Teaching Christianity
from the scripture story that is already a commonplace among all nations.
34. Nor is it to the point when they say that the minimal, tiny moment of time which separates the birth of twins counts for much in nature, considering the speed at which the heavenly bodies rush along. For even were I to grant that it counts for ever so much, it still cannot be discerned by the astrologer in the stars, by inspecting which he claims to tell people's fate. So how is he helped by what he cannot find in the set of stars, which he is bound to inspect as a unit, whether he is consulted about Jacob or about his brother, if it is different in the sky which he has no qualms at all about blaming, and no different in his tables, which he is anxiously and pointlessly scrutinizing?
So it is that these opinions, by which human presumption has treated things as signs of this sort, should be put down to those same agreements and bargains made with demons that we mentioned before.
23, 35. For it will come about as a result of this, that by a mysterious divine judgment people who are greedy for bad things are handed over to be fooled and cheated as their evil wishes deserve, fooled and cheated by the apostate angels, to whom a ruling of divine providence has so neatly and fittingly subjected this lowest part of the universe.[80] The way they are made fools of and cheated is that many past and future events are declared by means of these superstitious and pernicious kinds of divination that occur, or have occurred, exactly as declared, and that to those who bother about such observances,[81] many things do happen such as the observances suggest. So they are caught like flies in a spider's web, and become more obsessed than ever with these things, getting themselves entangled more and more inextricably in this direst, most baneful of errors.
In their concern for our salvation the divine scriptures did not pass over in silence this kind of fornication of the soul;