Beginning, then, with the declaration of the first of these three parts, which is the greater world, the first thing and as foundation of what we must presuppose is that, when that most magnificent and sovereign Lord by his sole goodness determined to create man in this world in the time that pleased him (so that, knowing and loving and obeying his Creator, he might merit to attain the life and blessedness of the other), he also determined to provide him with sustenance and with everything necessary for the
conservation of his life. Therefore for this he created this visible world with all the things whatsoever that there are in it, all of which we see serve the use and necessities of human life.
And just as in any workshop there must be two things, that is to say: matter from which things may be made, and a craftsman who may make them and introduce the form into the matter, as the carpenter and any other craftsman does, so the Creator provided that in this great workshop of the world there should be these two things, which are: matter from which things should be made, and craftsmen who should make them. The matter from which all things are made are the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. The craftsmen that from this matter fabricate all things are the heavens, with their planets and stars. For granted that God is the first cause that moves the other causes, yet these bodies with the intelligences that move them are the principal instruments of which he makes use for the government of this inferior world, which in such manner hangs from the movement of the heavens that the philosophers come to say that, if this movement stopped, every other movement would cease, in such manner that fire would not burn a little tow that it found beside itself. For just as, the first wheel of a clock stopping, then all the others would stop, so the movement of the heavens ceasing (on which all the other movements hang), then they also would cease.
And because these celestial bodies are the first instruments of the first mover, who is God, and have so principal an office in this world, which is to be efficient cause of everything bodily, the Creator advantaged and ennobled them with great preeminences above all the other bodies.
I. For first he made them incorruptible and impassible, though they are always in continual movement and joined to the sphere of fire. So that, after so many thousand years as have passed since they were created, they persevere in the same wholeness and beauty that they had on the day they were created, without time, waster of all things, having diminished anything of them.
II. He also gave them light, not only for ornament of the world, without which all things would be dark and sad and sunk in the abyss of darknesses, but also for the use of human life and, as the Psalmist says, he created the sun to give light by day, and the moon for the night. And because she also is absent from our hemisphere, he created the stars in her place, so that the world might never lack light.
III. He also gave them so much constancy in their movements that, since he created them, they have never varied one point from that rule and order that he put upon them in the beginning. The sun always rises at its hour, it always makes with its movement the four times of the year, and all the planets and stars do the same. From which it proceeds that those who know the order of these movements predict from there to many years the eclipses of the sun and of the moon, without lacking one point, because these movements are so regular and ordered. By whose example all those who in the Church or in the Christian commonwealth have the place and office of heavens and of stars, which is to govern and rule others, will learn how regulated and ordered and how constant they must be in their lives and offices, so that in those who are in their charge there may be no disorder, if in those who rule them there should be. For if the light that must enlighten the darknesses of others should be darkened, what will those darknesses themselves be like? And if one blind man should guide another blind man, what can be hoped for except the fall of both?
IV. Therefore the greatness of these bodies is such that it puts admiration in him who thinks it, and altogether would be incredible if we did not know that there is nothing impossible to him who created them.
V. And no less admirable, but perhaps much more, is the lightness with which they move, of which things we shall treat below, when we come to the greatnesses and marvels of God.
VI. Therefore the beauty of the heaven, who will explain it? How agreeable it is in the middle of summer on a serene night to see the full moon and so clear, that with its clarity it hides that of all the stars! How much more do those who travel by night in the summer take pleasure in this luminary than in the sun, although it is greater! But when she is absent, what thing is more beautiful and more discovers the omnipotence and beauty of the Creator than the starry heaven with so great a variety and multitude of most beautiful stars, some very large and resplendent, and others small, and others of middling greatness, which no one can count except only he who created them? But the custom of seeing this so many times takes from us the admiration of so great a beauty and the motive that it gives us to praise that sovereign painter who so knew how to beautify that so great vault of heaven.
If a child were born in a prison, and grew in it until the age of twenty-five years without seeing more than what was within those walls, and were a man of understanding, the first time that, having come out of that darkness, he saw the starry heaven on a serene night, certainly this man could not fail to be amazed at so great an ornament and beauty and at so great a number of stars that he would see in whatever part he turned his eyes, either toward East or West, or to the quarter of the North or of the South, nor could he fail to say: who could enamel such great heavens with so many precious stones and with so many diamonds so resplendent? Who could create so great a number of luminaries and lamps to give light to the world? Who could paint so beautiful a meadow with so many differences of flowers, except some most beautiful and most powerful Maker? A gentile philosopher, marveling at this work, said: Intuere coelum, et philosophare. It means: look at the heaven, and begin to philosophize, which is to say: by the great variety and beauty that you will see there, know and contemplate the wisdom and omnipotence of the author of that work. And the Prophet knew no less how to philosophize in this matter, when he said: “I shall see, Lord, your heavens, which are work of your hands, the moon and the stars that you formed.”
And if the beauty of the stars is admirable, no less so is the efficacy that they have in influencing and producing all things in this inferior world, and especially the sun, which just as it goes withdrawing from us (which is in autumn), all freshnesses and groves together with the leaf lose their beauty, until they remain naked, sterile, and as if dead. And when it turns back and approaches us, then the fields dress themselves in another livery, and the trees are covered with flowers and leaves, and the birds, which until then were mute, begin to sing and chirp, and the vines and the rosebushes then disclose their buds and shoots, preparing themselves to show the beauty that they have enclosed within themselves. Finally, so great is the dependence that this world has on the influences of
the heaven, that by however little a space something of them is impeded (as happens in the eclipses of the sun and of the moon and in the interlunations), then we feel alterations and changes in human bodies, especially in the weaker and sicklier ones.