"[123] But comets were the staple commodity that turned
principally to account. In compliance, however, with the impressions of
fear which the strangeness and excessive length of these stars made upon
mankind, the Astrologers did not hesitate to pronounce them of a malign
tendency; and the more so when they found they had, by this means, made
themselves in some degree necessary, in consequence of the impatient
applications that were made to them as from the mouth of an oracle, what
particular disaster such and such a comet portended.
Eclipses furnished more frequent occasions for the exercise of their
talent. From this worthy precedent of Judicial Astrology, others took
the hint and invented new modes of divination, such as Geomancy,
Chiromancy, Onomancy, and the like; till the world by degrees became so
overrun with superstition, that the least trifle was converted into a
presage or presentiment; and the more so when this kind of knowledge
became the business of religion; and when the substance of divine
worship consisted in the ordinances of Augurs who, to make themselves
necessary in the world, were obliged to keep up and quicken men's
apprehensions of the wrath of God, took special care to cultivate
comets, and bring it into a proverb, that "so many comets so many
calamities.
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