a pretended science, teaching 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 was divided into two branches, natural and judicatory. To the former belonged the predicting of natural effects; as the changes of weather, winds, storms, hurricanes, thunder, floods, earthquakes, &c. Judicatory or judicial astrology is that which pretended to foretell moral events, as if they were directed by the stars. It 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. 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 expelling them from the city. The same superstition has prevailed in modern nations. The French historians tell us, that in the time of Queen Catherine d' Medici, astrology was so much in vogue that the most inconsiderable thing was not to be done without consulting the stars. And in the reigns of king Henry III. and IV. of France, the predictions of astrologers were the common theme of the court conversation.