piter ascended the horizon, in
conjunction with the first star of sagitary, Jupiter was indeed at that
time in conjunction with a star thirty degrees eastward of sagitary, and
in good truth it was the pernicious scorpion that presided at the birth
of this happy, this incomparable child." And so it would, as Shakspeare
says, "if my mother's cat had kittened. This," says our sagacious bard,
"is the excellent foppery of the world, that when we are sick in
fortune, (after the surfeit of our own behaviour) we make guilt of our
disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars; as if we were villains by
necessity; fools, by heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and
treachers, (traitors) by spherical predominance; drunkards, liars, and
adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence; and all
that we are evil in by a divine thrusting on; an admirable evasion of a
whoremaster to lay his goatish tricks to the charge of a star! My father
compounded with my mother under the dragon's tail; and my nativity was
under _Ursa major_; so that it follows I am rough and treacherous.--Tut!
I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament
twinkled at my bastardizing." Thus it is evident, that astrology is
built upon no principles, that it is founded on fables, and on
influences void of reality. Yet absurd as it is, and even was, it
obtained credit; and the more it spread, the greater injury was done to
the cause of virtue. Instead of the exercise of prudence and wise
precautions, it substituted superstitious forms and childish practices;
it enervated the courage of the brave by apprehensions grounded on puns,
and encouraged the wicked, by making them lay to the charge of a planet
those evils which only proceeded from their own depravity.

But not content with such absurdities, which destroyed the very idea of
liberty, they asserted that these stars, which had not the least
connection with mankind, governed all the parts of the human body, and
ridiculously affirmed that the ram presided over the head, the bull over
the gullet, the twins over the breast, the scorpion over the entrails,
the fishes over the feet, etc. The juggles of astrology have been
admirably ridiculed by Butler in the following lines:

Some by the nose with fumes trepan 'em,
As Dunstan did the devil's grannam;
Others, with characters and words,
Catch 'em, as men in nets do birds;
And some with symbols, signs, and tricks,
Engrav'd in