To know
everything knowable, is certainly a perfection; but to endure, or
suffer, or feel anything by sense, is an imperfection. The
former, I say, agrees to God, but not the latter. God knows, or
hath ideas; but His ideas are not conveyed to Him by sense, as
ours are. Your not distinguishing, where there is so manifest a
difference, makes you fancy you see an absurdity where there is
none.
. But, all this while you have not considered that the
quantity of Matter has been demonstrated to be proportioned to
the gravity of bodies. And what can withstand demonstration?
. Let me see how you demonstrate that point.
. I lay it down for a principle, that the moments or
quantities of motion in bodies are in a direct compounded reason
of the velocities and quantities of Matter contained in them.
Hence, where the velocities are equal, it follows the moments are
directly as the quantity of Matter in each. But it is found by
experience that all bodies (bating the small inequalities,
arising from the resistance of the air) descend with an equal
velocity; the motion therefore of descending bodies, and
consequently their gravity, which is the cause or principle of
that motion, is proportional to the quantity of Matter; which was
to be demonstrated.
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