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Order of Contents
Articles 3
Quote 1
History 2
Latin 1
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Articles
1500’s
Musculus, Wolfgang – ‘Against calculators which do ascribe the necessity of stealing to stars, Gen. 1’ in Common Places of the Christian Religion (1560; London, 1563), 8th Commandment, folio 91.a
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1600’s
Turretin, Francis – 7. ‘From the use of the luminaries posited by Moses can judiciary astrology be built up? We deny against the astrologers and planetarians.’ in Institutes of Elenctic Theology, tr. George M. Giger, ed. James Dennison Jr. (1679–1685; P&R, 1992), vol. 1, 5th Topic, pp. 452-57
van Mastricht, Peter – bk. 3, ch. 6 in Theoretical-Practical Theology (RHB), vol. 3
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Quote
1700’s
Barthold Holtzfus
‘Theological Dissertation on Creation’ (Frankfurt: Steppinus, 1706), ch. 3, Of the Six Days, pp. 37-41 trans. AI Latin
“XX. The use of the stars is that:
[1.] They illuminate the world…
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4. That by light, heat, and other effluvia they may act and influence these lower regions. Hence with the waxing moon, the humor and vigor of fruits increases, shellfish, crabs, and indeed the very brain of animals is augmented; the diseases of lunatics, epileptics, and maniacs grow stronger: on the contrary, with the waning moon, the same decrease and are diminished.
XXI. But whether they also act on the actions of men, and how, and with what efficacy, is wont to be inquired. Wherein some have sinned and do sin in defect, many in excess.
In defect sin Averroes, Zimara, Boccaferri, Johannes Picus Mirandola, Georgius Agricola, and Medina, who opine that the light of the sun alone, carried by its motion, is sufficient
for all the effects which are wont to be ascribed to the influx of the stars, and they deny the influx of the other stars into these lower regions, even into natural bodies.
But in excess sin the Chaldeans, who, as Cicero testifies in bk. 1 of De Divinatione:
“by long observation of the stars are thought to have effected a science, so that it could be predicted what would happen to each person, and with what fate each was born,”
to whom were added the Priscillianists, as Augustine testifies, de Haeres., c. 70, whom the Genethliacs, Planetarians, and Astrologers followed, also Cardanus, who proceeded to such audacity that he did not hesitate to erect a natal chart for Christ Himself, and to subject him to the stars, (in which matter, however, Petrus de Alliaco had preceded him; also Abu Ma’shar and R. Bechai, with a hostile mind, see Paschasius, De Inventis Nov. Antiq., ch. 7, 17), Pomponatius, Gauricus, Junctinus, Leovitius, Argolus, Garcaeus, etc., who will that from the position and situation of the stars at the birth of any man, the nature, inclination, morals, actions, fortune, life, and manner of death of any man depend.
XXII. We think it should not be denied that the stars act upon the human body and its temperament, and move, alter, change, and dispose it in various ways; and indeed upon the natural and animal actions themselves, and therefore exert a great force upon animal life and death; and also that they move the will of man indirectly, since the stars can impress certain qualities and inclinations upon the body and the animal spirits, by heating the blood and exciting the concupiscible and irascible appetite, by which the soul is excited to do this or that: for experience testifies this, nor does Scripture cry out against it;
Yet we deny that the stars directly influence and act upon the spiritual mind itself and upon the will and human actions, strictly so called, in such a way that the life and moral actions, fortune, and manner of death of a man precisely depend on the situation and influx of the stars at birth. The reasons for this negative are:
1. Because God in His word severely prohibits this judicial astrology:
Lev. 19:31, “Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them.”
20:27, “A man also or woman that has a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them.”
Isa. 44:25, “The Lord… makes diviners mad; that turns wise men backward, and makes their knowledge foolish.”
47:12-13, “Stand now with your enchantments… Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, the monthly prognosticators, stand up, and save you from these things that shall come upon you.”
Jer. 10:2, “Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.”
Cf. Dt. 18:10, 14; Isa. 8:19; 19:3; Jer. 27:9.
2. Because God vindicates the knowledge of future things for Himself alone, denies it to men, and wishes to be distinguished from false gods by this mark:
Eccl. 8:7, “a man knows not that which is past, and that which is to come he can know by no messenger.”
James 4:14, “you know not what shall be on the morrow.”
Isa. 4122-23, “Let them bring them forth, and shew us what shall happen… Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that you are gods.”
Dan. 2:28-29, “there is a God in heaven that reveals mysteries, and makes known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days… He that reveals mysteries makes known to you what shall come to pass.”
3. Because the stars and their influx, if they are to be admitted into the number of causes, will be a general, and therefore only a remote, cause of human actions and morals, but by no means a particular and determining cause.
4. Because the actions and morals of men are voluntary and free, proceeding from the free will of man, or from the intellect and will, upon which the stars cannot directly act and influence, since the material cannot operate on the immaterial. Whence it is not undeservedly said: “Every man is the architect of his own fortune.”
5. If human actions, morals, fortune, and manner of death depended on the stars, the actions, morals, fortune, and manner of death of all those whose horoscope was the same at birth would be similar; that this is false is taught by the example of the twins Esau and Jacob, who, conceived and born at the same time, were most dissimilar in life and morals; nor are all who are conceived and born at the same moment as a royal offspring received into the royal purple, or elevated to the honor of a magistrate.
Many also, who had a different horoscope at birth, nevertheless experience the same fortune, and end their life by the same manner of death; e.g., the firstborn of the Egyptians, and the infants of Bethlehem, the Egyptians submerged in the Red Sea, the Philistines struck or oppressed by Samson, the Canaanites slain at the same time, the Israelites detained in the same Egyptian and Babylonian captivity, the Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices, the soldiers who fall in the same battle, and whom the same slaughter involves, also those whom the same tempest or ruin of a house, or earthquake, or epidemic disease carries away from life; no one will say that all these were conceived or born under the same constellation, under the same or a similar horoscope, and therefore had the same natal chart.
6. Because no one can accurately indicate the point of birth, since it is not completed in a moment, because it is conjoined with motion; but an error of a moment, on account of the most rapid motion of the stars, is of no small, but of great, moment, since even in a moment of time the constellation changes greatly: whence, the hypothesis of these astrologers being granted, the head would have one fate, the feet another, and the other members successively proceeding from the mother’s womb, would have yet others.
7. Because it seems inept and preposterous, why attention should not rather be paid to the moment of conception than of birth: which, however, is unknown even to the mothers themselves, let alone to the genethliacs; for the moment of conception cannot always be accurately gathered from the birth, since seven-month, eight-month, and nine-month births, and at other intervals, are given with notable variety.
8. Because not a few stars and their powers are unknown; which the best astrologers do not deny.
9. Because experience refutes judicial astrology in many ways; which Cicero proves with ancient examples in De Divinatione, bk. 2:
“the Chaldeans are daily refuted. How many things I remember being said by the Chaldeans to Pompey, how many to Crassus, how many to Caesar himself; that none of them would die except in old age, except at home, except with clarity, so that it seems very strange to me that anyone still exists who believes those whose predictions he sees refuted daily by fact and events”;
yet all of these were taken away by a violent death, which is confirmed by the examples of Julian the Apostate, Ludovico Sforza, Prince of Milan, Edward VI, King of England, the son of Cardanus, and others, to whom things far different from what had been predicted happened.
Hence 10 emperors, princes, and lawgivers have forbidden this art of divining from the stars, and wise men and the fathers have disapproved of it.
Maecenas, in Dio, bk. 52, Oration to Augustus, said that “diviners should not be tolerated in a republic.” Augustus expelled the astrologers from the city, Tiberius and Claudius from Italy; Vitellius also severely judged that they should be deprived of the world and of life. See Code, bk. 9, Tit. 18; bk. 2, 5, 7, and Tacitus, bk. 2, Annals, ch. 32, in whose judgment, “mathematicians are a race of men untrustworthy to the powerful, deceitful to the hopeful: which in our state will always be both forbidden and retained.” Cf. Valerius Maximus, bk. 1, ch. 3; Curtius, bk. 4, ch. 10; bk. 7, ch. 7.
If an event has corresponded to some predictions, this should be attributed either to the shrewdness of the diviners, who had knowledge of the morals, counsels, and studies of those consulting them; or to the credulity of those consulting, who have turned fortuitous chances into the fulfillment of the thing predicted; or to the work of the devil, from whose suggestion or inspiration such prophets can draw many things; or to the just judgment of God, who chastises the vain minds of men with those mockeries, and permits the superstition of men to feel the
scourge of Satan.”
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The History of Astrology
On the 1500’s – 1600’s
Article
Tessicini, Dario – Astrology, Heliocentrism & the Copernican Question (Essay Review of R. Westman, ‘The Copernican Question. Prognostication, Skepticism & the Celestial Order’) in Galilaeana, X, 2013, pp. 219-236
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Book
Dohoney, Justin – ‘In So Many Ways Do the Planets Bear Witness’: The Impact of Copernicanism on Judicial Astrology at the English Court, 1543-1660 Masters thesis (Clemson Univ., 2011)
Abstract: “The traditional historiography of science from the late-nineteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries has broadly claimed that the Copernican revolution in astronomy irrevocably damaged the practice of judicial astrology. However, evidence to the contrary suggests that judicial astrology not only continued but actually expanded during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries…
Contrary to their European counterparts on the Continent, English patrons typically required tangible, practical results to justify their support of client-scientists. The heliocentric theory received a largely positive reaction in England, and many astrologers readily employed its mathematics to make more precise predictions of planetary locations, which would presumably lead to better prognostications of human events. As long as scientists and patrons defined science in these exclusively mathematical terms, astrology could comfortably exist within these scientific boundaries.
However, throughout the mid-sixteenth century, multiple processes occurred that changed astrology from a science into a popular belief in England. Patrons began to lose interest in astrology and thus financed fewer astrologers, and with the instability of the Civil War, fewer patrons were in positions of power to provide this sort of support. Furthermore, as astrology enjoyed increased popularity among the lower and merchant classes of England through almanac and pamphlet publications, scientists saw it in their best professional interest to consciously distance themselves from astrology and redefine and re-categorize it beyond the reasonable margins of proper scientific practice. In short, while astrology declined as a scientific activity during the latter half of the seventeenth century, it found success as a popular activity beyond the confines of conventional science.”
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Latin
1600’s
Voet, Gisbert – Select Theological Disputations (1669), vol. 5 The below work of Voet is listed at the end of the table of contents, but is not contained in the GB edition.
A Declamation on the Comets of 1604, by Andreas Libavius 137
Gisbert Voetius, An Exercitation on the Prognostications of Comets 141
Prolegomena on the Declamation of Dr. Libavius on the Comets seen in October, 1604 141
1. That from stars, and thus even from comets, special divinations have been rightly deduced, according to Libavius, is exploded 151
2. Whether any and all, or which sign of comets, being seen, are to be discarded? 154
3. On the presupposed premises and rightly constituted state of the controversy, this is put forth: By the consensus of all peoples and wise men without foolishness and superstition, some portent is to be looked for in the appearance of comets. 165
4. What is to be judged of dread from an appearance and sight taken of comets? 190
5. The universal consensus of the peoples and wise men is confirmed by the judgment on prognostications of comets 201
6. Responds to Objections 227
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Related Pages
On Geocentricism & Heliocentrism
On the History of Religion & Science, & on the Mosaic Physics