Sir
When I
wrote my treatise bout our Systeme I had an eye upon such Principles as might
work with considering men for the belief of a Deity and nothing can rejoyce me
more than to find it usefull for that purpose. But if I have done the publick
any service this way ’tis 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 in the Universe was eavenly 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 to the middle of the whole space and
there compose one great spherical mass. But if the matter was eavenly diffused
through 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 to another throughout all
that infinite space. And thus might the Sun and Fixt stars be formed supposing
the matter were of a lucid nature. But how the matter should divide it self
into two sorts and that part of it 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 opake 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 opake body like
the Planets, or the Planets lucid bodies like the Sun, how he alone should be
changed into a shining body whilst all they continue opake or all they be
changed into opake 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 Orbs of the six primary
Planets, placed Saturn in the center of the orbs of his five secondary Planets
and Jupiter in the center of the orbs of his four secondary ones and the earth
in the center of the Moons orb; and therefore had this cause been a blind one
without contrivance and designe 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 our Systeme qualified to give light and heat to all the rest I know
reason but because the author of the Systeme 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 Hypothesis of the Sun’s
loosing their light and then turning into Comets and Comets into Planets can
have no place in my systeme and is plainly erroneous because its certain that
Comets as often as they appear to us descend into the system of our planets
lower then the orb of Jupiter and sometimes lower then 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 naturall cause alone but were imprest 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
Ecliptick at all kinds of angles: its plaine that there is no naturall 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 about which they move and to
the quantity of matter conteined in those bodies, which were requisite to make
them move in concentrick 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 motions 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 then they are (as they might have been had they arose from any other cause
then their gravity) or had their distances from the centers about which they
move been greater or less then 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 then it is: the primary Planets
could not have revolved about the Sun nor the secondary ones about Saturn,
Jupiter and the earth in concentrick circles as they do, but would have moved
in Hyperbolas or Parabolas or in Ellipses very excentric. To make this systeme
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 secondary ones from Saturn Jupiter and the
earth, and the velocities with which these planets could revolve at those
distances 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 and fortuitous, but very well skilled in
Mechanicks and Geometry.
To your third Query I answer that it may be
represented that the Sun may be heating those Planets most which are nearest to
him to cause them to be better concocted and more condensed by concoction. But
when I consider that our earth is much more heated in its bowells below the
upper crust by subterraneous fermentations of mineral bodies then 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 then 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 then the
rest so they are vastly greater and contein a 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 that great distance. For by their
gravitating powers they disturb one anothers motions very sensibly as I find by
some late Observations of Mr Flamsteed, 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 Systeme.
To the 4th
Query I answer that in the Hypotheses 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 neighbouring vortices and the earth turned
from a Sun to a Comet; but this inclination ought constantly to decrease in
compliance with the motion of the earths vortex, whose axis is much less
inclined to the Ecliptick 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 affect 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 for winter and for 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 systeme which (as I
explained above) was the effect of choice rather then of chance.
There is
yet another argument for a Deity which I take to be a very strong one, but till
principles on which tis grounded be better received I think it more advisable
to let it sleep. I am
Your most humble Servant to command
Is.