I IO

Sir I S A A C N E W T O N’s Book. II.

their consequences, however obscure the causes of thosepowers may be ; and this he has done with great success.

16. But however commodious the term attraEiion may be,to avoid an useless and tedious circumlocution, yet because itwas used by the school-men to cover their ignorance, the ad-verlaries of Sir Isaac Newton s philosophy have taken an un-just handle from his use os this term, after all his precautions,to depreciate and even ridicule his doctrines ; by which theyonly convince us that they neither understand them, nor haveimpartially and duely considered them. Mr. Leibnitz madeuse os this same term, in the same sense with Sir Isaac Newton ,before he set up in opposition to him ; and it is often to bemet with in the writings of the most accurate philosophers,who have used it without always guarding against the abuse ofit, as he has done. A term of art has been often employedby crafty men, with too much success, to raise a distike againsttheir opponents, and mistead the unwary, and to disgust themfrom enquiring into the truth ; but such disingenuity is un-worthy of philosophers. No writer hath appeared against SirIsaac Newton , of late, by whom this argument, tho’ altogethergroundless, is not insisted on at great length ; and sometimesadorned with the embellishments of wit and humour; butit the reader will take the trouble to compare their de-scriptions with Sir Isaac Newto?i\ own account, he will easilyperceive how little it was minded by them ; and that the sum' of all their art and skill amounts to this only, that they wereable to expose a creature of their own imagination. Possiblysome unskillful men may have fancied that bodies might at-tract each other by some charm or unknown virtue, withoutbeing impelled or acted upon by other bodies, or by any otherpowers of whatever kind ;' and some may have imagined

that