculous. For who is so mad to think that there should be so many circles, like subordinate wheels in a clock, all impenetrable and hard, as they feign, add and subtract at their pleasure. [3089]Maginus makes eleven heavens, subdivided into their orbs and circles, and all too little to serve those particular appearances: Fracastorius, seventy-two homocentrics; Tycho Brahe, Nicholas Ramerus, Heliseus Roeslin, have peculiar hypotheses of their own inventions; and they be but inventions, as most of them acknowledge, as we admit of equators, tropics, colures, circles arctic and antarctic, for doctrine's sake (though Ramus thinks them all unnecessary), they will have them supposed only for method and order. Tycho hath feigned I know not how many subdivisions of epicycles in epicycles, &c., to calculate and express the moon's motion: but when all is done, as a supposition, and no otherwise; not (as he holds) hard, impenetrable, subtile, transparent, &c., or making music, as Pythagoras maintained of old, and Robert Constantine of late, but still, quiet, liquid, open, &c.
If the heavens then be penetrable, as these men deliver, and no lets, it were not amiss in this aerial progress, to make wings and fly up, which that Turk in Busbequius made his fellow-citizens in Constantinople believe he would perform: and some new-fangled wits, methinks, should some time or other find out: or if that may not be, yet with a Galileo's glass, or Icaromenippus' wings in Lucian, command the spheres and heavens, and see what is done amongst them. Whether there be generation and corruption, as some think, by reason of ethereal comets, that in Cassiopea, 1572, that in Cygno, 1600, that in Sagittarius, 1604, and many like, which by no means Jul. Caesar la Galla, that Italian philosopher, in his physical disputation with Galileis de phenomenis in orbe lunae, cap. 9. will admit: or that they were created ab initio, and show themselves at set times. and as [3090]Helisaeus Roeslin contends, have poles, axle-trees, circles of their own, and regular motions. For, non pereunt, sed minuuntur et disparent, [3091]Blancanus holds they come and go by fits, casting their tails still from the sun: some of them, as a burning-glass, projects the sunbeams from it; though not always neither: for sometimes a comet casts his tail from Venus, as Tycho observes. And as [3092]Helisaeus Roeslin of some others, from the moon, with little stars about them ad stuporem astronomorum; cum multis aliis in coelo miraculis, all which argue with those Medicean, Austrian, and Burbonian stars, that the heaven of the planets is indistinct, pure, and open, in which the planets move certis legibus ac metis. Examine likewise, An coelum sit coloratum? Whether the stars be of that bigness, distance, as astronomers relate, so many in [3093]number, 1026, or 1725, as J. Bayerus; or as some Rabbins, 29,000 myriads; or as Galileo discovers by his glasses, infinite, and that via lactea, a confused light of small stars, like so many nails in a door: or all in a row, like those 12,000 isles of the Maldives in the Indian ocean? Whether the least visible star in the eighth sphere be eighteen times bigger than the earth; and as Tycho calculates, 14,000 semi-diameters distant from it? Whether they be thicker parts of the orbs, as Aristotle delivers: or so many habitable worlds, as Democritus? Whether they have light of their own, or from the sun, or give light round, as Patritius discourseth? An aeque distent a centra mundi? Whether light be of their essence; and that light be a substance or an accident? Whether they be hot by themselves, or by accident cause heat? Whether there be such a precession of the equinoxes as Copernicus holds, or that the eighth sphere move? An bene philosophentur, R. Bacon and J. Dee, Aphorism. de multiplicatione specierum? Whether there be any such images ascending with each degree of the zodiac in the east, as Aliacensis feigns? An aqua super coelum? as Patritius and the schoolmen will, a crystalline [3094]watery heaven, which is [3095] certainly to be understood of that in the middle region? for otherwise, if at Noah's flood the water came from thence, it must be above a hundred years falling down to us, as [3096]some calculate. Besides, An terra sit animata? which some so confidently believe, with Orpheus, Hermes, Averroes, from which all other souls of men, beasts, devils, plants, fishes, &c. are derived, and into which again, after some revolutions, as Plato in his Timaeus, Plotinus in his Enneades more largely discuss, they return (see Chalcidius and Bennius, Plato's commentators), as all philosophical matter, in materiam primam. Keplerus, Patritius, and some other Neoterics, have in part revived this opinion. And that every star in heaven hath a soul, angel or intelligence to animate or move it, &c. Or to omit all smaller controversies, as matters of less moment, and examine that main paradox, of the earth's motion, now so much in question: Aristarchus Samius, Pythagoras maintained it of old, Democritus and many of their scholars, Didacus Astunica, Anthony Fascarinus, a Carmelite, and some other commentators, will have Job to insinuate as much, cap. 9. ver. 4. Qui commovet terram de loco suo, &c., and that this one place of scripture makes more for the earth's motion than all the other prove against it; whom Pineda confutes most contradict. Howsoever, it is revived since by Copernicus, not as a truth, but a supposition, as he himself confesseth in the preface to pope Nicholas, but now maintained in good earnest by [3097] Calcagninus, Telesius, Kepler, Rotman, Gilbert, Digges, Galileo, Campanella, and especially by [3098]Lansbergius, naturae, rationi, et veritati consentaneum, by Origanus, and some [3099]others of his followers. For if the earth be the centre of the world, stand still, and the heavens move, as the most received [3100]opinion is, which they call inordinatam coeli dispositionem, though stiffly maintained by Tycho, Ptolemeus, and their adherents, quis ille furor? &c. what fury is that, saith [3101]Dr. Gilbert, satis animose, as Cabeus notes, that shall drive the heavens about with such incomprehensible celerity in twenty-four hours, when as every point of the firmament, and in the equator, must needs move (so [3102]Clavius calculates) 176,660 in one 246th part of an hour, and an arrow out of a bow must go seven times about the earth, whilst a man can say an Ave Maria, if it keep the same space, or compass the earth 1884 times in an hour, which is supra humanam cogitationem, beyond human conceit: ocyor et jaculo, et ventos, aequante sagitta. A man could not ride so much ground, going 40 miles a day, in 2904 years, as the firmament goes in 23 hours: or so much in 203 years, as the firmament in one minute: quod incredibile videtur: and the [3103]pole-star, which to our thinking scarce moveth out of his place, goeth a bigger circuit than the sun, whose diameter is much larger than the diameter of the heaven of the sun, and 20,000 semi-diameters of the earth from us, with the rest of the fixed stars, as Tycho proves. To avoid therefore these impossibilities, they ascribe a triple motion to the earth, the sun immovable in the centre of the whole world, the earth centre of the moon, alone, above ♂ and ☿, beneath ♄, ♃, ♂ (or as [3104]Origanus and others will, one single motion to the earth, still placed in the centre of the world, which is more probable) a single motion to the firmament, which moves in 30 or 26 thousand years; and so the planets, Saturn in 30 years absolves his sole and proper motion, Jupiter in 12, Mars in 3, &c. and so solve all appearances better than any way whatsoever: calculate all motions, be they in longum or latum, direct, stationary, retrograde, ascent or descent, without epicycles, intricate eccentrics, &c. rectius commodiusque per unicum motum terrae, saith Lansbergius, much more certain than by those Alphonsine, or any such tables, which are grounded from those other suppositions. And 'tis true they say, according to optic principles, the visible appearances of the planets do so indeed answer to their magnitudes and orbs, and come nearest to mathematical observations and precedent calculations, there is no repugnancy to physical axioms, because no penetration of orbs; but then between the sphere of Saturn and the firmament, there is such an incredible and vast [3105]space or distance (7,000,000 semi-diameters of the earth, as Tycho calculates) void of stars: and besides, they do so enhance the bigness of the stars, enlarge their circuit, to solve those ordinary objections of parallaxes and retrogradations of the fixed stars, that alteration of the poles, elevation in several places or latitude of cities here on earth (for, say they, if a man's eye were in the firmament, he should not at all discern that great annual motion of the earth, but it would still appear punctum indivisibile and seem to be fixed in one place, of the same bigness) that it is quite opposite to reason, to natural philosophy, and all out as absurd as disproportional (so some will) as prodigious, as that of the sun's swift motion of heavens. But hoc posito, to grant this their tenet of the earth's motion: if the earth move, it is a planet, and shines to them in the moon, and to the other planetary inhabitants, as the moon and they do to us upon the earth: but shine she doth, as Galileo, [3106] Kepler, and others prove, and then per consequens, the rest of the planets are inhabited, as well as the moon, which he grants in his dissertation with Galileo's Nuncius Sidereus, [3107]“that there be Jovial and Saturn inhabitants,” &c., and those several planets have their several moons about them, as the earth hath hers, as Galileo hath already evinced by his glasses: [3108]four about Jupiter, two about Saturn (though Sitius the Florentine, Fortunius Licetus, and Jul. Caesar le Galla cavil at it) yet Kepler, the emperor's mathematician, confirms out of his experience, that he saw as much by the same help, and more about Mars, Venus, and the rest they hope to find out, peradventure even amongst the fixed stars, which Brunus and Brutius have already averred. Then (I say) the earth and they be planets alike, moved about the sun, the common centre of the world alike, and it may be those two green children which [3109] Nubrigensis speaks of in his time, that fell from heaven, came from thence; and that famous stone that fell from heaven in Aristotle's time, olymp. 84, anno tertio, ad Capuas Fluenta, recorded by Laertius and others, or Ancile or buckler in Numa's time, recorded by Festus. We may likewise insert with Campanella and Brunus, that which Pythagoras, Aristarchus, Samius, Heraclitus, Epicurus, Melissus, Democritus, Leucippus maintained in their ages, there be [3110]infinite worlds, and infinite earths or systems, in infinito aethere, which [3111]Eusebius collects out of their tenets, because infinite stars and planets like unto this of ours, which some stick not still to maintain and publicly defend, sperabundus expecto innumerabilium mundorum in aeternitate per ambulationem, &c. (Nic. Hill. Londinensis philos. Epicur.) For if the firmament be of such an incomparable bigness, as these Copernical giants will have it, infinitum, aut infinito proximum, so vast and full of innumerable stars, as being infinite in extent, one above another, some higher, some lower, some nearer, some farther off, and so far asunder, and those so huge and great, insomuch that if the whole sphere of Saturn, and all that is included in it, totum aggregatum (as Fromundus of Louvain in his tract, de immobilitate terrae argues) evehatur inter stellas, videri a nobis non poterat, tam immanis est distantia inter tellurem et fixas, sed instar puncti, &c. If our world be small in respect, why may we not suppose a plurality of worlds, those infinite stars visible in the firmament to be so many suns, with particular fixed centres; to have likewise their subordinate planets, as the sun hath his dancing still round him? which Cardinal Cusanus, Walkarinus, Brunus, and some others have held, and some still maintain, Animae, Aristotelismo innutritae, et minutis speculationibus assuetae, secus forsan, &c. Though they seem close to us, they are infinitely distant, and so per consequens, there are infinite habitable worlds: what hinders? Why should not an infinite cause (as God is) produce infinite effects? as Nic. Hill. Democrit. philos. disputes: Kepler (I confess) will by no means admit of Brunus's infinite worlds, or that the fixed stars should be so many suns, with their compassing planets, yet the said [3112]Kepler between jest and earnest in his perspectives, lunar geography, [3113] & somnio suo, dissertat. cum nunc. sider. seems in part to agree with this, and partly to contradict; for the planets, he yields them to be inhabited, he doubts of the stars; and so doth Tycho in his astronomical epistles, out of a consideration of their vastity and greatness, break out into some such like speeches, that he will never believe those great and huge bodies were made to no other use than this that we perceive, to illuminate the earth, a point insensible in respect of the whole. But who shall dwell in these vast bodies, earths, worlds, [3114] “if they be inhabited? rational creatures?” as Kepler demands, “or have they souls to be saved? or do they inhabit a better part of the world than we do? Are we or they lords of the world? And how are all things made for man?” Difficile est nodum hunc expedire, eo quod nondum omnia quae huc pertinent explorata habemus: 'tis hard to determine: this only he proves, that we are in praecipuo mundi sinu, in the best place, best world, nearest the heart of the sun. [3115]Thomas Campanella, a Calabrian monk, in his second book de sensu rerum, cap. 4, subscribes to this of Kepler; that they are inhabited he certainly supposeth, but with what kind of creatures he cannot say, he labours to prove it by all means: and that there are infinite worlds, having made an apology for Galileo, and dedicates this tenet of his to Cardinal Cajetanus. Others freely speak, mutter, and would persuade the world (as [3116]Marinus Marcenus complains) that our modern divines are too severe and rigid against mathematicians; ignorant and peevish, in not admitting their true demonstrations and certain observations, that they tyrannise over art, science, and all philosophy, in suppressing their labours (saith Pomponatius), forbidding them to write, to speak a truth, all to maintain their superstition, and for their profit's sake. As for those places of Scripture which oppugn it, they will have spoken ad captum vulgi, and if rightly understood, and favourably interpreted, not at all against it; and as Otho Gasman, Astrol. cap. 1. part. 1. notes, many great divines, besides Porphyrius, Proclus, Simplicius, and those heathen philosophers, doctrina et aetate venerandi, Mosis Genesin mundanam popularis nescio cujus ruditatis, quae longa absit a vera Philosophorum eruditione, insimulant: for Moses makes mention but of two planets, ☉ and ☾, no four elements, &c. Read more on him, in [3117]Grossius and Junius. But to proceed, these and such like insolent and bold attempts, prodigious paradoxes, inferences must needs follow, if it once be granted, which Rotman, Kepler, Gilbert, Diggeus, Origanus, Galileo, and others, maintain of the earth's motion, that 'tis a planet, and shines as the moon doth, which contains in it [3118]“both land and sea as the moon doth:” for so they find by their glasses that Maculae in facie Lunae, “the brighter parts are earth, the dusky sea,” which Thales, Plutarch, and Pythagoras formerly taught: and manifestly discern hills and dales, and such like concavities, if we may subscribe to and believe Galileo's observations. But to avoid these paradoxes of the earth's motion (which the Church of Rome hath lately [3119]condemned as heretical, as appears by Blancanus and Fromundus's writings) our latter mathematicians have rolled all the stones that may be stirred: and to solve all appearances and objections, have invented new hypotheses, and fabricated new systems of the world, out of their own Dedalaean heads. Fracastorius will have the earth stand still, as before; and to avoid that supposition of eccentrics and epicycles, he hath coined seventy-two homocentrics, to solve all appearances. Nicholas Ramerus will have the earth the centre of the world, but movable, and the eighth sphere immovable, the five upper planets to move about the sun, the sun and moon about the earth. Of which orbs Tycho Brahe puts the earth the centre immovable, the stars immovable, the rest with Ramerus, the planets without orbs to wander in the air, keep time and distance, true motion, according to that virtue which God hath given them. [3120]Helisaeus Roeslin censureth both, with Copernicus (whose hypothesis de terrae motu, Philippus Lansbergius hath lately vindicated, and demonstrated with solid arguments in a just volume, Jansonius Caesins [3121]hath illustrated in a sphere.) The said Johannes Lansbergius, 1633, hath since defended his assertion against all the cavils and calumnies of Fromundus his Anti-Aristarchus, Baptista Morinus, and Petrus Bartholinus: Fromundus, 1634, hath written against him again, J. Rosseus of Aberdeen, &c. (sound drums and trumpets) whilst Roeslin (I say) censures all, and Ptolemeus himself as insufficient: one offends against natural philosophy, another against optic principles, a third against mathematical, as not answering to astronomical observations: one puts a great space between Saturn's orb and the eighth sphere, another too narrow. In his own hypothesis he makes the earth as before the universal centre, the sun to the five upper planets, to the eighth sphere he ascribes diurnal motion, eccentrics, and epicycles to the seven planets, which hath been formerly exploded; and so, Dum vitant stulti vitia in contraria currunt, [3122]as a tinker stops one hole and makes two, he corrects them, and doth worse himself: reforms some, and mars all. In the mean time, the world is tossed in a blanket amongst them, they hoist the earth up and down like a ball, make it stand and go at their pleasures: one saith the sun stands, another he moves; a third comes in, taking them all at rebound, and lest there should any paradox be wanting, he [3123]finds certain spots and clouds in the sun, by the help of glasses, which multiply (saith Keplerus) a thing seen a thousand times bigger in plano, and makes it come thirty-two times nearer to the eye of the beholder: but see the demonstration of this glass in [3124]Tarde, by means of which, the sun must turn round upon his own centre, or they about the sun. Fabricius puts only three, and those in the sun: Apelles 15, and those without the sun, floating like the Cyanean Isles in the Euxine sea. [3125]Tarde, the Frenchman, hath observed thirty-three, and those neither spots nor clouds, as Galileo, Epist. ad Valserum, supposeth, but planets concentric with the sun, and not far from him with regular motions. [3126]Christopher Shemer, a German Suisser Jesuit, Ursica Rosa, divides them in maculas et faculas, and will have them to be fixed in Solis superficie: and to absolve their periodical and regular motion in twenty-seven or twenty-eight days, holding withal the rotation of the sun upon his centre; and all are so confident, that they have made schemes and tables of their motions. The [3127]Hollander, in his dissertatiuncula cum Apelle, censures all; and thus they disagree amongst themselves, old and new, irreconcilable in their opinions; thus Aristarchus, thus Hipparchus, thus Ptolemeus, thus Albateginus, thus Alfraganus, thus Tycho, thus Ramerus, thus Roeslinus, thus Fracastorius, thus Copernicus and his adherents, thus Clavius and Maginus, &c., with their followers, vary and determine of these celestial orbs and bodies: and so whilst these men contend about the sun and moon, like the philosophers in Lucian, it is to be feared, the sun and moon will hide themselves, and be as much offended as [3128]she was with those, and send another messenger to Jupiter, by some new-fangled Icaromenippus, to make an end of all those curious controversies, and scatter them abroad.
But why should the sun and moon be angry, or take exceptions at mathematicians and philosophers? when as the like measure is offered unto God himself, by a company of theologasters: they are not contented to see the sun and moon, measure their site and biggest distance in a glass, calculate their motions, or visit the moon in a poetical fiction, or a dream, as he saith, [3129]Audax facinus et memorabile nunc incipiam, neque hoc saeculo usurpatum prius, quid in Lunae regno hac nocte gestum sit exponam, et quo nemo unquam nisi somniando pervenit, [3130]but he and Menippus: or as [3131]Peter Cuneus, Bona fide agam, nihil eorum quae scripturus sum, verum esse scitote, &c. quae nec facta, nec futura sunt, dicam, [3132]stili tantum et ingenii causa, not in jest, but in good earnest these gigantical Cyclops will transcend spheres, heaven, stars, into that Empyrean heaven; soar higher yet, and see what God himself doth. The Jewish Talmudists take upon them to determine how God spends his whole time, sometimes playing with Leviathan, sometimes overseeing the world, &c., like Lucian's Jupiter, that spent much of the year in painting butterflies' wings, and seeing who offered sacrifice; telling the hours when it should rain, how much snow should fall in such a place, which way the wind should stand in Greece, which way in Africa. In the Turks' Alcoran, Mahomet is taken up to heaven, upon a Pegasus sent on purpose for him, as he lay in bed with his wife, and after some conference with God is set on ground again. The pagans paint him and mangle him after a thousand fashions; our heretics, schismatics, and some schoolmen, come not far behind: some paint him in the habit of an old man, and make maps of heaven, number the angels, tell their several [3133]names, offices: some deny God and his providence, some take his office out of his hands, will [3134]bind and loose in heaven, release, pardon, forgive, and be quarter-master with him: some call his Godhead in question, his power, and attributes, his mercy, justice, providence: they will know with [3135]Cecilius, why good and bad are punished together, war, fires, plagues, infest all alike, why wicked men flourish, good are poor, in prison, sick, and ill at ease. Why doth he suffer so much mischief and evil to be done, if he be [3136]able to help? why doth he not assist good, or resist bad, reform our wills, if he be not the author of sin, and let such enormities be committed, unworthy of his knowledge, wisdom, government, mercy, and providence, why lets he all things be done by fortune and chance? Others as prodigiously inquire after his omnipotency, an possit plures similes creare deos? an ex scarcibaeo deum? &c., et quo demum ruetis sacrificuli? Some, by visions and revelations, take upon them to be familiar with God, and to be of privy council with him; they will tell how many, and who shall be saved, when the world shall come to an end, what year, what month, and whatsoever else God hath reserved unto himself, and to his angels. Some again, curious fantastics, will know more than this, and inquire with [3137]Epicurus, what God did before the world was made? was he idle? Where did he bide? What did he make the world of? why did he then make it, and not before? If he made it new, or to have an end, how is he unchangeable, infinite, &c. Some will dispute, cavil, and object, as Julian did of old, whom Cyril confutes, as Simon Magus is feigned to do, in that [3138]dialogue betwixt him and Peter: and Ammonius the philosopher, in that dialogical disputation with Zacharias the Christian. If God be infinitely and only good, why should he alter or destroy the world? if he confound that which is good, how shall himself continue good? If he pull it down because evil, how shall he be free from the evil that made it evil? &c., with many such absurd and brain-sick questions, intricacies, froth of human wit, and excrements of curiosity, &c., which, as our Saviour told his inquisitive disciples, are not fit for them to know. But hoo! I am now gone quite out of sight, I am almost giddy with roving about: I could have ranged farther yet; but I am an infant, and not [3139]able to dive into these profundities, or sound these depths; not able to understand, much less to discuss. I leave the contemplation of these things to stronger wits, that have better ability, and happier leisure to wade into such philosophical mysteries; for put case I were as able as willing, yet what can one man do? I will conclude with [3140]Scaliger, Nequaquam nos homines sumus, sed partes hominis, ex omnibus aliquid fieri potest, idque non magnum; ex singulis fere nihil. Besides (as Nazianzen hath it) Deus latere nos multa voluit; and with Seneca, cap. 35. de Cometis, Quid miramur tam rara mundi spectacula non teneri certis legibus, nondum intelligi? multae sunt gentes quae tantum de facie sciunt coelum, veniet, tempus fortasse, quo ista quae, nunc latent in lucem dies extrahat longioris aevi diligentia, una aetas non sufficit, posteri, &c., when God sees his time, he will reveal these mysteries to mortal men, and show that to some few at last, which he hath concealed so long. For I am of [3141]his mind, that Columbus did not find out America by chance, but God directed him at that time to discover it: it was contingent to him, but necessary to God; he reveals and conceals to whom and when he will. And which [3142]one said of history and records of former times, “God in his providence, to check our presumptuous inquisition, wraps up all things in uncertainty, bars us from long antiquity, and bounds our search within the compass of some few ages:” many good things are lost, which our predecessors made use of, as Pancirola will better inform you; many new things are daily invented, to the public good; so kingdoms, men, and knowledge ebb and flow, are hid and revealed, and when you have all done, as the Preacher concluded, Nihil est sub sole novum (nothing new under the sun.) But my melancholy spaniel's quest, my game is sprung, and I must suddenly come down and follow.