60, 307, etc.

For Jeremy Taylor, see his Sermons on the Life of Christ.

For John Howe, see his Works, London, 1862, vol.iv, pp.

140, 141.
The Reformed Church of Scotland supported the superstition just as strongly.

John Knox saw in comets tokens of the wrath of Heaven; other authorities considered them "a warning to the king to extirpate the Papists"; and as late as 1680, after Halley had won his victory, comets were announced on high authority in the Scottish Church to be "prodigies of great judgment on these lands for our sins, for never was the Lord more provoked by a people." While such was the view of the clergy during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the laity generally accepted it as a matter of course, Among the great leaders in literature there was at least general acquiescence in it.