ismayed 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 Pingr