10 et seq., and p.

181 et seq.; also Pingre, chap.ii.For the Pythagorean notions, see citations from Plutarch in Costard, History of Astronomy, p.283.For Seneca's prediction, see Guillemin, World of Comets (translated by Glaisher), pp.

4, 5; also Watson, On Comets, p.126.

For this feeling in antiquity generally, see the preliminary chapters of the two works last cited.
The belief that every comet is a ball of fire flung from the right hand of an angry God to warn the grovelling dwellers of earth was received into the early Church, transmitted through the Middle Ages to the Reformation period, and in its transmission was made all the more precious by supposed textual proofs from Scripture.

The great fathers of the Church committed themselves unreservedly to it.