PREFACE.

Of all the forms in which Superstition haunts the mind, none, perhaps, has a more attractive and seducing influence than that of astrology. Adorned with the radiance of heaven, she is viewed by the eye of the visionary, as the celestial messenger of human destiny; and the imagined connexion of ethereal phenomena with mundane events, leads to the conclusion, that some mysterious emanation from the stars influences the career and habits of mortals, and regulates every thing that transpires on our globe. When these vain chimeras are received and cherished, and when it is believed that the laws of this connexion have for ages been known and studied by the

professors of the art, the conclusion seems inevitable, that the leading events of every man's life may almost with certainty be predicted; and the sublimity of such attainments has an extraordinary effect upon the imaginative faculty, which is dazzled with the contemplation. Astrology is very flattering to the pride and vanity of the human heart, for when men are led to believe that all nature is ever concerned in what they are concerned, they rise in selfimportance; and even their follies and vices appear to be less odious than before, because they are then considered to be the necessary result of planetary agency; these sentiments coincide with those of Prior's heroine :

"She made it plain that human passion

Was ordered by predestination;

That if weak women went astray,

Their stars were more in fault than they."

But every well-informed mind rejects such doctrine with abhorrence, and perceives that if astrology were

true, man would be degraded in the scale of being:

he would not be a free agent; and being overruled in every thing by the stars of heaven, his best actions would have no virtue, and his foulest atrocities no vice; for under such circumstances, no villains would be found on the earth, but such as had been made so by stellar influence. As this system of imposture has lately been gaining ground in the British Empire, it is hoped that the present work may, in some degree, be instrumental in checking its progress. The author has not been able to procure any regular refutation of astrology; but he believes the line of argument adopted in the following pages to be, for the most part, original. It will be seen that he has made numerous quotations from the Volume of Inspiration to illustrate and enforce his sentiments respecting astrology; for if the Bible be a revelation from heaven, as it most assuredly is, and if its sacred pages reflect any light to guide the mind through the difficulties of the inquiry before us, to neglect such aid would he criminal, as its authority is decisive wherever it is found to bear upon the question. Every argument, therefore, derived from this source

will have its proper weight with all who are firm believers in the Holy Scriptures. I write, not to convince sceptics and infidels that astrology is an absurd and impious art, and a diabolical delusion; for when the minds of men are so darkened by sin that they deny the truth of God, it is of small moment what else such characters may credit. It may also be remarked that astrologers are accustomed, in their writings, to appeal to the Divine Record as furnishing an authority for their practice; it is, therefore, incumbent on all who oppose them to shew that the sacred Scriptures strictly prohibit every kind of divination whatever. I now humbly commend the work to the Divine blessing, hoping that it may be a means of preserving the minds of Englishmen from being enslaved by the seductive arts of the astrological doctors.

T. H. MOODY.

7, PORTLAND STREET; August 22nd, 1838.