Cassini seemed likely to win for
Italy the glory of completing the great structure; but he was sadly
fettered by Church influences, and was obliged to leave most of the
work to others. Early among these was Hevel. He gave reasons for
believing that comets move in parabolic curves toward the sun. Then
came a man who developed this truth further--Samuel Doerfel; and it
is a pleasure to note that he was a clergyman. The comet of 1680,
which set Erni in Switzerland, Mather in New England, and so many
others in all parts of the world at declaiming, set Doerfel at
thinking. Undismayed 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.
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