250 NATURAL THEOL.OGr. 



fore, that the sun is one ; that the planets going round it aic 

 at least seven ; that it is indifferent to their nature which 

 are luminous and which are opaque ; and also in what order, 

 with respect to each other, these two kinds of bodies are dis 

 posed, we may judge of the improbability of the present 

 arrangement taking place by chance. 



If, by way of accounting for the state in which we find 

 he solar system, it be alleged — and this is one among the 

 guesses of those Avho reject an intelligent Creator — that the 

 planets themselves are only cooled or cooling masses, and 

 were once like the sun, many thousand times hotter than red 

 hot iron ; then it follows, that the sun also himself must be 

 in his progress towards growing cold, which puts an end to 

 the possibility of his having existed as he is from eternity. 

 This consequence arises out of the hypothesis with still more 

 certainty, if we make a part of it what the philosophers who 

 maintain it have usually taught, that the planets were orig- 

 inally masses of matter, struck off in a state of fusion from 

 the body of the sun by the percussion of a comet, or by a 

 shock li-om some other cause with which we are not ac- 

 quainted; for if these masses, partaking of the nature and 

 substance of the sun's body, have in process of time lost their 

 heat, that body itself, in time likewise, no matter in how 

 much longer time, must lose its heat also, and therefore be 

 mcapabie of an eternal duration in the state in which we 

 see it, either for the time to come, or the time past. 



The preference of the present to any other mode of dis- 

 tributing luminous and opaque bodies, I take to be evident. 

 It requires more astronomy than I am able to lay before the 

 reader to show, in its particulars, what would be the effect 

 to the system, of a dark body at the centre and one of the 

 planets being luminous ; but I think it manifest, without 

 either plates or calculation, first, that supposing the neces- 

 sary proportion of magnitude between the central and the 

 revolving bodies to be preserved, the ignited planet would 

 Qot be sufficient to illuminate and warm the rest of the sys- 



