A42469:156
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.
not unfitly appliable to these terrible Eclipses and the pretended Effects of them. for the Argument, will be, as valid and vigorous in the one as in the other. Or we may well yoke our Wizards herein with our Empiric quacksalvers, who having a set number of medicines, when they come to a Patient, of whose malady they are ignorant, give him first one medicine, and after that another, and then it may be a third; and if it so come to pass, that by the strength of nature over-mastering the disease, or the matter that fed it being wasted and spent, or by some occurrent intervening, the party come to recover, the cure is by them ascribed to the medicine last given, and that is pricked down with a probatum est upon it, albeit it effected nothing at all in it. and howsoever by this course they kill more then they cure;1 and where any chance to be cured, [Greek or Hebrew], as he speaks, they are cured rather by hap hazard then by any their skill. Yet there is a register made of those that recover, but no record kept usually of such as miscarry, and the less regard had, or notice taken, of the one then of the other, because as one sometime said, [Greek or Hebrew],2 their lucky haps the Sun shows, their mishaps the grave covers. In like manner is it with these Wizards, whatsoever distemper in the air, or unseasonable weather, or bad harvest, or strange malady, or great mortality, or war, or seditions, or sad accident whatsoever falls out in a land, all is set upon the score of the Eclipse last past, tho it cannot be showed to have had any hand in it, and by ⟨p. 80⟩other courses it were both procured and produced▪ and when such things are by guess foretold of them, (according to the old saying,3 [Greek or Hebrew]. He is the best Wizard, that gives the best guess.) tho their predictions fail oftener, then fall out aright, and what falls out aright, doth in regard of them come to pass rather, by mere conjecture and casualty, then by any certain fore knowledge, or well-grounded rules of art; yet being observed to have fallen out so in some Eclipses that have ben regarded, that is reckoned to have proceeded from the Eclipse, that was no more thereof guilty, then the Man in the Moon, or the thorns at his back;