Page:The life and opinions of Tristram Shandy (Volume 4).pdf/53

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

[45]

cessary influence of the planets on the twenty-second day of October 1483—when the moon was in the twelfth house—Jupiter, Mars, and Venus in the third, the Sun, Saturn, and Mercury all got together in the fourth—that he must in course, and unavoidably be a damn'd man—and that his doctrines, by a direct corollary, must be damn'd doctrines too.

By inspection into his horoscope, where five planets were in coition all at once with scorpio[E 1] (in reading this my fatherwould

  1. Hæc mira, satisque horrenda. Planetarum coitio sub Scarpio Asterismo in nonâ coeli statione, quam Arabes religioni deputabant efficit Martinum Lutherum sacrilegum hereticum, christianæ religionis hostem acerrimum atque prophanum, ex horoscopi directione ad Martis coitum, religiosissimus obiit, ejus Anima seclestissima ad infernos navigavit—ab Alecto, Tisiphone et Magera flagellis igneis cruciata pereniter.
    —Lucas Gauricus in Tractatu astrologico de præteritis multorum hominum accidentibus per genituras examinatis.