Disputations Against Divinatory Astrology

...what they do not wish to be known, you publicly teach. Or, as Alliacensis says, that which could have been harmful to the growing faith, and for that reason the teachers of the nascent Church opposed it, now that it is adult, does no harm—nay, it is even of great service. But let he who will refute this later, for we shall demonstrate clearly that it is as pestiferous now as it was then, which experience itself also demonstrates. But that was not to be condemned, but rather its abuse. Why, then, did they not condemn philosophy, but only the impiety of certain philosophers, and not equally the astrologers, but astrology itself? Assuredly, because in philosophy, if anything is erred, it is the vice of the professor, but in astrology, the profession itself is the vice. Whose authority, together with reason, we have also followed while disputing against the impious, not having refuted philosophy, but the errors of the philosophers. Let them say not astrologers, but astrology, since astrology itself is an error. But let us return to the testimonies of the prophets. God speaks to us through Moses: "The nations hear augurs and diviners, but thou hast been instructed otherwise by the Lord thy God." But for the word that we read as "augurs," in the Hebrew it is Mehonem, by which Achinnas, the greatest doctor of the Hebrews, says they are understood who calculate the times and observe happy and unhappy hours; for that word is derived from hona, which signifies "hour." Jerome translated it as "augurs." But we have also seen astrologers called augurs in Isaiah. Nor is the name of astrologers used in the sacred scriptures. For it itself has various locutions, and this superstition has acquired various names at various times. For once they were called Chaldeans and genethliaci; in the times of Augustine, mathematicians and planetarii; now, they are called astrologers everywhere. Moreover, what Jerome translated in that place and elsewhere mostly as "diviners," in the Hebrew is chesem, which Avenazra—himself also an astrologer—says is indeed common to all who divine, but is more properly the name of astrologers. Who is ignorant of that of Jeremiah: "From the signs of the heavens do not be afraid, which the nations fear." What, therefore, does a Christian man enjoy or sorrow over regarding the signs of astrologers, from whom nothing is to be hoped? Isaiah and Jeremiah say nothing is to be feared; nay, through both, divine truth affirms to us that, as Ambrose says, to seek everything that they profess is absurd, since what they promise is impossible. Whence the ruler of the heavens says in Job: "Dost thou know the order of the heavens, and canst thou set the reason thereof on the earth?" And below: "Who shall recount the reason of the heavens?" For there is a double error of the astrologers: the one, that they subject to the heavens many things that do not depend upon them; the other, that even those things which the heavens do bring about, they think cannot be foreseen by them, which the words brought forward from Job show us. And since the doctors of the Church refute both equally, how can it be said that they only disapprove of it because it takes away the freedom of the will or induces the necessity of fate? Does not that argument of Augustine concerning twins tend to take away all foreknowledge of future things from them? In the same book, Enchiridion, did he not say that the mere observation of times, so that we think these things are auspicious and those things inauspicious, pertains to a great sin?