Part 20 (2/2)
(111) For Erni, see Wolf, Gesch. d. Astronomie, p. 239. For Gra.s.sner 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 G.o.d had then removed a bright star and a s.h.i.+ning 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 G.o.d to awaken the secure world,” and goes on to show how in that year ”it pleased G.o.d 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 G.o.d by licentiousness in drinking and fas.h.i.+ons in apparel, for the obtaining whereof a great part of the princ.i.p.al 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 ”G.o.d's sharp razors on mankind, whereby he doth poll, and his scythe whereby he doth shear down mult.i.tudes 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, that the judgment be diverted and not return upon us again so speedily.... Doth G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d. 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, Ma.s.sachusetts and Plymouth--by the death of two governors, who died within a twelvemonth after.... Shall, then, such mighty works of G.o.d 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 superst.i.tious 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 superst.i.tion in the mind of his father. The same provincial tendency to receive implicitly any new European fas.h.i.+on in thinking or speech wrought upon both, plunging one into superst.i.tion 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 emanc.i.p.ating 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 superst.i.tion 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 coa.r.s.er 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 superst.i.tion. 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 superst.i.tion, 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 Pet.i.t, formerly geographer of Louis XIII, and an intimate friend of Descartes, addressed to the young Louis XIV a vehement protest against the superst.i.tion, 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 Cometic.u.m, Amsterdam, 1667, in part ii: Historia Cometarum, preface ”to the reader.” For Pet.i.t, 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 ma.s.s 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.
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