1S6 ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book II. 



miraculous manner. Sir Ifaac, It Is true, fays, in his Principia, that, 

 pven v^'hile the lyftein Lfio, it may deliderate the mending hand of the 

 Creator. Rut the meaning of tbis, as he has explained it in the 

 Query at the end of his Optics, is, that the adtion of the comets up- 

 on the planets, or of the planets upon one another, may, in a 

 great length of rime, difturh their movement (o much, that a 

 mending hand will be required. But Sir Ifaac does not ieem to un- 

 derhand, that the centripetal and centrifugal fovce$,.ii^ they are call- 

 ed, which he fuppofes to be originally imprefled upon them, will ever 

 fail. 



From this account of the Newtonian Aftronomy, it is evident, that 

 the fyftem of the heavens is, according to il, a mere machine, very 

 different from any thing to be feen on earth, where there is no perpe^ 

 tuiim 7nobile of a machine, neither of the workmanihip of nature, nor 

 of man, and where all the natural movements of bodies, whether or- 

 ganized or unorganized, are fimple and uncompofed, not being com- 

 bined of motions counteradin:^ one another. Ihe Newtonian Philo- 

 fophy, therefore, is not fo fimple or uniform, nor fo univerfal, as its 

 followers would make us believe ; and I have always thought that it 

 would be more confiftent, and better explain the whole of nature, 

 if they could make machines of the bodies of all animals, as the 

 French have done of the bodies of brutes, and allowing them to have 

 been made, and once fet agoing by God, have (hewn that they 

 might go on iike the celeftial bodies, by the power of matter and me- 

 chanifin merely. Such a philofophy would have comprehended heaven 

 and earth, and eftablifhed an univerfal law of nature, extending thro' 

 thi^ vv'hole univerfe ; whereas, iu the Newtonian Philofophy, as It 

 ftands, there is vranting that analogy and unity of defign, which every 

 part of nature feems to indicate* 



Sir 



