I.  THE THEOLOGICAL VIEW.





Few things in the evolution of astronomy are more suggestive than

the struggle between the theological and the scientific doctrine

regarding comets--the passage from the conception of them as

fire-balls flung by an angry God for the purpose of scaring a

wicked world, to a recognition of them as natural in origin and

obedient to law in movement.  Hardly anything throws a more vivid

light upon the danger of wresting texts of Scripture to preserve

ideas which observation and thought have superseded, and upon the

folly of arraying ecclesiastical power against scientific

discovery.[88]



[88] The present study, after its appearance in the Popular

Science Monthly as a "new chapter in the Warfare of Science," was

revised and enlarged to nearly its present form, and read before

the American Historical Association, among whose papers it was

published, in 1887, under the title of A History of the Doctrine

of Comets.





Out of the ancient world had come a mass of beliefs regarding

comets, meteors, and eclipses; all these were held to be signs

displayed from heaven for the warning of mankind.  Stars and

meteors were generally thought to presage happy events,

especially the births of gods, heroes, and great men.  So firmly

rooted was this idea that we constantly find among the ancient

nations traditions of lights in the heavens preceding the birth

of persons of note.  The sacred books of India show that the

births of Crishna and of Buddha were announced by such heavenly

lights.[89] The sacred books of China tell of similar

appearances at the births of Yu, the founder of the first

dynasty, and of the inspired sage, Lao-tse.  According to the

Jewish legends, a star appeared at the birth of Moses, and was

seen by the Magi of Egypt, who informed the king; and when

Abraham was born an unusual star appeared in the east.  The

Greeks and Romans cherished similar traditions.  A heavenly light

accompanied the birth of Aesculapius, and the births of various

Caesars were heralded in like manner.[90]



[89] For Crishna, see Cox, Aryan Mythology, vol. ii, p. 133; the

Vishnu Purana (Wilson's translation), book v, chap. iv.  As to

lights at the birth, or rather at the conception, of Buddha, see

Bunsen, Angel Messiah, pp. 22,23; Alabaster, Wheel of the Law

(illustrations of Buddhism), p. 102; Edwin Arnold, Light of Asia;

Bp. Bigandet, Life of Gaudama, the Burmese Buddha, p. 30;

Oldenberg, Buddha (English translation), part i, chap. ii.



[90] For Chinese legends regarding stars at the birth of Yu and

Lao-tse, see Thornton, History of China, vol. i, p. 137; also

Pingre, Cometographie, p. 245. Regarding stars at the birth of

Moses and Abraham, see Calmet, Fragments, part viii; Baring-

Gould, Legends of Old Testament Characters, chap. xxiv; Farrar,

Life of Christ, chap. iii.  As to the Magi, see Higgins,

Anacalypsis; Hooykaas, Ort, and Kuenen, Bible for Learners, vol.

iii. For Greek and Roman traditions, see Bell, Pantheon, s. v.

Aesculapius and Atreus; Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. i, pp.

151, 590; Farrar, Life of Christ (American edition), p. 52; Cox,

Tales of Ancient Greece, pp. 41, 61, 62; Higgins, Anacalypsis,

vol. i, p. 322; also Suetonius, Caes., Julius, p.88, Claud., p.

463; Seneca, Nat. Quaest, vol. 1, p. 1; Virgil, Ecl., vol. ix, p.

47; as well as Ovid, Pliny, and others.





The same conception entered into our Christian sacred books.  Of

all the legends which grew in such luxuriance and beauty about

the cradle of Jesus of Nazareth, none appeals more directly to

the highest poetic feeling than that given by one of the

evangelists, in which a star, rising in the east, conducted the

wise men to the manger where the Galilean peasant-child--the Hope

of Mankind, the Light of the World--was lying in poverty and

helplessness.



Among the Mohammedans we have a curious example of the same

tendency toward a kindly interpretation of stars and meteors, in

the belief of certain Mohammedan teachers that meteoric showers

are caused by good angels hurling missiles to drive evil angels

out of the sky.



Eclipses were regarded in a very different light, being supposed

to express the distress of Nature at earthly calamities.  The

Greeks believed that darkness overshadowed the earth at the

deaths of Prometheus, Atreus, Hercules, Aesculapius, and

Alexander the Great.  The Roman legends held that at the death of

Romulus there was darkness for six hours.  In the history of the

Caesars occur portents of all three kinds; for at the death of

Julius the earth was shrouded in darkness, the birth of Augustus

was heralded by a star, and the downfall of Nero by a comet.  So,

too, in one of the Christian legends clustering about the

crucifixion, darkness overspread the earth from the sixth to the

ninth hour.  Neither the silence regarding it of the only

evangelist who claims to have been present, nor the fact that

observers like Seneca and Pliny, who, though they carefully

described much less striking occurrences of the same sort and in

more remote regions, failed to note any such darkness even in

Judea, have availed to shake faith in an account so true to the

highest poetic instincts of humanity.



This view of the relations between Nature and man continued among

both Jews and Christians.  According to Jewish tradition,

darkness overspread the earth for three days when the books of

the Law were profaned by translation into Greek.  Tertullian

thought an eclipse an evidence of God's wrath against

unbelievers.  Nor has this mode of thinking ceased in modern

times.  A similar claim was made at the execution of Charles I;

and Increase Mather thought an eclipse in Massachusetts an

evidence of the grief of Nature at the death of President

Chauncey, of Harvard College.  Archbishop Sandys expected

eclipses to be the final tokens of woe at the destruction of the

world, and traces of this feeling have come down to our own time.



The quaint story of the Connecticut statesman who, when his

associates in the General Assembly were alarmed by an eclipse of

the sun, and thought it the beginning of the Day of Judgment,

quietly ordered in candles, that he might in any case be found

doing his duty, marks probably the last noteworthy appearance of

the old belief in any civilized nation.[91]



[91] For Hindu theories, see Alabaster, Wheel of the Law, 11.

For Greek and Roman legends, See Higgins, Anacalypsis, vol. i,

pp. 616, 617.; also Suetonius, Caes., Julius, p. 88, Claud., p.

46; Seneca, Quaest. Nat., vol. i, p. 1, vol. vii, p. 17; Pliny,

Hist. Nat., vol. ii, p. 25; Tacitus, Ann., vol. xiv, p. 22;

Josephus, Antiq., vol. xiv, p. 12; and the authorities above

cited.  For the tradition of the Jews regarding the darkness of

three days, see citation in Renan, Histoire du Peuple Israel,

vol. iv, chap. iv.  For Tertullian's belief regarding the

significance of an eclipse, see the Ad Scapulum, chap. iii, in

Migne, Patrolog. Lat., vol. i, p. 701.  For the claim regarding

Charles I, see a sermon preached before Charles II, cited by

Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, vol. i, p. 65.  Mather

thought, too, that it might have something to do with the death

of sundry civil functionaries of the colonies; see his Discourse

concerning comets, 1682.  For Archbishop Sandy's belief, see his

eighteenth sermon (in Parker Soc. Publications).  The story of

Abraham Davenport has been made familiar by the poem of Whittier.





In these beliefs regarding meteors and eclipses there was little

calculated to do harm by arousing that superstitious terror which

is the worst breeding-bed of cruelty.  Far otherwise was it with

the belief regarding comets.  During many centuries it gave rise

to the direst superstition and fanaticism.  The Chaldeans alone

among the ancient peoples generally regarded comets without fear,

and thought them bodies wandering as harmless as fishes in the

sea; the Pythagoreans alone among philosophers seem to have had

a vague idea of them as bodies returning at fixed periods of

time; and in all antiquity, so far as is known, one man alone,

Seneca, had the scientific instinct and prophetic inspiration to

give this idea definite shape, and to declare that the time would

come when comets would be found to move in accordance with

natural law.  Here and there a few strong men rose above the

prevailing superstition.  The Emperor Vespasian tried to laugh it

down, and insisted that a certain comet in his time could not

betoken his death, because it was hairy, and he bald; but such

scoffing produced little permanent effect, and the prophecy of

Seneca was soon forgotten.  These and similar isolated utterances

could not stand against the mass of opinion which upheld the

doctrine that comets are "signs and wonders."[92]



[92] For terror caused in Rome by comets, see Pingre,

Cometographie, pp. 165, 166.  For the Chaldeans, see Wolf,

Geschichte der Astronomie, p. 10 et seq., and p. 181 et seq.;

also Pingre, chap. ii.  For the Pythagorean notions, see

citations from Plutarch in Costard, History of Astronomy, p. 283.

For Seneca's prediction, see Guillemin, World of Comets

(translated by Glaisher), pp. 4, 5; also Watson, On Comets, p.

126.  For this feeling in antiquity generally, see the

preliminary chapters of the two works last cited.





The belief that every comet is a ball of fire flung from the

right hand of an angry God to warn the grovelling dwellers of

earth was received into the early Church, transmitted through the

Middle Ages to the Reformation period, and in its transmission

was made all the more precious by supposed textual proofs from

Scripture.  The great fathers of the Church committed themselves

unreservedly to it.  In the third century Origen, perhaps the

most influential of the earlier fathers of the universal Church

in all questions between science and faith, insisted that comets

indicate catastrophes and the downfall of empires and worlds.

Bede, so justly revered by the English Church, declared in the

eighth century that "comets portend revolutions of kingdoms,

pestilence, war, winds, or heat"; and John of Damascus, his

eminent contemporary in the Eastern Church, took the same view.

Rabanus Maurus, the great teacher of Europe in the ninth century,

an authority throughout the Middle Ages, adopted Bede's opinion

fully.  St. Thomas Aquinas, the great light of the universal

Church in the thirteenth century, whose works the Pope now

reigning commends as the centre and source of all university

instruction, accepted and handed down the same opinion.  The

sainted Albert the Great, the most noted genius of the medieval

Church in natural science, received and developed this theory.

These men and those who followed them founded upon scriptural

texts and theological reasonings a system that for seventeen

centuries defied every advance of thought.[93]



[93] For Origen, se his De Princip., vol. i, p. 7; also Maury,

Leg. pieuses, p. 203, note.  For Bede and others, see De Nat.,

vol. xxiv; Joh. Dam., De Fid. Or.,vol. ii, p. 7; Maury, La Magie

et l'Astronomie, pp. 181, 182.  For Albertus Magnus, see his

Opera, vol. i, tr. iii, chaps. x, xi.  Among the texts of

Scripture on which this belief rested was especially Joel ii, 30,

31.





The main evils thence arising were three:  the paralysis of

self-help, the arousing of fanaticism, and the strengthening of

ecclesiastical and political tyranny.  The first two of these

evils--the paralysis of self-help and the arousing of

fanaticism--are evident throughout all these ages.  At the

appearance of a comet we constantly see all Christendom, from

pope to peasant, instead of striving to avert war by wise

statesmanship, instead of striving to avert pestilence by

observation and reason, instead of striving to avert famine by

skilful economy, whining before fetiches, trying to bribe them to

remove these signs of God's wrath, and planning to wreak this

supposed wrath of God upon misbelievers.



As to the third of these evils--the strengthening of

ecclesiastical and civil despotism--examples appear on every

side.  It was natural that hierarchs and monarchs whose births

were announced by stars, or whose deaths were announced by

comets, should regard themselves as far above the common herd,

and should be so regarded by mankind; passive obedience was thus

strengthened, and the most monstrous assumptions of authority

were considered simply as manifestations of the Divine will.

Shakespeare makes Calphurnia say to Caesar:





"When beggars die, there are no comets seen;

The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes."





Galeazzo, the tyrant of Milan, expressing satisfaction on his

deathbed that his approaching end was of such importance as to be

heralded by a comet, is but a type of many thus encouraged to

prey upon mankind; and Charles V, one of the most powerful

monarchs the world has known, abdicating under fear of the comet

of 1556, taking refuge in the monastery of San Yuste, and giving

up the best of his vast realms to such a scribbling bigot as

Philip II, furnishes an example even more striking.[94]





[94] For Caesar, see Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, act ii, sc. 2.

For Galeazzo, see Guillemin, World of Comets, p. 19.  For Charles

V, see Prof. Wolf's essay in the Monatschrift des

wissenschaftlichen Vereins, Zurich, 1857, p. 228.





But for the retention of this belief there was a moral cause.

Myriads of good men in the Christian Church down to a recent

period saw in the appearance of comets not merely an exhibition

of "signs in the heavens" foretold in Scripture, but also Divine

warnings of vast value to humanity as incentives to repentance

and improvement of life-warnings, indeed, so precious that they

could not be spared without danger to the moral government of the

world.  And this belief in the portentous character of comets as

an essential part of the Divine government, being, as it was

thought, in full accord with Scripture, was made for centuries a

source of terror to humanity.  To say nothing of examples in the

earlier periods, comets in the tenth century especially increased

the distress of all Europe.  In the middle of the eleventh

century a comet was thought to accompany the death of Edward the

Confessor and to presage the Norman conquest; the traveller in

France to-day may see this belief as it was then wrought into the

Bayeux tapestry.[95]



[95] For evidences of this widespread terror, see chronicles of

Raoul Glaber, Guillaume de Nangis, William of Malmesbury,

Florence of Worcester, Ordericus Vitalis, et al., passim, and the

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (in the Rolls Series).  For very thrilling

pictures of this horror in England, see Freeman, Norman Conquest,

vol. iii, pp. 640-644, and William Rufus, vol. ii, p. 118.  For

the Bayeau tapestry, see Bruce, Bayeux Tapestry Elucidated, plate

vii and p. 86; also Guillemin, World of Comets, p. 24.  There is

a large photographic copy, in the South Kensington Museum at

London, of the original, wrought, as is generally believed, by

the wife of William the Conqueror and her ladies, and is still

preserved in the town museum at Bayeux.





Nearly every decade of years throughout the Middle Ages saw

Europe plunged into alarm by appearances of this sort, but the

culmination seems to have been reached in 1456.  At that time the

Turks, after a long effort, had made good their footing in

Europe.  A large statesmanship or generalship might have kept

them out; but, while different religious factions were disputing

over petty shades of dogma, they had advanced, had taken

Constantinople, and were evidently securing their foothold.  Now

came the full bloom of this superstition.  A comet appeared.  The

Pope of that period, Calixtus III, though a man of more than

ordinary ability, was saturated with the ideas of his time.

Alarmed at this monster, if we are to believe the contemporary

historian, this infallible head of the Church solemnly "decreed

several days of prayer for the averting of the wrath of God, that

whatever calamity impended might be turned from the Christians

and against the Turks."  And, that all might join daily in this

petition, there was then established that midday Angelus which

has ever since called good Catholics to prayer against the powers

of evil.  Then, too, was incorporated into a litany the plea,

"From the Turk and the comet, good Lord, deliver us."  Never was

papal intercession less effective; for the Turk has held

Constantinople from that day to this, while the obstinate comet,

being that now known under the name of Halley, has returned

imperturbably at short periods ever since.[96]



[96] The usual statement is, that Calixtus excommunicated the

comet by a bull, and this is accepted by Arago, Grant, Hoefer,

Guillemin, Watson, and many historians of astronomy.  Hence the

parallel is made on a noted occasion by President Lincoln.  No

such bull, however, is to be found in the published Bulleria, and

that establishing the Angelus (as given by Raynaldus in the

Annales Eccl.) contains no mention of the comet.  But the

authority of Platina (in his Vitae Pontificum, Venice, 1479, sub

Calistus III) who was not only in Rome at the time, but when he

wrote his history, archivist of the Vatican, is final as to the

Pope's attitude.  Platina's authority was never questioned until

modern science changed the ideas of the world.  The recent

attempt of Pastor (in his Geschichte der Papste) to pooh-pooh

down the whole matter is too evident an evasion to carry weight

with those who know how even the most careful histories have to

be modified to suit the views of the censorship at Rome.





But the superstition went still further.  It became more and more

incorporated into what was considered "scriptural science" and

"sound learning."  The encyclopedic summaries, in which the

science of the Middle Ages and the Reformation period took form,

furnish abundant proofs of this.



Yet scientific observation was slowly undermining this structure.

The inspired prophecy of Seneca had not been forgotten.  Even as

far back as the ninth century, in the midst of the sacred

learning so abundant at the court of Charlemagne and his

successors, we find a scholar protesting against the accepted

doctrine.  In the thirteenth century we have a mild question by

Albert the Great as to the supposed influence of comets upon

individuals; but the prevailing theological current was too

strong, and he finally yielded to it in this as in so many other

things.



So, too, in the sixteenth century, we have Copernicus refusing to

accept the usual theory, Paracelsus writing to Zwingli against

it, and Julius Caesar Scaliger denouncing it as "ridiculous

folly."[97]



[97] As to encyclopedic summaries, see Vincent of Beauvais,

Speculum Naturale, and the various editions of Reisch's Margarita

Philosophica.  For Charlemagne's time, see Champion, La Fin du

Monde, p. 156; Leopardi, Errori Popolari, p. 165.  As to Albert

the Great's question, see Heller, Geschichte der Physik, vol. i,

p. 188.  As to scepticism in the sixteenth century, see Champion,

La Fin du Monde, pp. 155, 156; and for Scaliger, Dudith's book,

cited below.





At first this scepticism only aroused the horror of theologians

and increased the vigour of ecclesiastics; both asserted the

theological theory of comets all the more strenuously as based on

scriptural truth.  During the sixteenth century France felt the

influence of one of her greatest men on the side of this

superstition.  Jean Bodin, so far before his time in political

theories, was only thoroughly abreast of it in religious

theories:  the same reverence for the mere letter of Scripture

which made him so fatally powerful in supporting the witchcraft

delusion, led him to support this theological theory of

comets--but with a difference:  he thought them the souls of men,

wandering in space, bringing famine, pestilence, and war.



Not less strong was the same superstition in England.  Based upon

mediaeval theology, it outlived the revival of learning.  From a

multitude of examples a few may be selected as typical.  Early in

the sixteenth century Polydore Virgil, an ecclesiastic of the

unreformed Church, alludes, in his English History, to the

presage of the death of the Emperor Constantine by a comet as to

a simple matter of fact; and in his work on prodigies he pushes

this superstition to its most extreme point, exhibiting comets as

preceding almost every form of calamity.



In 1532, just at the transition period from the old Church to the

new, Cranmer, paving the way to his archbishopric, writes from

Germany to Henry VIII, and says of the comet then visible:  "What

strange things these tokens do signify to come hereafter, God

knoweth; for they do not lightly appear but against some great

matter."



Twenty years later Bishop Latimer, in an Advent sermon, speaks of

eclipses, rings about the sun, and the like, as signs of the

approaching end of the world.[98]



[98] For Bodin, see Theatr., lib. ii, cited by Pingre, vol. i, p.

45; also a vague citation in Baudrillart, Bodin et son Temps, p.

360.  For Polydore Virgil, see English History, p. 97 (in Camden

Society Publications).  For Cranmer, see Remains, vol. ii, p. 535

(in Parker Society Publications).  For Latimer, see Sermons,

second Sunday in Advent, 1552.





In 1580, under Queen Elizabeth, there was set forth an "order of

prayer to avert God's wrath from us, threatened by the late

terrible earthquake, to be used in all parish churches."  In

connection with this there was also commended to the faithful "a

godly admonition for the time present"; and among the things

referred to as evidence of God's wrath are comets, eclipses, and

falls of snow.



This view held sway in the Church of England during Elizabeth's

whole reign and far into the Stuart period:  Strype, the

ecclesiastical annalist, gives ample evidence of this, and among

the more curious examples is the surmise that the comet of 1572

was a token of Divine wrath provoked by the St. Bartholomew

massacre.



As to the Stuart period, Archbishop Spottiswoode seems to have

been active in carrying the superstition from the sixteenth

century to the seventeenth, and Archbishop Bramhall cites

Scripture in support of it.  Rather curiously, while the diary of

Archbishop Laud shows so much superstition regarding dreams as

portents, it shows little or none regarding comets; but Bishop

Jeremy Taylor, strong as he was, evidently favoured the usual

view.  John Howe, the eminent Nonconformist divine in the latter

part of the century, seems to have regarded the comet

superstition as almost a fundamental article of belief; he

laments the total neglect of comets and portents generally,

declaring that this neglect betokens want of reverence for the

Ruler of the world; he expresses contempt for scientific inquiry

regarding comets, insists that they may be natural bodies and yet

supernatural portents, and ends by saying, "I conceive it very

safe to suppose that some very considerable thing, either in the

way of judgment or mercy, may ensue, according as the cry of

persevering wickedness or of penitential prayer is more or less

loud at that time."[99]



[99] For Liturgical Services of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, see

Parker Society Publications, pp. 569, 570.  For Strype, see his

Ecclesiastical Memorials, vol. iii, part i, p. 472; also see his

Annals of the reformation, vol. ii, part ii, p. 151; and his Life

of Sir Thomas Smith, pp. 161, 162.  For Spottiswoode, see History

of the Church of Scotland (Edinburgh reprint, 1851), vol. i, pp.

185, 186.  For Bramhall, see his Works, Oxford, 1844, vol. iv,

pp. 60, 307, etc.  For Jeremy Taylor, see his Sermons on the Life

of Christ.  For John Howe, see his Works, London, 1862, vol. iv,

pp. 140, 141.





The Reformed Church of Scotland supported the superstition just

as strongly.  John Knox saw in comets tokens of the wrath of

Heaven; other authorities considered them "a warning to the king

to extirpate the Papists"; and as late as 1680, after Halley had

won his victory, comets were announced on high authority in the

Scottish Church to be "prodigies of great judgment on these lands

for our sins, for never was the Lord more provoked by a people."



While such was the view of the clergy during the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries, the laity generally accepted it as a

matter of course, Among the great leaders in literature there was

at least general acquiescence in it.  Both Shakespeare and Milton

recognise it, whether they fully accept it or not.  Shakespeare

makes the Duke of Bedford, lamenting at the bier of Henry V, say:





"Comets, importing change of time and states,

Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky;

And with them scourge the bad revolting stars,

That have consented unto Henry's death."





Milton, speaking of Satan preparing for combat, says:





"On the other side,

Incensed with indignation, Satan stood.

Unterrified, and like a comet burned,

That fires the length of Ophiuchus huge

In the arctic sky, and from its horrid hair

Shakes pestilence and war."





We do indeed find that in some minds the discoveries of Tycho

Brahe and Kepler begin to take effect, for, in 1621, Burton in

his Anatomy of Melancholy alludes to them as changing public

opinion somewhat regarding comets; and, just before the middle

of the century, Sir Thomas Browne expresses a doubt whether

comets produce such terrible effects, "since it is found that

many of them are above the moon."[100] Yet even as late as the

last years of the seventeenth century we have English authors of

much power battling for this supposed scriptural view and among

the natural and typical results we find, in 1682, Ralph Thoresby,

a Fellow of the Royal Society, terrified at the comet of that

year, and writing in his diary the following passage:  "Lord, fit

us for whatever changes it may portend; for, though I am not

ignorant that such meteors proceed from natural causes, yet are

they frequently also the presages of imminent calamities."

Interesting is it to note here that this was Halley's comet, and

that Halley was at this very moment making those scientific

studies upon it which were to free the civilized world

forever from such terrors as distressed Thoresby.



[100] For John Knox, see his Histoire of the Reformation of

Religion within the Realm of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1732), lib. iv;

also Chambers, Domestic Annals of Scotland, vol. ii, pp 410-412.

For Burton, see his Anatomy of Melancholy, part ii, sect 2.  For

Browne, see the Vulgar and Common Errors, book vi, chap. xiv.





The belief in comets as warnings against sin was especially one

of those held "always, everywhere, and by all," and by Eastern

Christians as well as by Western.  One of the most striking

scenes in the history of the Eastern Church is that which took

place at the condemnation of Nikon, the great Patriarch of

Moscow.  Turning toward his judges, he pointed to a comet then

blazing in the sky, and said, "God's besom shall sweep you all

away!"



Of all countries in western Europe, it was in Germany and German

Switzerland that this superstition took strongest hold.  That

same depth of religious feeling which produced in those countries

the most terrible growth of witchcraft persecution, brought

superstition to its highest development regarding comets.  No

country suffered more from it in the Middle Ages.  At the

Reformation Luther declared strongly in favour of it.  In one of

his Advent sermons he said, "The heathen write that the comet may

arise from natural causes, but God creates not one that does not

foretoken a sure calamity."  Again he said, "Whatever moves in

the heaven in an unusual way is certainly a sign of God's wrath."



And sometimes, yielding to another phase of his belief, he

declared them works of the devil, and declaimed against them as

"harlot stars."[101]



[101] For Thoresby, see his Diary, (London, 1830).  Halley's

great service is described further on in this chapter.  For

Nikon's speech, see Dean Stanley's History of the Eastern Church,

p. 485.  For very striking examples of this mediaeval terror in

Germany, see Von Raumer, Geschichte der Hohenstaufen, vol. vi, p.

538.  For the Reformation period, see Wolf, Gesch. d. Astronomie;

also Praetorius, Ueber d. Cometstern (Erfurt, 1589), in which the

above sentences of Luther are printed on the title page as

epigraphs.  For "Huren-Sternen," see the sermon of Celichius,

described later.





Melanchthon, too, in various letters refers to comets as heralds

of Heaven's wrath, classing them, with evil conjunctions of the

planets and abortive births, among the "signs" referred to in

Scripture.  Zwingli, boldest of the greater Reformers in shaking

off traditional beliefs, could not shake off this, and insisted

that the comet of 1531 betokened calamity.  Arietus, a leading

Protestant theologian, declared, "The heavens are given us not

merely for our pleasure, but also as a warning of the wrath of

God for the correction of our lives."  Lavater insisted that

comets are signs of death or calamity, and cited proofs from

Scripture.



Catholic and Protestant strove together for the glory of this

doctrine.  It was maintained with especial vigour by Fromundus,

the eminent professor and Doctor of Theology at the Catholic

University of Louvain, who so strongly opposed the Copernican

system; at the beginning of the seventeenth century, even so

gifted an astronomer as Kepler yielded somewhat to the belief;

and near the end of that century Voigt declared that the comet of

1618 clearly presaged the downfall of the Turkish Empire, and he

stigmatized as "atheists and Epicureans" all who did not believe

comets to be God's warnings.[102]



[102] For Melanchthon, see Wolf, ubi supra.  For Zwingli, see

Wolf, p. 235.  For Arietus, see Madler, Geschichte der

Himmelskunde, vol. ii.  For Kepler's superstition, see Wolf, p.

281.  For Voight, see Himmels-Manaten Reichstage, Hamburg, 1676.

For both Fromundus and Voigt, see also Madler, vol. ii, p. 399,

and Lecky, Rationalism in Europe, vol. i, p.28.





II.  THEOLOGICAL EFFORTS TO CRUSH THE SCIENTIFIC VIEW.





Out of this belief was developed a great series of efforts to

maintain the theological view of comets, and to put down forever

the scientific view.  These efforts may be divided into two

classes:  those directed toward learned men and scholars, through

the universities, and those directed toward the people at large,

through the pulpits.  As to the first of these, that learned men

and scholars might be kept in the paths of "sacred science" and

"sound learning," especial pains was taken to keep all knowledge

of the scientific view of comets as far as possible from students

in the universities.  Even to the end of the seventeenth century

the oath generally required of professors of astronomy over a

large part of Europe prevented their teaching that comets are

heavenly bodies obedient to law.  Efforts just as earnest were

made to fasten into students' minds the theological theory.  Two

or three examples out of many may serve as types.  First of these

may be named the teaching of Jacob Heerbrand, professor at the

University of Tubingen, who in 1577 illustrated the moral value

of comets by comparing the Almighty sending a comet, to the judge

laying the executioner's sword on the table between himself and

the criminal in a court of justice; and, again, to the father or

schoolmaster displaying the rod before naughty children.  A

little later we have another churchman of great importance in

that region, Schickhart, head pastor and superintendent at

Goppingen, preaching and publishing a comet sermon, in which he

denounces those who stare at such warnings of God without heeding

them, and compares them to "calves gaping at a new barn door."

Still later, at the end of the seventeenth century, we find

Conrad Dieterich, director of studies at the University of

Marburg, denouncing all scientific investigation of comets as

impious, and insisting that they are only to be regarded as

"signs and wonders."[103]



[103] For the effect of the anti-Pythagorean oath, see Prowe,

Copernicus; also Madler and Wolf.  For Heerbrand, see his Von dem

erschrockenlichen Wunderzeichen, Tubingen, 1577.  For Schickart,

see his Predigt vom Wunderzeichen, Stuttgart, 1621.  For

Deiterich, see his sermon, described more fully below.





The results of this ecclesiastical pressure upon science in the

universities were painfully shown during generation after

generation, as regards both professors and students; and

examples may be given typical of its effects upon each of these

two classes.



The first of these is the case of Michael Maestlin.  He was by

birth a Swabian Protestant, was educated at Tubingen as a pupil

of Apian, and, after a period of travel, was settled as deacon in

the little parish of Backnang, when the comet of 1577 gave him an

occasion to apply his astronomical studies.  His minute and

accurate observation of it is to this day one of the wonders of

science.  It seems almost impossible that so much could be

accomplished by the naked eye.  His observations agreed with

those of Tycho Brahe, and won for Maestlin the professorship of

astronomy in the University of Heidelberg.  No man had so clearly

proved the supralunar position of a comet, or shown so

conclusively that its motion was not erratic, but regular.  The

young astronomer, though Apian's pupil, was an avowed Copernican

and the destined master and friend of Kepler.  Yet, in the

treatise embodying his observations, he felt it necessary to save

his reputation for orthodoxy by calling the comet a "new and

horrible prodigy," and by giving a chapter of "conjectures on the

signification of the present comet," in which he proves from

history that this variety of comet betokens peace, but peace

purchased by a bloody victory.  That he really believed in this

theological theory seems impossible; the very fact that his

observations had settled the supralunar character and regular

motion of comets proves this.  It was a humiliation only to be

compared to that of Osiander when he wrote his grovelling preface

to the great book of Copernicus.  Maestlin had his reward:  when,

a few years, later his old teacher, Apian, was driven from his

chair at Tubingen for refusing to sign the Lutheran

Concord-Book, Maestlin was elected to his place.



Not less striking was the effect of this theological pressure

upon the minds of students.  Noteworthy as an example of this is

the book of the Leipsic lawyer, Buttner.  From no less than

eighty-six biblical texts he proves the Almighty's purpose of

using the heavenly bodies for the instruction of men as to future

events, and then proceeds to frame exhaustive tables, from which,

the time and place of the comet's first appearance being known,

its signification can be deduced.  This manual he gave forth as a

triumph of religious science, under the name of the Comet

Hour-Book.[104]



[104] For Maestlin, see his Observatio et Demonstration Cometae,

Tubingen, 1578.  For Buttner, see his Cometen Stundbuchlein,

Leipsic, 1605.





The same devotion to the portent theory is found in the

universities of Protestant Holland.  Striking is it to see in the

sixteenth century, after Tycho Brahe's discovery, the Dutch

theologian, Gerard Vossius, Professor of Theology and Eloquence

at Leyden, lending his great weight to the superstition.  "The

history of all times," he says, "shows comets to be the

messengers of misfortune.  It does not follow that they are

endowed with intelligence, but that there is a deity who makes

use of them to call the human race to repentance."  Though

familiar with the works of Tycho Brahe, he finds it "hard to

believe" that all comets are ethereal, and adduces several

historical examples of sublunary ones.



Nor was this attempt to hold back university teaching to the old

view of comets confined to Protestants.  The Roman Church was, if

possible, more strenuous in the same effort.  A few examples will

serve as types, representing the orthodox teaching at the great

centres of Catholic theology.



One of these is seen in Spain.  The eminent jurist Torreblanca

was recognised as a controlling authority in all the universities

of Spain, and from these he swayed in the seventeenth century the

thought of Catholic Europe, especially as to witchcraft and the

occult powers in Nature.  He lays down the old cometary

superstition as one of the foundations of orthodox teaching:

Begging the question, after the fashion of his time, he argues

that comets can not be stars, because new stars always betoken

good, while comets betoken evil.



The same teaching was given in the Catholic universities of the

Netherlands.  Fromundus, at Louvain, the enemy of Galileo,

steadily continued his crusade against all cometary heresy.[105]



[105] For Vossius, see the De Idololatria (in his Opera, vol. v,

pp. 283-285).  For Torreblanc, see his De Magia, Seville, 1618,

and often reprinted. For Fromundus, see his Meteorologica.





But a still more striking case is seen in Italy.  The reverend

Father Augustin de Angelis, rector of the Clementine College at

Rome, as late as 1673, after the new cometary theory had been

placed beyond reasonable doubt, and even while Newton was working

out its final demonstration, published a third edition of his

Lectures on Meteorology.  It was dedicated to the Cardinal of

Hesse, and bore the express sanction of the Master of the Sacred

Palace at Rome and of the head of the religious order to which De

Angelis belonged.  This work deserves careful analysis, not only

as representing the highest and most approved university teaching

of the time at the centre of Roman Catholic Christendom, but

still more because it represents that attempt to make a

compromise between theology and science, or rather the attempt to

confiscate science to the uses of theology, which we so

constantly find whenever the triumph of science in any field has

become inevitable.



As to the scientific element in this compromise, De Angelis

holds, in his general introduction regarding meteorology, that

the main material cause of comets is "exhalation," and says, "If

this exhalation is thick and sticky, it blazes into a comet."

And again he returns to the same view, saying that "one form of

exhalation is dense, hence easily inflammable and long retentive

of fire, from which sort are especially generated comets."  But

it is in his third lecture that he takes up comets specially, and

his discussion of them is extended through the fourth, fifth, and

sixth lectures.  Having given in detail the opinions of various

theologians and philosophers, he declares his own in the form of

two conclusions.  The first of these is that "comets are not

heavenly bodies, but originate in the earth's atmosphere below

the moon; for everything heavenly is eternal and incorruptible,

but comets have a beginning and ending--ergo, comets can not be

heavenly bodies."  This, we may observe, is levelled at the

observations and reasonings of Tycho Brahe and Kepler, and is a

very good illustration of the scholastic and mediaeval

method--the method which blots out an ascertained fact by means

of a metaphysical formula.  His second conclusion is that "comets

are of elemental and sublunary nature; for they are an

exhalation hot and dry, fatty and well condensed, inflammable and

kindled in the uppermost regions of the air."  He then goes on to

answer sundry objections to this mixture of metaphysics and

science, and among other things declares that "the fatty, sticky

material of a comet may be kindled from sparks falling from fiery

heavenly bodies or from a thunderbolt"; and, again, that the

thick, fatty, sticky quality of the comet holds its tail in

shape, and that, so far are comets from having their paths beyond

the, moon's orbit, as Tycho Brahe and Kepler thought, he himself

in 1618 saw "a bearded comet so near the summit of Vesuvius that

it almost seemed to touch it."  As to sorts and qualities of

comets, he accepts Aristotle's view, and divides them into

bearded and tailed.[106] He goes on into long disquisitions upon

their colours, forms, and motions.  Under this latter head he

again plunges deep into a sea of metaphysical considerations, and

does not reappear until he brings up his compromise in the

opinion that their movement is as yet uncertain and not

understood, but that, if we must account definitely for it, we

must say that it is effected by angels especially assigned to

this service by Divine Providence.  But, while proposing this

compromise between science and theology as to the origin and

movement of comets, he will hear to none as regards their mission

as "signs and wonders" and presages of evil.  He draws up a

careful table of these evils, arranging them in the following

order: Drought, wind, earthquake, tempest, famine, pestilence,

war, and, to clinch the matter, declares that the comet

observed by him in 1618 brought not only war, famine,

pestilence, and earthquake, but also a general volcanic eruption,

"which would have destroyed Naples, had not the blood of the

invincible martyr Januarius withstood it."



[106] Barbata et caudata.





It will be observed, even from this sketch, that, while the

learned Father Augustin thus comes infallibly to the mediaeval

conclusion, he does so very largely by scientific and essentially

modern processes, giving unwonted prominence to observation, and

at times twisting scientific observation into the strand with his

metaphysics.  The observations and methods of his science are

sometimes shrewd, sometimes comical.  Good examples of the latter

sort are such as his observing that the comet stood very near the

summit of Vesuvius, and his reasoning that its tail was kept in

place by its stickiness.  But observations and reasonings of this

sort are always the first homage paid by theology to science as

the end of their struggle approaches.[107]



[107] See De Angelis, Lectiones Meteorologicae, Rome, 1669.





Equally striking is an example seen a little later in another

part of Europe; and it is the more noteworthy because Halley and

Newton had already fully established the modern scientific

theory.  Just at the close of the seventeenth century the Jesuit

Reinzer, professor at Linz, put forth his Meteorologia

Philosophico-Politica, in which all natural phenomena received

both a physical and a moral interpretation.  It was profusely and

elaborately illustrated, and on account of its instructive

contents was in 1712 translated into German for the unlearned

reader.  The comet receives, of course, great attention.  "It

appears," says Reinzer, "only then in the heavens when the latter

punish the earth, and through it [the comet] not only predict but

bring to pass all sorts of calamity....And, to that end, its

tail serves for a rod, its hair for weapons and arrows, its light

for a threat, and its heat for a sign of anger and vengeance."

Its warnings are threefold:  (1) "Comets, generated in the air,

betoken NATURALLY drought, wind, earthquake, famine, and

pestilence."  (2) "Comets can indirectly, in view of their

material, betoken wars, tumults, and the death of princes; for,

being hot and dry, they bring the moistnesses [Feuchtigkeiten]

in the human body to an extraordinary heat and dryness,

increasing the gall; and, since the emotions depend on the

temperament and condition of the body, men are through this

change driven to violent deeds, quarrels, disputes, and finally

to arms:  especially is this the result with princes, who are

more delicate and also more arrogant than other men, and whose

moistnesses are more liable to inflammation of this sort,

inasmuch as they live in luxury and seldom restrain themselves

from those things which in such a dry state of the heavens are

especially injurious."  (3) "All comets, whatever prophetic

significance they may have naturally in and of themselves, are

yet principally, according to the Divine pleasure, heralds of the

death of great princes, of war, and of other such great

calamities; and this is known and proved, first of all, from the

words of Christ himself:  `Nation shall rise against nation, and

kingdom against kingdom; and great earthquakes shall be in

divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights

and great signs shall there be from heaven.'"[108]



[108] See Reinzer, Meteorologica Philosophico-Politica (edition

of Augsburg, 1712), pp. 101-103.





While such pains was taken to keep the more highly educated

classes in the "paths of scriptural science and sound learning;

at the universities, equal efforts were made to preserve the

cometary orthodoxy of the people at large by means of the

pulpits.  Out of the mass of sermons for this purpose which were

widely circulated I will select just two as typical, and they are

worthy of careful study as showing some special dangers of

applying theological methods to scientific facts.  In the second

half of the sixteenth century the recognised capital of orthodox

Lutheranism was Magdeburg, and in the region tributary to this

metropolis no Church official held a more prominent station than

the "Superintendent," or Lutheran bishop, of the neighbouring

Altmark.  It was this dignitary, Andreas Celichius by name, who

at Magdeburg, in 1578, gave to the press his Theological Reminder

of the New Comet.  After deprecating as blasphemous the attempt

of Aristotle to explain the phenomenon otherwise than as a

supernatural warning from God to sinful man, he assures his

hearers that "whoever would know the comet's real source and

nature must not merely gape and stare at the scientific theory

that it is an earthy, greasy, tough, and sticky vapour and mist,

rising into the upper air and set ablaze by the celestial heat."

Far more important for them is it to know what this vapour is.

It is really, in the opinion of Celichius, nothing more or less

than  "the thick smoke of human sins, rising every day, every

hour, every moment, full of stench and horror, before the face of

God, and becoming gradually so thick as to form a comet, with

curled and plaited tresses, which at last is kindled by the hot

and fiery anger of the Supreme Heavenly Judge."  He adds that it

is probably only through the prayers and tears of Christ that

this blazing monument of human depravity becomes visible to

mortals.  In support of this theory, he urges the "coming up

before God" of the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah and of

Nineveh, and especially the words of the prophet regarding

Babylon, "Her stench and rottenness is come up before me."  That

the anger of God can produce the conflagration without any

intervention of Nature is proved from the Psalms, "He sendeth out

his word and melteth them."  From the position of the comet, its

course, and the direction of its tail he augurs especially the

near approach of the judgment day, though it may also betoken, as

usual, famine, pestilence, and war.  "Yet even in these days," he

mourns, "there are people reckless and giddy enough to pay no

heed to such celestial warnings, and these even cite in their own

defence the injunction of Jeremiah not to fear signs in the

heavens."  This idea he explodes, and shows that good and

orthodox Christians, while not superstitious like the heathen,

know well "that God is not bound to his creation and the ordinary

course of Nature, but must often, especially in these last dregs

of the world, resort to irregular means to display his anger at

human guilt."[109]



[109] For Celichius, or Celich, see his own treatise, as above.





The other typical case occurred in the following century and in

another part of Germany.  Conrad Dieterich was, during the first

half of the seventeenth century, 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 "Superintendent," or

Lutheran bishop, in southwestern Germany.  In the year 162O, 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 stronghold of German Protestantism

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

called, 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 the stars; and upon

the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the

waves roaring."  As to what comets are, he cites a multitude of

philosophers, and, finding that they differ among themselves, he

uses a form of argument not uncommon from that day to this,

declaring that this difference of opinion proves that there is no

solution of the problem save in revelation, and insisting that

comets are "signs especially sent by the Almighty to warn the

earth."  An additional proof of this he finds in the forms of

comets.  One, he says, took the form of a trumpet; another, of a

spear; another of a goat; another, of a torch; another, of a

sword; another, of an arrow; another, of a sabre; still another,

of a bare arm.  From these forms of comets he infers that we may

divine their purpose.  As to their creation, he quotes John of

Damascus and other early Church authorities in behalf of the idea

that each comet is a star newly created at the Divine command,

out of nothing, and that it indicates the wrath of God.  As to

their purpose, having quoted largely from the Bible and from

Luther, he winds up by insisting that, as God can make nothing in

vain, comets must have some distinct object; then, from Isaiah

and Joel among the prophets, from Matthew, Mark, and Luke among

the evangelists, from Origen and John Chrysostom among the

fathers, from Luther and Melanchthon among the Reformers, he

draws various texts more or less conclusive to prove that comets

indicate evil and only evil; and he cites Luther's Advent sermon

to the effect that, though comets may arise in the course of

Nature, they are still signs of evil to mankind.  In answer to

the theory of sundry naturalists that comets are made up of "a

certain fiery, warm, sulphurous, saltpetery, sticky fog," he

declaims:  "Our sins, our sins:  they are the fiery heated

vapours, the thick, sticky, sulphurous clouds which rise from the

earth toward heaven before God."  Throughout the sermon Dieterich

pours contempt over all men who simply investigate comets as

natural objects, calls special attention to a comet then in the

heavens resembling a long broom or bundle of rods, and declares

that he and his hearers can only consider it rightly "when we see

standing before us our Lord God in heaven as an angry father with

a rod for his children."  In answer to the question what comets

signify, he commits himself entirely to the idea that they

indicate the wrath of God, and therefore calamities of every

sort.  Page after page is filled with the records of evils

following comets.  Beginning with the creation of the world, he

insists that the first comet brought on the deluge of Noah, and

cites a mass of authorities, ranging from Moses and Isaiah to

Albert the Great and Melanchthon, in support of the view that

comets precede earthquakes, famines, wars, pestilences, and every

form of evil.  He makes some parade of astronomical knowledge as

to the greatness of the sun and moon, but relapses soon into his

old line of argument.  Imploring his audience not to be led away

from the well-established belief of Christendom and the

principles of their fathers, he comes back to his old assertion,

insists that "our sins are the inflammable material of which

comets are made," and winds up with a most earnest appeal to the

Almighty to spare his people.[110]



[110] For Deiterich, see Ulmische Cometen-Predigt, von dem

Cometen, so nechst abgewischen 1618 Jahrs im Wintermonat

erstenmahls in Schwaben sehen lassen, . . . gehalten zu Ulm . . .

durch Conrad Dieterich, Ulm, 1620.  For a life of the author, see

article Dieterich in the Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie. See also

Wolf.





Similar efforts from the pulpit were provoked by the great comet

of 1680.  Typical among these was the effort in Switzerland of

Pastor Heinrich Erni, who, from the Cathedral of Zurich, sent a

circular letter to the clergy of that region showing the

connection of the eleventh and twelfth verses of the first

chapter of Jeremiah with the comet, giving notice that at his

suggestion the authorities had proclaimed a solemn fast, and

exhorting the clergy to preach earnestly on the subject of this

warning.



Nor were the interpreters of the comet's message content with

simple prose.  At the appearance of the comet of 1618, Grasser

and Gross, pastors and doctors of theology at Basle, put forth a

collection of doggerel rhymes to fasten the orthodox theory into

the minds of school-children and peasants.  One of these may be

translated:



"I am a Rod in God's right hand

  threatening the German and foreign land."





Others for a similar purpose taught:





"Eight things there be a Comet brings,

When it on high doth horrid range:

Wind, Famine, Plague, and Death to Kings,

War, Earthquakes, Floods, and Direful Change."





Great ingenuity was shown in meeting the advance of science, in

the universities and schools, with new texts of Scripture; and

Stephen Spleiss, Rector of the Gymnasium at Schaffhausen, got

great credit by teaching that in the vision of Jeremiah the

"almond rod" was a tailed comet, and the "seething pot" a bearded

one.[111]



[111] For Erni, see Wolf, Gesch. d. Astronomie, p. 239.  For

Grassner and Gross, see their Christenliches Bedenken . . . von

dem erschrockenlichen Cometen, etc., Zurich, 1664.  For Spleiss,

see Beilauftiger Bericht von dem jetzigen Cometsternen, etc.,

schaffhausen, 1664.





It can be easily understood that such authoritative utterances as

that of Dieterich must have produced a great effect throughout

Protestant Christendom; and in due time we see their working in

New England.  That same tendency to provincialism, which, save at

rare intervals, has been the bane of Massachusetts thought from

that day to this, appeared; and in 1664 we find Samuel Danforth

arguing from the Bible that "comets are portentous signals of

great and notable changes," and arguing from history that they

"have been many times heralds of wrath to a secure and impenitent

world."  He cites especially the comet of 1652, which appeared

just before Mr. Cotton's sickness and disappeared after his

death.  Morton also, in his Memorial recording the death of John

Putnam, alludes to the comet of 1662 as "a very signal testimony

that God had then removed a bright star and a shining light out

of the heaven of his Church here into celestial glory above."

Again he speaks of another comet, insisting that "it was no fiery

meteor caused by exhalation, but it was sent immediately by God

to awaken the secure world," and goes on to show how in that year

"it pleased God to smite the fruits of the earth--namely, the

wheat in special--with blasting and mildew, whereby much of it

was spoiled and became profitable for nothing, and much of it

worth little, being light and empty.  This was looked upon by the

judicious and conscientious of the land as a speaking providence

against the unthankfulness of many,... as also against

voluptuousness and abuse of the good creatures of God by

licentiousness in drinking and fashions in apparel, for the

obtaining whereof a great part of the principal grain was

oftentimes unnecessarily expended."



But in 1680 a stronger than either of these seized upon the

doctrine and wielded it with power.  Increase Mather, so open

always to ideas from Europe, and always so powerful for good or

evil in the cloonies, preached his sermon on "Heaven's Alarm to

the World,...wherein is shown that fearful sights and signs in

the heavens are the presages of great calamities at hand."  The

texts were taken from the book of Revelation:  "And the third

angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning,

as it were a lamp," and "Behold, the third woe cometh quickly."

In this, as in various other sermons, he supports the theological

cometary theory fully.  He insists that "we are fallen into the

dregs of time," and that the day of judgment is evidently

approaching.  He explains away the words of Jeremiah--"Be not

dismayed at signs in the heavens"--and shows that comets have

been forerunners of nearly every form of evil.  Having done full

justice to evils thus presaged in scriptural times, he begins a

similar display in modern history by citing blazing stars which

foretold the invasions of Goths, Huns, Saracens, and Turks, and

warns gainsayers by citing the example of Vespasian, who, after

ridiculing a comet, soon died.  The general shape and appearance

of comets, he thinks, betoken their purpose, and he cites

Tertullian to prove them "God's sharp razors on mankind, whereby

he doth poll, and his scythe whereby he doth shear down

multitudes of sinful creatures."  At last, rising to a fearful

height, he declares:  "For the Lord hath fired his beacon in the

heavens among the stars of God there; the fearful sight is not

yet out of sight.  The warning piece of heaven is going off.

Now, then, if the Lord discharge his murdering pieces from on

high, and men be found in their sins unfit for death, their blood

shall be upon them."  And again, in an agony of supplication, he

cries out:  "Do we see the sword blazing over us? Let it put us

upon crying to God, that the judgment be diverted and not return

upon us again so speedily....Doth God threaten our very heavens?

O pray unto him, that he would not take away stars and send

comets to succeed them."[112]



[112] For Danforth, see his Astronomical Descritption of the Late

Comet or Blazing Star, Together with a Brief Theological

Application Thereof, 1664.  For Morton, see his Memorial, pp.

251, 252,; also 309, 310.  Texts cited by Mather were Rev., viii,

10, and xi, 14.





Two years later, in August, 1682, he followed this with another

sermon on "The Latter Sign," "wherein is showed that the voice of

God in signal providences, especially when repeated and iterated,

ought to be hearkened unto."  Here, too, of course, the comet

comes in for a large share of attention.  But his tone is less

sure:  even in the midst of all his arguments appears an evident

misgiving.  The thoughts of Newton in science and Bayle in

philosophy were evidently tending to accomplish the prophecy of

Seneca.  Mather's alarm at this is clear.  His natural tendency

is to uphold the idea that a comet is simply a fire-ball flung

from the hand of an avenging God at a guilty world, but he

evidently feels obliged to yield something to the scientific

spirit;  hence, in the Discourse concerning Comets, published in

1683, he declares:  "There are those who think that, inasmuch as

comets may be supposed to proceed from natural causes, there is

no speaking voice of Heaven in them beyond what is to be said of

all other works of God.  But certain it is that many things which

may happen according to the course of Nature are portentous signs

of Divine anger and prognostics of great evils hastening upon the

world."  He then notices the eclipse of August, 1672, and adds:

"That year the college was eclipsed by the death of the learned

president there, worthy Mr. Chauncey and two colonies--namely,

Massachusetts and Plymouth--by the death of two governors, who

died within a twelvemonth after....Shall, then, such mighty

works of God as comets are be insignificant things?"[113]



[113] Increase Mather's Heaven's Alarm to the World was first

printed at Boston in 1681, but was reprinted in 1682, and was

appended, with the sermon on The Latter Sign, to the Discourse on

Comets (Boston, 1683).







III.  THE INVASION OF SCEPTICISM.





Vigorous as Mather's argument is, we see scepticism regarding

"signs" continuing to invade the public mind; and, in spite of

his threatenings, about twenty years after we find a remarkable

evidence of this progress in the fact that this scepticism has

seized upon no less a personage than that colossus of orthodoxy,

his thrice illustrious son, Cotton Mather himself; and him we

find, in 1726, despite the arguments of his father, declaring in

his Manuductio:  "Perhaps there may be some need for me to

caution you against being dismayed at the signs of the heavens,

or having any superstitious fancies upon eclipses and the

like....I am willing that you be apprehensive of nothing

portentous in blazing stars.  For my part, I know not whether all

our worlds, and even the sun itself, may not fare the better for

them."[114]



[114] For Cotton Mather, see the Manuductio, pp. 54, 55.





Curiously enough, for this scientific scepticism in Cotton Mather

there was a cause identical with that which had developed

superstition in the mind of his father.  The same provincial

tendency to receive implicitly any new European fashion in

thinking or speech wrought upon both, plunging one into

superstition and drawing the other out of it.



European thought, which New England followed, had at last broken

away in great measure from the theological view of comets as

signs and wonders.  The germ of this emancipating influence was

mainly in the great utterance of Seneca; and we find in nearly

every century some evidence that this germ was still alive.  This

life became more and more evident after the Reformation period,

even though theologians in every Church did their best to destroy

it.  The first series of attacks on the old theological doctrine

were mainly founded in philosophic reasoning.  As early as the

first half of the sixteenth century we hear Julius Caesar

Scaliger protesting against the cometary superstition as

"ridiculous folly."[115]  Of more real importance was the

treatise of Blaise de Vigenere, published at Paris in 1578.  In

this little book various statements regarding comets as signs of

wrath or causes of evils are given, and then followed by a very

gentle and quiet discussion, usually tending to develop that

healthful scepticism which is the parent of investigation.  A

fair example of his mode of treating the subject is seen in his

dealing with a bit of "sacred science."  This was simply that

"comets menace princes and kings with death because they live

more delicately than other people; and, therefore, the air

thickened and corrupted by a comet would be naturally more

injurious to them than to common folk who live on coarser food."

To this De Vigenere answers that there are very many persons who

live on food as delicate as that enjoyed by princes and kings,

and yet receive no harm from comets.  He then goes on to show

that many of the greatest monarchs in history have met death

without any comet to herald it.



[115] For Scaliger, see p. 20 of Dudith's book, cited below.





In the same year thoughtful scepticism of a similar sort found an

advocate in another part of Europe.  Thomas Erastus, the learned

and devout professor of medicine at Heidelberg, put forth a

letter dealing in the plainest terms with the superstition.  He

argued especially that there could be no natural connection

between the comet and pestilence, since the burning of an

exhalation must tend to purify rather than to infect the air.  In

the following year the eloquent Hungarian divine Dudith published

a letter in which the theological theory was handled even more

shrewdly.  for he argued that, if comets were caused by the sins

of mortals, they would never be absent from the sky.  But these

utterances were for the time brushed aside by the theological

leaders of thought as shallow or impious.



In the seventeenth century able arguments against the

superstition, on general grounds, began to be multiplied.  In

Holland, Balthasar Bekker opposed this, as he opposed the

witchcraft delusion, on general philosophic grounds; and

Lubienitzky wrote in a compromising spirit to prove that comets

were as often followed by good as by evil events.  In France,

Pierre Petit, formerly geographer of Louis XIII, and an intimate

friend of Descartes, addressed to the young Louis XIV a vehement

protest against the superstition, basing his arguments not on

astronomy, but on common sense.  A very effective part of the

little treatise was devoted to answering the authority of the

fathers of the early Church.  To do this, he simply reminded his

readers that St. Augustine and St. John Damascenus had also

opposed the doctrine of the antipodes.  The book did good service

in France, and was translated in Germany a few years later.[116]



[116] For Blaise de Vigenere, see his Traite des Cometes, Paris,

1578.  For Dudith, see his De Cometarum Dignificatione, Basle,

1579, to which the letter of Erastus is appended.  Bekker's views

may be found in his Onderzoek van de Betekening der Cometen,

Leeuwarden, 1683.  For Lubienitsky's, see his Theatrum Cometicum,

Amsterdam, 1667, in part ii: Historia Cometarum, preface "to the

reader."  For Petit, see his Dissertation sur la Nature des

Cometes, Paris, 1665 (German translation, Dresden and Zittau,

1681).





All these were denounced as infidels and heretics, yet none the

less did they set men at thinking, and prepare the way for a far

greater genius; for toward the end of the same century the

philosophic attack was taken up by Pierre Bayle, and in the whole

series of philosophic champions he is chief.  While professor at

the University of Sedan he had observed the alarm caused by the

comet of 1680, and he now brought all his reasoning powers to

bear upon it.  Thoughts deep and witty he poured out in volume

after volume.  Catholics and Protestants were alike scandalized.

Catholic France spurned him, and Jurieu, the great Reformed

divine, called his cometary views "atheism," and tried hard to

have Protestant Holland condemn him.  Though Bayle did not touch

immediately the mass of mankind, he wrought with power upon men

who gave themselves the trouble of thinking.  It was indeed

unfortunate for the Church that theologians, instead of taking

the initiative in this matter, left it to Bayle; for, in tearing

down the pretended scriptural doctrine of comets, he tore down

much else:  of all men in his time, no one so thoroughly prepared

the way for Voltaire.



Bayle's whole argument is rooted in the prophecy of Seneca.  He

declares:  "Comets are bodies subject to the ordinary law of

Nature, and not prodigies amenable to no law."  He shows

historically that there is no reason to regard comets as portents

of earthly evils.  As to the fact that such evils occur after the

passage of comets across the sky, he compares the person

believing that comets cause these evils to a woman looking out of

a window into a Paris street and believing that the carriages

pass because she looks out.  As to the accomplishment of some

predictions, he cites the shrewd saying of Henry IV, to the

effect that "the public will remember one prediction that comes

true better than all the rest that have proved false."  Finally,

he sums up by saying:  "The more we study man, the more does it

appear that pride is his ruling passion, and that he affects

grandeur even in his misery.  Mean and perishable creature that

he is, he has been able to persuade men that he can not die

without disturbing the whole course of Nature and obliging the

heavens to put themselves to fresh expense.  In order to light

his funeral pomp.  Foolish and ridiculous vanity! If we had a

just idea of the universe, we should soon comprehend that the

death or birth of a prince is too insignificant a matter to stir

the heavens."[117]



[117] Regarding Bayle, see Madler, Himmelskunde, vol. i, p. 327.

For special points of interest in Bayle's arguments, see his

Pensees Diverses sur les Cometes, Amsterdam, 1749, pp. 79, 102,

134, 206.  For the response to Jurieu, see the continuation des

Pensees, Rotterdam, 1705; also Champion, p. 164, Lecky, ubi

supra, and Guillemin, pp. 29, 30.







This great philosophic champion of right reason was followed by a

literary champion hardly less famous; for Fontenelle now gave to

the French theatre his play of The Comet, and a point of capital

importance in France was made by rendering the army of ignorance

ridiculous.[118]



[118] See Fontenelle, cited by Champion, p. 167.





Such was the line of philosophic and literary attack, as

developed from Scaliger to Fontenelle.  But beneath and in the

midst of all of it, from first to last, giving firmness,

strength, and new sources of vitality to it, was the steady

development of scientific effort; and to the series of great men

who patiently wrought and thought out the truth by scientific

methods through all these centuries belong the honours of the

victory.



For generations men in various parts of the world had been making

careful observations on these strange bodies.  As far back as the

time when Luther and Melanchthon and Zwingli were plunged into

alarm by various comets from 1531 to 1539, Peter Apian kept his

head sufficiently cool to make scientific notes of their paths

through the heavens.  A little later, when the great comet of

1556 scared popes, emperors, and reformers alike, such men as

Fabricius at Vienna and Heller at Nuremberg quietly observed its

path.  In vain did men like Dieterich and Heerbrand and Celich

from various parts of Germany denounce such observations and

investigations as impious; they were steadily continued, and in

1577 came the first which led to the distinct foundation of the

modern doctrine.  In that year appeared a comet which again

plunged Europe into alarm.  In every European country this alarm

was strong, but in Germany strongest of all.  The churches were

filled with terror-stricken multitudes.  Celich preaching at

Magdeburg was echoed by Heerbrand preaching at Tubingen, and both

these from thousands of other pulpits, Catholic and Protestant,

throughout Europe.  In the midst of all this din and outcry a few

men quietly but steadily observed the monster; and Tycho Brahe

announced, as the result, that its path lay farther from the

earth than the orbit of the moon.  Another great astronomical

genius, Kepler, confirmed this.  This distinct beginning of the

new doctrine was bitterly opposed by theologians; they denounced

it as one of the evil results of that scientific meddling with

the designs of Providence against which they had so long

declaimed in pulpits and professors' chairs; they even brought

forward some astronomers ambitious or wrong-headed enough to

testify that Tycho and Kepler were in error.[119]



[119] See Madler, Himmelskunde, vol. i, pp. 181, 197; also Wolf,

Gesch. d. Astronomie, and Janssen, Gesch. d. deutschen Volkes,

vol. v, p. 350.  Heerbrand's sermon, cited above, is a good

specimen of the theologic attitude. See Pingre, vol. ii, p. 81.







Nothing could be more natural than such opposition; for this

simple announcement by Tycho Brahe began a new era.  It shook the

very foundation of cometary superstition.  The Aristotelian view,

developed by the theologians, was that what lies within the

moon's orbit appertains to the earth and is essentially

transitory and evil, while what lies beyond it belongs to the

heavens and is permanent, regular, and pure.  Tycho Brahe and

Kepler, therefore, having by means of scientific observation and

thought taken comets out of the category of meteors and

appearances in the neighbourhood of the earth, and placed them

among the heavenly bodies, dealt a blow at the very foundations

of the theological argument, and gave a great impulse to the idea

that comets are themselves heavenly bodies moving regularly and

in obedience to law.







IV.  THEOLOGICAL EFFORTS AT COMPROMISE.--THE FINAL

VICTORY OF SCIENCE.





Attempts were now made to compromise.  It was declared that,

while some comets were doubtless supralunar, some must be

sublunar.  But this admission was no less fatal on another

account.  During many centuries the theory favoured by the Church

had been, as we have seen, that the earth was surrounded by

hollow spheres, concentric and transparent, forming a number of

glassy strata incasing one another "like the different coatings

of an onion," and that each of these in its movement about the

earth carries one or more of the heavenly bodies.  Some

maintained that these spheres were crystal; but Lactantius, and

with him various fathers of the Church, spoke of the heavenly

vault as made of ice.  Now, the admission that comets could move

beyond the moon was fatal to this theory, for it sent them

crashing through these spheres of ice or crystal, and therefore

through the whole sacred fabric of the Ptolemaic theory.[120]



[120] For these features in cometary theory, see Pingre, vol. i,

p. 89; also Humboldt, Cosmos (English translation, London, 1868),

vol. iii, p. 169.





Here we may pause for a moment to note one of the chief

differences between scientific and theological reasoning

considered in themselves.  Kepler's main reasoning as to the

existence of a law for cometary movement was right; but his

secondary reasoning, that comets move nearly in straight lines,

was wrong.  His right reasoning was developed by Gassendi in

France, by Borelli in Italy, by Hevel and Doerfel in Germany, by

Eysat and Bernouilli in Switzerland, by Percy and--most important

of all, as regards mathematical demonstration--by Newton in

England.  The general theory, which was true, they accepted and

developed; the secondary theory, which was found untrue, they

rejected; and, as a result, both of what they thus accepted and

of what they rejected, was evolved the basis of the whole modern

cometary theory.



Very different was this from the theological method.  As a rule,

when there arises a thinker as great in theology as Kepler in

science, the whole mass of his conclusions ripens into a dogma.

His disciples labour not to test it, but to establish it; and

while, in the Catholic Church, it becomes a dogma to be believed

or disbelieved under the penalty of damnation, it becomes in the

Protestant Church the basis for one more sect.



Various astronomers laboured to develop the truth discovered by

Tycho and strengthened by Kepler.  Cassini seemed likely to win

for Italy the glory of completing the great structure; but he

was sadly fettered by Church influences, and was obliged to leave

most of the work to others.  Early among these was Hevel.  He

gave reasons for believing that comets move in parabolic curves

toward the sun.  Then came a man who developed this truth

further--Samuel Doerfel; and it is a pleasure to note that he was

a clergyman. The comet of 1680, which set Erni in Switzerland,

Mather in New England, and so many others in all parts of the

world at declaiming, set Doerfel at thinking.  Undismayed by the

authority of Origen and St. John Chrysostom, the arguments of

Luther, Melanchthon, and Zwingli, the outcries of Celich,

Heerbrand, and Dieterich, he pondered over the problem in his

little Saxon parsonage, until in 1681 he set forth his proofs

that comets are heavenly bodies moving in parabolas of which the

sun is the focus.  Bernouilli arrived at the same conclusion;

and, finally, this great series of men and works was closed by

the greatest of all, when Newton, in 1686, having taken the data

furnished by the comet of 1680, demonstrated that comets are

guided in their movements by the same principle that controls the

planets in their orbits.  Thus was completed the evolution of

this new truth in science.



Yet we are not to suppose that these two great series of

philosophical and scientific victories cleared the field of all

opponents.  Declamation and pretended demonstration of the old

theologic view were still heard; but the day of complete victory

dawned when Halley, after most thorough observation and

calculation, recognised the comet of 1682 as one which had

already appeared at stated periods, and foretold its return in

about seventy-five years; and the battle was fully won when

Clairaut, seconded by Lalande and Mme. Lepaute, predicted

distinctly the time when the comet would arrive at its

perihelion, and this prediction was verified.[121] Then it was

that a Roman heathen philosopher was proved more infallible and

more directly under Divine inspiration than a Roman Christian

pontiff; for the very comet which the traveller finds to-day

depicted on the Bayeux tapestry as portending destruction to

Harold and the Saxons at the Norman invasion of England, and

which was regarded by Pope Calixtus as portending evil to

Christendom, was found six centuries later to be, as Seneca had

prophesied, a heavenly body obeying the great laws of the

universe, and coming at regular periods.  Thenceforth the whole

ponderous enginery of this superstition, with its proof-texts

regarding "signs in the heavens," its theological reasoning to

show the moral necessity of cometary warnings, and its

ecclesiastical fulminations against the "atheism, godlessness,

and infidelity" of scientific investigation, was seen by all

thinking men to be as weak against the scientific method as

Indian arrows against needle guns.  Copernicus, Galileo,

Cassini, Doerfel, Newton, Halley, and Clairaut had gained the

victory.[122]



[121] See Pingre, vol. i, p. 53; Grant, History of Physical

Astronomy, p. 305, etc., etc.  For a curious partial anticipation

by Hooke, in 1664, of the great truth announced by Halley in

1682, see Pepy's Diary for March 1, 1664.  For excellent

summaries of the whole work of Halley and Clairaut and their

forerunners and associates, see Pingre, Madler, Wolf, Arago, et

al.



[122] In accordance with Halley's prophecy, the comet of 1682 has

returned in 1759 and 1835.  See Madler, Guillemin, Watson, Grant,

Delambre, Proctor, article Astronomy in Encycl. Brit., and

especially for details, Wolf, pp. 407-412 and 701-722.  For clear

statement regarding Doerfel, see Wolf, p. 411.





It is instructive to note, even after the main battle was lost, a

renewal of the attempt, always seen under like circumstances, to

effect a compromise, to establish a "safe science" on grounds

pseudo-scientific and pseudo-theologic.  Luther, with his strong

common sense, had foreshadowed this; Kepler had expressed a

willingness to accept it.  It was insisted that comets might be

heavenly bodies moving in regular orbits, and even obedient to

law, and yet be sent as "signs in the heavens."  Many good men

clung longingly to this phase of the old belief, and in 1770

Semler, professor at Halle, tried to satisfy both sides.  He

insisted that, while from a scientific point of view comets could

not exercise any physical influence upon the world, yet from a

religious point of view they could exercise a moral influence as

reminders of the Just Judge of the Universe.



So hard was it for good men to give up the doctrine of "signs in

the heavens," seemingly based upon Scripture and exercising such

a healthful moral tendency! As is always the case after such a

defeat, these votaries of "sacred science" exerted the greatest

ingenuity in devising statements and arguments to avert the new

doctrine.  Within our own century the great Catholic champion,

Joseph de Maistre, echoed these in declaring his belief that

comets are special warnings of evil.  So, too, in Protestant

England, in 1818, the Gentleman's Magazine stated that under the

malign influence of a recent comet "flies became blind and died

early in the season," and "the wife of a London shoemaker had

four children at a birth."  And even as late as 1829 Mr. Forster,

an English physician, published a work to prove that comets

produce hot summers, cold winters, epidemics, earthquakes, clouds

of midges and locusts, and nearly every calamity conceivable.  He

bore especially upon the fact that the comet of 1665 was

coincident with the plague in London, apparently forgetting that

the other great cities of England and the Continent were not thus

visited; and, in a climax, announces the fact that the comet of

1663 "made all the cats in Westphalia sick."



There still lingered one little cloud-patch of superstition,

arising mainly from the supposed fact that comets had really been

followed by a marked rise in temperature.  Even this poor basis

for the belief that they might, after all, affect earthly affairs

was swept away, and science won here another victory; for Arago,

by thermometric records carefully kept at Paris from 1735 to

1781, proved that comets had produced no effect upon temperature.

Among multitudes of similar examples he showed that, in some

years when several comets appeared, the temperature was lower

than in other years when few or none appeared.  In 1737 there

were two comets, and the weather was cool; in 1785 there was no

comet, and the weather was hot; through the whole fifty years it

was shown that comets were sometimes followed by hot weather,

sometimes by cool, and that no rule was deducible.  The victory

of science was complete at every point.[123]



[123] For Forster, see his Illustrations of the Atmospherical

Origin of Epidemic Diseases, Chelmsford, 1829, cited by Arago;

also in Quarterly Review for April, 1835.  For the writings of

several on both sides, and especially those who sought to save,

as far as possible, the sacred theory of comets, see Madler, vol.

ii, p. 384 et seq., and Wolf, p. 186.





But in this history there was one little exhibition so curious as

to be worthy of notice, though its permanent effect upon thought

was small.  Whiston and Burnet, so devoted to what they

considered sacred science, had determined that in some way comets

must be instruments of Divine wrath.  One of them maintained that

the deluge was caused by the tail of a comet striking the earth;

the other put forth the theory that comets are places of

punishment for the damned--in fact, "flying hells."  The theories

of Whiston and Burnet found wide acceptance also in Germany,

mainly through the all-powerful mediation of Gottsched, so long,

from his professor's chair at Leipsic, the dictator of orthodox

thought, who not only wrote a brief tractate of his own upon the

subject, but furnished a voluminous historical introduction to

the more elaborate treatise of Heyn.  In this book, which

appeared at Leipsic in 1742, the agency of comets in the

creation, the flood, and the final destruction of the world is

fully proved.  Both these theories were, however, soon

discredited.



Perhaps the more interesting of them can best be met by another,

which, if not fully established, appears much better

based--namely, that in 1868 the earth passed directly through the

tail of a comet, with no deluge, no sound of any wailings of the

damned, with but slight appearances here and there, only to be

detected by the keen sight of the meteorological or astronomical

observer.



In our own country superstitious ideas regarding comets continued

to have some little currency; but their life was short.  The

tendency shown by Cotton Mather, at the beginning of the

eighteenth century, toward acknowledging the victory of science,

was completed by the utterances of Winthrop, professor at

Harvard, who in 1759 published two lectures on comets, in which

he simply and clearly revealed the truth, never scoffing, but

reasoning quietly and reverently.  In one passage he says:  "To

be thrown into a panic whenever a comet appears, on account of

the ill effects which some few of them might possibly produce, if

they were not under proper direction, betrays a weakness

unbecoming a reasonable being."



A happy influence in this respect was exercised on both

continents by John Wesley.  Tenaciously as he had held to the

supposed scriptural view in so many other matters of science, in

this he allowed his reason to prevail, accepted the

demonstrations of Halley, and gloried in them.[124]



[124] For Heyn, see his Versuch einer Betrachtung uber die

cometun, die Sundfluth und das Vorspeil des jungsten Gerichts,

Leipsic, 1742.  A Latin version, of the same year, bears the

title, Specimen Cometologiae Sacre.  For the theory that the

earth encountered the tail of a comet, see Guillemin and Watson.

For survival of the old idea in America, see a Sermon of Israel

Loring, of Sudbury, published in 1722.   For Prof. J. Winthrop,

see his Comets.  For Wesley, see his Natural Philosophy, London,

1784, vol. iii, p. 303.





The victory was indeed complete.  Happily, none of the fears

expressed by Conrad Dieterich and Increase Mather were realized.

No catastrophe has ensued either to religion or to morals.  In

the realm of religion the Psalms of David remain no less

beautiful, the great utterances of the Hebrew prophets no less

powerful;  the Sermon on the Mount, "the first commandment, and

the second, which is like unto it," the definition of "pure

religion and undefiled" by St. James, appeal no less to the

deepest things in the human heart.  In the realm of morals, too,

serviceable as the idea of firebrands thrown by the right hand of

an avenging God to scare a naughty world might seem, any

competent historian must find that the destruction of the old

theological cometary theory was followed by moral improvement

rather than by deterioration. We have but to compare the general

moral tone of society to-day, wretchedly imperfect as it is, with

that existing in the time when this superstition had its

strongest hold.  We have only to compare the court of Henry VIII

with the court of Victoria, the reign of the later Valois and

earlier Bourbon princes with the present French Republic, the

period of the Medici and Sforzas and Borgias with the period of

Leo XIII and Humbert, the monstrous wickedness of the Thirty

Years' War with the ennobling patriotism of the Franco-Prussian

struggle, and the despotism of the miserable German princelings

of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the reign of the

Emperor William.  The gain is not simply that mankind has arrived

at a clearer conception of law in the universe; not merely that

thinking men see more clearly that we are part of a system not

requiring constant patching and arbitrary interference; but

perhaps best of all is the fact that science has cleared away one

more series of those dogmas which tend to debase rather than to

develop man's whole moral and religious nature.  In this

emancipation from terror and fanaticism, as in so many other

results of scientific thinking, we have a proof of the

inspiration of those great words, "THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU

FREE."