"
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.[194]
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.
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