It may have been heresy--I am no scholar--but he pointed a good moral.

For, said he, the old things pass away and the boundaries of the world are shifting.
Here in Europe we have come to knowledge of salvation, and brought the soul and mind of man to an edge and brightness like a sword.

Having perfected the weapon, it is now God's will that we enter into possession of the new earth which He has kept hidden against this day, and He has sent His Spirit like a wind to blow us into those happy spaces....
Now, mark you, sir, this earth is not a flat plain surrounded by outer darkness, but a sphere hung in the heavens and sustained by God's hand.
Therefore if a man travel east or west he will, if God prosper him, return in time to his starting-point." The speaker looked at Philip as if to invite contradiction, but the other nodded.
"It is the belief of the best sailors," Battista went on; "it is the belief of the great Paolo Toscanelli in this very land of Italy." "It was the belief of a greater than he.

The ancients--" "Ay, what of your ancients ?" Battista asked eagerly.
Philip responded with a scholar's zest.

"Four centuries before our Lord's birth Aristotle taught the doctrine, from observing in different places the rise and setting of the heavenly bodies.