Sir
The
Hypothesis of deriving the frame of the world by mechanical principles from
matter eavenly spread through the heavens being inconsistent with my systeme, I
had considered it very little before your letters put me upon it, and therefore
trouble you with a line or two more about it if this come 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 power to impress them. And
tho 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. I would now add that the Hypothesis of
matters being at first eavenly spread through the heavens is, in my opinion,
inconsistent with the Hypothesis of innate gravity without a supernatural power
to reconcile them, and therefore it infers a Deity. For if there be innate
gravity its impossible now for the matter of the earth and all the Planets and
stars to fly up from them and become eavenly spread throughout all the heavens
without a supernatural power, and certainly that which can never be hereafter
without a supernatural power could never be heretofore without the same power.
You queried
whether matter eavenly spread throughout a finite space of some other figure
than spherical, would not in falling down towards a centrall body cause that
body to be of the same figure with the whole space, and I answered, Yes. But in
my answer it’s to be supposed that the matter descends directly downwards to
that body and that that body has no diurnal rotation. This Sir is all that I
would add to my former Letters. I am
Your most humble Servant
Is.