Page:The Captivity of Hans Stade of Hesse.pdf/128

to be correct. "Yes," say they, "who has been in the heavens, and has seen these things, and has measured them?"

Answer: Because daily experience of these things agrees with the demonstration. One must consider them true, even as it is true that if I add together the figures three and two, these will make five.

And from certain reasons and clear proofs in science, it happens that man can measure and calculate how high it is to the moon's firmament, and from there to all the planets, and, last of all, to the starry heavens. Yea, also the dimensions and size of the sun, the moon, and the other heavenly bodies; and from the study of the heavens, or astronomy, with geometry, we can even calculate how wide, round, broad and long the earth is. Yet these things are unknown to the unlearned man, and are considered by him as unworthy of belief. Ignorance would also be pardonable in the common person, as he has not studied much in philosophy. But that the highly important and the almost learned should doubt those things which are proved true is shameful and also harmful, as the ordinary man looks up to these, and their error being thus confirmed to him, says: "If this were true, then it would not have been contradicted by this or the other writer." Ergo, etc.

That St. Augustine and Lactantius Firmianus, the two most learned, holy, and well-experienced men, not only in theology, but also in other arts, doubt and will not admit that the antipodes can exist, viz., that men are found who on the opposite side of the earth, and under us, walk with their feet towards us, and therefore have their head and body hanging underneath them and against the heavens, and yet do not fall off, etc. This sounds strange, and yet it is everywhere held by scientific men to be so, and that it cannot be otherwise, and it is found true, however much the holy and highly learned authors mentioned above have denied it. For this must be the positive fact, that those