instrument wherewith our good God has in a singular manner favoured and enriched us: a messenger that has brought unto us, from very distant regions, most wonderful discoveries.

My God, I cannot look upon our glasses without uttering thy praises: by them I see thy goodness to the children of men!

By this enlightener of our world, it is particularly discovered, That all the planets at least, excepting the Sun, are dense and dark bodies; and that what light these opaque bodies have, is borrowed from the Sun.

That every one of the planets, excepting the Sun, do change their faces like the Moon. Venus and Mercury appear sometimes like an half-moon, and sometimes quite round, according as they are more or less opposite to the Sun. Mars has his times of appearing in a curve-lined figure. Jupiter has four little stars, that continually move about him, and in doing so, cast a shadow upon him. Saturn has a ring encompassing him.

That each of these planets have spots in their superficies, like those of the Moon.

That not only each of these planets, but the Sun also, beside whatever other motion they may have, do move themselves upon their own centre; some of them with a motion of revolution, others by that of libration.

It was a good remark made by one of the ancients, What is heaven with the decorations of nature, but a kind of glass, which reflects the workmanship of the great Architect?

The pagan Tully, contemplating the admirable order, and the incredible constancy of the heavenly bodies and their motions, adds upon it:

whosoever thinks this is not governed by mind and understanding, is himself to be accounted void of all mind and understanding.

According to Mr. Hugens, the distance of the sun from us is 12,000 diameters of the earth. A diameter of the earth is 7,846 miles. The distance of the nearest fixed stars from us, compared with that of the sun, is as 27,664 to 1: So then the distance of the nearest fixed stars is at least 2,404,520,928,000 miles; which is so great, that if a cannon ball (going all the way with the same velocity it has when it parts from the mouth of the gun) would searce arrive there in 700,000 years. Great God, what is thy immensity!

- The number of the stars! The learned Arndt has a good thought upon it: If God has made such a multitude of stars, who can doubt, that he has by far a greater number of heavenly spirits, who are continually singing his praise.

"Glorious God, I give thanks to thee, for the benefits and improvements of the sciences, granted by thee unto these our latter ages. The glasses which our God has given us the discretion to invent, and apply for the most noble purposes, are favours of Heaven most thankfully to be acknowledged.

"The world has much longer enjoyed the Scriptures, which are glasses, that bring the best of Heavens much nearer to us. But though the object glasses are here, the eye glasses are wanting. My God, bestow thou that faith upon me, which, using the prospective of thy word, may discover the heavenly world, and acquaint me with what is in that world, to which I hope, I am going.

"I hear a great voice from the starry heavens, ascribe ye greatness to our God. Great God, what a variety of worlds hast thou created! How astonishing are the dimensions of them! How stupendous are the displays of thy greatness, and of thy glory, in the creatures, with which thou hast replenished those worlds! Who can tell what angelic inhabitants may there see and sing the praises of the Lord! Who can tell for what uses those marvellous globes may be designed! Of these unknown worlds I know thus much, it is our great God that has made them all."

ESSAY III. Of the FIXED STARS.

OUR great prospective having made inquiry, finds a far greater number of stars, than what we can discern with the naked eye. The ancients reckoned only one thousand and twenty-two stars in their fifty constellations. Kepler augments the number to one thousand three hundred and ninety two. Bayer carries it on to one thousand seven hundred and nine. Travellers to the southward increased the number of their constellations to sixty-two. The number of the stars, brought down into our latest globes, is about nineteen hundred; but those in the heavens are inconceivably more. Among the pleiades in a circle of but one degree diameter, where our naked eye sees but six, thus assisted we see forty-six.

The milky-way is nothing but an infinite number of stars, which are so small, and lie so thick, as to give but a confused glare unto us: and so the nebuloso, in the head of Orion.

The prœsepe is a cluster of more than forty Those adjacent unto the sword and girdle

stars.

of Orion about forescore. Mr. Derham suspects, that the whiteness of the milky-way is not caused by the great number of the fixed stars in that place, but partly by their light, and partly by the reflection of their planets, which blend their light, and mix it.

It is a little surprising, that all the planets ap pear greater in the glass than to the naked eye; but the fixed stars appear smaller there.

The words of the ingenious Dr. Cheyne are worth considering: "Since our fixed stars are exactly of the same nature with our sun, it is very likely that they have their planets; and these planets have satellites; and these planets and satellites have inhabitants, rational and irrational; plants and vegetables, water and fire; analogous to those of our system." Ascribe ye greatness to our God!

That which renders it probable, that the fixed stars are bodies like our sun, is this: It is plain they shine by their own light. It is impossible they should appear so lucid as we see them, from the light of our sun transmitted upon them. It is their astonishing distance from us that causes the best of our telescopes to lessen them. Though we in this globe approach nearer to them, some 24,000 diameters of the earth, or 188,304,000 iniles, one time of the year than another; yet their parallax is hardly sensible, or any at all: which could not be, if the distance were not wonderful.

Hence also, it is impossible they should be all in the surface of the same sphere, since our sun, which is one of them, cannot be reduced to this rule. They are doubtless at as immense

distances from one another, as the nearest of them is from us. Were we at such a distance from the sun, we should not have the least glimpse of the planets that now attend it. Their light would be too weak to affect us, and all their orbs would be united in that one lucid point of the sun.

There are discovered new stars in the firmament, which, having appeared a certain time, do again disappear.

A new star appeared about 125 years before the birth of our Saviour.

388.

Claudian mentions one which appeared, A. C. Albumazer Haly mentions one which appeared in the fifteenth degree of Scorpio, and con. tinued four months.

In the year 1571, and the month of November, there appeared in that constellation, which we call the chair of Cassiopeia, a most notable and wonderful star of the first magnitude, which held a place among the other stars, not having any parallax, and kept a course like theirs: It continued fifteen months; then decreased; anon grew quite invisible. A noble person affirms, there was a black spot remaining in the place where that star appeared.

In the year 1601, there appeared a new star of the third magnitude, in the swan's breast, which continued visible twenty-five years, and then disappeared. Thirty-three years after, it appeared again in its former magnitude; but went away again in a year or two. It re-appeared five years after, and was extant for several years, but of no more than the sixth or seventh magnitude.

In the year 1671, another star which arrived to the third magnitude, appeared in the swan's bill;