An history of the wonderful things of nature set forth in ten severall classes wherein are contained I. The wonders of the heavens, II. Of the elements, III. Of meteors, IV. Of minerals, V. Of plants, VI. Of birds, VII. Of four-footed beasts, VIII. Of insects, and things wanting blood, IX. Of fishes, X. Of man / written by Johannes Jonstonus, and now rendred into English by a person of quality.

Artic. 1. Of the Force of the Stars, and Nutriment of them.

MAhomet said, That the Stars hang in the Ayr by golden chains: That the Workmaster set them in the Heavens, bright & round, we religiously acknowledge; that they were made for signs and sea∣sons; All men know, that they shine and communicate their vertue to sublunary things; which is done, by sending forth their beams: the

will of man, and works of Artificers, are out of this account. There is in these no mixture of new qualities; but onely an accidentall spe∣cies is induced to a body ready made. The mind is free from the Elements; if it suffer any thing, it is by the mediation of the Instru∣ments of the body, the temperament whereof Mens manners easily follow. Hence you may see an errour; That the characters were formed by a certain position of the Heavens, and are moved by a stronger power from the Heavens. Plato saith false, That the Souls before they come into the bo∣dies were made subject to some Star. These are toyes, That Stars are ap∣pointed for every one of us, bright Stars for rich men; little ones for poor men; dark ones for defects; and some for every mans condition, Pliny l. 2. Histor. Natur. c. 8. There is not so great Society between Heaven and us, that for our destiny the brightnesse of the Stars should be mortal. Our chance is in Gods hand: It is false, That Jacob read his sons destinies in the Tables of the Heavens.

More writes elegantly of one White, in an Epigram:

White in the Stars did oft his Wife behold, That she was chaste and good he all men told; He look't to find her in the Stars once more, And then he did proclaim her for a Whore. But that thy Wife was common, though thou see Through all the Stars, not one declares to thee.

Cleomedes in lib. de 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, speaks something of the nutriment of the Stars, as Dalechampius cites it, and the Stoicks observed the same. Laertius (in Lipsius in Manuduct. ad Physiol. Stoicam.) saith, That these fiery Stars are fed and nourished, (the Sun and Moon, and the rest) the Sun by the great Sea, as being the great Torch, and a kind of burning endued with un∣derstanding: But the Moon, by fresh waters, and such as may be drunk because it is mingled with the Ayr, and is near to the Earth. Wherefore Macrobius in Somnium Scipionis ascribes it to providence, that the Ocean was placed under the torrid Zone. That all that space which the Sun and the rest of the Planets and the Moon wander up and down in, on this side and that side of the Eccliptick, may have moysture for their nourishment. The opinion seems absurd at first; yet Ambrosius l. 2. Hex. c. 3. thought so; nor doth Libavius l. 5. de origin. rerum, seem to deny it. Lucianus saith, there shall be a common bone-fire for the world. Whence shall this burning be, but that moysture must fail? and that cannot fail, but for nutriment. Yet see that you make not a combustion amongst the Stars, by assuming an aetherial spirit into the nature of the Stars.