A General View of the NUMBERS of the Heavenly Bodies.

AVING in the preceding Book given a Demonftration of God from the Magnitude of the

Heavenly Bodies, I fhall do the fame

in

in this from their Number; a Number fo great, that we cannot view and confider them without Aftonishment. Were there no more of them than the Sun, and the Planets (both Primary and Secondary) fuppofed to move about him, there would be a Number fufficient to manifeft an Almighty andWife CREATOR: But when we view the Heavens, and fee ourselves furrounded with fo prodigious a Number of illuftrious Bodies,' of various Magnitudes; when we go to other Parts of this our Globe, from the Northern, fuppofe to the Southern Pole, and there difcover a great Multitude of other Stars, that were never seen in our Hemisphere: when we perceive the Heavens thick befet with them in every Place; and when (as I already hinted) we view the Heavens with our Glaffes, and discover many more than our naked Eye could reach; and when we again

view them with better and better Inftruments, and ftill discover more and more of those Starry Globes; when particularly we furvey what they call the Milky-Way, and fee the prodigious Number, I may almoft fay Clufters, of Stars, that fill that Region of the Heavens,and caufe that remarkable whiteness there: Hay, when we fee fuch prodigious Numbers of those Heavenly Bodies, which no art of man can number; and when we farther confider, that in all probability, we do not fee the half, nay perchance not the thousandth Part of what the Heavens do con tain; as we cannot but be ftruck with, Amazement at fuch a multitude of GOD's glorious Works, fo we cannot but own the great CREATOR in them,; and we are worfe than Men, if we do not give him his due Praises.

СНАР.

CHAP. II.

That the Fixt Stars are Suns encompaffed with Syftemes of Planets.

A

LTHOUGH the Number of the Erratick and Fixt Heavenly Bodies we fee, are fufficient to fet forth the Exiftence and Praises of their great CREATOR, yet there is one thing more that I cannot eafily pals over (though it hath only high Probabilities for it) because it gives us a far more noble and agreeable Idea of the Creation, than the World was ever, that we know of, acquainted with before; and that is, That the best and most learned modern Aftronomers do generally fuppofe the great multitude of Fixt Stars we fee, or imagine to be in the Univerfe,

D

wverse, to be so many Suns, and each of them encompaffed with a Syfteme of Planets like our Sun.

AND that the Fixt Stars are Suns, or of much the fame Nature as our Sun, there is great Reason to conclude,

1. BECAUSE they are Bodies no lefs immense (as I have faid) than the Sun, but only diminifhed, in appearance, by their prodigious distances from us.

2. BECAUSE they shine by their own native Light, not by any borrowed from the Sun. For fo great are their distances from the Sun, and from us alfo, that it is not poffible their Light fhould be received from the Sun, and reflected to us, as that of the Moon and other Planets is. And withal, so brisk and vivid is their Light, and so very small their apparent Diameters, when divefted of their glaring Rays, and made to

have