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.[188]
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.
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