What makes a body saving quantity? What quantitie unlesse extension? Extension if ’t admit infinity Bodies admit boundlesse dimension. That some extension forward on doth run Withouten limits, endlesse, infinite Is plane from Space, that ever paceth on Unstop’d, unstaid, till it have filled quite That immense infinite Orb where God himself doth sit. 37 But yet more sensibly this truth to show If space be ended set upon that end Some strong arm’d Archer with his Parthian bow, That from that place with speedy force may send His fleeter shafts, and so still forward wend. Where? When shall he want room his strength to trie? But here perversly subtill you’l contend Nothing can move in mere vacuity, And space is nought, so not extended properly. 38 To solve these knots I must call down from high Some heavenly help, feather with angels wing The sluggish arrow. If it will not flie, Sent out from bow stiff-bent with even string, Let angels on their backs it thither bring Where your free mind appointed had before, And then hold on, till in your travelling You be well wearied, finding ever more Free passage for their flight, and what they flying bore. 39 Now to that shift that sayes Vacuity Is nought, and therefore not at all extent We answer thus: There is a distancy In empty space, though we be well content To balk that question (for we never meant Such needlesse niceties) whether that it be A reall being; yet that there’s parts distent One from another, no mans phantasie Can e’re reject if well he weigh’t and warily. 40 For now conceive the aire and azure skie All swept away from Saturn to the Sunne, Which each is to be wrought by him on high. Then in this place let all the Planets runne (As erst they did before this feat was done) If not by nature, yet by divine power, Ne one hairs breadth their former circuits shun And still for fuller proof, th’ Astronomer Observe their hights as in the empty heavens they scoure. 41 Will then their Parallaxes prove all one Or none, or different still as before? If so, their distances by mortall men Must be acknowledg’d such as were of yore, Measur’d by leagues, miles, stades, nor lesse nor more From circuit unto circuit shall be found Then was before the sweeping of the floor. That distance therefore hath most certain ground In emptinesse we may conclude with reason sound. 42 If distance now so certainly attend All emptinesse (as also mensuration Attendeth distance) distance without end Is wide disperst above imagination (For emptinesse is void of limitation) And this unbounded voidnesse doth admit The least and greatest measures application; The number thus of the greatest that doth fit This infinite void space is likewise infinite. 43