understood what those mutations are, and amongst what stars they should be discerned; therefore it would be necessary that we in the next place narrowly examine this particular.Astronomers having omitted to instance what alterations those are that may be derived from the annual motion of the Earth, do thereby testifie that they never rightly understood the same. My having onely found written in general terms that the annual motion of the Earth about the Grand Orb, ought not to be admitted, because it is not probable but that by means of the same there would be discoverd some apparent mutation in the fixed stars, and not hearing say what those apparent mutations ought to be in particular, and in what stars, maketh me very reasonably to infer that they who rely upon that general position, have not understood, no nor possibly endeavoured to understand, how the businesse of these mutations goeth, nor what things those are which they say ought to be seen.The mutations of the fixed stars ought to be in some greater, in others lesser, and in others nothing at all. And to this judgment I am the rather induced; knowing that the annual motion ascribed by Copernicus to the Earth, if it should appear sensible in the Starry Sphere, is not to make apparent mutations equal in respect to all the stars, but those appearances ought to be made in some greater, in others lesser, and in others yet lesser; and lastly, in others absolutely nothing at all, by reason of the vast magnitude that the circle of this annual motion is supposed to be of. As for the mutations that should b• seen, they are of two kinds, one is the said stars changing apparent magnitude, and the other their variation of altitudes in the Meridian. Upon which necessarily followeth the mutation of risings and settings, and of their distances from the Zenith, &c.
Sagr.Methinks I see preparing for me such a skean of these revolutions, that I wish it may never be my task to dis-intangle them, for to confesse my infirmity to Salviatus, I have sometimes thought thereon, but could never find the ** Bandola that end of a skeen where with housewives fasten their hankes of yarn, thread or silk. Lay-band of it, and I speak not so much of this which pertains to the fixed stars, as of another more terrible labour which you bring to my remembrance by maintaining these Meridian Altitudes, Ortive Latitudes and distances from the Vertex, &c.The grand difficulty in Copernicus his Doctrine, is that which concerns the Phænomena of the Sun and fixed stars. And that which puzzleth my brains, ariseth from what I am now about to tell you. Copernicus supposeth the Starry Sphere immoveable, and the Sun in the centre thereof immoveable also. Therefore every mutation which seemeth unto us to be made in the Sun or in the fixed stars, must of necessity befall the Earth and be ous. But the Sun riseth and declineth in our Meridian by a very great arch of almost 47. degrees, and by arches yet greater and greatet, varieth its Ortive and Occidual Latitudes in the oblique Horizons. Now how can the Earth ever incline and elevate so notably to the Sun, and nothing at all to the fixed stars, or so little, that it is not to be perceived? This is that knot which could never get thorow my ** Pettine, it is the stay in a Weavets Loom, that permitteth no knot or snarle to passe it, called by them the Combe of the Loom. Loom-Combe; and if you shalluntie
