Si Sol splendescat Mariâ purificante,
Major erit glacies post festum quam fuit ante.
So is it usual among us to qualifie and conditionate the twelve months of the year, answerably unto the temper of the twelve days in Christmas; and to ascribe unto March certain borrowed days from April; all which men seem to believe upon annual experience of their own, and the received traditions of their fore-fathers.
Now it is manifest, and most men likewise know, that the Calenders of these computers, and the accounts of these days are very different; the Greeks dissenting from the Latins, and the Latins from each other; the one observing the Julian or ancient account, as great Britain and part of Germany; the other adhering to the Gregorian or new account, as Italy, France, Spain, and the united Provinces of the Netherlands. Now this later account by ten days at least anticipateth the other; so that before the one beginneth the account, the other is past it; yet in the several calculations, the same events seem true, and men with equal opinion of verity, expect and confess a confirmation from them all. Whereby is evident the Oraculous authority of tradition, and the easie seduction of men, neither enquiring into the verity of the substance, nor reforming upon repugnance of circumstance.
And thus may divers easily be mistaken who superstitiously observe certain times, or set down unto themselves an observation of unfortunate months, or dayes, or hours; As did the Egyptians, two in every month, and the Romans, the days after the Nones, Ides and Calends. And thus the Rules of Navigators must often fail, setting down, as Rhodiginus observeth, suspected and ominous days in every month, as the first and seventh of March, the fift and sixt of April, the sixt, the twelfth and fifteenth of February. For the accounts hereof in these months are very different in our days, and were different with several Nations in Ages past; and how strictly soever the account be made, and even by the self-same Calender, yet is it possible that Navigators may be out. For so were the Hollanders, who passing Westward through fretum le Mayre, and compassing the Globe, upon their return into their own Country, found that they had lost a day. For if two men at the same time travel from the same place, the one Eastward, the other Westward round about the earth, and meet in the same place from whence the first set forth; it will so fall out, that he which hath moved Eastward against the diurnal motion of the Sun, by anticipating dayly something of its circle with his own motion, will gaine one day; but he that travelleth Westward, with the motion of the Sun, by seconding its revolution, shall lose or come short a day. And therefore also upon these grounds that Delos was seated in the middle of the earth, it was no exact decision, because two Eagles let fly East and West by Jupiter, their meeting fell out just in the Island Delos.
[CHAPTER V]
A Digression of the wisdom of God in the site and motion of the Sun.
Having thus beheld the ignorance of man in some things, his error and blindness in others, that is, in the measure of duration both of years and seasons, let us a while admire the Wisdom of God in this distinguisher of times, and visible Deity (as some have termed it) the Sun. Which though some from its glory adore, and all for its benefits admire, we shall advance from other considerations, and such as illustrate the artifice of its Maker. Nor do we think we can excuse the duty of our knowledge, if we only bestow the flourish of Poetry hereon, or those commendatory conceits which popularly set forth the eminency of this creature; except we ascend unto subtiler considerations, and such as rightly understood, convincingly declare the wisdom of the Creator. Which since a Spanish Physitian Valerius de Philos. Sacr.hath begun, we will enlarge with our deductions; and this we shall endeavour from two considerations; its proper situation, and wisely ordered motion.
And first we cannot pass over his providence, in that it moveth at all; for had it stood still, and were it fixed like the earth, there had been then no distinction of times, either of day or year, of Spring, of Autumn, of Summer, or of Winter; for these seasons are defined by the motions of the Sun; when that approacheth neare our Zenith, or vertical Point, we call it Summer, when furthest off, Winter, when in the middle spaces, Spring or Autumn, whereas remaining in one place these distinctions had ceased, and consequently the generation of all things depending on their vicissitudes; making in one hemisphere a perpetual Summer, in the other a deplorable and comfortless Winter. What the natural day is. And thus had it also been continual day unto some, and perpetual night unto others; for the day is defined by the abode of the Sun above the Horizon, and the night by its continuance below; so should we have needed another Sun, one to illustrate our Hemisphere, a second to enlighten the other; which inconvenience will ensue in what site soever we place it, whether in the Poles, or the Æquator, or between them both; no spherical body of what bigness soever illuminating the whole sphere of another, although it illuminate something more than half of a lesser, according unto the doctrine of the Opticks.