In our own country superstitious ideas regarding comets continued to have some little currency; but their life was short. The tendency shown by Cotton Mather, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, toward acknowledging the victory of science, was completed by the utterances of Winthrop, professor at Harvard, who in 1759 published two lectures on comets, in which he simply and clearly revealed the truth, never scoffing, but reasoning quietly and reverently. In one passage he says: "To be thrown into a panic whenever a comet appears, on account of the ill effects which some few of them might possibly produce, if they were not under proper direction, betrays a weakness unbecoming a reasonable being." A happy influence in this respect was exercised on both continents by John Wesley. Tenaciously as he had held to the supposed scriptural view in so many other matters of science, in this he allowed his reason to prevail, accepted the demonstrations of Halley, and gloried in them.(124) (124) For Heyn, see his Versuch einer Betrachtung uber die cometun, die Sundfluth und das Vorspeil des jungsten Gerichts, Leipsic, 1742. A Latin version, of the same year, bears the title, Specimen Cometologiae Sacre. For the theory that the earth encountered the tail of a comet, see Guillemin and Watson. For survival of the old idea in America, see a Sermon of Israel Loring, of Sudbury, published in 1722. For Prof. J. Winthrop, see his Comets. For Wesley, see his Natural Philosophy, London, 1784, vol. iii, p. 303.