Ioannis Wolphii Tigurini de christiana perseverantia commentationis consolatoriae, ad N. captivos fratres liber unus. ...

terrible, which we have now been observing for almost two months as a sad and mournful spectacle. It ought to penetrate our spirits and hearts all the more deeply because that new star—hitherto unheard of since the first coming of Christ—appeared four years ago, which all learned and pious men conjecture to predict the end of the world and the second coming of Christ. For this year is the first of the critical ones, which usually serves as an index of future events. There is no doubt that all the portents of the times seem to be divinely brought together into this one comet: so that it obtains the force of this testimony, if that higher reasoning did not already provide faith, through the testimony of our Lord himself, who said that these signs would immediately precede the last judgment. Come then, let us examine this index and recount all the comets from the very beginning of the world down to this day, and here we will encounter wars, here pestilences, here stormy winds, here earthquakes, and here other evils of this kind, all of which comets produce by their very nature because of the pestilential vapors, heat, droughts, sterility, etc., with which they infect these lower regions. And if you look at its shape? Behold, rods rods