VOL. XVI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 263 



But though the efBcient cause of gravity be so obscure, yet its final cause is 

 clear enough ; for it is by this single principle that the earth and all the celes- 

 tial bodies are kept from dissolution ; the least of their particles not being suf- 

 fered to recede far from their surfaces, without being immediately brought down 

 again by virtue of this natural tendency ; which, for their preservation, the 

 infinite wisdom of their Creator has ordained to be towards each of their centres; 

 nor can the globes of the sun and planets be otherwise destroyed, than by de- 

 priving them of this power of keeping their parts united. 



The affections or properties of gravity, and its manner of acting on falling 

 bodies, have been in a great measure discovered, and most of them made out 

 by mathematical demonstration, by the accurate diligence of Galileo, Torricelli, 

 Huygens, and others, and now lately by our worthy countryman Mr, Isaac 

 Newton, who has an incomparable Treatise on Motion almost ready for the 

 press. Of these properties, the first is, that by this principle of gravitation, 

 all bodies descend towards a point, which either is, or else is very near to the 

 centre of magnitude of the earth and sea, about which the sea forms itself 

 exactly into a spherical surface, and the prominences of the land, considering 

 the bulk of the whole, differ but insensibly from it. 1. This point, or centre 

 of gravitation, is fixed within the earth, or at least has been so, ever since we 

 have any authentic history : for a consequence of its change, though never so 

 little, would be the overflowing of the low lands on that side of the globe to- 

 wards which it approached, and the leaving new islands bare on the opposite 

 side, from which it receded ; but for these 2000 years it appears, that the low 

 islands of the Mediterranean Sea, near which the more ancient writers lived, 

 have continued much at the same height above the water, as they now are 

 found ; and no inundations or recesses of the sea, arguing any such change, 

 are recorded in history ; excepting the universal deluge, which can no better 

 way be accounted for, than by supposing the centre of gravitation removed for 

 a time towards the middle of the then inhabited parts of the world ; and a 

 change of its place, but the 2000th part of the radius of this globe, would be 

 sufficient to bury the tops of the highest hills under water. 3. That in all parts 

 of the surface of the earth, or rather in all points equidistant from its centre, 

 the force of gravity is nearly equal ; so that the length of the pendulum, vi- 

 brating seconds of time, is found in all parts of the world to be nearly the 

 same. It is true that at St. Helena, in the latitude of l6° south, I found that 

 the pendulum of my clock, which vibrated seconds, required to be made shorter 

 than it had been in England by a very sensible space, before it would keep time ; 

 and since that, the like observations have been made by the French observers 

 near the equator: yet I dare not affirm, that in mine it proceeded from any 



