Indago astrologica: or, a brief and modest enquiry into some principal points of astrology, as it was delivered by the fathers of it, and is now generally received by the sons of it. / By Joshua Childrey of Feversham in Kent.

Sect. 29.

Here, by being so near, I shall take occasion to presume little farther, and tell some Astrologers who account it their glory to have their hearers tremble at their Ora∣cles, that they betray both their own credit, and (as in them lies) the truth of Gods Word, by telling the world that this Eclipse past in March, and that other to come in 1654. are certain Signs of the day of Judge∣ment: For (though it be true that Eclipses of the ☉

(as we call them) are more dreadful and effectual to us, then those of the ☽; for this reason, because the one sort are a privation of original Light, the of other a deri∣vative onely, yet) seeing that every year there happen sometimes two, sometimes three, sometimes more, but never fewer Eclipses, visible in one Horizon or other, though our own be no witness of them; the World by their Logick would have been by this time dissolved a hundred times over and over. And by this means too we can expect no less, then that credulous and cavilling heads, when they shall have survived that other Eclipse as well as this, and shall see the Universe in statu quo, notwithstanding these outragious fantasies had turned all into ashes, will be apt enough to think, That sacred Prophecies are us empty Terrors, as those bold Sooth-saying; and, That dooms-day is but a dream. A help which in these days we need least, since too many al∣ready have leap'd into Hell without this staff. That the end shall be, is an Article of the Catholique Faith; but when it shall be (since the Ephemerides of Heaven speaks nothing of it; and not onely the Stars of the Caelum Empiraeum know nothing of it, but the Son of Righte∣ousness himself confesses as much for them and himself too) is more then curiosity to ask, more then madness to determine, and more then folly to believe.