Various Systems And Theories Appear To Have Prevailed Among The Ancients
Respecting The Figure And Motion Of The Earth; Some Justly Enough
Supposing It To Be A Ball Or Sphere, Suspended In Infinite Space, While
Others Conceived It To Be A Flat Surface, Floating Upon And Surrounded
By An Interminable Ocean.
The just conceptions of some ancient
philosophers, respecting the spherical figure of the earth, and its
diurnal motion around its own axis, were superseded by others of a more
popular nature, and forgotten for many ages.
Lactantius and Augustine,
two fathers of the catholic church, unfortunately adopted the idea of
the earth being a flat surface, infinitely extending downwards;
grounding this false notion upon a mistaken interpretation of the holy
scriptures, or rather seeking assistance from them in support of their
own unphilosophical conceptions. So strongly had this false opinion
taken possession of the minds of men, in our European world, even after
the revival of learning in the west, that Galileo was imprisoned by the
holy inquisitors at Rome for asserting the sphericity of the earth, and
the doctrine of antipodes, and had to redeem his liberty and life, by
writing a refutation of that heretical doctrine, which satisfied the
inquisitors, yet convinced the world of its truth.
Columbus assuredly grounded his grand discovery of America upon the
knowledge of the earth being a sphere; and had not the new western world
intervened, his voyage had probably been the first circumnavigation. In
modern times, an idea has been advanced that Columbus only retraced the
steps of some former navigator, having seen certain parts of the grand
division of the world which he discovered, already delineated on a
globe.
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