ith the help
of an exuberant imagination, they would make a transition to the higher
regions--to the celestial bodies and the stars to which, indeed, they
ascribed no less a power than that of deciding the destinies of men, and
which, consequently, must have had a considerable share in shortening or
prolonging the duration of human life--every nation or kingdom was
subjected to the dominion of its particular planet the time of whose
government was determined; and a number of ascendant powers were
fictitiously contrived, with a view to reduce, under its influence,
every thing which was produced and born under its administration. The
professors of astrology appeared as the confidents of these invisible
rulers, and the interpreters of their will; they were well versed in the
art of giving a respectable appearance to this usurped dignity. Provided
they could but ascertain the hour and minute of a person's birth, they
confidently took upon themselves to predict his mental capacities,
future vicissitudes of life, and the diseases he would be visited with,
together with the circumstances, the day and hour of his death.[75]

Not only the common people, but persons of the highest rank and
stations, nay, even men the most distinguished for their rank and
abilities, did homage to those "gods of their idolatry," and lived in
continual dread of their occult powers. With anxious countenance and
attentive ears, they listened to the cantrip effusions of these
pretended oracles, which prognosticated the bright or gloomy days of
futurity. Even physicians were solicitous to qualify themselves for
appointments no less lucrative than respectable:--they forgot, over the
dazzling hoards of Mammon, that they are peculiarly and professedly the
pupils of nature.--The curious student in the universities found
everywhere public lecturers, who undertook to instruct him in the
profound arts of divination, chiromancy, and the _cabala_.

Among other instances, the following anecdote is related of the noted
Thurneisen, who, in the seventeenth century, was invested, at Berlin,
with the respectable offices of printer to the court, bookseller,
almanack-maker, astrologer, chemist, and first physician. Messengers
daily arrived from the most respectable houses in Germany, Poland,
Hungary, Denmark, and even from England, for the purpose of consulting
him respecting the future fortunes[76] of their new-born infants,
acquainting him with the hour of the nativi