§ 135. CALVIN AND THE ASTROLOGERS. 677
depended most on the stars, or on their Maker and Ruler.* In this respect Luther, notwithstanding his strong belief in witchcraft and personal encounters with the devil, was in advance of his more learned friend, and refuted his astrological calculation of the nativit}'^ of Cicero with the Scripture fact of Esau's and Jacob's birth in the same hour. Yet lie regarded the comets, or "harlot stars," as he called them, as tokens of God's wrath, or as works of the devil. Zwlngli saw in Halley's comet, which appeared a few weeks before the disaster of Cappel, a sign of war and of his own death. The independent and heretical Servetus believed and practised astrology and wrote a defence of it (^Apologetica Dlsceptatio pro Astrologia).
Nothing of this kind is found in Calvin. He denounced the attempt to reveal what God has hidden, and to seek him outside of his revealed will, as an impious presumption and a Satanic delusion. It is right and proper, he maintains, to study the laws and motions of the heavenly bodies.^ True astronomy leads to the praise of God's wisdom and majesty ; but astrology upsets the moral order. God is sovereign in his gifts and not bound to any necessity of nature. He has foreordained all things by his eternal decree. Sometimes sixty thousand men fall in one battle ; are they therefore born under the same star? It is true the sun works upon the earth, and heat and dearth, rain and storm come down from the skies, but the wickedness of man proceeds from his will. The astrologers appealed to the first chapter of Genesis and to the prophet Jeremiah, who calls the stars signs, but Calvin met them by quoting Isa. 44 : 25 : " who frustrateth the tokens of the liars and maketh diviners mad." In conclusion
1 He wrote to Bullinger from Wittenberg, Aug. 20, 1550 : " Omnes ah uno Melanchthone [pendenf], qui Astrologue. judiciaries fuit addictus, et itnus Hie ab astrisne magis, an ab astrorum conditore ac domino pendeat, ignoro." Quoted by Trechsel, Antitrin. II. 154, note 4.
2 Comp. Inst. I. eh. V. §§ 2 and 5, where be speaks highly of astronomy.
678 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
he rejects the whole theory and practice of astrology as not only superfluous and useless, but even pernicious.^
In the same tract he ridicules the alchemists, and incidentally exhibits a considerable amount of secular learning.
Calvin discredited also the ingenious speculations of Pseudo-Dionysius on the Celestial Hierarchy, as " mere babbling," adding that the author of that book, which was sanctioned by Thomas Aquinas and Dante, spoke like a man descended from heaven and giving an account of things he had seen with his own eyes ; while Paul, who was caught up to the third heaven, did not deem it lawful for man to utter the secret things he had seen and heard.^
Calvin might have made his task easier if he had accepted the heliocentric theory of Copernicus, which was known in his time, though only as a hypothesis.^
But in this matter Calvin was no more in advance of his age than any other divine. He believed that "the whole heaven moves around the earth," and declared it preposterous to set the conjecture of a man against the authority of God, who in the first chapter of Genesis had pointed out the relation of the sun and moon to the earth. Luther speaks with contempt of that upstart astronomer who wishes to reverse
1 " Curiositas non modo supervacanea et ad nullam rem titilis, verum etiam exitiosa."
2 Inst. Bk. I. ch. XIV. § 4.
3 Copernicus finished his work De Orbiiim calestium Revolutionibus in 1530, and dedicated it to the pope ; but it was not published till 1543, by Osiander of Niirnberg, to whom he had given the manuscript, and who announced the discovery in the preface as a mere hypothesis. He received a copy on his death-bed at Frauenburg on the borders of Prussia and Poland. He was probably a devout man, and is often credited with the prayer graven on his tombstone: "I ask not the grace accorded to Paul; not that given to Peter,give me only the favor which thou didst show to the thief on the cross" {"non parem Pauli grattam reqm'ro," etc.) ; but this inscription is taken from a poem of ^Eneas Sylvius De Passione Domint, and was put upon the monument of Copernicus at Thorn by Dr. Melchior Pyrnesius (1589). Copernicus is there represented with folded hands before a crucifix. See Prowe's work on Copernicus, and Luthardt in the "Theol. Literaturblatt" for April 22, 1892 (p. 188).