And before the age of Ennius, Euripides had in the person of Tiresias shewn how surely any such profession, if the professor believed in his own art, must lead to martyrdom, or falsehood. When the blind old Prophet turns away from Creon, he says, in words worthy of Milton's favourite poet,
Τὰ μὲν παρ᾽ ἡμῶν πάντ᾽ ἔχεις· ἡγοῦ, τέκνον,
Πρὸς οἶκον· ὅστις δ᾽ ἐμπύρῳ χρῆται τέχνῃ,
Μάταιος᾽ ἢν μὲν ἐχθρὰ σημήνας τύχῃ,
Πικρὸς καθέστηχ᾽, οἷς ἂν οἰωνοσκοπῇ,
Ψευδῆ δ᾽ ὑπ᾽ οἴκτου τοῖσι χρωμένοις λέγων,
Ἀδικεῖ τὰ τῶν θεῶν. Φοῖβον ἀνθρώποις μόνον
Χρῆν θεσπιωδεῖν, ὃς δέδοικεν οὐδένα.
The sagacity of the poet will be seen by those who are versed in the history of the Old Testament; and for those who are not versed in it, the sooner they cease to be ignorant in what so nearly concerns them, the better it may be for themselves.
Jeremy Taylor says that he reproves those who practised judicial astrology, and pretended to deliver genethliacal predictions, “not because their reason is against religion, for certainly, said he, it cannot be; but because they have not reason enough in what they say; they go upon weak principles which they cannot prove; they reduce them to practice by impossible mediums; they argue about things with which they have little conversation. Although the art may be very lawful if the stars were upon the earth, or the men were in heaven, if they had skill in what they profess, and reason in all their pretences, and after all that their principles were certain, and that the stars did really signify future events, and that those events were not overruled by every thing in heaven and in earth, by God, and by our own will and wisdom,—yet because here is so little reason and less certainty, and nothing but confidence and illusion, therefore it is that religion permits them not; and it is not the reason in this art that is against religion, but the folly or the knavery of it; and the dangerous and horrid consequents which they feel that run a-whoring after such idols of imagination.”
In our days most of those persons who can afford to employ the greater part of their thoughts upon themselves, fall at a certain age under the influence either of a physical or a spiritual director, for Protestantism has its Directeurs as well as Popery, less to its advantage and as little to its credit. The spiritual professors have the most extensive practice, because they like their patients are of all grades, and are employed quite as much among the sound as the sick. The astrologer no longer contests the ascendancy with either. That calling is now followed by none but such low impostors, that they are only heard of when one of them is brought before a magistrate for defrauding some poor credulous creature in the humblest walks of life. So low has that cunning fallen, which in the seventeenth century introduced its professors into the cabinets of kings, and more powerful ministers. An astrologer was present at the birth of Louis XIV, that he might mark with all possible precision the exact moment of his nativity. After the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day, Catherine de Medici, deep in blood as she was, hesitated about putting to death the king of Navarre and the prince of Condé, and the person of whom she took counsel was an astrologer,—had she gone to her Confessor their death would have been certain. Cosmo Ruggieri was an unprincipled adventurer, but on this occasion he made a pious use of his craft, and when the Queen enquired of him what the nativities of these Princes prognosticated, he assured her that he had calculated them with the utmost exactness, and that according to the principles of his art, the State had nothing to apprehend from either of them. He let them know this as soon as he could, and told them that he had given this answer purely from regard for them, not from any result of his schemes, the matter being in its nature undiscoverable by astrology.
The Imperial astrologers in China excused themselves once for a notable failure in their art, with more notable address. The error indeed was harmless, except in its probable consequences to themselves; they had predicted an eclipse, and no eclipse took place. But instead of being abashed at this proof of their incapacity the ready rogues complimented the Emperor, and congratulated him upon so wonderful and auspicious an event. The eclipse they said portended evil, and therefore in regard to him the Gods had put it by.
An Asiatic Emperor who calls himself Brother to the Sun and Moon, might well believe that his relations would go a little out of their way to oblige him, if the Queen of Navarre could with apparent sincerity declare her belief that special revelations are made to the Great, as one of the privileges of their high estate, and that her mother, that Catherine de Medici, whose name is for ever infamous, was thus miraculously forewarned of every remarkable event that befell her husband and her children, nor was she herself, without her share in this privilege, though her character was not more spotless in one point than her mother's in another. De ces divins advertissemens, she says, je ne me veux estimer digne, toutesfois pour ne me taire comme ingrate des graces que j'ay receües de Dieu, que je dois et veux confesser toute ma vie, pour luy en rendre grace, et que chacun le loue aux merveilles des effets de sa puissance, bonté, et misericorde, qu'il luy a plû faire en moy, j'advoueray n'avoir jamais esté proche de quelques signalez accidens, ou sinistres, ou heureux, que j'en aye eu quelque advertissement ou en songe, ou autrement; et puis bien dire ce vers,
De mon bien ou mon mal, mon esprit m'est oracle.