ken deep root in the
minds of men, as because Christians, generally speaking, are as far gone
in the folly of finding presages in every thing, as infidels themselves.
It may be easily conceived how the pagans might be brought stedfastly to
believe that comets, eclipses, and thunderstorms, were the forerunners
of calamities, when man's strong inclination for the marvellous is
considered, and his insatiable curiosity for prying into future events,
or what is to come to pass. This desire of peeping into futurity, as has
already been shown, has given birth to a thousand different kinds of
divination, all alike whimsical and impertinent, which in the hands of
the more expert and cunning have been made most important and
mysterious tools. When any one has been rogue enough to think of making
a penny of the simplicity of his neighbours, and has had the ingenuity
to invent something to amuse, the pretended faculty of foretelling
things to come, has always been one of the readiest projects. From hence
always the assumption of judiciary astrology. Those who first began to
consult the motions of the heavens, had no other design in view, than
the enriching their minds with so noble a knowledge; and as they had
their genius bent on the pursuit of useful knowledge, they never dreamed
of converting astrology or a knowledge of the stars to the purpose of
picking the pockets of the credulous and ignorant, of whose blind side
advantage was taken by these sideral sages to turn them to account by
making them believe that the doctrine of the stars comprehended the
knowledge of all things that were, or are, or ever shall be; so that
every one, for his money, might come to them and have their fortune
told.

The better to gull the world, the Star-gazers assert that the heavens
are the book in which God has written the destiny of all things; and
that it is only necessary to learn to read this book, which is simply
the construction of the stars, to be able to know the whole history of
what is to come to pass. Very learned men, Origen and Plotinus among the
rest, were let into the secret, and grew so fond of it, that the
former,[122] willing to support his opinion by something very solid,
catches at the authority of an Apocryphal book, ascribed to the
patriarch Joseph, where Jacob is introduced speaking to his twelve sons:
"I have read in the register of heaven what shall happen to you and your
children."[123] But comets were the staple commodity