Bacon, Guido, Bonatus, Arnoldus de Villanova, philosophers; Aliacensis, cardinal and divine, and many other famous Christian doctors, against which astrologers the most learned Picus Mirandola wrote twelve books, so fully as scarcely one argument is omitted against it, and gave the death blow to astrology! Amongst the ancient Romans it was prohibited, and most of the holy fathers condemned, and utterly banished it out of the territories of Christianity, and in the synod of Martinus it was anathematized. As to the predictions of Thales, who is said to have foretold a scarcity of olives and a dearth of oil, so commonly avouched by astrologers to maintain the glory of their science, Des Cartes answers with an easy reason and probable truth, that Thales being a great natural philosopher, and thereby well acquainted with the virtue of water, (which he maintained was the principle of all things,) he could not be ignorant of the fruits that stood the most in need of moisture, and how much they were beholden to rain for their growth, which then being wanting, he might easily know there would be a scarcity without the help of astrology; yet if they will have it that Thales foreknew it only by the science of this art, why are not others who pretend to be so well skilled in its precepts, as able to have the same opportunities of enriching themselves? As for the foretelling the deaths of emperors and others, it was but conjectures, knowing most of them to be tyrants, and hated, and thereupon would they pretend to promise to others the empires and dignities, which sometimes spurring up ambitious minds, they neglected no attempts to gain the crown, the astrologers thereby occasioning murders, add advancements by secret instructions, rather than by any rules of art, which they publicly pretended to, to gloss their actions and advance the honour of their conjecturing science: by the same manner might Ascletarion have foretold the death of Domitian, and as for himself being torn to pieces by dogs, it was but a mere guess, for astrologers do not extend their predictions beyond death, and therefore he did not suppose his body would be torn to pieces after his death, as it proved, but alive as a punishment for his boldness in foretelling the death of the emperor, which being a common punishment, had it proved so, it had been by probability from custom, but not of the rules of astrology.—_See_ BLOME’s _Body of Philosophy_, pt. iii. chap. 14, _in the history of Nature_. ON THE ORIGIN AND IMAGINARY EFFICACY OF AMULETS & CHARMS, _In the Cure of Diseases, Protection from Evil Spirits, &c._