“You boast much of the event of a few predictions, which, considering the multitude of those your art has produced, plainly confess its impertinency. A million of deceptions are industriously hidden and forgot, in favour of some eight or ten things which have succeeded[12]. Out of so many conjectures, it must be preternatural if some do not hit; and it is certain, that, by considering you only as guessers, there is no room to boast you have been successful therein. Do you know what fate awaits France in this war; and yet are not apprehensive what shall befal yourself? Did you not foresee the opposition I was this day to make you? If you can say whether the king will vanquish his enemies, find out first whether he will believe you. DES CARTES and AGRIPPA, as they inveigh much against some other sciences, especially Agrippa, so the latter of them does not favour or spare astronomy, but particularly astrology, which he says, is an art altogether fallacious, and that all vanities and superstitions flow out of the bosom of astrology, their whole foundation being upon conjectures, and comparing future occurrences by past events, which they have no pretence for, since they allow that the heavens never have been, nor ever will be, in one exact position since the world commenced, and yet they borrow the effects and influence of the stars from the most remote ages in the world, beyond the memory of things, pretending themselves able to display the hidden natures, qualities, &c. of all sorts of animals, stones, metals, and plants, and to shew how the same does depend on the skies, and flow from the stars. Still Eudoxus, Archelaus, Cassandrus, Halicarnassus, and others, confess it is impossible, that any thing of certainty should be discovered by the art of judicial astrology, in consequence of the innumerable co-operating causes that attend the heavenly influences; and Ptolemy is also of this opinion. In like manner those who have prescribed the rules of judgments, set down their maxims so various and contradictory, that it is impossible for a prognosticator out of so many various and disagreeable opinions, to be able to pronounce any thing certain, unless he is inwardly inspired with some hidden instinct and sense of future things, or unless by some occult and latent communication with the devil. And antiquity witnesseth that Zoroaster, Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Cæsar, Crassus, Pompey, Diatharus, Nero, Julian the Apostate, and several others most addicted to astrologers’ predictions, perished unfortunately, though they were promised all things favourable and auspicious. And who can believe that any person happily placed under Mars, being in the ninth, shall be able to cast out devils by his presence only; or he who hath Saturn happily constituted with Leo at his nativity, shall, when he departs this life, immediately return to heaven, yet are the heresies maintained by Petrus Aponensis, Roger