" In
connection with this there was also commended to the faithful "a
godly admonition for the time present"; and among the things
referred to as evidence of God's wrath are comets, eclipses, and
falls of snow.
This view held sway in the Church of England during Elizabeth's
whole reign and far into the Stuart period: Strype, the
ecclesiastical annalist, gives ample evidence of this, and among
the more curious examples is the surmise that the comet of 1572 was
a token of Divine wrath provoked by the St. Bartholomew massacre.
As to the Stuart period, Archbishop Spottiswoode seems to have been
active in carrying the superstition from the sixteenth century to
the seventeenth, and Archbishop Bramhall cites Scripture in support
of it. Rather curiously, while the diary of Archbishop Laud shows
so much superstition regarding dreams as portents, it shows little
or none regarding comets; but Bishop Jeremy Taylor, strong as he
was, evidently favoured the usual view. John Howe, the eminent
Nonconformist divine in the latter part of the century, seems to
have regarded the comet superstition as almost a fundamental
article of belief; he laments the total neglect of comets and
portents generally, declaring that this neglect betokens want of
reverence for the Ruler of the world; he expresses contempt for
scientific inquiry regarding comets, insists that they may be
natural bodies and yet supernatural portents, and ends by saying,
"I conceive it very safe to suppose that some very considerable
thing, either in the way of judgment or mercy, may ensue, according
as the cry of persevering wickedness or of penitential prayer is
more or less loud at that time.
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