flourishing, as any one in the town, and has continued so ever since. My next letter will contain a full reply to the Lieutenant's theology, as exhibited in his last two communications. I am, Sir, &c. T. H. MOODY. LETTER IX. SIR, THE last three letters of Lieutenant Morrison prove to what an extent an astrologer will proceed in support of his delusive system. Sooner than abandon it, the star-gazer will blaspheme the truth of his Maker-endeavour to worm out of the sacred text some meaning favourable to his unhallowed views, and thus wrest the very "scriptures to his own destruction." Reckless of consequences, daring the vengeance of Him "to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid," he proceeds in his career of folly, drawing iniquity with cords of vanity, sinning as it were with a cart rope (Isaiah v. 18), and wildly laughing on the brink of eternal ruin. St. Paul, in his first epistle to Timothy (v. 24) says "Some men's sins are open before hand, going before to judgment." This solemn passage should lead many to serious thought, whether they may not, with Saint Paul, be thinking they are doing God service, while they are advocating the cause of error, and opposing his holy truth. Certainly I may be permitted to say, that a more awful perversion of scripture than is contained in the two theological essays of the Lieutenant has rarely appeared. His last effort is a bold attempt to escape the force of truth by mere subterfuge and chicanery. My thirteen facts his fancy has transformed into thirteen mice," nibbling through the foundations of astrology;" and himself, of course, into a good mouser, guarding the temple of folly, which he now supposes to rest principally on his own publications: these are pretty numerous; and he speaks of them as having strengthened the foundations of the tottering edifice (Horary Astrology, page 257). The Lieut. is fearful that my mice will eat up his books; and these having given him so sleek a coat, he springs at whatever attacks them, and will even claw the sacred volume to pieces, that he may purr over the yearly produce of his astrological pen. These mice, however, I trust, will do their work yet, for they have all escaped unhurt from the fangs of the astrological mouser. His observations on my facts shall now be reviewed. No. 1.-This, he says, "refers to a miracle related in scripture 3000 years ago;" that "astrology I But never pretended to read the mysterious writing of the immediate acts of God." Does the Lieutenant imagine that a new language and a new character were created on that occasion? Does he not know that divines are generally of opinion that it was the old Hebrew or Samaritan character that was then employed? The astrologers, therefore, of the court of Babylon must have been a set of dunces, as they were not able to read it; and it is evident that they knew but little of the literature of those times. this is not the leading charge against these sorcerors: say, that they knew not that the stars were conducting Cyrus to their city; they knew not that he was about to divert the Euphrates from its channel; they knew not that the brazen gates would be left open by the drunken Chaldeans; that their night of feasting and rejoicing would be blasted by Heaven; that their monarch would be slain, and their city filled with bloodshed and slaughter. These things took place according to the common course of events-are divinely recorded for our instruction and warningare conclusive against the vain pretensions of astrology-and, I publicly defy the Lieutenant to give any thing like a rational answer to them. No. 2.-The Lieutenant says that this is two thousand years old, is no fact at all, and merely "the opinion of a man who had not himself examined : astrology." It is the testimony of the great Cicero, a man who had fully examined the subject (De Div. 42), and greater authority for an ancient fact we cannot have than his, except that of inspiration itself. Vain is his attempt to discredit what Cicero has recorded a more important witness from the philosophic heatheus I could not have produced. The Lieutenant knows this, and, in his Horoscope, has claimed him as an abettor of his art, but at the discussion, I shewed that Cicero was a bitter enemy to the abominations of the Chaldeans. The fact is objected to also because it is 2000 years old, and yet the Lieutenant in the Horoscope (page 6), has recorded one 400 years older in the support of his system-I mean the death of Eschylus. 'It had been foretold to Eschylus that he should die by the fall of a house or other building about a certain period; and he, (knowing that the influence of the planets may be guarded against by human prudence), to avoid the danger, went away from all buildings, to pass his time in the open fields, until the influence should be passed over. * He was killed as he sat in the fields, by the fall of a tortoise, which an eagle dashed against his bald pate, mistaking it for a stone, &c." Here was a man who put more faith in an astrologer than in his maker, and he deservedly perished in his folly, for he could not escape the judgment of God. Had he despised the prediction, and com |