Bottesford Moors, Kirton Lindsey.
_Passage in St. James._--I hope you will not consider the following Query
unsuited to your publication, and in that case I may confidently anticipate
the removal of my difficulty.
In reading yesterday Jeremy Taylor's _Holy Living and Dying_, I came to
this passage (p. 308. Bohn's edition):
"St. James, in his epistle, notes the folly of some men, his
contemporaries, who were so impatient of the event of to-morrow, or the
accidents of next year, or the good or evils of old age, that they
would consult astrologers and witches, oracles and devils, what should
befall them the next calends--what should be the event of such a
voyage--what God had written in his book concerning the success of
battles, the election of emperors, &c.... Against this he opposes his
counsel, that we should not search after forbidden records, much less
by uncertain significations," &c.
Now my Query is, To what epistle of St. James does the eloquent bishop
refer? If to the canonical epistle, to what part? To the words (above
quoted) "forbidden records" there is a foot-note, which contains only the
well-known passage in Horace, lib. i. od. xi., and two others from
Propertius and Catullus.