created mortal, as birds, beasts, and the like, are left to their natural appetites; over all which, celestial bodies (as instruments and executioners of God's providence) have absolute dominion. What we should judge of men, who little differ from beasts, I cannot tell; for as he that contendeth against those enforcements may easily master or resist them; so whosoever shall neglect the remedies by virtue and piety prepared, putteth himself altogether under the power of his sensual appetite; m Vincetur fatum si resistas, vincit si contempseris; "Fate will be overcome, if "thou resist it; if thou neglect, it conquereth."

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But that either the stars or the sun have any power over the minds of men immediately, it is absurd to think, other than as aforesaid, as the same by the body's temper may be affected. Lumen solis ad generationem sensibilium corporum confert, et ad vitam ipsam movet, et nutrit, et auget, et perficit: "The light of the sun," saith "St. Augustine, helpeth the generation of sensible bodies, moveth them to "life, and nourisheth, augmenteth, and perfecteth them;" yet still as a minister, not as a master: Bonus quidem est sol, in ministerio, non imperio; "The sun is good to serve, "not to sway," saith St. Ambrose. And St. Augustine, Deus regit inferiora corpora per superiora; "God ruleth "the bodies below by those above:" but he avoucheth not, that superior bodies have rule over men's minds, which are incorporal.

But howsoever we are by the stars inclined at our birth, yet there are many things, both in nature and art, that encounter the same, and weaken their operation; and Aristotle himself confesseth, that the heavens do not always work their effects in inferior bodies, no more than the signs of rain and wind do always come to pass. And it is divers times seen, that paternal virtue and vice hath his counter-working to these inclinations. Est in juvencis patrum virtus; "In the young offspring the father's virtue is ;" and so the contrary, patrum vitia: and herein also there is

often found an interchange; the sons of virtuous men, by an ill constellation, become inclinable to vice; and of vicious men to virtue.

Egregia est soboles scelerato nata parente :

A worthy son is born of a wicked father.

But there is nothing (after God's reserved power) that so much setteth this art of influence out of square and rule, as education doth: for there are none in the world so wickedly inclined, but that a religious instruction and bringing up may fashion anew and reform them; nor any so well disposed, whom (the reins being let loose) the continual fellowship and familiarity, and the examples of dissolute men, may not corrupt and deform. Vessels will ever retain a savour of their first liquor: it being equally difficult either to cleanse the mind once corrupted, or to extinguish the sweet savour of virtue first received, when the mind was yet tender, open, and easily seasoned; but where a favourable constellation (allowing that the stars incline the will) and a virtuous education do happily arrive, or the contrary in both, thereby it is that men are found so exceeding virtuous or vicious, heaven and earth (as it were) running together, and agreeing in one: for as the seeds of virtue may, by the art and husbandry of Christian counsel, produce better and more beautiful fruit, than the strength of self-nature and kind could have yielded them; so the plants, apt to grow wild, and to change themselves into weeds, by being set in a soil suitable, and like themselves, are made more unsavoury, and filled with poison. It was therefore truly affirmed, Sapiens adjuvabit opus astrorum, quemadmodum agricola terræ naturam; "A wise man as"sisteth the work of the stars, as the husbandman helpeth "the nature of the soil." And Ptolemy himself confesseth thus much; Sapiens, et omina sapientis medici dominabuntur astris; "A wise man, and the ominous art of a wise "physician, shall prevail against the stars." Lastly, we ought all to know that God created the stars, as he did the rest of the universal; whose influences may be called his

reserved and unwritten laws. But let us consider how they bind even as the laws of men do; for although the kings and princes of the world have by their laws decreed, that a thief and a murderer shall suffer death; and though their ordinances are daily by judges and magistrates (the stars of kings) executed accordingly; yet these laws do not deprive kings of their natural or religious compassion, or bind them without prerogative, to such a severe execution, as that there should be nothing left of liberty to judgment, power, or conscience: the law in his own nature being no other than a deaf tyrant. But seeing that it is otherwise, and that princes (who ought to imitate God in all they can) do sometimes, for causes to themselves known, and by mediation, pardon offences both against others and themselves; it were then impious to take that power and liberty from God himself, which his substitutes enjoy; God being mercy, goodness, and charity itself. Otherwise that example of prayer by our Saviour taught, ¶ And let us not be led into temptation, but deliver us from evil, had been no other but an expense of words and time; but that God (which only knoweth the operation of his own creatures truly) hath assured us, that there is no inclination or temptation so forcible, which our humble prayers and desires may not make frustrate and break asunder: for were it (as the Stoics conceive) that fate or destiny, though depending upon eternal power, yet being once ordered and disposed, had such a connection and immutable dependency, that God himself should in a kind have shut up himself therein, "how miserable then were the condition of men," saith St. Augustine, “ left "altogether without hope."

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And if this strength of the stars were so transferred, as that God had quitted unto them all dominion over his creatures; be he Pagan or Christian that so believeth, the only true God of the one, and the imaginary gods of the other, would thereby be despoiled of all worship, reverence, or respect.

4 Matt. vi. 13.

And certainly, God, which hath promised us the reward of well-doing, which Christ himself claimed at the hands of the Father, (I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do,) and the same God who hath threatened unto us the sorrow and torment of offences, could not, contrary to his merciful nature, be so unjust, as to bind us inevitably to the destinies or influences of the stars, or subject our souls to any imposed necessity. But it was well said of Plotinus, that the stars were significant, but not efficient; giving them yet something less than their due: and therefore, as I do not consent with those who would make those glorious creatures of God virtueless; so I think that we derogate from his eternal and absolute power and providence, to ascribe to them the same dominion over our immortal souls, which they have over all bodily substances and perishable natures: for the souls of men loving and fearing God, receive influence from that divine light itself, whereof the sun's clarity, and that of the stars, is by Plato called but a shadow, s Lumen est umbra Dei, et Deus est lumen luminis; "Light is the shadow of God's brightness, who is the "light of light." But to end this question, because this destiny, together with providence, prescience, and predestination, are often confounded, I think it not impertinent to touch the difference in a word or two; for every man hath not observed it, though all learned men have.

SECT. XII.

Of Prescience.

PRESCIENCE, or foreknowledge, (which the Greeks call prognosis, the Latins præcognitio, or præscientia,) considered in order and nature, (if we may speak of God after the manner of men,) goeth before providence: for God foreknew all things before he had created them, or before they had being to be cared for; and prescience is no other than an infallible foreknowledge. For whatsoever ourselves

r John xviii. 4. s Plat. Pol. 6. Ficin. in 1. 7. RALEGH, HIST. WORLD, VOL. I.

D

Pol.

foreknow, except the same be to succeed accordingly, it cannot be true that we foreknow it. But this prescience of God (as it is prescience only) is not the cause of any thing futurely succeeding: neither doth God's foreknowledge impose any necessity, or bind. For in that we foreknow that the sun will rise and set; that all men born in the world shall die again; that after winter the spring shall come; after the spring, summer, and harvest; and that according to the several seeds that we sow, we shall reap several sorts of grain, yet is not our foreknowledge the cause of this, or any of these: neither doth the knowledge in us bind or constrain the sun to rise and set, or men to die; for the causes (as men persuade themselves) are otherwise manifest and known to all. "The eye of man," saith Boetius," behold"eth those things subject to sense, as they are; the eye "seeth that such a beast is a horse, it seeth men, trees, " and houses, &c. but our seeing of them (as they are) is not the cause of their so being, for such they be in their 66 own natures." And again out of the same author; Divina providentia rebus generandis non imponit necessitatem, quia si omnia evenirent ex necessitate, præmia bonorum, et pæna malorum periret; "Divine providence," saith he, "imposeth no necessity upon things that are to "exist; for if all came to pass of necessity, there should nei"ther be reward of good, nor punishment of evil."

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SECT. XIII.

Of Providence.

NOW providence (which the Greeks call pronoia) is an intellectual knowledge, both foreseeing, caring for, and ordering all things, and doth not only behold all past, all present, and all to come, but is the cause of their so being, which prescience (simply taken) is not: and therefore providence by the philosophers, saith St. Augustine, is divided into memory, knowledge, and care: memory of the past,

t Boetius de Consol.