Original letter from Isaac Newton to Richard Bentley, dated 11 February 1692/3

<6r>

Sir

The Hypothesis of deriving the frame of the world by mechanical principles from matter eavenly spread through the heavens being inconsistent with my systeme, I had considered it very little before your letters put me upon it, & therefore trouble you with a line or two more about it if this come not too late for your use. In my former I {represented} that the diurnal rotations of the Planets could not be derived from gravity but required a divin{e} power to impress them. And thô gravity might give the Planets a motion of descent towards the Sun either directly or with some little obliquity, yet the transverse motions by which they revolve in their several orbs required the divine Arm to impress them according to the tangents of their orbs I would now add that the Hypothesis of matters being at first eavenly spread through the heavens is, in my opinion, inconsistent with the Hypothesis of innate gravity without a supernatural <6v> power to reconcile them, & therefore it infers a Deity. ffor if there be innate gravity its impossible now for the matter of the earth & all the Planets & stars to fly up from them & become eavenly spread throughout all the heavens without a supernatural power. & certainly that which can never be hereafter without a supernatural power could never be heretofore without the same power.

You queried whether matter eavenly spread throughout a finite space of some other figure then spherical, would not in falling down towards a centrall body cause that body to be of the same figure with the whole space, & I answered, Yes. But in my answer it's to be supposed that the matter desends directly downwards to that body & that that body has no diurnal rotation. This Sir is all that I would add to my former Letters. I am

Your most humble Servant

Is. Newton

Cambridge.

Feb. 11. 1693.

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For M^r Bently at the Palace in

Worcester.

A 3^d Letter from M^r Newton