A42469:361
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.
But concerning what he addeth of helping us in the knowledge of Christs Divinity by his Miracles. It shall be a thing worth the noting, as Mr. S. speaks, to consider, what good service our Astromancers have done God and Christ, in ascribing and entitling their strangest and most stupendous works of wonder to the Stars. 1For as some Heathen Writers have ascribed Gods conduct of his people thorough the Red Sea, to Moses his skill, in observing the time of an unusual low ebb, and making use thereof for his peoples passage: and the water that God by miracle gave them from the Rock in the Wilderness, to Moses his observation of an heard of Wild asses, 2that were repairing to a spring, by tracing whom he found out a watering place for the refreshment of himself and his people ready otherwise in that wast and wild desert to have perished with drought: and the Jewish Masters all the Miracles that our Lord and Saviour Christ wrought here upon earth to the power of the Tetragrammaton:3 whereof they tell us a tale, how by stealth having gotten into the Inner Temple, and found it engraven there on a Stone, that he might not forget it again, as some other had done, by the hideous barkings of the brazen dogs, that stood at the door, he writ it in a piece of parchment, which having cut and raised the skin about the calf of his leg; he there enclosed, as did Jupiter Bacchus his Mother Semele's abortive in his thigh; which afterward opening he drew out again, and by virtue thereof did all that ever he did. In like manner do these our Wise Masters ascribe Christs Incarnation, his miraculous Birth, his Offices, what betided him, and was done by him in his life, together with the manner of his death ▪ unto the Constellations, the conjunctions of the Stars, and the postures of them at the supposed time of his Nativity. To this purpose have they erected a Scheme or Figure of Christs Nativity, whereby they say the Wise men that came conducted by a Star, might well have foreknown Christs Birth of a Virgin, the manner of his life, and the great alteration that he was to make in matter of Religion. and all this,4 as some of them indeed say, by presignification only, as the Stars might foreshow it; God having written in the Book of Heaven, whatsoever from eternity he had decreed should be done here on earth.