^5^: NATURAL THEOLOGY. 



may appear to be a strange consequence — that cases arise 

 in which attraction, incessantly drawing a body towards a 

 centre, never brings, nor ever will bring, the body to that 

 centre, but keep it in eternal circulation round it. If it 

 were possible to fire off a cannon-ball with a velocity of hve 

 miles in a second, and the resistance of the air could be taken 

 away, the cannon-ball would for ever wheel round the earth 

 instead of falling down upon it. This is the principle which 

 sustains the heavenly motions. The Deity having appoint- 

 ed this law to matter — than which, as we have said before, 

 no law could be more simple — ^has turned it to a wonderful 

 account in constructing planetary systems. 



The actuating cause in these systems, is an attraction 

 which varies reciprocally as the square of the distance : that 

 is, at double the distance it has a quarter of the force ; at half 

 Ihe distance, four times the strength, and so on. Now, con- 

 cerning this law of variation, we have three things to ob- 

 serve : first, that attraction, for any thing we know about it, 

 was just as capable of one laAV of variation as of another ; 

 secondly, that out of an infinite number of possible laws, 

 those which were admissible for the purpose of supporting 

 the heavenly motions, lay within certain narrow limits; 

 thirdly, that of the admissible laws, or those which come 

 within the Umits prescribed, the law that actually prevails 

 is the most beneficial. So far as these propositions can be 

 made out, we may be said, I thmk, to prove choice and reg- 

 ulatioii : choice, out of boundless variety ; and regulation 

 of that which, by its own nature, was, in respect of the prop- 

 erty regulated, indifferent and indefinite. 



I. First, then, attraction, for any thing we know about 

 it, was originally indifferent to all laws of variation depend- 

 ing upon change of distance, that is, just as susceptible of 

 one law as of another. It might have been the same at all 

 distances ; it might have increased as the distance increased ; 

 or it might have diminished with the increase of the dis- 

 tance, yet in ten thousand different proportions from the 



