Elementary arithmetic, with brief notices of its history... by Robert Potts.

2

ON THE DIVISIONS AND MEASURES OF TIME.

In the very brief notices of the records of creation contained in
the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, it is stated that the Creator
made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the less
light to rule the night, and set them in the expanse to give light upon
the earth; and that he also ordained them to be for signs and for
seasons, and for days and for years.
From the earliest times the whole expanse of the starry heavens
has appeared (as may be observed on a clear night) to move round
the earth as stationary, during the alternate periods of darkness and
light, in orderly succession. The sun, the moon, and " the wandering
stars " also appeared, as they do now, to move round the earth within
this vast expanse, in the boundary of which the fixed stars appear as
shining points of different degrees of brightness.
The sun, the source of light, was observed to rise successively and
regularly in the east, and to.move round the heavens, giving light to
the earth, and to go down in the west; and the period of darkness
came on and lasted until the sun rose again on the next morning in
the east. The sun also, besides its daily rising and setting, appeared
to move round the whole circle of the heavens during the period of
the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
The moon also, like the sun, appeared to move round the earth,
and to pass through a regular succession of changes, alternately waxing
and waning in brightness. These risings and settings of the sun, the
changes of the moon, and the orderly succession of the seasons, marked
the primitive divisions and periods of time.
It is highly probable that before the deluge the period of the
month was reckoned from observing the number of days in which the
moon passes through all its.changes from new moon to new moon, or
from full moon to full moon. The month was reckoned to consist of
thirty days at the time of the deluge. For it appears from the
axis and round the sun was contrary to the ScriFtures, and the following sentence of
the Inquisition on Galileo in 1633, is founded on this infallible decree. "The proposition that the sun is in the centre of the world and immovable from its place, is
absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical, because it is expressly contrary to
the Holy Scriptures." " The proposition that the earth is not the centre of the world,
nor immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal motion, is also absurd,
philosophically false; and, theologically considered, at least erroneous in faith."
The Papal decree is acknowledged in the following declaration printed on the
seventh page of the third volume of an edition of Newton's Principia. It was
edited by the Jesuit fathers Le Seur and Jacquier, and published at Geneva in
3.vols. 4to, in 1742. "'Newton, in this third book, assumes the hypothesis of the
motion of the earth. The propositions of the author could not be explained otherwise than by making the same hypothesis. From this circumstance we have been
compelled to personate the character of another; but we profess to obey the decrees
made by the supreme pontiffs against the motion of the earth."
That the motion of the earth is "expressly contrary to the Holy Scriptures,"
cannot be maintained without perverting the plain sense of Scripture. Natural
phenomena are described in the Scriptures as they appear, and no claims or pretences are therein found to, explain the true system of the universe.
From the following extract of a letter of Cardinal Mai to the late Canon Townsend,
it appears that the dogmas and decrees of Infallible Authority once issued, stand
irrevocable for all time. " Saneta quidem Romana Ecclesia in dogmatibus semel
definitis perstat, semperque perstabit: neque a Conciliorum quorumlibet cecumenicorum placitis unquam recedet;" that is, "The Holy Roman Church stands, and
always will persist in standing, firmly on its dogmas once defined; and will never
recede from the decisions of any (Ecumenical Councils whatsoever."-Canon Town-r
send's Journzal of a Tour in Italy in 1850.