a conjectural science, which teaches to judge of the effects and influences of the stars, and to foretell future events by the situation and different aspects of the heavenly bodies.

This science has been divided into two branches, natural and judiciary. To the former belongs the predicting of natural effects; as, the changes of weather, winds, storms, hurricanes, thunder, floods, earthquakes, &c. This art properly belongs to natural philosophy; and is only to be deduced à posteriori from phenomena and observations. Judiciary or judicial astrology, is that which pretends to foretell moral events; i.e. such as have a dependence on the free will and agency of man; as if they were directed by the stars. This art, which owed its origin to the practices of knavery on credulity, is now universally exploded by the intelligent part of mankind.

The professors of this kind of astrology maintain, "That the heavens are one great volume or book, wherein God has written the history of the world; and in which every man may read his own fortune, and the transactions of his time. The art, say they, had its rise from the same hands as astronomy itself; while the ancient Assyrians, whose serene unclouded sky favoured their celestial observations, were intent on tracing the paths and periods of the heavenly bodies, they discovered a constant settled relation of analogy between them and things below; and hence were led to conclude these to be the Parcae, the Destinies, so much talked of, which preside at our births, and dispose of our future fate.

"The laws therefore of this relation being ascertained by a series of observations, and the share each planet has therein; by knowing the precise time of any person's nativity, they were enabled, from their knowledge in astronomy, to erect a scheme or horoscope of the situation of the planets at that point of time; and hence, Astrology, hence, by considering their degrees of power and influence, and how each was either strengthened or tempered by some other, to compute what must be the result thereof."

Thus the astrologers.—But the chief province now remaining to the modern professors, is the making of calendars or almanacks.

Judicial astrology is commonly said to have been invented in Chaldea, and thence transmitted to the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans; though some will have it of Egyptian origin, and ascribe the invention to Cham. But it is to the Arabs that we owe it. At Rome the people were so infatuated with it, that the astrologers, or, as they were then called, the mathematicians, maintained their ground in spite of all the edicts of the emperors to expel them out of the city. See Genethliaci.

Add, that the Bramins, who introduced and practised this art among the Indians, have hereby made themselves the arbiters of good and evil hours, which gives them great authority; they are consulted as oracles; and they have taken care never to sell their answers but at good rates.

The same superstition has prevailed in more modern ages and nations. The French historians remark, that in the time of queen Catharine de Medicis, astrology was in so much vogue, that the most inconsiderable thing was not to be done without consulting the stars. Astronomers in the reigns of king Henry III. and IV. of France, the predictions of astrologers were the common theme of the court conversation. This predominant humour in that court was well rallied by Barclay, in his Argenis, lib. ii. on occasion of an astrologer, who had undertaken to instruct king Henry in the event of a war then threatened by the faction of the Guises.