That these heavenly bodies can naturally halt, the author of the Scholastic History [Peter Comestor] once said, as Abulensis [Tostatus] reports (on 4 Kings, chapter 20, question 25; and on 1 Chronicles, chapter 4, question 18). And although he brought forward no reasons [for it], it pleases [me] to adduce four on its behalf. First: every year we see two solstices, the summer and the winter [one]. Secondly: that the planets are, and are called, “stationary,” experience teaches, and Astrology in the Theorics. Thirdly: the noble Mathematician of this age, Nicolaus Copernicus — called “a second Ptolemy,” and praised both by our Clavius (chapters 1 & 4 of the Sphere) and by Magini (in the book of the Theorics, in the preface to Torialus and to the Reader), and by many others — teaches that the Sun is always at rest, and is the center of the whole universe (book 1 of the Revolutions, chapters 9 & 10). Fourthly: the motions of the lower heavens are natural, since (as Aristotle teaches at the beginning of On the Heavens book 1, chapter 2) every physical body claims for itself some [proper] motion; therefore the rest of these same [bodies] is also natural — for of motion and of rest there is one and the same principle, a natural one (book 2 of the Physics, chapter 1). The decision of this question is fit and bound up with various [matters] which pertain to the disputations of other sciences.
I say briefly. First: if the heavens — and so the Sun and Moon — be considered according to Aristotle’s opinion, in no natural way can there be rest and a standing-still in them. For hence, in Metaphysics book 9, chapter 4, text 17, he said that “it need not be feared that the heavenly bodies should stand still.” And he adds the cause of this: that there is not in them a potency [for the]…
(col. 1005)
…[there would lie a danger] of contradiction — namely, that [the heavens] should both be moved and not moved. To this opinion of their Master [Aristotle] most of the Greek Philosophers thoroughly assented: Themistius, Philoponus, Simplicius (on Physics book 2), Alexander of Aphrodisias (book 2 of the Natural Questions, chapter 18).
Secondly: if according to the truth [of the matter] these same heavens, and the Sun and Moon, be regarded, rest can in some way be called natural to them. But this mode can be set forth, with probability, in two ways. One: that the heaven, by reason both of its matter and of its form, is said of its own nature, and from the propensity of its nature, to be moved and not moved indifferently — to undergo motion, and to cease from it. So the Coimbrans (On the Heavens book 1, chapter 2, question 3, article 4). The other: that, by the propensity of its nature — which the conjunction of such matter and form produces — the heaven simply wills to rest in such a place as natural [to it], because, namely, it is composed of that most tenuous watery matter, as is the air, and that which above this is called fire, though [the heaven] itself is still grosser than either. And thus the heavens are now moved in a circle — and so the two great luminaries here [the Sun and Moon] — in that manner in which the air and that fire are now said by the Philosophers to be turned, for the use of men; except that these lower [bodies] are snatched along by the higher bodies, but the heavens [are moved] by a cause devoid of body [an incorporeal mover], as the common opinion of the Philosophers and Theologians says — on which [see] the same Coimbrans (On the Heavens book 2, chapter 5, question 5). But after the Day of Judgment, and whenever some greater utility can come to be for men (which is known to God’s judgment alone), their settled order and rest can be natural.
Thirdly: although it is natural for the Sun and Moon not to be moved in their heavens but to rest [under such conditions], yet in Joshua’s time it was a great miracle that they rested — because the divine order, by which He governs this world, [is] so established and perpetually maintained (unless some extraordinary cause, such as will appear hereafter, intervene), that the heaven, with restless motion, day and night, journeys round in its orbit, and [so do] all its stars, both the fixed and the wandering.
But the [arguments] which the head of the Question raises are not difficult. For to the First, concerning the solstice, answer has already been made in the previous Question. To the Second: the planets never truly stand still, but [only] appear after the manner of those that stand still, since the two lines — [the line] of their true [motion], and [the line] of the centers which their epicycles have — are drawn with equal speed relative to the Zodiac into different parts of the heaven; namely so, that by however great an arc of true motion the planet’s line is rolled into the preceding signs, by so great an [arc] of true motion the line of the epicycle’s center is carried into the following [signs] — as Peurbach explains in the second part of the Theorics, and Magini (book 2, chapter 11), where he also explains that this “station,” though apparent, is nonetheless false, [and] that it falls upon the Sun and Moon [too] — because they lack epicycles. To the Third: Copernicus is indeed in other respects a noble Mathematician, and deservedly praised; but, along with others, these two hypotheses of his especially are hissed off the stage by all. The former, that the Sun is the center of the world; the latter, that the Earth is in the fifth heaven with the lunar orb, below Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars, above Venus and Mercury and even the Sun itself, fixed to an epicycle, by a threefold motion of the heaven.
…[carried about] by a threefold [motion]. And although he dedicated those Revolutions of his to the Supreme Pontiff Paul III — that he might escape all reproach — yet these hypotheses, if they were asserted as truly and seriously [held], I do not see how they could even be free from heresy. For Scripture always attributes rest to the Earth, and motion to the Sun and Moon; so that whenever those heavenly bodies do rest, it signifies that this comes about by a great miracle. “The Earth,” says Ecclesiastes (chapter 1, verse 4), “stands forever. The Sun rises and sets, and returns to its place, and there, being born again, wheels through the south, and bends toward the North.” Psalm 42 [as printed; the verse is Psalm 92(93)], verse 1: “[The Lord] has established the world, which shall not be moved.” Psalm 102 [as printed; the verse is Psalm 103(104)], verse 5: “Who hast founded the Earth upon its own stability; it shall not be inclined for ever and ever.” [It is to be] added that all the Philosophers of all [schools] — except Nicetas and a few Pythagoreans — blow away and condemn that opinion; [against it are] all the pronouncements of the holy Fathers, all the schools of all the Theologians. Nor indeed is it safe or seemly, in matters so certain and clear, to invent falsehoods and to defend [mere] problems.
Elias [Levita] in the Tishbi [says]: “The heavens are called galgallim [גלגלים, ‘wheels’]” — because, as in Psalm 77 [76:19 Vulg.], “the voice of [Thy] thunder [is] in the galgal [wheel],” namely from this, that they go round assiduously. And there are seven galgallim, in each of which is one of the moving stars, which the Heathen falsely called “wandering [stars]” and “Planets.” Hence rightly Seneca, in the book To Polybius [On Consolation], chapter 26, compares the Emperor [Caesar] to the heavenly bodies: “From the time,” he says, “that Caesar dedicated himself to the world, he took [himself] away from himself; and, after the manner of the heavenly bodies — which restlessly ever unfold their courses — he is never permitted anywhere to halt, nor to do anything of his own.” To the Fourth: since it conflicts with nothing of what has been said, there is no need to answer.