A42469:152
Thomas Gataker B.D. his vindication of the annotations by him published upon these words,…
Thomas Gataker B.D. his vindication of the annotations by him published upon these words, Thus saith the Lord, learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven, for the heathen are dismayed at them, Jer. 10. 2 against the scurrilous aspersions of that grand impostor Mr. William Lillie : as also against the various expositions of two of his advocates, Mr. John Swan, and another by him cited, but not named : together with the annotations themselves : wherein the pretended grounds of judiciary astrology, and the Scripture-proofs produced for it are discussed and refuted.Thomas Gataker B.D. his vindication of the annotations by him published upon these words, Thus saith the Lord, learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signes of heaven, for the heathen are dismayed at them, Jer. 10. 2 against the scurrilous aspersions of that grand imposter Mr. William Lillie : as also against the various expositions of two of his advocates, Mr. John Swan, and another by him cited, but not named : together with the annotations themselvs : wherein the pretended grounds of judiciary astrologie, and the Scripture-proofes produced for it are discussed and refuted.
London: printed by J.L. for Richard Thrayle, 1653
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
5. What he tells us so peremptorily, We know, I say, by experience▪ that Eclipses are ever so attended. by what experience I would fain know, can this man come to know, that they are ever so attended? He tells us elsewhere indeed,1 that for any memorable Eclipse that falls out in the Ram, the event either for good or bad (of which clause before) is assuredly grounded upon the experience ⟨p. 76⟩of twenty generations of men. which, tho it come far short of his Ever here, yet is far more then he by his own knowledge and experience is able to reach unto. And doth not Pliny tell us,2 that the Heathen Wizards did as confidently avow the constant experience of 800 years and upward for their divinations by the flight of fowls, and bowels of beasts, and the efficacy of their magical spells and charms? and we may well believe, that Mr. L. can as well prov the one, as they the other, and give as much credit therefore to the one as to the other. But his Ever here goeth far beyond either, and may well come home to that tempus immensum, that immensity of time, that time before all time,3 that reckoning of 472000 years before Alexander's days, that the Chaldee Wizards affirmed their observations of the course of the Stars to have ben continued; yea or that account, tho falling far short of that, of 40000 years, 4that the pleader for the Chaldeans, that is the Astrologers, their judgment of genitures in Tully, would raise up their experience unto, affirming it to be reported, that the Babylonians had constantly made observation thereof in the birth of all children born with them for so many thousands of years, before any indeed were bred or born. Unto which vain and hyperbolical assertion Tully wisely makes answer, (tho he had not that notice of the time of the worlds creation that we have) that that report was not possible to be justified and made good by any sound proof. and to the Argument in general concerning their Astrologers taken from the constant experience of Events, he returns them a flat denial. Perspicuum est multa vera evadere. qid qod multo plura falsa? qota enim qaeque res evenit praedicta ab istis?