threw a tincture of severity and moroseness over the religion of the Jews; he it was that made them obstinate and covetous, and their Sabbath accordingly is his day. In like manner the character of the Turks and their day of rest have been determined by the planet Venus, which is the star of their religion. And as Christianity began under the influence of the Sun, Sunday is the Christian Sabbath; and the visible head of the Christian Church has his seat in Rome, which is a solar city, its foundations having been laid when the Sun was in Leo, his proper House. Farther proof of this influence is, that the Cardinals wear red, which is a solar colour. [Footnote 1: WALLENSTEIN.] Dr. Jenkin, in his Discourses upon the Reasonableness and certainty of the Christian Religion, takes into his consideration the opinion of those persons who thought that the stars would shine to little purpose unless there were other habitable worlds besides this earth whereon we dwell. One of the uses for which they serve he supposes to be this, that in all ages the wits of many men whose curiosity might otherwise be very ill employed, have been busied in considering their end and nature, and calculating their distances and motions:—a whimsical argument, in advancing which he seems to have forgotten the mischievous purposes to which so much of the wit which had taken this direction had been applied. Yet these fancies of the wildest astrologers are not more absurd than the grave proposition of John Craig, whose “_Theologiæ Christianæ Principia Mathematica_” were published in London at the close of the 17th century. He asserted, and pretended to show by mathematical calculations, that the probability of the truth of the Gospel history was as strong at that time, as it would have been in the days of our Saviour himself, to a person who should have heard it related by twenty-eight disciples; but that, upon the same mathematical grounds, the probability will entirely cease by the year 3150; there would then be no more faith on earth, and, consequently, according to St. Luke, the world would then be at an end, and the Son of Man would come to judge the quick and the dead. Bayle always ridiculed that sort of evidence which is called mathematical demonstration. CHAPTER XCVI. A MUSICIAN'S WISH EXCITED BY HERSCHEL'S TELESCOPE. SYMPATHY BETWEEN PETER HOPKINS AND HIS PUPIL. INDIFFERENTISM USEFUL IN ORDINARY POLITICS, BUT DANGEROUS IN RELIGION. _Noi intendiamo parlare alle cose che utili sono alla umana vita, quanto per nostro intendimento si potrà in questa parte comprendere; e sopra quelle particelle che detto avemo di comporre._ BUSONE DA GUBBIO.