alle that use any maner of wichecraft or any misbileve, that alle suche forsaken the feyth of holy churche and their Cristendome, and bicome Goddes enmyes, and greve God full grevously, and falle into dampnacion withouten ende, but they amende theym the soner.'

St.

Cornelius Agrippa, in his Vanity of Sciences, p. 98, exposes astrology as the mother of heresy, and adds: "Besides this same fortune-telling astrology, not only the best of moral philosophers explode, but also, Moses, Isaias, Job, Jeremiah, and all the other prophets of the ancient law; and among the Catholic writers, St. Austin condemns it to be utterly expelled and banished out of the territories of Christianity. Hierome argues the same to be a kind of idolatry. Basil and Cyprian laugh at it as most contemptible. Chrysostome, Eusebius, and Lactantius utterly condemn it. Gregory, Ambrose, and Severianus inveigh against it. The Council of Toledo utterly abandon and prohibit it. In the synod of Martinus, and by Gregory the Younger, and Alexander the Third, it was anathematized and punished by the civil laws of the emperors. Among the ancient Romans it was prohibited by Tiberius, Vitellius, Dioclesian, Constantin, Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodosius, ejected also, and punished. By Justinian made a capital crime, as may appear in his Codex." He pleasantly observes of astrologers, that "undertaking to tell all people most obscure and hidden secrets abroad, they at the same know not what happens in their own houses and in their own chambers. Even such an astrologer as More laught at them in his epigram:

'The stars, ethereal bard, to thee shine clear,
And all our future fates thou mak'st appear.
But that thy wife is common all men know,
Yet what all see, there's not a star doth show.
Saturn is blinde, or some long journey gone,
Not able to discern an infant from a stone.
The moon is fair, and as she's fair she's chaste,
And wont behold thy wife so leudly embract,
Europa Jove, Mars Venus, she Mars courts,
With Daphne Sol, with Hirce Hermes sports.
Thus while the stars their wanton love pursue,
No wonder, cuckold, they'll not tell thee true.'"

Strype, in his Annals of the Reformation, ii. 16, sub. ann. 1570, says:

And because the welfare of the nation did so

much depend upon the queen's marriage, it seems were employed, secretly by calculating her nativity, to enquire into her marriage. For which art even Secretary Cecil himself had some opinion. I have met among his papers with such a judgment made, written all with his own hand."

Lodge, in his Incarnate Devils, 1596, p. 12, thus glances at the superstitious follower of the planetary houses: "And he is so busie in finding out the houses of the planets, that at last he is either faine to house himselfe in an hospitall, or take up his inne in a prison." At p. 11 also, is the following: "His name is Curiositie, who not content with the studies of profite and the practise of commendable sciences, setteth his mind wholie on astrologie, negromancie, and magicke. This divel prefers an Ephimerides before a Bible; and his Ptolemey and Hali before Ambrose, golden Chrisostome, or S. Augustine: promise him a familiar, and he will take a flie in a box for good paiment... He will shew you the devill in a christal, calculate the nativitie of his gelding, talke of nothing but gold and silver, elixir, calcination, augmentation, citrination, commentation; and swearing to enrich the world in a month, he is not able to buy himself a new cloake in a whole year. Such a divell I knewe in my daies, that having sold all his land in England to the benefite of the coosener, went to Andwerpe with protestation to enrich Monsieur the king's brother of France, le feu Roy Harie I meane; and missing his purpose, died miserably in spight at Hermes in Flushing." Ibid. p. 95, speaking of desperation, Lodge says: "He persuades the merchant not to traffique, because it is given him in his nativity to have losse by sea; and not to lend, least he never receive again." Hall, in his Virgidemiarum, book ii. sat. 7, says:

"Thou damned mock-art, and thou brainsick tale
Of old astrologie"-

"Some doting gossip 'mongst the Chaldee wives
Did to the credulous world the first derive;

And superstition nurs'd thee ever sence,

And publisht in profounder arts pretence:

That now, who pares his nailes, or libs his swine
But he must first take counsell of the signe."

In a Map of the Microcosme, by H. Browne, 1642, we read: "Surely all astrologers are Erra Pater's disciples, and the divel's professors, telling their opinions in spurious ænig

matical doubtful tearmes, like the oracle at Delphos. What a blind dotage and shameless impudence is in these men, who pretend to know more than saints and angels. Can they read other men's fates by those glorious characters the starres, being ignorant of their owne? Qui sibi nescius, cui præscius? Thracias the soothsayer, in the nine years drought of Egypt, came to Busiris the tyrant, and told him that Jupiter's wrath might bee expiated by sacrificing the blood of a stranger: the tyrant asked him whether he was a stranger: he told him he

was

Thou, quoth Busiris, shalt that stranger bee.
Whose blood shall wet our soyle by destinie.'

"If all were served so, we should have none that would relye so confidently on the falshood of their ephemerides, and in some manner shake off all divine providence, making themselves equal to God, between whom and man the greatest difference is taken away, if man should foreknow future events."

Fuller, in his Good Thoughts in Bad Times, 1669, p. 37, has this passage: "Lord, hereafter I will admire Thee more and fear astrologers lesse: not affrighted with their doleful predictions of dearth and drought, collected from the collections of the planets. Must the earth of necessity be sad, because some ill-natured star is sullen? As if the grass could not grow without asking it leave. Whereas thy power, which made herbs before the stars, can preserve them without their propitious, yea, against their malignant aspects."

In the Character of a Quack Astrologer, 1673, we are told: "First, he gravely inquires the business, and by subtle questions pumps out certain particulars which he treasures up in his memory; next, he consults his old rusty clock, which has got a trick of lying as fast as its master, and amuses you for a quarter of an hour, with scrawling out the all-revealing figure, and placing the planets in their respective pues; all which being dispatched, you must lay down your money on his book, as you do the wedding fees to the parson at the delivery of the ring; for 'tis a fundamental axiome in his art, that, without crossing his hand with silver, no scheme can be radical: then he begins to tell you back your own tale in other language, and you take that for divination which is but repetition." Also, signat. B. 3: "His groundlesse guesses he calls resolves, and compels the stars (like knights o'th'

post) to depose things they know no more than the man i'th' moon as if hell were accessory to all the cheating tricks hell inspires him with.” Also, in the last page: "He impair God's universal monarchy, by making the stars sole keepers of the liberties of the sublunary world; and, not content they should domineer over naturals, will needs promote their tyranny in things artificial too, asserting that all manufactures receive good or ill fortunes and qualities from some particular radix, and therefore elects a time for stuing of pruins, and chuses a pisspot by its horoscope. Nothing pusles him more than fatal necessity: he is loth to deny it, yet dares not justify it, and therefore prudently banishes it his theory, but hugs it in his practice, yet knows not how to avoid the horns of that excellent dilemma propounded by a most ingenious. modern poet:

'If fate be not, how shall we aught foresee?
Or how shall we avoid it, if it be?

If by free-will in our own paths we move,
How are we bounded by decrees above?"

Werenfels, in his Dissertation upon Superstition, p. 6, says, speaking of a superstitious man: "He will be more afraid of the constellation-fires, than the flame of his next neighbour's house. He will not open a vein till he has asked leave of the planets. He will avoid the sea whenever Mars is in the middle of Heaven, lest that warrior god should stir up pirates against him. In Taurus he will plant his trees, that this sign, which the astrologers are pleased to call fix'd, may fasten them deeper in the earth. . . He will make use of no herbs but such as are gathered in the planetary hour. Against any sort of misfortune he will arm himself with a ring, to which he has fixed the benevolent aspect of the stars, and the lucky hour that was just at the instant flying away, but which, by a wonderful nimbleness, he has seized and detained."

Gaule, in his Mag-astromancers Posed and Puzzel'd, p. 181, asks: "Where is the source and root of the superstition of vain observation, and the more superstitious ominations thereupon to be found, save in those arts and speculations that teach to observe creatures, images, figures, signes, and accidents, for constellational, and (as they call them) second stars; and so to ominate and presage upon them, either as touching themselves or others? As, namely, to observe layes

for lucky or unlucky, either to travail, sail, fight, build, marry, plant, sow, buy, sell, or begin any businesse in.

In Sir Aston Cokain's Poems, 8vo. Lond. 1658, is the following quip for astrologers: "70. To astrologers.

'Your industry to you the art hath given

To have great knowledge in th' outside of Heaven :
Beware lest you abuse that art, and sin,

And therefore never visit it within." "

Astrology," says the Courtier's Calling, &c. by a person of honour, 1675, p. 242, "imagines to read in the constellations, as in a large book, every thing that shall come to pass here below; and figuring to itself admirable rencounters from the aspects and conjunctions of the planets, it draws from thence consequences as remote from truth as the stars themselves are from the earth. I confess, I have ever esteemed this science vain and ridiculous: for, indeed, it must either be true or false: if true, that which it predicts is infallible and inevitable, and consequently unuseful to be foreknown. But, if it is false, as it may easily be evinced to be, would not a man of sense be blamed to apply his minde to, and lose his time in, the study thereof? It ought to be the occupation of a shallow braine, that feeds itself with chimerical fancies, or of an imposter who makes a mystery of every thing which he understands not, for to deceive women and credulous people." In the Athenian Oracle, iii. 149, we read: "Astra regunt homines, sed regit astra Deus, is a maxim held by all astrologers."

Sheridan, in his notes on Persius, 2d edit. 1739, p. 79, says: "To give some little notion of the ancients concerning horoscopes. The ascendant was understood by them to be that part of Heaven which arises in the east the moment of the child's birth. This containing thirty degrees was called the first house. In this point the astrologers observed the position of the celestial constellations, the planets, and the fixed stars, placing the planets and the signs of the zodiack in a figure which they divided into twelve houses, representing the whole circumference of heaven. The first was angulus orientis, (by some called the horoscope,) shewing the form and complexion of the child then born; and likewise the rest had their several significations, too tedious to be inserted here, because of no use in the least. The heathen astrologers, in