ABSTRACT
Against those 'who, 'while 10ishing to profess Christianily, thillk aud imagine like the paga llS that the heaven is spherical.
many as ardently desire true knowledge and are lovers of the true light, and earnestly endeavour to becomc fellowcitizens of the saints in the age to come, who regard the Old and New Testament as in reality divine scripture, ",ho are
obedient to Moscs and the Christ, who follow out to the end the principles they have adopted, who acknowledge
8 CHRISTIAN TOPOGRAPHY OF
that the world was produced by God out of mere nothing, and who believe that there is a resurrection of men and a judgment, and that the righteous shall inherit the Kingdom of Heaven ; all these carefully examine the divine scriptures all throughoUt, to see whether in Moscs, who wrote thc account of the Creation, and in the other Prophets, they
COSMAS INDICOPLEUSTES.-BOOK 1. 9
contain descriptions of the places and figures of the whole creation, among which is indicated also the position of the Kingdom uf Heaven, which the Lord Christ promises God will give to righteous men. And when they find the Old and Ncw Testaments to bc in mutual harmony, they abide therein firmly grounded and immovable, in nothing confounded by their adversaries. But those on the other hand who prank themselves out in the wisdom of this world, and are self-confident that by scholastic reasonings they can comprehend its figure and position, scoff at aU divine scripture as a mass of fables, stiglnatising Moses and thc prophets, thc Lord Christ and the Apostles as idle babblers,l 117 and given over to vain delusions; whilc with supercilious airs, as if they far surpassed in wisdom the rest of man kind, they attribute to the heavens a spherical figure and a circular motion, and by geometrical methods and calculations applied to the heavenly bodies, as weU as by the abuse of words and by worldly craft, endeavour to grasp the position and figure of the world by means of the solar and lunar eclipses, leading others into error while they are in error themselves in maintaining that such phenomena could not present themselves if the figure was other than spherical. But concerning these matters we shall not enter into any discussion just at present, since those persons sufficiently confute the one the other. But those who wish to profess Christianity, while wishing at the same thne to
bedeck themselves with the principles, the wisdom, and thc diversity of the errors of this world, and contend that one thing and another should be accepted, seem to differ nothing from a shadow w hieh exists while the intermediate body from which it is projected is in light, hut whieh cannot exist when that body is not in light, nay, is even obliterated by the light when the body is illuminated all round.
