380 Additional Kofef* 



ever, whether sohd or fluid, without any great difficulty or re- 

 sistance ; when tiiey are pushed fon^'ard in straight lines by the 

 action of fire, or are reflected or refracted in straight lines, they 

 produce light, and are so called ; but when the interposition of 

 any opaque body hinders their progress in stiaight lines, they pass, 

 but cease to produce light. 



'* These particles or atoms, which, when moving in straight 

 lines, produce light, and, if collected and put into another sort of 

 motion, would produce heat and fire, are, as our author insists, 

 when the force impelling them ceases to act with vigour, and 

 when their motion is retarded, so made, tliat they are apt to ad- 

 here in small masses or grains, which the author calls spirit or 

 air, and is of the same kind and texture witii that air which we 

 daily breathe, and wdiich we feel in wind when it blow^s. 



" The sun, which our author places at the centre of this sy- 

 stem, is an orb included in a vast collection of this subtile matter 

 in the action of fire, which continually melts down all the air that 

 is brought into it by the powerful action of the firmament or ex- 

 pansion, hereafter to be explained, into the subtile matter just 

 mentioned j and with an immense force sends forth, in perpetual 

 streams of light, this same subtile matter, so melted doA^-n, to the 

 circumference of this system, which the author says is bounded, 

 as he avers the space comprehended within it is absolutely 

 full. 



*' The matter thus melted down at the orb ©f the sun into 

 light must, as every thing is full, either stand still or make its way 

 outwards to the circumference ; being forced by the particles which 

 are concreted into air at the utmost extremities, and return 

 towards the sun, where, the fluid, being most subtile, gives least 

 resistance, and take up the place that the light left. 



" And therefore this endless uninterrupted flux of matter from 

 tlie sun in light, in place of being an expense that should destroy 

 that orb (which our author takes to be an insupportable objection 

 to sir Isaac Newton's scheme) is the very means of preserving it» 

 and every thing else in this system, in its action and vigour, by 

 pressing back perpetual supplies of air to be melted down into 

 light, and thercb}- producing a continual circulation. These per- 

 petual fluxes or tides of matter outv.ards and inwards, in every 

 point, from the centre to the circumference, mechanically, and 

 necessarily, as our author insists, produce that constant gyration in 

 the eartii and the planets rn\ind their own centres, and round thu 

 sun • and he avers, though he has not yd thought fit to explain it^ 



