Page:The Discovery of a World in the Moone, 1638.djvu/181

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164
The discovery

through a diaphanous matter, but in an opacous substance they are doubled in their returne and multiplyed by reflexion. Now if the moone and the other Planets can shine so clearely by beating backe the Sunne beames, why may not the earth also shine as well, which agrees with them in the cause of this brightnesse their opacity?

2. Consider what a cleare light wee may discerne reflected from the earth in the middest of Summer, and withall conceive how much greater that must bee which is under the line, where the rayes are more directly and strongly reverberated.

3. Consider the great distance at which wee behold the Planets, for this must needs adde much to their shining and therefore Cusauus (in the above cited place) thinkes that if a man were in the Sunne, that Planet would not appeare so bright to him, as now

it