Chapter XXVIII
Reading edition
How Faustus was asked a question as concerning thunder
In the month of August, there was over Wittenberg a mighty great lightning and thunder, and as Doctor Faustus was jesting merrily in the market place with certain of his friends and companions being Physicians, they desired him to tell them the cause of that weather. Faustus answered: it hath been commonly seen heretofore, that before a thunder-clap fell a shower of rain or a gale of wind, for commonly after a wind followeth a rain, and after a rain a thunder-clap: such things come to pass when the four winds meet together in the heavens, the airy clouds are by force beaten against the fixed crystalline firmament, but when the airy clouds meet with the firmament, they are congealed, and so strike and rush against the firmament, as great pieces of ice when they meet on the water, the echo thereof soundeth in our ears, and that we call thunder, which indeed is none other than you have heard.