CHAP. IV.] ASTROLOGY PERVERTED. 129 



and physical contemplations, but in the direct experience and 

 observation of past ages, and therefore not to be examined by 

 physical reasons, as the Chaldeans boasted, he may at the same 

 time bring back divination, auguries, soothsaying, and give 

 in to all kinds of fables ; for these also were said to descend 

 from long experience. But we receive astrology as a part of 

 physics, without attributing more to it than reason and the 

 evidence of things allow, and strip it of its superstition and 

 conceits. Thus we banish that empty notion about the 

 horary reign of the planets, as if each resumed the throne 

 thrice in twenty-four hours, so as to leave three hours super 

 numerary : and yet this fiction produced the division of the 

 week, a thing so ancient and so universally received. Tims 

 likewise we reject, as an idle figment, the doctrine of horo 

 scopes, and the distribution of the houses, though these are 

 the darling inventions of astrology, which have kept revel, 

 as it were, in the heavens. And we are surprised that some 

 eminent authors in astrology should rest upon so slender an 

 argument for erecting them, as because it appears by ex 

 perience that the solstices, the equinoxes, the new and full 

 moon, &c. have a manifest operation upon natural bodies, 

 therefore the more curious and subtile positions of the stars 

 must produce more exquisite and secret effects : whereas, 

 laying dilJe those operations of the sun, which are owing to 

 manifest heat, and a certain attractive virtue of the moon, 

 which causes the spring tide ; the other effects of the planets 

 upon natural bodies are, so far as experience reaches, exceed 

 ing small, weak, and latent. Therefore the argument should 

 run thus : since these greater revolutions are able to effect so 

 little, those more nice and trifling differences of positions 

 will have no force at all. And lastly, for the calculation of 

 nativities, fortunes, good or bad hours of business, and the 

 like fatalities, they are mere levities that have little in them 

 of certainty and solidity, and may be plainly confuted by 

 physical reasons. 



And here we judge ifc proper to lay down some rules for 

 the examination of astrological matters, in order to retain 

 what is useful therein, and reject what is insignificant. Thus, 

 1. Let the greater revolutions be retained, but the lesser of 

 horoscopes and houses }y& rejected, the former being like 

 ordnance, which shoot tp a great distance, whilst the other 

 2 K 



