The breakdown in the boundaries of perception which arises out of the Baroque crisis of consciousness relates to an even more profound challenge to the sacerdotal, ordered worldview of the past. During the seventeenth century, the established perception of the very limits of time and space is called into question. The Baroque subject is stripped of a past sense of integration into the cosmos and faces the threat of dissolution in the indefinite expanse of the universe. Eternity and infinity seem to engulf him, and he projects his fear of self-dissolution onto the phenomenal world; he envisions the world engulfing itself. While Reformation theologians saw the portents of Apocalypse in the findings of the new astronomy, the intimation of Apocalypse is ultimately rooted in the Baroque response to the idea of infinity (Nicolson 119). As Frank J. Warnke states,

In its treatment of time, space, and the Baroque presentiment of Apocalypse, the Soledades is a true artefact of the consciousness of its age.