a conjectural science, which teach- es to judge of the effects and influences of the stars, and to foretell future events by the situation and diffe- rent aspects of the heavenly bodies.

This science has been divided into two branches, na- tural and judiciary. To the former belongs the pre- dicting 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 dependency 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 intelli- gent 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 disco- vered a constant settled relation or analogy between them and things below; and hence were led to con- clude 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 ascer- tained 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 know- ledge in astronomy, to erect a scheme or horoscope of the situation of the planets at this point of time; and, hence, by considering their degrees of power and in- fluence, and how each was either strengthened or tem- pered by some other, to compute what must be the re- sult 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