And, in
my opinion, this puzzling question about matter, is only, how that could
be that never could have been, or what a man thinks on when he thinks on
nothing.
Turn matter on all sides, make it eternal, or of late production, finite
or infinite, there can be no regular system produced, but by a voluntary
and meaning agent. This the great Newton always asserted, and this he
asserts in the third letter; but proves, in another manner, in a manner,
perhaps, more happy and conclusive.
"The hypothesis of deriving the frame of the world, by mechanical
principles, from matter evenly spread through the heavens, being
inconsistent with my system, I had considered it very little, before
your letter put me upon it, and, therefore, trouble you with a line or
two more about it, if this comes not too late for your use.
"In my former, I represented, that the diurnal rotations of the planets
could not be derived from gravity, but required a divine arm to impress
them. And though gravity might give the planets a motion of descent
towards the sun, either directly, or with some little obliquity, yet the
transverse motions, by which they revolve in their several orbs,
required the divine arm to impress them, according to the tangents of
their orbs.
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