Page:The Discovery of a World in the Moone, 1638.djvu/99

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
82
The discovery

did Plato also assent[1], when hee considered that there was the like eclipse made by the earth, and this, that it had no light of its owne, that it was so full of spots. And therefore wee may often reade in him and his followers,[2] of an ætherea terra, and lunares populi, an æthereall earth, and inhabiters in the Moone; but afterwards this was mixed with many ridiculous fancies: for some of them considering the mysteries implied in the number 3. concluded that there must necessarily bee a Trinity of worlds, whereof the first is this of ours, the second in the Moone whose element of water is represented by the spheare of Mercury, the aire by Venus, and the fire by the Sunne. And that the whole Universe might the better end in earth as it began, they have contrived it, that Mars shall be a spheare of the fire, Jupiter of aire, Saturne of water; and above all these, the Elysian fields, spacious

  1. Plat. de conviviis.
  2. Macrob. Somn. Scip. lib. 1. ca. 11.
and