398 HISTORY OF FORMAL ASTRONOMY. 



absurd my doctrine would appear, I long hesitated 

 whether I should publish my book, or whether it 

 were not better to follow the example of the 

 Pythagoreans and others, who delivered their doc- 

 trines only by tradition and to friends." It will 

 be observed that he speaks here of the opposition 

 of the established school of Astronomers, not of 

 Divines. The latter, indeed, he appears to con- 

 sider as a less formidable danger. " If perchance," 

 he says at the end of his preface, "there be m 

 raio\oyot, vain babblers, who knowing nothing of 

 mathematics, yet assume the right of judging on 

 account of some place of Scripture perversely 

 wrested to their purpose, and who blame and attack 

 my undertaking ; I heed them not, and look upon 

 their judgments as rash and contemptible." He 

 then goes on to show that the globular figure of 

 the earth (which was, of course, at that time, an 

 undisputed point among astronomers,) had been 

 opposed on similar grounds by Lactantius, who, 

 though a writer of credit in other respects, had 

 spoken very childishly in that matter. In another 

 epistle prefixed to the work (apparently from ano- 

 ther hand, and asserted by Kepler s to be by Andreas 

 Osiander), the reader is reminded that the hypo- 

 theses of astronomers are not necessarily asserted 

 to be true, by those who propose them, but only 

 to be a way of representing facts. We may ob- 



8 See the motto to Kepler's De Stella Marti*. 



