Philosophumena; or, The refutation of all heresies, Volume I
David Hume · en
in some (they do evil), but in others good, of which they call these
malefic and those benefic. And they say that (the Planets) behold one
another and are in harmony with one another as they appear in trine
(or square). Now the stars beholding one another are figured in trine
when they have a space of three signs between them, but in square if
they have two. And as in the man the lower parts suffer with the head
and the head suffers with the lower parts, thus do the things on earth
[Sidenote: p. 192.] with those above the Moon. But (yet) there is a
certain difference and want of sympathy between them since they have
not one and the same unity.
This alliance and difference of the stars, although a Chaldæan
(doctrine), those of whom we have spoken before have taken as their
own and have falsified the name of truth. (For they) announce as the
utterance of Christ a strife of aeons and a falling-away of good powers
to the bad, and proclaim reconciliations of good and wicked.[200]
Then they invoke Toparchs and Proastii,[201] making for themselves
also very many other names which are not obvious but systematize
unsystematically the whole idea of the astrologers about the stars. As
they have thus laid the foundation of an enormous error they shall be
completely refuted by our appropriate arrangement. For I shall set side
by side with the aforesaid Chaldaic art of the astrologers some of the
doctrines of the Peratics, from which comparison it will be [Sidenote:
p. 193.] understood how the words of the Peratics are avowedly those of
the astrologers, but not of Christ.