"Although there were some fourtie heav'ns, or more,
Sometimes I peere above them all;
Sometimes I hardly reach a score,
Sometimes to hell I fall.
"O rack me not to such a vast extent,
Those distances belong to thee.
The world's too little for thy tent,
A grave too big for me."
Or they might waver, undecided, like Milton who had the archangel answer Adam's questions thus:[1]
"But whether thus these things, or whether not,
Whether the Sun predominant in Heaven
Rise on the Earth, or Earth rise on the Sun,
Hee from the East his flaming robe begin,
Or Shee from West her silent course advance
With inoffensive pace that spinning sleeps
On her soft axle, while she paces ev'n
And bears thee soft with the smooth Air along,
Solicit not thy thoughts with matters hid,
Leave them to God above, him serve and feare;
Of other Creatures, as him pleases best,
Wherever plac't, let him dispose; joy thou
In what he gives to thee, this Paradise
And the fair Eve: Heaven is for thee too high
To know what passes there: be lowlie wise." (1667)
Whewell thinks[2] that at this time the diffusion of the Copernican system was due more to the writings of Bishop Wilkins than to those of any one else, for their very extravagances drew stronger attention to it. The first, "The Discovery of a New World: or a Discourse tending to prove that there may be another habitable world in the moon," appeared in 1638; and
- ↑ Milton: Paradise Lost, Bk. VIII, lines 159 et seq.
The great Puritan divine, John Owen (1616-1683), accepts the miracle of the sun's standing still without a word of reference to the new astronomy. (Works: II, 160.) Farrar states that Owen declared Newton's discoveries were against the evident testimonies of Scripture (Farrar: History of Interpretation: xviii.), but I have been unable to verify this statement. Owen died before the Principia was published in 1687.
- ↑ Whewell: I, 410.
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