Astrology (29)

To both these opinions I may answer that although the stars do verily absolve their own course in the skye, none the less as a parergy or incidental of their motion each event among us cometh to pass. Or will you have it that although if a horse run or birds or humans move, pebbles are flung up and strawes set astir by the wind of their motion, yet the gyration of the stars bringeth naught else to pass? And that whereas from a little fire an effluxion cometh to us, although the fire burneth not for our sake at all and is not a whit sollicitous that we be warmed, yet from the stars we receive no effluxion whatever? Furthermore, astrologie is indeed impotent to convert bad into good, or to effect mutation in any of the effluents, yet is it profitable to those that employ it, in so much as the good, when they know that it is to come, delighteth them long beforehand, while the bad they accept readily, for it cometh not upon them unawares, but in vertue of contemplation and expectance is deemed easie and light. That is my opinion in the matter of astrology.