Natural and Moral History of the Indies

He who says that the sky is not round, but rather that it covers the face of the earth like a plate, must clearly concede that it could not produce the difference we see in the days and nights, which in some regions of the world are long and short at their times, and in others are perpetually equal.

Augustine, Book 2, on Genesis literally, ch. 10.

What the holy doctor Augustine writes in his books Genesis ad literam On Genesis literally, that all the oppositions, conversions, elevations, descents, and any other aspects and dispositions of the planets and stars can be saved if we understand that they move while the sky itself remains still and motionless, is very easy for me to understand, and it will be for anyone, provided there is license to imagine whatever we please. For if we posit, for instance, that each star and planet is a body unto itself, and that an Angel moves and carries it in the manner that he carried Habakkuk to Babylon;

Dan. 14.

who would be so blind as not to see that all the diversities of aspects that appear in the planets and stars could proceed from the diversity of the movement that he who moves them voluntarily gives them? However, good reason does not allow that the space and region through which the stars are imagined to walk or fly should cease to be elemental and corruptible, since it divides and parts when they pass, for they certainly do not pass through a vacuum. And if the region in which the stars and planets move is corruptible, then certainly they too must be corruptible by their nature, and consequently they must change, alter, and finally end. For naturally, the contained is no more durable than its container. To say, then, that those celestial bodies are corruptible does not agree with what the Scripture says in the Psalm, that God made them forever, nor does it sit well with the order and preservation of this universe.

Ps. 148.

I say more: to confirm this truth that it is the heavens themselves that move, and in them the stars go around, we can allege it with our eyes,