In The Meane Time I Could Wish That From Hencefoorth He Would Learne To Tell Troth, & Not Presume With So Impudent A Face To Enforme Excellent Peucer, Or Others, Of Such Vnknowen And Incredible Matters.

But to returne to Munster, who endeuouring to search out the causes of the great and strange fire of that famous hill Aetna, is it not monstrous that the very same thing which he there maketh natural, he should here imagine to be preternaturall, yea infernal?

But why do I speake of Aetna? Let vs rather consider what Munster in another place thinketh of the burning of Hecla.

[Sidenote: Munsterus Cosmograph. vniuersalis lib. 1. cap. 7.] It is without doubt (saith he) that some mountaines and fields burned in old time throughout the whole world: and in this our age do burne. As for example: mount Hecla in Island at certaine seasons casteth abroad great stones, spitteth out brimstone, and disperseth ashes, for such a distance round about, that the land cannot be inhabited within 20. miles thereof. But where mountaines do continually burne we vnderstand that there is no stopping of the passages, wherby they poure forth abundance of fire sometime flaming, & sometime smoaking gas it were a streaming flood. But if betweene times the fire encreaseth, all secret passages being shut vp, the inner parts of the mountaine are notwithstanding enflamed. The fire in the vpper part, for want of matter, somewhat abateth for the time. But when a more vehement spirite (the same, or other passages being set open again) doth with great violence breake prison, it casteth forth ashes, sand, brimstone, pumistones, lumpes resembling iron, great stones, & much other matter, not without the domage of the whole region adioyning.

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