Page:The Captivity of Hans Stade of Hesse.pdf/127

commonalty many recounted matters appear impossible, yet when those matters are laid before men of knowledge, and are well weighed, they are found to be correct and consistent, and they also prove themselves so to be.

This observe from one or two examples taken from astronomy. We people who live here in Germany, or near by, know from long experience how long winter and summer, as well as the other two seasons, autumn and spring, endure; therefore how long and how short are the longest day in summer and the shortest day in winter, and through this, also, what the nights are.

Now, for instance, when it is said that there are certain parts of the world where the sun for half a year does not set, and where the longest day with those people is six months, that is half a year long; likewise that places are found in the world, where in one year the "quatuor tempora," that is, the four seasons, are doubled, therefore that two winters and two summers certainly exist there in one year. Likewise that the sun with all the stars, small as they appear to us here to be, yet that the smallest star in the heavens is larger than the whole earth, and that there are innumerably many of them.

Now when the comman man hears these things, he greatly despises them and he believes them not, and considers them as things which are impossible. Yet these matters are so thoroughly proved by astronomers, that those having knowledge of the science do not doubt them.

Therefore it must not on this account follow, that because the mass consider these things untrue, they are really so; and how badly would the art of astronomers fare, if they could not demonstrate these heavenly bodies, and foretell from certain causes the eclipses, that is, the darkenings of the sun and moon, for fixed days and hours when they shall occur. Yes,men have announced them even some hundred years beforehand, and they have been found by experience