For as these were not created to beautify the earth alone, and to cover and shadow her dusty face, but otherwise for the use of man and beast, to feed them and cure them; so were not those uncountable glorious bodies set in the firmament, to no other end, than to adorn it; but for instruments and organs of his divine providence, so far as it hath pleased his just will to determine.

“Origen upon this place of Genesis, ‘Let there be light in the firmament, &c.’ affirmeth, that the stars are not causes (meaning perchance binding causes;) but are as open books, wherein are contained and set down all things whatsoever to come; but not to be read by the eyes of human wisdom: which latter part I believe well, and the saying of Syracides withal; ‘That there are hid yet greater things than these be, and we have seen but a few of his works.’ And though, for the capacity of men, we know somewhat, yet in the true and uttermost virtues of herbs and plants, which our selves sow and set, and which grow under our feet, we are in effect ignorant; much more in the powers and working of celestial bodies.… But in this question of fate, the middle course is to be followed, that as with the heathen we do not bind God to his creatures, in this supposed necessity of destiny; and so on the contrary we do not rob those beautiful creatures of their powers and offices.… And that they wholly direct the reasonless mind, I am resolved: for all those which were created mortal, as birds, beasts, and the like, are left to their natural appetites; over all which, celestial bodies (as instruments and executioners of God’s providence) have absolute dominion.… And Saint Augustine says, ‘Deus regit inferiora corpora per superiora’; ‘God ruleth the bodies below by those above.’… It was therefore truly affirmed, Sapiens adiuvabit opus astrorum, quemadmodum agricola terrae naturam; ‘A wise man assisteth the work of the stars, as the husbandman helpeth the nature of the soil.’… Lastly, we ought all to know, that God created the stars as he did the rest of the universal; whose influences may be called his reserved and unwritten laws.… But it was well said of Plotinus, that the stars were significant, but not efficient, giving them yet something less than their due: and therefore as I do not consent with them, who would make those glorious creatures of God virtueless: so I think that we derogate from his eternal and absolute power and providence, to ascribe to them the same dominion over our immortal souls, which they have over all bodily substances, and perishable natures: for the souls of men loving and fearing God, receive influence from that divine light itself, whereof the sun’s clarity, and that of the stars, is by Plato called but a shadow, Lumen est umbra Dei, et Deus est lumen luminis; ‘Light is the shadow of God’s brightness, who is the light of light.’”

We are reminded by this of Du Bartas’s poem on the Probability of the Celestial Orbs being inhabited, translated by Sylvester:

I’ll ne’er believe that the arch-Architect
With all these fires the heavenly arches deck’d
Only for shew, and with their glistering shields
T’ amaze poor shepherds, watching in the fields;
I’ll ne’er believe that the least flow’r that pranks
Our garden borders, or the common banks,
And the least stone, that in her warming lap
Our kind nurse Earth doth covetously wrap,
Hath some peculiar virtue of its own,
And that the glorious stars of heav’n have none.