Page:Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's life.djvu/151

 have a law; which tho' it dos force voluntary agents, yet it presents its self to a considering eye, in so amiable a light, that it allures us; offers present, as well as future rewards: and fully acquaints us with the mischiefs of a refusal. we are left to our own will, because that only can intitle us to merit. & if we be sincere, it affords us sufficient help to conduct us rightly.

several people of heretical, & unsettled notions, particularly those of Arian principles, have taken great pains to inlist Sr. Isaac into their party. but that with as little justice, as the anti christians. the church of England intirely claims him as her son, in faith, & in practise.

I can not better conclude this article, than in reciting the subject of a conversation, I once had with him, toward the beginning of our acquaintance.

I proposed to him a thought I had entertain'd, how to account for that great luminous circle incompassing us, which we look upon with so much wonder, in a clear starry night, called the milky way. we all readily suppose it to be owing to the suns of separate systems there placed, one beyond another,   whose united rays cause that luminous appearance. we suppose with probability enough, that every star is a sun of a separate system; some perhaps bigger, some lesser,  some further distant from