PREFACE

The blindness of human reason.

The authority of Holy Scripture clearly demonstrates through various arguments that [God] carries the bodies of the stars and sustains them as they perform their destined course and motion. First, such names are given to the Heaven that we know it consists of water and fire, and therefore we judge it to be liquid and fluid. The Hebrew word for heaven, "Shamayim," was traditionally etymologized as a combination of "Esh" (fire) and "Mayim" (water). Second, in many places, because of its extreme thinness and liquid quality, it is compared to the thinnest and most liquid things, such as Nothingness and Smoke in Isaiah chapters 40 and 51. Furthermore, free motion is attributed to the Planets in Joshua 10, Ecclesiastes 1, Psalms 108 and 104, Job 38, Isaiah 10, Habakkuk 3, and others. This motion would by no means be free if the Heaven itself did not exist as something fluid, liquid, and thin. For it had to be permeable, flexible, and yielding, so that it would not block the path and motion of so many bodies migrating continuously from one place to another. Additionally, nowhere in the Holy

A passage from Job explained.

Bible is mention made of a hard heaven. The passage in Job chapter 37, verse 18 says: Have you perhaps with him fashioned the heavens, which are most solid, like cast brass? Or, as others interpret it: Did you spread out the ether with him, so solid that it appears as a molten thing? This actually confirms the liquid substance and matter of the Heaven, even though some attempt to establish the hardness of the Heaven from it.

The fiery nature of the stars and heaven.

Indeed, this comparison implies the fiery, liquid, and consistent nature of the Heaven when it compares it to brass melted in fire. This suggests that the substance of the Heaven, being molten in fire, is liquid, flowing, and slippery by its own fire, and is as trembling and mobile as quicksilver. Quicksilver is an archaic name for mercury.

The Hebrew names of the Sun.

It also proves the constant and perennial heat of the Celestial Bodies, which always remains constant in fire like molten brass, and is not consumed by fire like vegetable matter. Finally, in Genesis 1, where Moses describes the beginning of Creation, all things are gathered as liquid from the Text itself, except for the earth,

The Earth alone is hard.

which, having been compacted into one hard mass through creation, alone received hardness and solidity in the entire Universe. However, in my opinion, it was also a liquid substance before the separation, since even the most solid metals and the hardest stones of any kind can be resolved into pure, clear water. This is a fact that finds belief only among those who have seen it. This refers to alchemical or chemical experiments where solids are dissolved into solutions.

The name of Heaven.

Thus, this comparison used in Job solidly builds the case for the liquidity of the Heaven. It is far from introducing any hardness or solidity to the Heaven by opposing it. Lastly, Esdras in book 4, chapter 6, verse 41, says: You created the spirit of the firmament (on the second day). This so clearly reveals the liquidity of the heaven

The passage from Esdras.

that anyone who wishes to deny it would seem to be blind in the midday Sun. For what else is a

What a spirit is.

spirit but a most liquid, thin, and subtle substance? By dilating it becomes rare, and by contracting it becomes dense, rejecting all placement and boundaries which are the properties of hard and solid bodies.

The Holy Scriptures regarding the liquidity of the Heaven are also supported by the Holy Fathers and the Doctors of the Ancient Church. Almost all of them ascribe a liquid nature to the Firmament. Most theologians, philosophers, and astronomers of our own age agree with them, being pleased by this same opinion of a liquid firmament.

Liquid and fluid things.

There are also many other reasons and arguments sought from the more recent optical

phenomena of the Heavens, such as Comets and similar things, which confirm the fluid nature and property of the Heaven. However, we must refrain from reviewing these here, lest the length of the subject carry us away from our intended purpose. Those are therefore

The error of some.

deluded who contend that the Heaven is hard, crystalline, and like adamant. They teach that the orbs themselves are hard, solid, and compact, and that the astral bodies are fixed and fastened to them as they move. This idea of solidity is now mocked and exploded in the Schools. Such solidity, if granted in this vast expansion, would imply a terrestrial thickening and would thus place terrestrial bodies, similar to the globe of the Earth, in the heaven. For the same reason, those who dream that the Heaven is composed of those coarse elements found in the Sublunary region The region below the moon, consisting of the four changing elements of earth, water, air, and fire. also deviate from the path of truth.

In this ethereal and heavenly region, God produced so many great

The purpose of the stars.

lights and simultaneously imposed a duty upon them, saying that they must illuminate the earth, be signs for the seasons, and distinguish days and years. This is the origin of Astronomy,

The origin of Astronomy.

that most noble art which the experience of the Ancients constructed from daily observation of the Stars over many years of use and notice. I say the experience of the Ancients and the investigation of the first men. It can truly be said of them that their long life made the "brief art" long for them. A play on the aphorism "Life is short, art is long." Since they spent many years living and relied on a much longer and firmer experience, being closer to the beginning of time and the origin, they were able to discover far more and more certain things. However, the origin and beginning of this art is usually traced back to the Pagans, by whom the true sources were defiled and infected with idolatry, providing nothing but mere dregs and the most uncertain things to us who follow in their footsteps. But we will deal more with these matters in the following description and declaration of Astronomy itself.

THE FIFTH DAY.

BY THE WORK OF THE FIFTH DAY, sensual life was opened in the Water and the Air. He filled the former with fish and the latter with birds. These two kinds of animals are of very different natures and are so attached to their Elements from which they came that they cannot live in the opposite Element. Fish, when

Fish.

moved out of the water into the air and deprived of their Element of water, necessarily die and perish once their life is lost. But birds,

Birds.

on the contrary, when brought from the air into the water and deprived of their Element of air, are suffocated and lose their lives. The nature of these animals is so utterly contrary that those destined for the element of water find life in it and death in the opposite element. Conversely, those granted the use of living in the air suffer the loss of life in the water. Although birds draw their origin in the air and from the air, they nevertheless preserve their life above the earth, to which the air is contiguous. This is not permitted to fish, which, when placed outside the water and deprived of it, cannot preserve their life.

Through his blessing, the Divine

Divine Blessing.

Benevolence granted infinite multiplication and propagation to both kinds. This blessing, enduring until now, has produced an innumerable multitude of fish and birds.