This seemeth altogether improbable to Christian piety.
CHAP. III.
The second Objection hath ranked the Author among Dreamers and false Visionaries.
Some are more moderate in the censuring of this Author, and being unwilling to call him maliciously a false Prophet, would have him to be a foolish Dreamer, who believed his own imaginations, and took pleasure in his own fancies, whence came that Latine Distick of the Poet Jodelle,
Nostra damus cum falsa damus, nam fallere nostrum est,
Et cum falsa damus, nil nisi Nostra damus.
This Distick was so pleasing to the Wits of the times, that without further inquiry, since that time Nostradamus went for a Dreamer and a doting fool.
This opinion increased more and more by his making of many Almanacks, wherein every body may see how much he was taken with judicial Astrology; and we see often in his Stanza’s the decision of the times, by the conjunction of the Planets with the Signs, and by the Eclipses, whence sometimes he doth infer some events that were to happen.
But what did undo him most, was the covetousness of the Printers and Booksellers of his time, who seeing his Almanacks so well received, did set forth a thousand others under his name, that were full of lies and fopperies.
From that time the Author went for one of those poor Astrologers, who get their living by foretelling absurdities; and pretend to read in the Heavens, that which is only in their foolish imagination.