It is written in Deuteronomy, [The Lord] your God will raise up a prophet like me for you from your brothers. You shall hear him; and it shall be that every soul which will not hear that prophet shall be destroyed from his people.^[1] Therefore some prophet was specially expected who would be similar to Moses in some respect, to mediate between God and humanity, and who would receive the covenant from God and give the new covenant to those who became disciples. And the people of Israel knew so far as each of the prophets was concerned that no one of them was the [special] one announced by Moses.

Like me, says Moses. This means according to the form of the flesh, not to the eminence of majesty. Therefore we find the Lord Jesus called a prophet. Accordingly that woman^[1] is no longer greatly in error when she says, I see that you are a prophet.^[2] She begins to call her husband, to exclude the adulterer. I see that you are a prophet. And she begins to ask about a thing that constantly disturbs her.

We can be prepared to find some prophet even of impiety—and perhaps not just one but several—who will tell us of a word of the Lord, which the Lord has not at all commanded, or a word of wisdom^[1] which has nothing whatever to do with wisdom. His purpose is to slay us by the word of his mouth.

But men form the material of their apostasy. For, having shown them a plan of the position of the stars, like dice players, they introduced fate, a flagrant injustice. For the judge and the judged are made so by fate.

Such are the demons; these are they who laid down the doctrine of fate. Their fundamental principle was the placing of animals in the heavens. For the creeping things on the earth, and those that swim in the waters, and the quadrupeds on the mountains, with which they lived when expelled from heaven—these they dignified with celestial honor, so that they might themselves be thought to remain in heaven, and, by placing the constellations there, might make the irrational course of life on earth appear rational. Thus the high-spirited and he who is crushed with toil, the temperate and the intemperate, the indigent and the wealthy, are what they are simply because of the controllers of their nativity. For the delineation of the zodiacal circle is the work of gods. And, when the light of one of them predominates, as they express it, it deprives all the rest of their honor; and he who now is conquered at another time gains the predominance. And the seven planets are well pleased with them, as if they were amusing themselves with dice. But we are superior to fate, and instead of wandering demons, we have learned to know one Lord who wanders not.

We observe among the arts some professions liable to the charge of idolatry. Of astrologers there should be no speaking even; but since one has recently challenged us, defending his profession on his own behalf, I will use a few words. I do not allege that he honors idols, whose names he has inscribed in the heavens, and to whom he has attributed all God’s power; but that men, presuming that we are disposed of by the immutable judgment of the stars, think on that account that God is not to be sought after. One proposition I lay down: that those angels, the deserters from God, the lovers of women, were the discoverers of this curious art, and on that account also condemned by God.

Since, therefore, we have explained the astonishing wisdom of these men, and have not concealed their overwrought art of divination by means of contemplation, neither shall I be silent regarding cases in which those who are deceived act foolishly. For, comparing the forms and dispositions of men with names of stars, how impotent their system is! For we know that those originally conversant with such investigations have called the stars by names in reference to their significance and for facility of future recognition. For what similarity is there of these [heavenly bodies] with the likeness of animals, or what community of nature as regards conduct and energy, that one should allege that a person born in Leo should be irascible, and one born in Virgo moderate, or one born in Cancer wicked.

It has been easily made evident to all that the heresy of the Peratae is altered in name only from the [art] of the astrologers. And the rest of the books of these [heretics] contain the same method, if it were agreeable to anyone to wade through them all.

[T]he demons are the enemies and harassers of men, and on this account Trismegistus calls them wicked angels, knowing that they were corrupted from heavenly beings, and began to be earthly. These were the inventors of astrology, and soothsaying, and divination, and oracles, and necromancy, and the art of magic, and whatever evil practices besides these men exercise, either openly or in secret.

[Demons] also brought to light astrology, and augury, and divination; and though these things are in themselves false, yet they themselves, the authors of evils, so govern and regulate them that they are believed to be true. . . . By their frauds they have drawn darkness over the human race, that truth might be oppressed, and the name of the supreme and matchless God might be forgotten.

Therefore the astrologers, being ignorant of such mysteries, think that these things happen by the courses of the heavenly bodies; hence in their answers to those who go to them to consult them as to future things, they are deceived in very many instances. Nor is it surprising, for they are not prophets; but by long practice the authors of errors find a refuge in those things by which they were deceived, and introduce certain “climacteric periods,” that they may pretend a knowledge of uncertain things. For they represent these “climacterics” as times of danger, in which one sometimes is destroyed, sometimes is not destroyed, not knowing that it is not the course of the stars but the operation of demons that regulates these things; and those demons, eager to confirm the error of astrology, deceive men to sin by mathematical calculations, so that when they suffer the punishment of sin, either by the permission of God or by legal sentence, the astrologer may seem to have spoken the truth.

[A]s usually happens when men see unfavorable dreams, and can make nothing certain out of them, when any event occurs, they adapt what they saw in the dream to what has occurred; so also is [the] mathematics [of astrology]. For before anything happens, nothing is declared with certainty; but after something has happened, they gather the causes of the event. And thus often, when the astrologer has been at fault, and the thing happens otherwise, they take the blame to themselves, saying that it was such and such a star that opposed, and that they did not see it; not knowing that their error does not proceed from unskillfulness in their art, but from the inconsistency of the whole system. . . . But we who have learned the reason of this mystery know the cause since, having freedom of will, we sometimes oppose our desires and sometimes yield to them. And therefore the issue of human doings is uncertain, because it depends upon freedom of will. . . . And this is why ignorant astrologers have invented the talk about “climacterics” as their refuge in uncertainties.

They who are of the priesthood, or of the clergy, shall not be magicians, enchanters, mathematicians, or astrologers; nor shall they make what are called amulets, which are chains for their own souls. And those who wear such, we command to be cast out of the Church.

[Astrologers] have written books of [astrological] tables, in which they show stars, to which they have given the names of saints. And therein they have inflicted on themselves a double reproach, because they have perfected themselves in a lying and contemptible science, and have led the ignorant and simple astray by evil thoughts about the right faith established in truth and upright in the presence of God.

But those who overstep the borders, making the words of Scripture their apology for the art of casting nativities, pretend that our lives depend upon the motion of the heavenly bodies, and that thus the Chaldaeans read in the planets what will happen to us. By these very simple words “let them be for signs,” they understand neither the variations of the weather, nor the change of seasons; they only see in them, at the will of their imagination, the distribution of human destinies. What do they say in reality? When the planets cross in the signs of the zodiac, certain figures formed by their meeting give birth to certain destinies, and others produce different destinies.

To whom then must we make an answer first—to the heretics or to the astrologers? For both come from the serpent, and desire to corrupt the Church’s virginity of heart, which she holds in undefiled faith.

Now I had also repudiated the lying divination and impious absurdities of the astrologers . . . [and] I turned my thoughts to those who are born twins, who generally are born so near one to another that the small distance of time between them (however much force [astrologers] may contend that it has in the nature of things) cannot be noted by human observation or expressed in those [planetary] figures the astrologer examines so that he may pronounce the truth. Nor can they be true; for looking into the same figures he must have foretold the same of Esau and Jacob, but the same did not happen to them. He must therefore speak falsely, or if truly, then, looking into the same figures, he must not speak the same things. Not then by art but by chance would he speak truly.