♦_By Ab. Fleming._♦ _Si sol splendescat Maria purificante, Major erit glacies post festum quàm fuit ante,_ _If Maries purifieng daie, Be cleare and bright with sunnie raie, Then frost and cold shalbe much more, After the feast than was before._ ♦_By Ab. Fleming._♦ _Serò rubens cœlum cras indicat esse serenum, Si manè rubescit, ventus vel pluvia crescit._ _The skie being red at evening, Foreshewes a faire and cleare morning; But if the morning riseth red, Of wind or raine we shalbe sped._ ♦_By Ab. Fleming._♦ Some sticke a needle or a buckle into a certeine tree, neere to the cathedrall church of S. _Christopher_, or of some other saint; hoping thereby to be delivered that yeare from the headach. Item maids forsooth hang some of their haire before the image of S. _Urbane_, bicause they would have the rest of their haire grow long and be yellow. Item, women with child runne to church, and tie their girdles or shoo latchets about a bell, and strike upon the same thrise, thinking that the sound thereof hasteth their good deliverie. But sithence these things beginne to touch the vanities and superstitions of incantations, I will referre you thither, where you shall see of that stuffe abundance; beginning at the word _Habar_. ♦Seeke more hereof in the word Habar.♦ The xvi. Chapter. _How old writers varie about the matter, the maner and the meanes, whereby things augurificall are mooved._ _Theophrastus_ and _Themistius_ affirme, that whatsoever happeneth unto man suddenlie and by chance, commeth from the providence of God. So as _Themistius_ gathereth, that men in that respect prophesie, when they speake what commeth in their braine, upon the sudden; though not knowing or understanding what they saie. And that seeing God hath a care for us, it agreeth with reason (as _Theophrastus_ saith) that he shew us by some meane whatsoever shall happen. For with _Pythagoras_ he concludeth, that all foreshewes and auguries are the voices and words of God, by the which he foretelleth man the good or evill that shall beetide. ♦_Averroes. 12. metaphysic._♦ _Trismegistus_ affirmeth, that all augurificall things are mooved by divels; _Porphyrie_ saith by gods, or rather good angels: according to the opinion of _Plotinus_ and _Iamblichus_. Some other affirme they are mooved by the moone wandering through the twelve signes of the Zodiake: bicause the moone hath dominion in all sudden matters. The _Aegyptian_ astronomers hold, that the moone ordereth not those portentous matters, but _Stella errans_, a wandering starre, &c. The xvii. Chapter. _How ridiculous an art augurie is, how Cato mocked it, Aristotles reason against it, fond collections of augurors, who allowed, and who disallowed it._