15. For the present let us allow, though we shall afterwards show that it is not so, that they do ascertain the true meaning of the position and relations of the stars; |188 nevertheless, let us ask those who suppose that human affairs are necessitated by the stars, how such and such a position to-day can have produced previous events. For if this is impossible, even supposing that they discover the truth concerning those previous events, it is clear that the stars with their present movements in the heavens have not produced things past and gone before they took that position. And if any one, noting what is said about the future, should allow that they are correct, he will say that they are right, not because the stars cause the events, but only because they indicate them. And if any one alleges that the stars do not now cause past events, but that there were other groupings which were the causes of the nativity of the persons I have mentioned, but that the present grouping has only indicated them, and that future events are nevertheless shown by the present grouping at the nativity of such an one, let him show how we are to distinguish between our ability to prove the truth of certain things if the stars are causative, and of others if they are indicative only. If they cannot explain the difference, they will frankly concede that nothing human is caused by the stars, but, as we said before, some way or other indicated; as if one did not receive the knowledge of the past and future from the stars at all, but from the mind of God through some prophetic utterance. For, as we have already shown that the fact of God's knowing the future conduct of every person does not disturb the argument respecting our Free Will, so neither do the signs, which God appointed to be indicative, interfere with our Free Will; but, like a volume of prophecy, the heavens as a whole, being as it were one of God's books, may contain the future. And thus what is said by Jacob in the prayer for Joseph may be understood: "For I read in the pages of the sky what shall befall thee and thy sons." Perhaps also the passage, "The heavens shall be rolled together as a book," shows |189 that the declarations therein indicative of the future shall be brought to completion, and, so to speak, fulfilled, as the prophecies are said to be fulfilled by the event. And thus the existing stars will be for signs, according as it is said, "Let them be for signs." And Jeremiah, in order that he may bring us back to ourselves, and remove our dread of what is thought to be indicated by the stars, and perhaps supposed to come from them, says, "Be not dismayed at the signs of heaven."