Pouring forth its seas everywhere, then, the ocean envelops the earth and fills its deeper chasms.

Moreover, since the sun remains stationary, whatever appears as a motion of the sun is really due rather to the motion of the earth.

Perhaps there will be prattlers who, although completely ignorant of mathematics, nevertheless take it upon themselves to pass judgment on mathematical questions, and on account of some passage in Scripture, badly distorted to their purpose, will dare to censure and assail what I have presented here.

So, influenced by these advisors and this hope, I have at length allowed my friends to publish the work, as they had long besought me to do.

In the midst of all dwells the sun.

The earth together with its surrounding waters must in fact have such a shape as its shadow reveals, for it eclipses the moon with the arc of a perfect circle.

In the center of all rests the sun. For who would place this lamp of a very beautiful temple in another or better place that this wherefrom it can illuminate everything at the same time? As a matter of fact, not unhappily do some call it the lantern; others, the mind and still others, the pilot of the world. Trismegistus calls it a "visible God"; Sophocles' Electra, "that which gazes upon all things." And so the sun, as if resting on a kingly throne, governs the family of stars which wheel around.