MEMB. II. Retention and Evacuation rectified.

I have declared in the causes what harm costiveness hath done in procuring this disease; if it be so noxious, the opposite must needs be good, or mean at least, as indeed it is, and to this cure necessarily required; maxime conducit, saith Montaltus, cap. 27. it very much avails. [2956] Altomarus, cap. 7, "commends walking in a morning, into some fair green pleasant fields, but by all means first, by art or nature, he will have these ordinary excrements evacuated." Piso calls it, Beneficium ventris, the benefit, help or pleasure of the belly, for it doth much ease it. Laurentius, cap. 8, Crato, consil. 21. l. 2. prescribes it once a day at least: where nature is defective, art must supply, by those lenitive electuaries, suppositories, condite prunes, turpentine, clysters, as shall be shown. Prosper Calenus, lib. de atra bile, commends clysters in hypochondriacal melancholy, still to be used as occasion serves; [2957] Peter Cnemander in a consultation of his pro hypocondriaco, will have his patient continually loose, and to that end sets down there many forms of potions and clysters. Mercurialis, consil. 88. if this benefit come not of its own accord, prescribes [2958]clysters in the first place: so doth Montanus, consil. 24. consil. 31 et 229. he commends turpentine to that purpose: the same he ingeminates, consil. 230. for an Italian abbot. 'Tis very good to wash his hands and face often, to shift his clothes, to have fair linen about him, to be decently and comely attired, for sordes vitiant, nastiness defiles and dejects any man that is so voluntarily, or compelled by want, it dulleth the spirits.

Baths are either artificial or natural, both have their special uses in this malady, and as [2959]Alexander supposeth, lib. 1. cap. 16. yield as speedy a remedy as any other physic whatsoever. Aetius would have them daily used, assidua balnea, Tetra. 2. sect. 2. c. 9. Galen cracks how many several cures he hath performed in this kind by use of baths alone, and Rufus pills, moistening them which are otherwise dry. Rhasis makes it a principal cure, Tota cura sit in humectando, to bathe and afterwards anoint with oil. Jason Pratensis, Laurentius, cap. 8. and Montanus set down their peculiar forms of artificial baths. Crato, consil. 17. lib. 2. commends mallows, camomile, violets, borage to be boiled in it, and sometimes fair water alone, and in his following counsel, Balneum aquae dulcis solum saepissime profuisse compertum habemus. So doth Fuchsius, lib. 1. cap. 33. Frisimelica, 2. consil. 42. in Trincavelius. Some beside herbs prescribe a ram's head and other things to be boiled. [2960] Fernelius, consil. 44. will have them used ten or twelve days together; to which he must enter fasting, and so continue in a temperate heat, and after that frictions all over the body. Lelius Aegubinus, consil. 142. and Christoph. Aererus, in a consultation of his, hold once or twice a week sufficient to bathe, the [2961]"water to be warm, not hot, for fear of sweating." Felix Plater, observ. lib. 1. for a melancholy lawyer, [2962] "will have lotions of the head still joined to these baths, with a ley wherein capital herbs have been boiled." [2963]Laurentius speaks of baths of milk, which I find approved by many others. And still after bath, the body to be anointed with oil of bitter almonds, of violets, new or fresh butter, [2964]capon's grease, especially the backbone, and then lotions of the head, embrocations, &c. These kinds of baths have been in former times much frequented, and diversely varied, and are still in general use in those eastern countries. The Romans had their public baths very sumptuous and stupend, as those of Antoninus and Diocletian. Plin. 36. saith there were an infinite number of them in Rome, and mightily frequented; some bathed seven times a day, as Commodus the emperor is reported to have done; usually twice a day, and they were after anointed with most costly ointments: rich women bathed themselves in milk, some in the milk of five hundred she-asses at once: we have many ruins of such, baths found in this island, amongst those parietines and rubbish of old Roman towns. Lipsius, de mag. Urb. Rom. l. 3, c. 8, Rosinus, Scot of Antwerp, and other antiquaries, tell strange stories of their baths. Gillius, l. 4. cap. ult. Topogr. Constant. reckons up 155 public [2965]baths in Constantinople, of fair building; they are still [2966]frequented in that city by the Turks of all sorts, men and women, and all over Greece, and those hot countries; to absterge belike that fulsomeness of sweat, to which they are there subject. [2967]Busbequius, in his epistles, is very copious in describing the manner of them, how their women go covered, a maid following with a box of ointment to rub them. The richer sort have private baths in their houses; the poorer go to the common, and are generally so curious in this behalf, that they will not eat nor drink until they have bathed, before and after meals some, [2968]"and will not make water (but they will wash their hands) or go to stool." Leo Afer. l. 3. makes mention of one hundred several baths at Fez in Africa, most sumptuous, and such as have great revenues belonging to them. Buxtorf. cap. 14, Synagog. Jud. speaks of many ceremonies amongst the Jews in this kind; they are very superstitious in their baths, especially women.

Natural baths are praised by some, discommended by others; but it is in a divers respect. [2969]Marcus, de Oddis in Hip. affect. consulted about baths, condemns them for the heat of the liver, because they dry too fast; and yet by and by, [2970]in another counsel for the same disease, he approves them because they cleanse by reason of the sulphur, and would have their water to be drunk. Areteus, c. 7. commends alum baths above the rest; and [2971]Mercurialis, consil. 88. those of Lucca in that hypochondriacal passion. "He would have his patient tarry there fifteen days together, and drink the water of them, and to be bucketed, or have the water poured on his head." John Baptista, Sylvaticus cont. 64. commends all the baths in Italy, and drinking of their water, whether they be iron, alum, sulphur; so doth [2972]Hercules de Saxonia. But in that they cause sweat and dry so much, he confines himself to hypochondriacal melancholy alone, excepting that of the head and the other. Trincavelius, consil. 14. lib. 1. refers those [2973]Porrectan baths before the rest, because of the mixture of brass, iron, alum, and consil. 35. l. 3. for a melancholy lawyer, and consil. 36. in that hypochondriacal passion, the [2974]baths of Aquaria, and 36. consil. the drinking of them. Frisimelica, consulted amongst the rest in Trincavelius, consil. 42. lib. 2. prefers the waters of [2975]Apona before all artificial baths whatsoever in this disease, and would have one nine years affected with hypochondriacal passions fly to them as to a [2976]holy anchor. Of the same mind is Trincavelius himself there, and yet both put a hot liver in the same party for a cause, and send him to the waters of St. Helen, which are much hotter. Montanus, consil. 230. magnifies the [2977]Chalderinian baths, and consil 237. et 239. he exhorteth to the same, but with this caution, [2978]"that the liver be outwardly anointed with some coolers that it be not overheated." But these baths must be warily frequented by melancholy persons, or if used, to such as are very cold of themselves, for as Gabelius concludes of all Dutch baths, and especially of those of Baden, "they are good for all cold diseases, [2979]naught for choleric, hot and dry, and all infirmities proceeding of choler, inflammations of the spleen and liver." Our English baths, as they are hot, must needs incur the same censure: but D. Turner of old, and D. Jones have written at large of them. Of cold baths I find little or no mention in any physician, some speak against them: [2980]Cardan alone out of Agathinus commends "bathing in fresh rivers, and cold waters, and adviseth all such as mean to live long to use it, for it agrees with all ages and complexions, and is most profitable for hot temperatures." As for sweating, urine, bloodletting by haemrods, or otherwise, I shall elsewhere more opportunely speak of them.

Immoderate Venus in excess, as it is a cause, or in defect; so moderately used to some parties an only help, a present remedy. Peter Forestus calls it aptissimum remedium, a most apposite remedy, [2981]"remitting anger, and reason, that was otherwise bound." Avicenna Fen. 3. 20. Oribasius med. collect. lib. 6. cap. 37. contend out of Ruffus and others, [2982] "that many madmen, melancholy, and labouring of the falling sickness, have been cured by this alone." Montaltus cap. 27. de melan. will have it drive away sorrow, and all illusions of the brain, to purge the heart and brain from ill smokes and vapours that offend them: [2983]"and if it be omitted," as Valescus supposeth, "it makes the mind sad, the body dull and heavy." Many other inconveniences are reckoned up by Mercatus, and by Rodericus a Castro, in their tracts de melancholia virginum et monialium; ob seminis retentionem saviunt saepe moniales et virgines, but as Platerus adds, si nubant sanantur, they rave single, and pine away, much discontent, but marriage mends all. Marcellus Donatus lib. 2. med. hist. cap. 1. tells a story to confirm this out of Alexander Benedictus, of a maid that was mad, ob menses inhibitos, cum in officinam meritoriam incidisset, a quindecem viris eadem nocte compressa, mensium largo profluvio, quod pluribus annis ante constiterat, non sine magno pudore mane menti restituta discessit. But this must be warily understood, for as Arnoldus objects, lib. 1. breviar. 18. cap. Quid coitus ad melancholicum succum? What affinity have these two? [2984]"except it be manifest that superabundance of seed, or fullness of blood be a cause, or that love, or an extraordinary desire of Venus, have gone before," or that as Lod. Mercatus excepts, they be very flatuous, and have been otherwise accustomed unto it. Montaltus cap. 27. will not allow of moderate Venus to such as have the gout, palsy, epilepsy, melancholy, except they be very lusty, and full of blood. [2985]Lodovicus Antonius lib. med. miscet. in his chapter of Venus, forbids it utterly to all wrestlers, ditchers, labouring men, &c. [2986]Ficinus and [2987]Marsilius Cognatus puts Venus one of the five mortal enemies of a student: "it consumes the spirits, and weakeneth the brain." Halyabbas the Arabian, 5. Theor. cap. 36. and Jason Pratensis make it the fountain of most diseases, [2988]"but most pernicious to them who are cold and dry:" a melancholy man must not meddle with it, but in some cases. Plutarch in his book de san. tuend. accounts of it as one of the three principal signs and preservers of health, temperance in this kind: [2989]"to rise with an appetite, to be ready to work, and abstain from venery," tria saluberrima, are three most healthful things. We see their opposites how pernicious they are to mankind, as to all other creatures they bring death, and many feral diseases: Immodicis brevis est aetas et rara senectus. Aristotle gives instance in sparrows, which are parum vivaces ob salacitatem, [2990]short lived because of their salacity, which is very frequent, as Scoppius in Priapus will better inform you. The extremes being both bad, [2991]the medium is to be kept, which cannot easily be determined. Some are better able to sustain, such as are hot and moist, phlegmatic, as Hippocrates insinuateth, some strong and lusty, well fed like [2992]Hercules, [2993] Proculus the emperor, lusty Laurence, [2994]prostibulum faeminae Messalina the empress, that by philters, and such kind of lascivious meats, use all means to [2995]enable themselves: and brag of it in the end, confodi multas enim, occidi vero paucas per ventrem vidisti, as that Spanish [2996]Celestina merrily said: others impotent, of a cold and dry constitution, cannot sustain those gymnics without great hurt done to their own bodies, of which number (though they be very prone to it) are melancholy men for the most part.

MEMB. III. Air rectified. With a digression of the Air.

As a long-winged hawk, when he is first whistled off the fist, mounts aloft, and for his pleasure fetcheth many a circuit in the air, still soaring higher and higher, till he be come to his full pitch, and in the end when the game is sprung, comes down amain, and stoops upon a sudden: so will I, having now come at last into these ample fields of air, wherein I may freely expatiate and exercise myself for my recreation, awhile rove, wander round about the world, mount aloft to those ethereal orbs and celestial spheres, and so descend to my former elements again. In which progress I will first see whether that relation of the friar of [2997] Oxford be true, concerning those northern parts under the pole (if I meet obiter with the wandering Jew, Elias Artifex, or Lucian's Icaromenippus, they shall be my guides) whether there be such 4. Euripes, and a great rock of loadstones, which may cause the needle in the compass still to bend that way, and what should be the true cause of the variation of the compass, [2998]is it a magnetical rock, or the pole-star, as Cardan will; or some other star in the bear, as Marsilius Ficinus; or a magnetical meridian, as Maurolieus; Vel situs in vena terrae, as Agricola; or the nearness of the next continent, as Cabeus will; or some other cause, as Scaliger, Cortesius, Conimbricenses, Peregrinus contend; why at the Azores it looks directly north, otherwise not? In the Mediterranean or Levant (as some observe) it varies 7. grad. by and by 12. and then 22. In the Baltic Seas, near Rasceburg in Finland, the needle runs round, if any ships come that way, though [2999]Martin Ridley write otherwise, that the needle near the Pole will hardly be forced from his direction. 'Tis fit to be inquired whether certain rules may be made of it, as 11. grad. Lond. variat. alibi 36. &c. and that which is more prodigious, the variation varies in the same place, now taken accurately, 'tis so much after a few years quite altered from that it was: till we have better intelligence, let our Dr. Gilbert, and Nicholas [3000]Cabeus the Jesuit, that have both written great volumes of this subject, satisfy these inquisitors. Whether the sea be open and navigable by the Pole arctic, and which is the likeliest way, that of Bartison the Hollander, under the Pole itself, which for some reasons I hold best: or by Fretum Davis, or Nova Zembla. Whether [3001]Hudson's discovery be true of a new found ocean, any likelihood of Button's Bay in 50. degrees, Hubberd's Hope in 60. that of ut ultra near Sir Thomas Roe's welcome in Northwest Fox, being that the sea ebbs and flows constantly there 15. foot in 12. hours, as our [3002]new cards inform us that California is not a cape, but an island, and the west winds make the neap tides equal to the spring, or that there be any probability to pass by the straits of Anian to China, by the promontory of Tabin. If there be, I shall soon perceive whether [3003]Marcus Polus the Venetian's narration be true or false, of that great city of Quinsay and Cambalu; whether there be any such places, or that as [3004]Matth. Riccius the Jesuit hath written, China and Cataia be all one, the great Cham of Tartary and the king of China be the same; Xuntain and Quinsay, and the city of Cambalu be that new Peking, or such a wall 400 leagues long to part China from Tartary: whether [3005]Presbyter John be in Asia or Africa; M. Polus Venetus puts him in Asia, [3006]the most received opinion is, that he is emperor of the Abyssines, which of old was Ethiopia, now Nubia, under the equator in Africa. Whether [3007]Guinea be an island or part of the continent, or that hungry [3008]Spaniard's discovery of Terra Australis Incognita, or Magellanica, be as true as that of Mercurius Britannius, or his of Utopia, or his of Lucinia. And yet in likelihood it may be so, for without all question it being extended from the tropic of Capricorn to the circle Antarctic, and lying as it doth in the temperate zone, cannot choose but yield in time some flourishing kingdoms to succeeding ages, as America did unto the Spaniards. Shouten and Le Meir have done well in the discovery of the Straits of Magellan, in finding a more convenient passage to Mare pacificum: methinks some of our modern argonauts should prosecute the rest. As I go by Madagascar, I would see that great bird [3009]ruck, that can carry a man and horse or an elephant, with that Arabian phoenix described by [3010]Adricomius; see the pelicans of Egypt, those Scythian gryphes in Asia: and afterwards in Africa examine the fountains of Nilus, whether Herodotus, [3011]Seneca, Plin. lib. 5. cap. 9. Strabo. lib. 5. give a true cause of his annual flowing, [3012]Pagaphetta discourse rightly of it, or of Niger and Senegal; examine Cardan, [3013]Scaliger's reasons, and the rest. Is it from those Etesian winds, or melting of snow in the mountains under the equator (for Jordan yearly overflows when the snow melts in Mount Libanus), or from those great dropping perpetual showers which are so frequent to the inhabitants within the tropics, when the sun is vertical, and cause such vast inundations in Senegal, Maragnan, Oronoco and the rest of those great rivers in Zona Torrida, which have all commonly the same passions at set times: and by good husbandry and policy hereafter no doubt may come to be as populous, as well tilled, as fruitful, as Egypt itself or Cauchinthina? I would observe all those motions of the sea, and from what cause they proceed, from the moon (as the vulgar hold) or earth's motion, which Galileus, in the fourth dialogue of his system of the world, so eagerly proves, and firmly demonstrates; or winds, as [3014] some will. Why in that quiet ocean of Zur, in mari pacifico, it is scarce perceived, in our British seas most violent, in the Mediterranean and Red Sea so vehement, irregular, and diverse? Why the current in that Atlantic Ocean should still be in some places from, in some again towards the north, and why they come sooner than go? and so from Moabar to Madagascar in that Indian Ocean, the merchants come in three weeks, as [3015]Scaliger discusseth, they return scarce in three months, with the same or like winds: the continual current is from east to west. Whether Mount Athos, Pelion, Olympus, Ossa, Caucasus, Atlas, be so high as Pliny, Solinus, Mela relate, above clouds, meteors, ubi nec aurae nec venti spirant (insomuch that they that ascend die suddenly very often, the air is so subtile,) 1250 paces high, according to that measure of Dicearchus, or 78 miles perpendicularly high, as Jacobus Mazonius, sec. 3. et 4. expounding that place of Aristotle about Caucasus; and as [3016]Blancanus the Jesuit contends out of Clavius and Nonius demonstrations de Crepusculis: or rather 32 stadiums, as the most received opinion is; or 4 miles, which the height of no mountain doth perpendicularly exceed, and is equal to the greatest depths of the sea, which is, as Scaliger holds, 1580 paces, Exer. 38, others 100 paces. I would see those inner parts of America, whether there be any such great city of Manoa, or Eldorado, in that golden empire, where the highways are as much beaten (one reports) as between Madrid and Valadolid in Spain; or any such Amazons as he relates, or gigantic Patagones in Chica; with that miraculous mountain [3017]Ybouyapab in the Northern Brazil, cujus jugum sternitur in amoenissimam planitiem, &c. or that of Pariacacca so high elevated in Peru. [3018]The peak of Tenerife how high it is? 70 miles, or 50 as Patricius holds, or 9 as Snellius demonstrates in his Eratosthenes: see that strange [3019]Cirknickzerksey lake in Carniola, whose waters gush so fast out of the ground, that they will overtake a swift horseman, and by and by with as incredible celerity are supped up: which Lazius and Wernerus make an argument of the Argonauts sailing under ground. And that vast den or hole called [3020]Esmellen in Muscovia, quae visitur horriendo hiatu, &c. which if anything casually fall in, makes such a roaring noise, that no thunder, or ordnance, or warlike engine can make the like; such another is Gilber's Cave in Lapland, with many the like. I would examine the Caspian Sea, and see where and how it exonerates itself, after it hath taken in Volga, Jaxares, Oxus, and those great rivers; at the mouth of Oby, or where? What vent the Mexican lake hath, the Titicacan in Peru, or that circular pool in the vale of Terapeia, of which Acosta l. 3. c. 16. hot in a cold country, the spring of which boils up in the middle twenty foot square, and hath no vent but exhalation: and that of Mare mortuum in Palestine, of Thrasymene, at Peruzium in Italy: the Mediterranean itself. For from the ocean, at the Straits of Gibraltar, there is a perpetual current into the Levant, and so likewise by the Thracian Bosphorus out of the Euxine or Black Sea, besides all those great rivers of Nile, Po, Rhone, &c. how is this water consumed, by the sun or otherwise? I would find out with Trajan the fountains of Danube, of Ganges, Oxus, see those Egyptian pyramids, Trajan's bridge, Grotto de Sybilla, Lucullus's fishponds, the temple of Nidrose, &c. (And, if I could, observe what becomes of swallows, storks, cranes, cuckoos, nightingales, redstarts, and many other kind of singing birds, water-fowls, hawks, &c. some of them are only seen in summer, some in winter; some are observed in the [3021]snow, and at no other times, each have their seasons. In winter not a bird is in Muscovy to be found, but at the spring in an instant the woods and hedges are full of them, saith [3022]Herbastein: how comes it to pass? Do they sleep in winter, like Gesner's Alpine mice; or do they lie hid (as [3023]Olaus affirms) "in the bottom of lakes and rivers, spiritum continentes? often so found by fishermen in Poland and Scandia, two together, mouth to mouth, wing to wing; and when the spring comes they revive again, or if they be brought into a stove, or to the fireside." Or do they follow the sun, as Peter Martyr legat Babylonica l. 2. manifestly convicts, out of his own knowledge; for when he was ambassador in Egypt, he saw swallows, Spanish kites, [3024]and many such other European birds, in December and January very familiarly flying, and in great abundance, about Alexandria, ubi floridae tunc arbores ac viridaria. Or lie they hid in caves, rocks, and hollow trees, as most think, in deep tin-mines or sea-cliffs, as [3025]Mr. Carew gives out? I conclude of them all, for my part, as [3026]Munster doth of cranes and storks; whence they come, whither they go, incompertum adhuc, as yet we know not. We see them here, some in summer, some in winter; "their coming and going is sure in the night: in the plains of Asia" (saith he) "the storks meet on such a set day, he that comes last is torn in pieces, and so they get them gone." Many strange places, Isthmi, Euripi, Chersonesi, creeks, havens, promontories, straits, Lakes, baths, rocks, mountains, places, and fields, where cities have been ruined or swallowed, battles fought, creatures, sea-monsters, remora, &c. minerals, vegetals. Zoophytes were fit to be considered in such an expedition, and amongst the rest that of [3027]Harbastein his Tartar lamb, [3028]Hector Boethius goosebearing tree in the orchards, to which Cardan lib. 7. cap. 36. de rerum varietat. subscribes: [3029]Vertomannus wonderful palm, that [3030] fly in Hispaniola, that shines like a torch in the night, that one may well see to write; those spherical stones in Cuba which nature hath so made, and those like birds, beasts, fishes, crowns, swords, saws, pots, &c. usually found in the metal mines in Saxony about Mansfield, and in Poland near Nokow and Pallukie, as [3031]Munster and others relate. Many rare creatures and novelties each part of the world affords: amongst the rest, I would know for a certain whether there be any such men, as Leo Suavius, in his comment on Paracelsus de sanit. tuend. and [3032]Gaguinus records in his description of Muscovy, "that in Lucomoria, a province in Russia, lie fast asleep as dead all winter, from the 27 of November, like frogs and swallows, benumbed with cold, but about the 24 of April in the spring they revive again, and go about their business." I would examine that demonstration of Alexander Picolomineus, whether the earth's superficies be bigger than the seas: or that of Archimedes be true, the superficies of all water is even? Search the depth, and see that variety of sea-monsters and fishes, mermaids, seamen, horses, &c. which it affords. Or whether that be true which Jordanus Brunus scoffs at, that if God did not detain it, the sea would overflow the earth by reason of his higher site, and which Josephus Blancanus the Jesuit in his interpretation on those mathematical places of Aristotle, foolishly fears, and in a just tract proves by many circumstances, that in time the sea will waste away the land, and all the globe of the earth shall be covered with waters; risum teneatis amici? what the sea takes away in one place it adds in another. Methinks he might rather suspect the sea should in time be filled by land, trees grow up, carcasses, &c. that all-devouring fire, omnia devorans et consumens, will sooner cover and dry up the vast ocean with sand and ashes. I would examine the true seat of that terrestrial [3033]paradise, and where Ophir was whence Solomon did fetch his gold: from Peruana, which some suppose, or that Aurea Chersonesus, as Dominicus Niger, Arias Montanus, Goropius, and others will. I would censure all Pliny's, Solinus', Strabo's, Sir John Mandeville's, Olaus Magnus', Marcus Polus' lies, correct those errors in navigation, reform cosmographical charts, and rectify longitudes, if it were possible; not by the compass, as some dream, with Mark Ridley in his treatise of magnetical bodies, cap. 43. for as Cabeus magnet philos. lib. 3. cap. 4. fully resolves, there is no hope thence, yet I would observe some better means to find them out.

I would have a convenient place to go down with Orpheus, Ulysses, Hercules, [3034]Lucian's Menippus, at St. Patrick's purgatory, at Trophonius' den, Hecla in Iceland, Aetna in Sicily, to descend and see what is done in the bowels of the earth: do stones and metals grow there still? how come fir trees to be [3035]digged out from tops of hills, as in our mosses, and marshes all over Europe? How come they to dig up fish bones, shells, beams, ironworks, many fathoms under ground, and anchors in mountains far remote from all seas? [3036]Anno 1460 at Bern in Switzerland 50 fathom deep a ship was digged out of a mountain, where they got metal ore, in which were 48 carcasses of men, with other merchandise. That such things are ordinarily found in tops of hills, Aristotle insinuates in his meteors, [3037]Pomponius Mela in his first book, c. de Numidia, and familiarly in the Alps, saith [3038]Blancanus the Jesuit, the like is to be seen: came this from earthquakes, or from Noah's flood, as Christians suppose, or is there a vicissitude of sea and land, as Anaximenes held of old, the mountains of Thessaly would become seas, and seas again mountains? The whole world belike should be new moulded, when it seemed good to those all-commanding powers, and turned inside out, as we do haycocks in harvest, top to bottom, or bottom to top: or as we turn apples to the fire, move the world upon his centre; that which is under the poles now, should be translated to the equinoctial, and that which is under the torrid zone to the circle arctic and antarctic another while, and so be reciprocally warmed by the sun: or if the worlds be infinite, and every fixed star a sun, with his compassing planets (as Brunus and Campanella conclude) cast three or four worlds into one; or else of one world make three or four new, as it shall seem to them best. To proceed, if the earth be 21,500 miles in [3039]compass, its diameter is 7,000 from us to our antipodes, and what shall be comprehended in all that space? What is the centre of the earth? is it pure element only, as Aristotle decrees, inhabited (as [3040] Paracelsus thinks) with creatures, whose chaos is the earth: or with fairies, as the woods and waters (according to him) are with nymphs, or as the air with spirits? Dionisiodorus, a mathematician in [3041]Pliny, that sent a letter, ad superos after he was dead, from the centre of the earth, to signify what distance the same centre was from the superficies of the same, viz. 42,000 stadiums, might have done well to have satisfied all these doubts. Or is it the place of hell, as Virgil in his Aenides, Plato, Lucian, Dante, and others poetically describe it, and as many of our divines think? In good earnest, Anthony Rusca, one of the society of that Ambrosian College, in Milan, in his great volume de Inferno, lib. 1. cap. 47. is stiff in this tenet, 'tis a corporeal fire tow, cap. 5. I. 2. as he there disputes. "Whatsoever philosophers write" (saith [3042]Surius) "there be certain mouths of hell, and places appointed for the punishment of men's souls, as at Hecla in Iceland, where the ghosts of dead men are familiarly seen, and sometimes talk with the living: God would have such visible places, that mortal men might be certainly informed, that there be such punishments after death, and learn hence to fear God." Kranzius Dan. hist. lib. 2. cap. 24. subscribes to this opinion of Surius, so doth Colerus cap. 12. lib. de immortal animae (out of the authority belike of St. Gregory, Durand, and the rest of the schoolmen, who derive as much from Aetna in Sicily, Lipari, Hiera, and those sulphureous vulcanian islands) making Terra del Fuego, and those frequent volcanoes in America, of which Acosta lib. 3. cap. 24. that fearful mount Hecklebirg in Norway, an especial argument to prove it, [3043]"where lamentable screeches and howlings are continually heard, which strike a terror to the auditors; fiery chariots are commonly seen to bring in the souls of men in the likeness of crows, and devils ordinarily go in and out." Such another proof is that place near the Pyramids in Egypt, by Cairo, as well to confirm this as the resurrection, mentioned by [3044]Kornmannus mirac. mort. lib. 1. cap. 30. Camerarius oper. suc. cap. 37. Bredenbachius pereg. ter. sanct. and some others, "where once a year dead bodies arise about March, and walk, after awhile hide themselves again: thousands of people come yearly to see them." But these and such like testimonies others reject, as fables, illusions of spirits, and they will have no such local known place, more than Styx or Phlegethon, Pluto's court, or that poetical Infernus, where Homer's soul was seen hanging on a tree, &c., to which they ferried over in Charon's boat, or went down at Hermione in Greece, compendiaria ad Infernos via, which is the shortest cut, quia nullum a mortuis naulum eo loci exposcunt, (saith [3045]Gerbelius) and besides there were no fees to be paid. Well then, is it hell, or purgatory, as Bellarmine: or Limbus patrum, as Gallucius will, and as Rusca will (for they have made maps of it) [3046]or Ignatius parler? Virgil, sometimes bishop of Saltburg (as Aventinus anno 745 relates) by Bonifacius bishop of Mentz was therefore called in question, because he held antipodes (which they made a doubt whether Christ died for) and so by that means took away the seat of hell, or so contracted it, that it could bear no proportion to heaven, and contradicted that opinion of Austin, Basil, Lactantius that held the earth round as a trencher (whom Acosta and common experience more largely confute) but not as a ball; and Jerusalem where Christ died the middle of it; or Delos, as the fabulous Greeks feigned: because when Jupiter let two eagles loose, to fly from the world's ends east and west, they met at Delos. But that scruple of Bonifacius is now quite taken away by our latter divines: Franciscus Ribera, in cap. 14. Apocalyps. will have hell a material and local fire in the centre of the earth, 200 Italian miles in diameter, as he defines it out of those words, Exivit sanguis de terra—per stadia mille sexcenta, &c. But Lessius lib. 13. de moribus divinis, cap. 24. will have this local hell far less, one Dutch mile in diameter, all filled with fire and brimstone: because, as he there demonstrates, that space, cubically multiplied, will make a sphere able to hold eight hundred thousand millions of damned bodies (allowing each body six foot square) which will abundantly suffice; Cum cerium sit, inquit, facta subductione, non futuros centies mille milliones damnandorum. But if it be no material fire (as Sco. Thomas, Bonaventure, Soncinas, Voscius, and others argue) it may be there or elsewhere, as Keckerman disputes System. Theol. for sure somewhere it is, certum est alicubi, etsi definitus circulus non assignetur. I will end the controversy in [3047]Austin's words, "Better doubt of things concealed, than to contend about uncertainties, where Abraham's bosom is, and hell fire:" [3048]Vix a mansuetis, a contentiosis nunquam invenitur; scarce the meek, the contentious shall never find. If it be solid earth, 'tis the fountain of metals, waters, which by his innate temper turns air into water, which springs up in several chinks, to moisten the earth's superficies, and that in a tenfold proportion (as Aristotle holds) or else these fountains come directly from the sea, by [3049]secret passages, and so made fresh again, by running through the bowels of the earth; and are either thick, thin, hot, cold, as the matter or minerals are by which they pass; or as Peter Martyr Ocean. Decad. lib. 9. and some others hold, from [3050] abundance of rain that falls, or from that ambient heat and cold, which alters that inward heat, and so per consequens the generation of waters. Or else it may be full of wind, or a sulphureous innate fire, as our meteorologists inform us, which sometimes breaking out, causeth those horrible earthquakes, which are so frequent in these days in Japan, China, and oftentimes swallow up whole cities. Let Lucian's Menippus consult with or ask of Tiresias, if you will not believe philosophers, he shall clear all your doubts when he makes a second voyage.

In the mean time let us consider of that which is sub dio, and find out a true cause, if it be possible, of such accidents, meteors, alterations, as happen above ground. Whence proceed that variety of manners, and a distinct character (as it were) to several nations? Some are wise, subtile, witty; others dull, sad and heavy; some big, some little, as Tully de Fato, Plato in Timaeo, Vegetius and Bodine prove at large, method. cap. 5. some soft, and some hardy, barbarous, civil, black, dun, white, is it from the air, from the soil, influence of stars, or some other secret cause? Why doth Africa breed so many venomous beasts, Ireland none? Athens owls, Crete none? [3051]Why hath Daulis and Thebes no swallows (so Pausanius informeth us) as well as the rest of Greece, [3052]Ithaca no hares, Pontus asses, Scythia swine? whence comes this variety of complexions, colours, plants, birds, beasts, [3053]metals, peculiar almost to every place? Why so many thousand strange birds and beasts proper to America alone, as Acosta demands lib. 4. cap. 36. were they created in the six days, or ever in Noah's ark? if there, why are they not dispersed and found in other countries? It is a thing (saith he) hath long held me in suspense; no Greek, Latin, Hebrew ever heard of them before, and yet as differing from our European animals, as an egg and a chestnut: and which is more, kine, horses, sheep, &c., till the Spaniards brought them, were never heard of in those parts? How comes it to pass, that in the same site, in one latitude, to such as are Perioeci, there should be such difference of soil, complexion, colour, metal, air, &c. The Spaniards are white, and so are Italians, when as the inhabitants about [3054]Caput bonae spei are blackamoors, and yet both alike distant from the equator: nay they that dwell in the same parallel line with these Negroes, as about the Straits of Magellan, are white coloured, and yet some in Presbyter John's country in Ethiopia are dun; they in Zeilan and Malabar parallel with them again black: Manamotapa in Africa, and St. Thomas Isle are extreme hot, both under the line, coal black their inhabitants, whereas in Peru they are quite opposite in colour, very temperate, or rather cold, and yet both alike elevated. Moscow in 53. degrees of latitude extreme cold, as those northern countries usually are, having one perpetual hard frost all winter long; and in 52. deg. lat. sometimes hard frost and snow all summer, as Button's Bay, &c., or by fits; and yet [3055]England near the same latitude, and Ireland, very moist, warm, and more temperate in winter than Spain, Italy, or France. Is it the sea that causeth this difference, and the air that comes from it: Why then is [3056]Ister so cold near the Euxine, Pontus, Bithynia, and all Thrace; frigidas regiones Maginus calls them, and yet their latitude is but 42. which should be hot: [3057] Quevira, or Nova Albion in America, bordering on the sea, was so cold in July, that our [3058]Englishmen could hardly endure it. At Noremberga in 45. lat. all the sea is frozen ice, and yet in a more southern latitude than ours. New England, and the island of Cambrial Colchos, which that noble gentleman Mr. Vaughan, or Orpheus junior, describes in his Golden Fleece, is in the same latitude with little Britain in France, and yet their winter begins not till January, their spring till May; which search he accounts worthy of an astrologer: is this from the easterly winds, or melting of ice and snow dissolved within the circle arctic; or that the air being thick, is longer before it be warm by the sunbeams, and once heated like an oven will keep itself from cold? Our climes breed lice, [3059] Hungary and Ireland male audiunt in this kind; come to the Azores, by a secret virtue of that air they are instantly consumed, and all our European vermin almost, saith Ortelius. Egypt is watered with Nilus not far from the sea, and yet there it seldom or never rains: Rhodes, an island of the same nature, yields not a cloud, and yet our islands ever dropping and inclining to rain. The Atlantic Ocean is still subject to storms, but in Del Zur, or Mare pacifico, seldom or never any. Is it from tropic stars, apertio portarum, in the dodecotemories or constellations, the moon's mansions, such aspects of planets, such winds, or dissolving air, or thick air, which causeth this and the like differences of heat and cold? Bodin relates of a Portugal ambassador, that coming from [3060]Lisbon to [3061]Danzig in Spruce, found greater heat there than at any time at home. Don Garcia de Sylva, legate to Philip III., king of Spain, residing at Ispahan in Persia, 1619, in his letter to the Marquess of Bedmar, makes mention of greater cold in Ispahan, whose lat. is 31. gr. than ever he felt in Spain, or any part of Europe. The torrid zone was by our predecessors held to be uninhabitable, but by our modern travellers found to be most temperate, bedewed with frequent rains, and moistening showers, the breeze and cooling blasts in some parts, as [3062]Acosta describes, most pleasant and fertile. Arica in Chile is by report one of the sweetest places that ever the sun shined on, Olympus terrae, a heaven on earth: how incomparably do some extol Mexico in Nova Hispania, Peru, Brazil, &c., in some again hard, dry, sandy, barren, a very desert, and still in the same latitude. Many times we find great diversity of air in the same [3063]country, by reason of the site to seas, hills or dales, want of water, nature of soil, and the like: as in Spain Arragon is aspera et sicca, harsh and evil inhabited; Estremadura is dry, sandy, barren most part, extreme hot by reason of his plains; Andalusia another paradise; Valencia a most pleasant air, and continually green; so is it about [3064]Granada, on the one side fertile plains, on the other, continual snow to be seen all summer long on the hill tops. That their houses in the Alps are three quarters of the year covered with snow, who knows not? That Tenerife is so cold at the top, extreme hot at the bottom: Mons Atlas in Africa, Libanus in Palestine, with many such, tantos inter ardores fidos nivibus, [3065]Tacitus calls them, and Radzivilus epist. 2. fol. 27. yields it to be far hotter there than in any part of Italy: 'tis true; but they are highly elevated, near the middle region, and therefore cold, ob paucam solarium radiorum refractionem, as Serrarius answers, com. in. 3. cap. Josua quaest. 5. Abulensis quaest. 37. In the heat of summer, in the king's palace in Escurial, the air is most temperate, by reason of a cold blast which comes from the snowy mountains of Sierra de Cadarama hard by, when as in Toledo it is very hot: so in all other countries. The causes of these alterations are commonly by reason of their nearness (I say) to the middle region; but this diversity of air, in places equally situated, elevated and distant from the pole, can hardly be satisfied with that diversity of plants, birds, beasts, which is so familiar with us: with Indians, everywhere, the sun is equally distant, the same vertical stars, the same irradiations of planets, aspects like, the same nearness of seas, the same superficies, the same soil, or not much different. Under the equator itself, amongst the Sierras, Andes, Lanos, as Herrera, Laet, and [3066]Acosta contend, there is tam mirabilis et inopinata varietas, such variety of weather, ut merito exerceat ingenia, that no philosophy can yet find out the true cause of it. When I consider how temperate it is in one place, saith [3067]Acosta, within the tropic of Capricorn, as about Laplata, and yet hard by at Potosi, in that same altitude, mountainous alike, extreme cold; extreme hot in Brazil, &c. Hic ego, saith Acosta, philosophiam Aristotelis meteorologicam vehementer irrisi, cum, &c., when the sun comes nearest to them, they have great tempests, storms, thunder and lightning, great store of rain, snow, and the foulest weather: when the sun is vertical, their rivers overflow, the morning fair and hot, noonday cold and moist: all which is opposite to us. How comes it to pass? Scaliger poetices l. 3. c. 16. discourseth thus of this subject. How comes, or wherefore is this temeraria siderum dispositio, this rash placing of stars, or as Epicurus will, fortuita, or accidental? Why are some big, some little, why are they so confusedly, unequally situated in the heavens, and set so much out of order? In all other things nature is equal, proportionable, and constant; there be justae dimensiones, et prudens partium dispositio, as in the fabric of man, his eyes, ears, nose, face, members are correspondent, cur non idem coelo opere omnium pulcherrimo? Why are the heavens so irregular, neque paribus molibus, neque paribus intervallis, whence is this difference? Diversos (he concludes) efficere locorum Genios, to make diversity of countries, soils, manners, customs, characters, and constitutions among us, ut quantum vicinia ad charitatem addat, sidera distrahant ad perniciem, and so by this means fluvio vel monte distincti sunt dissimiles, the same places almost shall be distinguished in manners. But this reason is weak and most insufficient. The fixed stars are removed since Ptolemy's time 26. gr. from the first of Aries, and if the earth be immovable, as their site varies, so should countries vary, and diverse alterations would follow. But this we perceive not; as in Tully's time with us in Britain, coelum visu foedum, et in quo facile generantur nubes, &c., 'tis so still. Wherefore Bodine Theat. nat. lib. 2. and some others, will have all these alterations and effects immediately to proceed from those genii, spirits, angels, which rule and domineer in several places; they cause storms, thunder, lightning, earthquakes, ruins, tempests, great winds, floods, &c., the philosophers of Conimbra, will refer this diversity to the influence of that empyrean heaven: for some say the eccentricity of the sun is come nearer to the earth than in Ptolemy's time, the virtue therefore of all the vegetals is decayed, [3068]men grow less, &c. There are that observe new motions of the heavens, new stars, palantia sidera, comets, clouds, call them what you will, like those Medicean, Burbonian, Austrian planets, lately detected, which do not decay, but come and go, rise higher and lower, hide and show themselves amongst the fixed stars, amongst the planets, above and beneath the moon, at set times, now nearer, now farther off, together, asunder; as he that plays upon a sackbut by pulling it up and down alters his tones and tunes, do they their stations and places, though to us undiscerned; and from those motions proceed (as they conceive) diverse alterations. Clavius conjectures otherwise, but they be but conjectures. About Damascus in Coeli-Syria is a [3069]Paradise, by reason of the plenty of waters, in promptu causa est, and the deserts of Arabia barren, because of rocks, rolling seas of sands, and dry mountains quod inaquosa (saith Adricomius) montes habens asperos, saxosos, praecipites, horroris et mortis speciem prae se ferentes, "uninhabitable therefore of men, birds, beasts, void of all green trees, plants, and fruits, a vast rocky horrid wilderness, which by no art can be manured, 'tis evident." Bohemia is cold, for that it lies all along to the north. But why should it be so hot in Egypt, or there never rain? Why should those [3070]etesian and northeastern winds blow continually and constantly so long together, in some places, at set times, one way still, in the dog-days only: here perpetual drought, there dropping showers; here foggy mists, there a pleasant air; here [3071]terrible thunder and lightning at such set seasons, here frozen seas all the year, there open in the same latitude, to the rest no such thing, nay quite opposite is to be found? Sometimes (as in [3072]Peru) on the one side of the mountains it is hot, on the other cold, here snow, there wind, with infinite such. Fromundus in his Meteors will excuse or solve all this by the sun's motion, but when there is such diversity to such as Perioeci or very near site, how can that position hold?

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 [Symbol: Mars] amongst the rest, which sometimes, as [3087]Kepler confirms by his own, and Tycho's accurate observations, comes nearer the earth than the [Symbol: Sun] 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 [Symbol: Mars] and [Symbol: Mercury], beneath [Symbol: Saturn], [Symbol: Jupiter], [Symbol: Mars] (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, [Symbol: Sun] and [Symbol: Moon-3/4], 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.

Jason Pratensis, in his book de morbis capitis, and chapter of Melancholy, hath these words out of Galen, [3143]"Let them come to me to know what meat and drink they shall use, and besides that, I will teach them what temper of ambient air they shall make choice of, what wind, what countries they shall choose, and what avoid." Out of which lines of his, thus much we may gather, that to this cure of melancholy, amongst other things, the rectification of air is necessarily required. This is performed, either in reforming natural or artificial air. Natural is that which is in our election to choose or avoid: and 'tis either general, to countries, provinces; particular, to cities, towns, villages, or private houses. What harm those extremities of heat or cold do in this malady, I have formerly shown: the medium must needs be good, where the air is temperate, serene, quiet, free from bogs, fens, mists, all manner of putrefaction, contagious and filthy noisome smells. The [3144]Egyptians by all geographers are commended to be hilares, a conceited and merry nation: which I can ascribe to no other cause than the serenity of their air. They that live in the Orcades are registered by [3145]Hector Boethius and [3146]Cardan, to be of fair complexion, long-lived, most healthful, free from all manner of infirmities of body and mind, by reason of a sharp purifying air, which comes from the sea. The Boeotians in Greece were dull and heavy, crassi Boeoti, by reason of a foggy air in which they lived, [3147]Boeotum in crasso jurares aere natum, Attica most acute, pleasant, and refined. The clime changes not so much customs, manners, wits (as Aristotle Polit. lib. 6. cap. 4. Vegetius, Plato, Bodine, method. hist. cap. 5. hath proved at large) as constitutions of their bodies, and temperature itself. In all particular provinces we see it confirmed by experience, as the air is, so are the inhabitants, dull, heavy, witty, subtle, neat, cleanly, clownish, sick, and sound. In [3148]Perigord in France the air is subtle, healthful, seldom any plague or contagious disease, but hilly and barren: the men sound, nimble, and lusty; but in some parts of Guienne, full of moors and marshes, the people dull, heavy, and subject to many infirmities. Who sees not a great difference between Surrey, Sussex, and Romney Marsh, the wolds in Lincolnshire and the fens. He therefore that loves his health, if his ability will give him leave, must often shift places, and make choice of such as are wholesome, pleasant, and convenient: there is nothing better than change of air in this malady, and generally for health to wander up and down, as those [3149]Tartari Zamolhenses, that live in hordes, and take opportunity of times, places, seasons. The kings of Persia had their summer and winter houses; in winter at Sardis, in summer at Susa; now at Persepolis, then at Pasargada. Cyrus lived seven cold months at Babylon, three at Susa, two at Ecbatana, saith [3150]Xenophon, and had by that means a perpetual spring. The great Turk sojourns sometimes at Constantinople, sometimes at Adrianople, &c. The kings of Spain have their Escurial in heat of summer, [3151]Madrid for a wholesome seat, Valladolid a pleasant site, &c., variety of secessus as all princes and great men have, and their several progresses to this purpose. Lucullus the Roman had his house at Rome, at Baiae, &c. [3152]When Cn. Pompeius, Marcus Cicero (saith Plutarch) and many noble men in the summer came to see him, at supper Pompeius jested with him, that it was an elegant and pleasant village, full of windows, galleries, and all offices fit for a summer house; but in his judgment very unfit for winter: Lucullus made answer that the lord of the house had wit like a crane, that changeth her country with the season; he had other houses furnished, and built for that purpose, all out as commodious as this. So Tully had his Tusculan, Plinius his Lauretan village, and every gentleman of any fashion in our times hath the like. The [3153]bishop of Exeter had fourteen several houses all furnished, in times past. In Italy, though they bide in cities in winter, which is more gentlemanlike, all the summer they come abroad to their country-houses, to recreate themselves. Our gentry in England live most part in the country (except it be some few castles) building still in bottoms (saith [3154]Jovius) or near woods, corona arborum virentium; you shall know a village by a tuft of trees at or about it, to avoid those strong winds wherewith the island is infested, and cold winter blasts. Some discommend moated houses, as unwholesome; so Camden saith of [3155]Ew-elme, that it was therefore unfrequented, ob stagni vicini halitus, and all such places as be near lakes or rivers. But I am of opinion that these inconveniences will be mitigated, or easily corrected by good fires, as [3156]one reports of Venice, that graveolentia and fog of the moors is sufficiently qualified by those innumerable smokes. Nay more, [3157]Thomas Philol. Ravennas, a great physician, contends that the Venetians are generally longer-lived than any city in Europe, and live many of them 120 years. But it is not water simply that so much offends, as the slime and noisome smells that accompany such overflowed places, which is but at some few seasons after a flood, and is sufficiently recompensed with sweet smells and aspects in summer, Ver pinget vario gemmantia prata colore, and many other commodities of pleasure and profit; or else may be corrected by the site, if it be somewhat remote from the water, as Lindley, [3158]Orton super montem, [3159]Drayton, or a little more elevated, though nearer, as [3160]Caucut, [3161]Amington, [3162]Polesworth, [3163]Weddington (to insist in such places best to me known, upon the river of Anker, in Warwickshire, [3164] Swarston, and [3165]Drakesly upon Trent). Or howsoever they be unseasonable in winter, or at some times, they have their good use in summer. If so be that their means be so slender as they may not admit of any such variety, but must determine once for all, and make one house serve each season, I know no men that have given better rules in this behalf than our husbandry writers. [3166]Cato and Columella prescribe a good house to stand by a navigable river, good highways, near some city, and in a good soil, but that is more for commodity than health.