The Christian philosopher Author:Cotton Mather Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 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 d... more »istance of the sun from us is 12,600 diameters of the earth. A diameter of the earth is 7846 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 scarce 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 t...« less