Consideratio & observatio cometae aetherei astronomica qui anno MDLXXX mensibus octobri, novembri et decembri in alto aethere apparvit

that have no number. Job 12: Ask the beasts, and they will teach you, and the birds of the air, and they will tell you; speak to the earth and it will answer you, and the fish of the sea will tell you. Who is ignorant that the hand of the Lord has made all these things? Job 37: Perhaps you have fashioned the heavens with Him, which are most solid as if they were cast of bronze. Sirach 34: He encircles the heaven with a glorious curve, with the hands of the Highest extending it. In these things, therefore, the pleasing fame of God is sung of His immense omnipotence, eternal power, ineffable kindness, and eternal glory, of which these things are only a shadow, since after the new heaven is created, there will be no more memory of these.

But besides this, the stars also scatter another fame, though not to men, yet no less pleasing to God, namely when God, offended beyond measure by the atrocity and multitude of our sins, is compelled to hasten to vengeance; He brings forth for us to behold His heralds, who sound the trumpet, who give warning of anger and retribution, in case there might be found someone who, interposing himself as a wall, might appease His wrath. These are the Comets shining with a sad face, the trembling chasmata gaping celestial lights, and other such ominous portents. He wishes these trumpeters, as rods of His fury, to be observed no less than the rainbow, the sign of the covenant and bond between God and man. Thus, in the past year, besides the fact that a displeasing fame of the anger of God burning against us was brought to us by various chasmata, in the last quarter of the year a Comet with a ferocious and threatening face inculcated the same.

However, it is customary for all Comets that they not only admonish us of impending evils, but also testify to both the power and the wisdom of God the Creator, so that we may understand, without doubt, that God is not driven to inflict the penalties of sins except by extreme necessity, for which reason, even in His very wrath, not unmindful of mercy, He prefers to propose the games of His clemency, so that, deterred by His goodness rather than by the fear of punishments, we might turn away from iniquities. But if God accomplishes nothing in this way, so that we may understand how hard a weapon necessity is in His hands, He whose power made the Comet shine.