NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 727 



Even as late as the end of the seventeenth century (1688) we have 

 English authors of much power battling for this supposed scriptural 

 view. 



But it was in Germany that this superstition took its strongest 

 hold. The same depth of feeling which produced in that country the 

 most terrible growth of the witchcraft persecution brought supersti- 

 tion to its highest development regarding comets. In one of his Ad- 

 vent sermons, Luther had declared strongly in favor of it. A little 

 later Arietus declared, " The heavens are not merely given us for our 

 pleasure, but also as a warning for the correction of our lives, and of 

 the wrath of God." * Lavather showed that comets are signs of death 

 or calamity, and cited proofs from Scripture. Catholic and Protestant 

 strove together for the glory of asserting the doctrine, and in the same 

 seventeenth century Fromundus, the eminent Professor and Doctor of 

 Theology at the University of Louvain, who so strongly opposed the 

 rotundity of the earth, supported no less vigorously the prophetic 

 character of comets. So, too, as late as 1680, we have Voigt declar- 

 ing that the comet of that year clearly presages the downfall of the 

 Turkish Empire, and stigmatizing as " atheists and epicureans " all who 

 do not believe comets to be God's warnings.! 



But the great efforts in behalf of this doctrine throughout Europe 

 were made in the pulpits, and especially in the Protestant pulpits. 

 Out of the mass of such sermons which were widely circulated, I will 

 select just one as typical, and it is worthy of careful study, as show- 

 ing the dangers of applying theological methods to scientific fact. 

 Conrad Dieterich was during the first half of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury a Lutheran ecclesiastic of the highest authority. His ability 

 as a theologian had made him Archdeacon of Marburg, Professor of 

 Philosophy and director of studies at the University of Giessen, and 

 finally "Superintendent," exercising functions of an episcopal char- 

 acter in the Lutheran regions of Southwestern Germany. In the year 

 1620, on the second Sunday in Advent, in the great Cathedral of Ulm, 

 he developed the orthodox doctrine of comets in a sermon, taking 

 up the questions : 1. What are comets ? 2. What do they indicate ? 

 3. What have we to do with their significance ? This sermon marks 

 an epoch. Delivered in that center of Protestant Germany, and by a 

 prelate of the highest standing, it was immediately printed, prefaced 

 by three laudatory poems from different men of note, and sent forth to 

 drive back the scientific, or, as it was supposed, the " godless," view of 

 comets. The preface shows that Dieterich was sincerely alarmed by 

 the tendency to regard comets as natural appearances. His text was 

 taken from the twenty-fifth verse of the twenty-first chapter of St. 

 Luke : " And there shall be signs in. the sun, and in the moon, and in 



* See Madler, " Geschichte der Astronomie," vol. ii. 



f For Fromundus and Voigt, see Madler, p. 399; also Lecky, "Rationalism in Eu- 

 rope," vol. i, p. 28. 



