the priests praise God in the sun and in the stars, as it were His
altars, and in the heavens, His temple as it were; and they pray
to good angels, who are, so to speak, the intercessors living in
the stars, their strong abodes. For God long since set signs of
their beauty in heaven, and of His glory in the sun. They say
there is but one heaven, and that the planets move and rise of
themselves when they approach the sun or are in conjunction
with it.

They assert two principles of the physics of things below,
namely, that the sun is the father, and the earth the mother;
the air is an impure part of the heavens; all fire is derived from
the sun. The sea is the sweat of earth, or the fluid of earth
combusted, and fused within its bowels, but is the bond of
union between air and earth, as the blood is of the spirit and
flesh of animals. The world is a great animal, and we live
within it as worms live within us. Therefore we do not belong
to the system of stars, sun, and earth, but to God only; for in
respect to them which seek only to amplify themselves, we are
born and live by chance; but in respect to God, whose instru-
ments we are, we are formed by prescience and design, and for
a high end. Therefore we are bound to no father but God, and
receive all things from Him. They hold as beyond question the
immortality of souls, and that these associate with good angels
after death, or with bad angels, according as they have likened
themselves in this life to either. For all things seek their like.
They differ little from us as to places of reward and punish-
ment. They are in doubt whether there are other worlds be-
yond ours, and account it madness to say there is nothing.
Nonentity is incompatible with the infinite entity of God. They