oth 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
ma