"[197]
Curiously enough, for this scientific scepticism in Cotton Mather
there was a cause identical with that which had developed
superstition in the mind of his father. The same provincial
tendency to receive implicitly any new European fashion in thinking
or speech wrought upon both, plunging one into superstition 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 emancipating 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 superstition as "ridiculous folly.
Pages:
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385