hey offer to the world as genuine
from the planets, although they descend from no greater height than their
own brains.

I intend, in a short time, to publish a large and rational Defence of
this Art; and therefore shall say no more in its justification at present
than that it hath been, in all Ages, defended by many Learned Men; and,
among the rest, by SOCRATES himself, whom I look upon as undoubtedly the
wisest of uninspired mortals. To which if we add, that those who have
condemned this Art, although otherwise learned, having been such as
either did not apply their studies this way, or at least did not succeed
in their applications; their testimonies will not be of much weight to
its disadvantage, since they are liable to the common objection of
condemning what they did not understand.

Nor am I at all offended, or think it an injury to the Art, when I see
the common dealers in it, the _Students in Astronomy_, the _Philomaths_,
and the rest of that tribe, treated by wise men with the utmost scorn and
contempt: but I rather wonder, when I observe Gentlemen in the country,
rich enough to serve the nation in Parliament, poring in PARTRIDGE's
_Almanack_ to find out the events of the year, at home and abroad; not
daring to propose a hunting match, unless GADBURY or he have fixed the
weather.

I will allow either of the two I have mentioned, or any others of the
fraternity, to be not only Astrologers, but Conjurers too, if I do not
produce a hundred instances in all their _Almanacks_, to convince any
reasonable man that they do not so much as understand Grammar and Syntax;
that they are not able to spell any word out of the usual road, nor even,
in their _Prefaces_, to write common sense, or intelligible English.

Then as their Observations or Predictions, they are such as will suit any
Age or country in the world.

_This month, a certain great Person will be threatened with death or
sickness_. This the News Paper will tell them. For there we find at the
end of the year, that no month passeth without the death of some Person
of Note: and it would be hard if it should be otherwise, where there are
at least two thousand Persons of Note in this kingdom, many of them old;
and the _Almanack_ maker has the liberty of choosing the sickliest season
of the year, where he may fix his prediction.

Again, _This month, an eminent Clergyman will be preferred_. Of which,
there may be some hundreds, half of them with one foot in the