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CAP. 4. Touching the pretended decay in the warmth of the heavenly bodies.
SECT. 1. That the starres are not of a fiery nature, or hot in themselues.
THe light of Heaven, whereof wee haue spoken, is not more comfor∣table & vsefull, then is the warmth therof; with a masculine vertue it quickens all kind of seeds, it makes them vegetate, & blossome, and fructifie, and brings their fruite to perfection, for the vse of man & beast, and the perpetuating of their owne kinds, nay it wonderfully re∣fresheth and cheares vp, the spirits of men and beasts, and birds, and creeping things, & not only impartsthe life of vegetation, but of sense & motion, to many thousand creatures, and like a tender parent forsters and cherisheth it being imparted. Some there are that liue with∣out the light of heauen, searching into and working vpon, those bodies which the light cannot pierce, but none without the warmth, it being in a manner the vniversall instrument of Nature, which made the Psal∣mist say that there is nothing hid from the heate of the sunne. Few things are hid from the light, but from the heate thereof nothing. Our life with∣the ligh of heaven would be tedious and vncomfortable: but without the warmth impossible. Since then such is the continuall and necessary vse of the Coelstiall warmth, aswell in regard of the generation, as the preser∣uation of these inferiour bodies, accomodating it selfe to their severall tempers and vses, in severall manners and degrees, it may easily be con∣ceiued to be a matter of marveilous greate importance in deciding the maine question touching Natures decay, to inquire thorowly into the state and condition of it, (vpon which so many and great workes of Nature wholy depend) whether it be decayed or no, or whether it still abide in the fullnesse of that strength and activitie in which it was cre∣ated. For the better cleering of which doubt, it will be very requisite first to inquire into the efficient cause thereof, which being once disco∣vered, it will soone appeare whether in the course of nature it be capable of any such diminution or no.
I am not ignorant that S. Augustine, S. Basill, S. Ambrose, and gene∣rally as many Divines, as held that there were waters, properly so tear∣med, aboue the starry firmament, held with all that the Sunne and Starres caused heate as being of a fiery Nature, those waters being set there, in their opinion, for cooling of that heate: which opinion of theirs seemes to be favoured by Syracides in the forty third of Ecclesiasticus, where he thus seakes of the Sunne, At noone it parcheth the countrey, and who can abide the burning heate there of. A man blowing a furnace is in workes of heate: but the sunne burneth the mountaines three tymes more, breathing out fiery va∣pours.