In the same year thoughtful scepticism of a similar sort found an
advocate in another part of Europe. Thomas Erastus, the learned and
devout professor of medicine at Heidelberg, put forth a letter
dealing in the plainest terms with the superstition. He argued
especially that there could be no natural connection between the
comet and pestilence, since the burning of an exhalation must tend
to purify rather than to infect the air. In the following year the
eloquent Hungarian divine Dudith published a letter in which the
theological theory was handled even more shrewdly. for he argued
that, if comets were caused by the sins of mortals, they would
never be absent from the sky. But these utterances were for the
time brushed aside by the theological leaders of thought as shallow
or impious.
In the seventeenth century able arguments against the superstition,
on general grounds, began to be multiplied. In Holland, Balthasar
Bekker opposed this, as he opposed the witchcraft delusion,
on general philosophic grounds; and Lubienitzky wrote in
a compromising spirit to prove that comets were as often followed
by good as by evil events.
Pages:
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387