264 NATUHAL THEOLOGY. 



Stars, are stationary. Their rest must be the effect of an 

 absence or of an equilibrium of attractions. Tt proves also, 

 that a projectile impulse was originally given to some of tht 

 heavenly bodies, and not to others. But further, if attrac- 

 tion act at all distances, there can only be one quiescent 

 centre of gravity in the universe ; and all bodies whatever 

 must be approaching this centre, or revolving round it. Ac- 

 cording to the first of these suppositions, if the duration of 

 the world had been long enough to allow of it, all its parts, 

 all the great bodies of which it is composed, must have been 

 gathered together in a heap round this point. No changes, 

 however, which have been observed, afford us the smallest 

 •'eason for believing that either the one supposition or the 

 other is true ; and then it will follow, that attraction itself 

 is controlled or suspended by a superior agent — that there is 

 a power above the highest of the powers of material nature — 

 a will which restrains and circumscribes the operations of 

 the most extensive.^ 



* It must here, however, be stated, that many astronomers deny 

 that any of the heavenly bodies are absokitely stationary. Some of 

 the brightest of the fixed stars have certainly small motions; and of 

 the rest the distance is too great, and the intervals of our observation 

 too short, to enable us to pronoimce with certainty that they may not 

 iiave the same. The motions in the fixed stars which have been ob- 

 served, are considered either as proper to each of them, or as com- 

 pounded of the motion of our system and of motions proper to each 

 Btar. By a comparison of these motions, a motion in our system is 

 supposed to be discovered. By continuing this analogy to other and 

 to all systems, it is possible to suppose that attraction is unliruited, 

 and that the whole material universe is revolving round some fixed 

 point within its containing sphere or space. 



