An exposition with practical observations continued upon the thirty-eighth, thirty-ninth, fortieth, forty-first, and forty-second,…

The sum of the 31. verse may be thus given; as if the Lord had said, O Job, Canst thou alter the seasons of the year? First, ⟨p. 136⟩Canst thou retard, or keep back the Spring? canst thou hinder the rising and appearance of the Pleiades or seven Stars, so called? canst thou stop the distillation of their influences, proper to the introduction of that season? Or, Secondly, Canst thou keep off the Winter, that it come not, or hasten it away when it is come, by dissolving the colds and frosts with which the constellations of that season bind up the earth, and so shorten that unkind and comfortless quarter of the year? This is the plain meaning of the Text, and of those hard or strange words, Pleiades, Orion, Mazzaroth, Arcturus, used in it; all which Constellations are conceived to have their special operations upon the four quarters of the year respectively: For,¹ though the access of the Sun hath the chief hand in making Spring and Summer, and the recess of the Sun in making Autumn and Winter; yet the Sun doth it not alone, but hath the aid of other adjuvant causes in nature, by which those great changes are in part effected and produced.

The sum of the 31. verse may be thus given; as if the Lord had said, O Job, Canst thou alter the seasons of the year? First, ⟨p. 136⟩Canst thou retard, or keep back the Spring? canst thou hinder the rising and appearance of the Pleiades or seven Stars, so called? canst thou stop the destillation of their influences, proper to the introduction of that season? Or, Secondly, Canst thou keep off the Winter, that it come not, or hasten it away when it is come, by dissolving the colds and frosts with which the constellations of that season bind up the earth, and so shorten that unkind and comfortless quarter of the year? This is the plain meaning of the Text, and of those hard or strange words, Pleiades, Orion, Mazzaroth, Arcturus, used in it; all which Constellations are conceived to have their special operations upon the four quarters of the year respectively: For,¹ though the access of the Sun hath the chief hand in making Spring and Summer, and the recess of the Sun in making Autumn and Winter; yet the Sun doth it not alone, but hath the aid of other adjuvant causes in nature, by which those great changes are in part effected and produced.