In quas Fortunæ leges quæque hora valeret;
Quantaque quam parvi facerent discrimina motus.3
3 MANILIUS.
Peter Hopkins could have explained to a student in this art, how its astronomical part might be performed upon the celestial globe “with speed, ease, delight, and demonstration.” He could have expatiated upon conjunctions and oppositions; have descanted upon the four Cardinal Houses; signs fixed, moveable, or common; signs human and signs bestial; semi-sextiles, sextiles, quintiles, quartiles, trediciles, trines, biquintiles and quincunxes; the ascension of the planets, and their declination; their dignities essential and accidental; their exaltation and retrogradation; till the hearer by understanding a little of the baseless theory, here and there, could have persuaded himself that he comprehended all the rest. And if it had been necessary to exact implicit and profound belief, by mysterious and horrisonant terms, he could have amazed the listener with the Lords of Decanats, the Five Fortitudes, and the Head and Tail of the Dragon; and have astounded him by ringing changes upon Almugea, Cazimi, Hylech, Aphetes, Anacretes and Alcochodon.
“So far,” says Fabian Withers, “are they distant from the true knowledge of physic which are ignorant of astrology, that they ought not rightly to be called physicians, but deceivers:—for it hath been many times experimented and proved, that that which many physicians could not cure or remedy with their greatest and strongest medicines, the astronomer hath brought to pass with one simple herb, by observing the moving of the signs.—There be certain evil times and years of a man's life, which are at every seven years' end. Wherefore if thou wilt prolong thy days, as often as thou comest to every seventh or ninth year (if thou givest any credit to Marsilius Ficinus, or Firmicus), diligently consult with an astronomer, from whence and by what means any peril or danger may happen, or come unto thee; then either go unto a physician, or use discretion and temperance, and by that means thou mayest defer and prolong thy natural life through the rules of astronomy, and the help of the physician. Neither be ashamed to enquire of the physician what is thy natural diet, and of the astronomer what star doth most support and favour thy life, and to see in what aspect he is with the moon.”
That once eminent student in the mathematics and the celestial sciences, Henry Coley, who, as Merlin junior continued Lily's Almanac, and published also his own yearly Nuncius Sydereus, or Starry Messenger,—the said Coley, whose portrait in a flowing wig and embroidered band, most unlike to Merlin, has made his Ephemeris in request among the Graingerites,—he tells us it is from considering the nature of the planets, together with their daily configurations, and the mixture of their rays or beams of light and heat, that astrologers deduce their judgement of what may probably, not positively happen: for Nature, he observes, works very abstrusely; and one person may be able to make a better discovery than another, whence arise diversities of opinion too often about the same thing. The physician knows that the same portion of either single or compound simples will not work upon all patients alike; so neither can the like portion and power of qualities stir up, or work always the same; but may sometimes receive either intention or remission according to the disposed aptness of the subject, the elements or elementary bodies not always admitting of their powers alike, or when they be overswayed by more potent and prevalent operations. For universal and particular causes do many times differ so as the one hinders the operation of the other; and Nature may sometimes be so abstrusely shut up, that what we see not may overpower and work beyond what we see.
Thus were these professors of a pseudo-science always provided with an excuse, however grossly their predictions might be contradicted by the event. It is a beautiful specimen of the ambiguity of the art that the same aspect threatened a hump-back, or the loss of an eye; and that the same horoscope which prognosticated a crown and sceptre, was held to be equally accomplished if the child were born to a fool's-cap, a bauble, and a suit of motley. “The right worshipful, and of singular learning in all sciences, Sir Thomas Smith, the flower in his time of the University of Cambridge,” and to whom, more than to any other individual, both Universities are beholden; for when Parliament, in its blind zeal for ultra-reformation, had placed the Colleges, as well as the Religious Houses, at the King's disposal, he, through Queen Katharine Par, prevailed upon Henry to preserve them, instead of dividing them also among the great court cormorants; and he it was who reserved for them the third part of their rents in corn, making that a law which had always been his practice when he was Provost of Eton:—This Sir Thomas used, as his grateful pupil Richard Eden has recorded, to call astrology ingeniosissimam artem mentiendi,—the most ingenious art of lying.
Ben Jonson's servant and pupil4 has given some good comic examples of the way in which those who honestly endeavoured to read the stars might be deceived,—though when the stars condescended “to palter in a double sense” it was seldom in so good a humour.
One told a gentleman
His son should be a man-killer, and be hang'd for't;
Who after proved a great and rich physician,
And with great fame, in the University
Hang'd up in picture for a grave example!
——Another schemist
Found that a squint-eyed boy should prove a notable
Pick-purse, and afterwards a most strong thief;
When he grew up to be a cunning lawyer,
And at last died a Judge!
4 BROOME.