foretel events, I formerly heard the philofopher Favorinus, at Rome, speaking, in Greek, in an excellent

climate, we find this fpecies of fuperftition invariably and almoft univerfally predominant. We have the highest authority for believing, that the Chaldæans not only took the lead in real science, but preferved and extended their influence for a confiderable period, and to no very narrow limits. Why the term Chaldeans was afterwards univerfally underflood to convey reproach, may be thus explained. The progress from the use to the abuse of wisdom and knowledge, has at all times kept pace with the paffions and vices of the profligate. Thus of the Chaldæans there may be supposed to have exifted a meaner number, who, prostituting the knowledge which they had of astronomy, yielded to the impreffion of avarice and intereft, and played upon the credulity of the weak. This appears from a multitude of paffages in ancient writers; and to this contemptible crew the prophet Ifaiah probably alluded, (see ch. xlvii. ver. 13.) Thou art wearied in the multitude of thy counfels: let now the aftrologers, the ftargazers, the monthly prognofticators, ftand up and fave thee from those things that shall come upon thee,

The Romans, under the term Chaldæi, principally refer red to the adventurers from Ægypt; but it may be observed, that their best writers always mentioned this fortunetelling tribe with contempt, and fometimes with abomination. I mention a few inftances in which they are mentioned by Roman writers, where this quality of foretelling the future is afcribed to them.

See Cicero pro Murena

Erant in magna potentia qui confulebantur, a quibus dica tanquam a Chaldæis petebatur.

Horace

Tu ne quæfieris fcire nefas quem mihi quem tibi
Finem dii dederint, Leucothoe: neu Babylonios
Tentaris numeros.

cellent and splendid style. Whether he delivered his real fentiments, or spoke for the fake of exercifing or exhibiting his talents, I cannot fay; but the heads of paffages, and of his arguments, as he arranged them, I have been able to remember; for, when I left the affembly, I immediately noted them down. They had principally this tendency that the fcience of the Chaldæans was not of fuch antiquity as they wifhed it to appear; and that they were not the real founders of it, though they pretended to be fo; but that people of this fort were jugglers, who dealt in delufions and tricks, procuring provision and money by their lying ftories; and that, as they faw amongst men certain terrestrial objects fwayed by the perception and guidance of heavenly bodies,

Again, the fame author

Juvenal

Irritat, mulcet, falfis terroribus implet,
Ut magus.

Chaldæis fed major erit fiducia, quicquid
Dixerit aftrologus credent a fronte relatum
Hammonis-

The moralift will probably think it just matter of astonishment, that neither the progrefs nor refinement of knowledge, nor even the light of revelation, has at all effaced this fuperftition, nor abolished the influence of this people. There is yet a wandering race calling themselves Gypfies, and doubtless of Ægyptian origin, who, without any pretenfions to science of any kind, arrogate to themselves this preternatural knowledge of futurity, and find numbers who are weak and foolish enough to believe them.

as,

as, for inftance, the ocean", which, being the companion, as it were, of the moon, grows old, and refumes it's youth, with her; they have thence formed an argument to perfuade us, that all human affairs, great and small, are conducted and regulated as if bound by the stars and conftellations. But, he added, it was too foolish and abfurd, because the tide of the ocean agreed with the progress of the moon, that we should suppose any other concern, such as a lawsuit concerning a conduit, or a wall between two neighbours, to be regulated by any chain from heaven; which, if indeed it could happen by any divine interpofition, he yet thought it could not be comprehended and thoroughly understood by any compafs of the mind, in the fhort and trifling space allotted to human life. But, he faid, that they interpreted a few things, to use his own word παχυμερέστερον, with a good deal of ftupidity, for which they had no foundation in fcience, but which were loofe thoughts, conceived at random, and arbitrarily impofed, like that compafs

The ocean,]-This alludes to the phænomena of the ebbing and flowing of the tides, which perplexed the ancients, and was by them confidered as the greatest myftery in the circle of natural philofophy. They imputed the flux and reflux of the waters of the fea to the influence and operation of the moon only, whereas the investigations of modern philofophers, and of our Newton in particular, have fatisfactorily proved, that the tides are produced by the combination of the forces of the fun and moon; that is, that there are two tides, a folar and a lunar tide.

of

of the eyes which fees diftant objects, though blind to those which are nearer. That the great difference between the gods and men was taken away, if men had the power of foreknowing future events. Moreover, he thought it by no means clearly made out, that the obfervation of the stars and conftellations was, as they inculcated, the origin of their fcience. For if the original Chaldæans, who lived on open plains, obferved the motions of the stars, their orbits, and different combinations, thence calculating events, let, faid he, the cultivation of this fcience proceed, but then let it be under the fame afpect of the heaven where the Chaldæans originally were. For, continued he, the system adopted by the Chaldæans can no longer be in force, if any one applies it to different sections of the heavens. For who does not fee, how great a variety there is of parts and circles of the heavens, arifing from the diverging and convexities of the globe. For as the fame ftars, by which they contend that all things, human and divine, are regulated, do not every where excite cold or heat, but change and vary them, and, at the fame time, produce in one place calm feasons, in another tempeftuous, why may they not, in like manner, affect circumstances and events, producing one thing among the Chaldæans, another among the Getulians; one upon the Danube, another at the Nile? But it is very inconfiftent, fays he, for them to suppose, that the body and quality of air under a different

a different inflexion of the heavens, neceffarily varies, and yet that upon human affairs the ftars give the fame information, though confulted from any part of the earth. Befides, he wondered alfo to find it admitted by every one as an axiom, that those stars, which, they fay, were studied by the Chaldæans and Babylonians, or Ægyptians, which many call erraticas, wandering, and which Nigidius calls errones, are not more in number than they are ufually faid to be. For he thought it might happen, that there were other planets of equal influence, without which, a just and determinate calculation could not be made; which, however, men could not distinguish, either on account of their fplendor or altitude. For, faid he, fome ftars are vifible from fome fituations of the earth, and are known to those who inhabit there; but the fame are not feen from every region, and are to fome utterly unknown. Now, as we fee only these stars, and know that they are only to be seen from one part of the earth, what end is there to that fort of calculation? or what time feems fufficient to make us understand what the junctions, or the circuits, or the tranfits of the ftars, forebode+? For, if a calcu

Not feen,]-This muft neceffarily happen at the poles. • Forebode,]-Yet the Arabian and Eastern philosophers found it neceffary to comply in this inftance with the credulity and fuperftitions of mankind.