But you’ll say, it may be, Tho’ no Reason can be given for such Effects, yet Experience does attest the Truth of them. In the first Place, I answer, no Experience can be produced for this Effect we are speaking of, the Conflagration of the World. Secondly, Experience fallaciously recorded, or wholly in favour of one side, is no Proof. If a publick Register was kept of all Astrological Predictions, and of all the Events that followed upon them, right or wrong, agreeing or disagreeing, I could willingly refer the Cause to the Determination of such a Register, and such Experience: But that which they call Experience, is so stated, that if one Prediction of ten hits right, or near right, it shall make more Noise, and be more taken Notice of, than all the Nine that are false. Just as in a Lottery, where many Blanks are drawn for one Prize, yet these make all the Noise, and those are forgotten. If any one be so lucky as to draw a good Lot, then the Trumpet sounds, and his Name is register’d, and he tells his good Fortune to every Body he meets; whereas those that lose, go silently away with empty Pockets, and are asham’d to tell their Losses. Such a Thing is the Register of Astrological Experiences; they record what makes for their Credit, but drop all blank Instances, that would discover the Vanity or Cheat of their Art. So much for the Planets. They have also a pretended Calculation of the End of the World, from the fix’d Stars and the Firmament. Which, in short, is this: They suppose these Bodies, besides the Hurry of their Diurnal Motion from East to West, quite round the Earth in 24 Hours, to have another retrograde Motion from West to East, which is more slow and leisurely: And when they have finished the Circle of this Retrogradation, and come up again to the same Place from whence they started at the Beginning of the World, then this Course of Nature will be at an End; and either the Heavens will cease from all Motion, or a new Set of Motions will be put a-foot, and the World begin again. This is a Bundle of Fictions tied up in a pretty Knot. In the first Place, there is no such Thing as a solid Firmament, in which the Stars are fix’d, as Nails in a Board. The Heavens are as fluid as our Air, and the higher we go, the more thin and subtle is the ethereal Matter. Then, the fix’d Stars are not all in one Surface, as they seem to us, not at an equal Distance from the Earth, but are placed in several Orbs higher and higher; there being infinite Room in the great Deep of the Heavens, every Way, for innumerable Stars and Spheres behind one another, to fill and beautify the immense Spaces of the Universe. Lastly, the fix’d Stars have no Motion common to them all, nor any Motion singly, unless upon their own Centres; and therefore, never leaving their Stations, they can never return to any common Station, which they would suppose them to have had at the Beginning of the World. So as this Period they speak of,