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SIR,

[FROM THE SAME.]

Letter from Sir Isaac Newton to Dr. Bentley.

WHEN I wrote my treatise about our system, I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity; and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose. But if I have done the pnblic any service this way, it is due to nothing but industry and patient thought.

As to your first query, it seems to me, that if the matter of our sun and planets, and all the matter of the universe, were evenly scattered throughout all the heavens, and every particle had an innate gravity towards all the rest, and the whole space throughout which this matter was scattered was but finite, the matter on the outside of this space would, by its gravity, tend towards all the matter on the inside, and, by consequence, fall down into the middle of the whole space, and there compose one great spherical mass. But if the matter was evenly disposed throughout an infinite space, it would never convene into one mass; but some of it convene into one mass, and some into another, so as to make an infinite number of great masses, scattered at great distances from one another throughout all that infinite space; and thus might the sun aud fixed stars be formed, supposing the matter were of a lucid nature. But how the matter should divide itself into two sorts, and that that part which is fit to compose a shining body, should fall down into one mass, and make a sun; and the rest, which is fit to compose an opaque body, should coalesce, not into one great body, like the shining matter; but into many little ones; or if the sun was at first an opaque body, like the planete, or the planets lucid bodies like the sun, how he alone should be changed into a shining body, whilst all they continue opaque, or all they be changed into opaque ones, whilst he remains unchanged; I do not think explicable by mere natural causes, but am forced to ascribe it to the counsel and contrivance of a voluntary agent.

The same power, whether natural or supernatural, which placed the sun in the center of the six primary planets, placed Saturn in the center of the orbs of his five secondary planets, and Jupiter in the center of his four secondary planets, and the earth in the center of the moon's orb; and, therefore, had this cause been a blind one, without contrivance or design, the Sun would have been a body of the same kind with Saturn, Jupiter, and the Earth, that is, without light and heat. Why there is one body in one system, qualified to give light and heat to all the rest, I know no reason, but because the Author of the system thought it convenient; and why there is but one body of this kind, I know no reason, but because one was sufficient to warm and enlighten all the rest. For the Cartesian bypothesis, of suns losing their light, and then turning into comets, and comets into planets, can have no place in my system, and is plainly erroneous, because it is certain, that as often as they appear to us, they descend into the system of our planets, lower than the orb of Jupiter, and sometimes lower than the orbs of Venus and Mercury, and yet never stay here, but always return from the sun with the same degrees of motion by which they approached him.

To your second query I answer, that the motions which the planets now have, could not spring from any natural cause alone, but were impressed by an intelligent agent; for, since comets descend into the region of our planets, and here move all manner of ways, going sometimes the same way with the planets, sometimes the contrary way, and sometimes in cross ways, in planes inclined to the plane of the ecliptic, and at all kinds of angles, 'tis plain that there is no nat. ural cause which could determine all the planets, both primary and secondary, to move the same way, and in the same plane, without any considerable variation; this must have been the effect of counsel.

Nor is there any natural cause which could give the planets those just degrees of velocity, in proportion to their distances from the sun, and other central bodies, which were requisite to make them move in such excentric orbs about those bodies. Had the planets been as swift as comets, in proportion to their distances from the sun (as they would have been, had their motion been caused by their gravity, whereby the matter, at the first formation of the planets, might fall from the remotest regions towards the sun,) they would not move in concentric orbs, but in such excentric ones as the comets move in. Were all the planets as swift as Mercury, or as slow as Saturn or his satellites; or were there several velocities otherwise much greater or less than they are, as they might have been; had they arose from any other cause than their gravities; or had the distances from the centres about which they move been greater or less than they are with the same velocities; or had the quantity of matter in the sun, or in Saturn, Jupiter, and the earth, and, by consequence, their gravitating power been greater or less than it is, the primary planets could not have revolved about the sun, nor the secondary ones about Saturn, Jupiter, and the earth, in concentric circles as they do, but would have moved in hyperbolas or parabolas, or in ellipses very eccentric. To make this system, therefore, with all its motions, required a cause which understood and compared together the quantities of matter in the several bodies of the sun and planets, and the gravitating powers resulting from thence, the several distances of the primary planets from the sun, and of the secondary ones from Saturn, Jupiter, and the earth, and the velocities with which these planets could revolve about those quantities of matter in the central bodies; and to compare and adjust all these things together in so great a variety of bodies, argues that cause to be not blind or fortuitous, but very well skilled in mechanics and geometry.

To your third query I answer, that it may be represented, that the sun may, by heating those planets most which are nearest to him, cause them to be better concocted, and more condensed by concoction. But when I consider that our earth is much more heated in its bowels below the upper crust, by subterraneous fermentations of mineral bodies than by the sun, I see not why the interior parts of Jupiter and Saturn might not be as much heated, concocted, and coagulated by those fermentations, as our earth is; and, therefore, this various density should have some other cause than the various distances of the planets from the sun and I am confirmed in this opinion, by considering that the planets of Jupiter and Saturn, as they are rarer than the rest, so they are vastly greater, and contain a

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far greater quantity of matter, and have many satellites about them; which qualifications surely arose not from their being placed at so great a distance from the sun, but were rather the cause why the Creator placed them at a great distance; for, by their gravitating powers, they disturb one another's motions very sensibly, as I find by some late observations of Mr. Flamstead; and, had they been placed much nearer to the sun, and to one another, they would, by the same powers, have caused a considerable disturbance in the whole sys

tem.

To your fourth query I answer, that in the hypothesis of vortices, the inclination of the axis of the earth might, in my opinion, be ascribed to the situation of the earth's vortex, before it was absorbed by the neighboring vortices, and the earth turned from a sun to a comet; but this inclination ought to decrease constantly, in compliance with the motion of the earth's vortex, whose axis is much less inclined to the ecliptic, as appears by the motion of the moon carried about therein. If the sun by his rays could carry about the planets, yet I do not see how he could thereby effect their diurnal motions.

Lastly, I see nothing extraordinary in the inclination of the earth's axis for proving a Deity, unless you will urge it as a contrivance fer winter and summer, and for making the earth habitable towards the poles, and that the diurnal rotations of the sun and planets, as they could hardly arise from any cause purely mechanical, so by being determined all the same way with the annual and menstrual motions, they seem to make up that harmony in the system which, as I explained above, was the effect of choice rather than chance.

There is yet another argument for a Deity, which I take to be a very strong one; but, till the principles on which it is grounded be better received, I think it advisable to let it sleep.

I am

Your most humble servant to command,

Cambridge, Dec. 10, 1807.

ISAAC NEWTON.

To the Rev. Dr. Richard Bentley, at the Bp. of Worcester's House, in Park-street, Westminster.

LINES

POETRY

Written in a country Burial Place, in
Scituate, Massachusetts.
[Concluded.]

The green turf swells above thy moul-
dering clay,

The moss has strew'd it with the softest felt,

The violets here their loveliest hues display,

This humble stone, which fond affection plac'd

To mark the spot, and to preserve thy name,

Though by a rude unlettered artist trac'd,

On his regard has more than marble's claim.

Sacred to thee forever may it stand; Forbear, O TIME! the tablet to destroy

To deck the bed on which he oft Whose lay disarms the king of ter

has knelt.

ror's hand

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Attend the word that speaks of lea-. ving earth,

We seek for happiness-it dwells not here,

In Heaven alone are joys of lasting worth.

Here some repose who scarce receiv'd their birth

Ere death consign'd them to the silent tomb,

Small, though sufficient, is their lot of

earth

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joy!

The last love-pledge of this connubial pair,

Their fears were ever wakeful for the boy.

The sylvan Muse entic'd me to her cell,

My childish fingers wanton'd o'er her lyre,

Bade the rude strain, untaught, to wildly swell,

While to the sound each throbbing pulse beat higher.

Then as I grew and learn'd to sweep the strings

By art directed, though less sweetly wild,

I envied not the happiness of kings,

My lyre was bliss, and I a happy child.

But why recount the joys of childhood o'er?

That happy state with all its joys has fled!

As fade the beauties of the tender

flower,

When WINTER beats upon its drooping head.

But see! the ocean sparkles on the

sight,

What lovely hues upon its surface play!

The liquid mirror streams with dazzling light,

Reflected from the rising god of day He comes! and nature hails his glad'. ning beams,

New life pervades her animated part,

Norless improved the vegetable seems, Its charms increase, and laugh at mimic art.

Not long ago adown the western skies He sunk, and left the mourning world in gloom, But only sunk at night again to rise In tenfold splendor from his watery bomb.

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[Original in the Connecticut Herald of Aug. 18.] FRIENDSHIP.

WHAT power can prop a sinking soul,

Opprest with woes, and sick of grief,
Bid the warm tear forbear to roll,
Despair's heart-rending sigh control,
And whisper sweet relief?
Friendship! sweet balm for sorrow's
smart,

In thee the soothing power is found,
To heal the lacerated heart,
Extract affliction's venom'd dart,

And close the rankling wound. When pierc'd by grief's chill tempest through,

The tendril bends beneath its power, Thou canst the broken plant renew, Thy sacred tear, like heavenly dew,

Revives the drooping flower.

If Fortune frown-if Health depart,

Or death divide the tenderest tie,
Friendship can raise the sinking heart,
A glow of real joy impart,

And wipe the tearful eye.
If foes without attack our name,

Or foes within assault our peace,
Then Friendship's pure celestial flame,
Can heal our malice-wounded fame,

And bid internal tumults cease.
If hopeless Love our bliss destroy,
And fill the breast with black des-
pair,

All peace such sufferers can enjoy
Is built by Friendship's kind employ,
Which lessens every care.
Come, then, sweet power of source
divine,

Forever glow within my breast,
My earliest Friend be ever mine,
One link our hearts in union join,
And each make either blest.

SELIM.

Gleanings.

RISE OF THE PURITANS.

IN Sir George Paul's life of Archbishop Whitgift, there is a trifling circumstance related, which is supposed to have given rise to the dissenters in the reign of Elizabeth.

The circumstance is this: The first discontentment of Master Cartwright, (a Fellow of Trinity college, Cambridge and a celebrated disputant) grew at a public act in that university before queen Elizabeth; because Master Preston, (then of King's college and afterwards Master of Trinity hall) for his comely gesture and pleasing

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