N00277:41
Kometographia. Or A discourse concerning comets; wherein the nature of blazing stars is enquired…
Kometographia. Or A discourse concerning comets; wherein the nature of blazing stars is enquired into: with an historical account of all the comets which have appeared from the beginning of the world unto this present year, M.DC.LXXXIII. : Expressing the place in the heavens, where they were seen, their motion, forms, duration; and the remarkable events which have followed in the world, so far as they have been by learned men observed. : As also two sermons occasioned by the late blazing stars. / By Mr. Increase Mather, teacher of a church at Boston in New-England. ; [Three lines of Scripture texts]Kometographia. Or A discourse concerning comets; wherein the nature of blazing stars is enquired into: with an historical account of all the comets which have appeared from the beginning of the world unto this present year, M.DC.LXXXIII. : Expressing the place in the heavens, where they were seen, their motion, forms, duration; and the remarkable events which have followed in the world, so far as thay have been by learned men observed. : As also two sermons occasioned by the late blazing stars. / By Mr. Increase Mather, teacher of a church at Boston in New-England. ; [Three lines of Scripture texts]
printed by S.G. for S.S. i.e, 1683
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
The Sentiments of learned Men, concerning the place where and the matter out of which Comets are made; have been very various. The Peripatetic School has fancied them to be Meteors, generated out of the Bowels of the Earth, exhaled and extolled by the Sun to the supreme Region of the Air, and there set on Fire. It would be needless and endless to tell how many have after Aristotle embraced this fiction, but it may not be unprofitable in a few words to evince the contrary, viz. That Comets are not placed in the first heaven or Air, but far above ⟨p. 2⟩it, in the second or Starry Heaven, and that therefore they are rather Stars than Meteors.
THe Sentiments of learned Men, concerning the place where and the matter out of which Comets are made; have been very various. The Peripatetick School has phansied them to be Meteors, generated out of the Bowels of the Earth, exhaled and extolled by the Sun to the supream Region of the Air, and there set on Fire. It would be needless and endless to tell how many have after Aristotle embraced this fiction, but it may not be unprofitable in a few words to evince the contrary, viz. That Comets are not placed in the first heaven or Air, but farr above ⟨p. 2⟩it, in the second or Starry Heaven, and that therefore they are rather Stars than Meteors.
1. That most learned Mathematician Hevelius his argument from the motion of Comets is irrefragable awhatever body (saith he) is moved in the great Circle, dividing the Sphere, and keeping fixed Poles, is certainly Ethereal and not Aerial. But this is true of every Comet; its diurnal or common motion, is absolved as other Celestial bodies are, which cannot be said of any sort of Meteors; yea, the motion thereof is exact and regular, though at first its more swift, and afterwards more slow, yet in that inequality, there is an exact proportion and regularity observed, when as it is otherwise with Meteors that are tossed to and fro, and move not through the great Circle. The motion of Comets doth very much imitate not that of the fixed Stars, but of the Planets, whence they are by some called Pseudo-Planetae and by others Spurious-Planets. And the Holy Scripture seems to give that name of Planets to them, or as our Translation hath it wandering Stars,