Lilly's opinions, and his pretended science, were such favourites of the age, that the learned Gataker[80] wrote professedly against this popular delusion. At the head of his star-expounding friends, Lilly not only formally replied to, but persecuted Gataker annually in his predictions, and even struck at his ghost, when beyond the grave. Gataker died in July 1654, and Lilly, having written in his almanack for that year, for the month of August, the following barbarous latin line-- Hoc in tumbo, jacet presbyter et nebulo! Here in this tomb lies a presbyter and a knave, had the impudence to assert, that he had predicted Gataker's death! But the truth is, it was an empty epitaph to the "Lodgings to let:" it stood empty, reader, for the first passenger that the immortal ferryman should carry over the Styx. But hear that arch imposter Old Patridge of more modern date whose _gulleries_ appear to have no end. "The practice of astrology is divided into speculative and theoretical." (Astronomy and judicial astrology). The first teaches us how to know the stars and planets, and to find their places and motions. The second directs us to the knowledge of the influence and operations of the stars and planets upon sublunary bodies, and without this last the former is of little use. Astronomy cannot direct and inform us of the secret influences and operations of the stars and planets, without the assistance of' the _most sublime_ art of astrology. For astronomy is conversant about the subject of this art, and doth furnish the astrologer with matter whereon to exercise his judgment, but astrology disposes this matter into predictions, or rational conjectures, as time and occasion require. "The practice again is subdivided into two parts, or quadripartite, as Ptolomy (lib. 2) declares: the first considers the general state of the world, and from eclipses and comets, great conjunctions, annual revolutions, quarterly ingressions and lunations, also the rising, culminating, and setting of the fixed stars, together with the configurations of the planets both to the sun and among themselves, judgment is deduced, and the astrologer doth frame his annual predictions of all sensitive and vegetative things lying in the air, earth, or water; of plague, plenty, dearth, mutations of the air, wars, peace, and other general accidents of countries, provinces, cities, etc.