The xvi. Chapter.
How old writers varie about the matter, the maner and the meanes, whereby things augurificall are mooved.
THEOPHRASTUS and Themistius affirme, that whatsoever happeneth unto man suddenlie and by chance, commeth from the providence of God. So as Themistius gathereth, that men in that respect/206. prophesie, when they speake what commeth in their braine, upon the sudden; though not knowing or understanding what they saie. And that seeing God hath a care for us, Averroes. 12. metaphysic. it agreeth with reason (as Theophrastus saith) that he shew us by some meane whatsoever shall happen. For with Pythagoras he concludeth, that all foreshewes and auguries are the voices and words of God, by the which he foretelleth man the good or evill that shall beetide.
Trismegistus affirmeth, that all augurificall things are mooved by divels; Porphyrie saith by gods, or rather good angels: according to the opinion of Plotinus and Iamblichus. Some other affirme they are mooved by the moone wandering through the twelve signes of the Zodiake: bicause the moone hath dominion in all sudden matters. The Aegyptian astronomers hold, that the moone ordereth not those portentous matters, but Stella errans, a wandering starre, &c./