in his second discourse, where he is arguing against a fortuitous origin of the universe. "If a man should affirm that an ape, casually meeting with pen, ink, and paper, and falling to scribble, did happen to write exactly the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes, would an atheist believe such a story?"

It was from the pulpit of St. Martin's Church, in London, that Bentley delivered his Boyle Lectures. The first was given on March 7, 1692. Bentley announces that his refutation of atheists will not be drawn from those sacred books which, in their eyes, possess no special authority; "but, however, there are other books extant, which they must needs allow of as proper evidence; even the mighty volumes of visible nature, and the everlasting tables of right reason; wherein, if they do not wilfully shut their eyes, they may read their own folly written by the finger of God, in a much plainer and more terrible sentence than Belshazzar's was by the hand upon the wall."

In choosing this ground Bentley was following a recent example. Richard Cumberland, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough, had published in 1672 his "Philosophical Disquisition on the Laws of Nature"-arguing, against the school of Hobbes, that certain immutable principles of moral choice are inherent in the nature of things and in the mind of man. He purposely refrains, however, from appealing to Scripture: the testimony which Cumberland invokes is that of recent science, mathematical or physiological-of Descartes and Huygens, of Willis or Harvey. It is characteristic of Bentley that he chose to draw his weapons from the same armoury. He was already a disciple of strictly theological learning. But in this field, as in others, he declined to use authority as a refuge from logical encounter.

Bentley's first Lecture argues that to adopt atheism is "to choose death and evil before life and good ;" that such folly is needless, since religion imposes nothing repugnant to man's faculties or incredible to his reason; that it is also hurtful, both to the individual, whom it robs of the best hope, and to communities, since religion is the basis of society. The second Lecture proceeds to deduce the existence of the Deity from the faculties of the human soul. Hobbes had said: "There is no conception in a man's mind which hath not at first, totally or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense the rest are derived from that original." Bentley, on the contrary, undertakes to prove that "the powers of cogitation, and volition, and sensation, are neither inherent in matter as such, nor producible in matter;" but proceed from "some cogitative substance, some incorporeal inhabitant within. us, which we call spirit and soul." As the result of the inquiry, he concludes that there is "an immaterial and intelligent Being, that created our souls; which Being was either eternal itself, or created immediately or ultimately by some other Eternal, that has all those perfections. There is, therefore, originally an eternal, immaterial, intelligent Creator; all which together are the attributes of God alone." Evelyn, who was present at this Lecture, writes of it in his Diary (April 4, 1692)-" one of the most learned and convincing discourses I had ever heard." From this point we may date the friendship which til his death in 1706 he steadily entertained for Bentley. The third, fourth and fifth Lectures urge the same inference from the origin and structure of human bodies. Bentley seeks to prove that "the human race was neither from everlasting without beginning; nor owes its beginning to the influence of heavenly bodies; nor to

what they call nature, that is, the necessary and mechanical motions of dead senseless matter." His style of argument on the evidence of design in the human structure may be seen from this passage on the organism of the heart:

"If we consider the heart, which is supposed to be the first principle of motion and life, and divide it by our imagination into its constituent parts, its arteries, and veins, and nerves, and tendons, and membranes, and innumerable little fibres that these secondary parts do consist of, we shall find nothing here singular, but what is in any other muscle of the body. 'Tis only the site and posture of these several parts, and the configuration of the whole, that give it the form and functions of a heart. Now, why should the first single fibres in the formation of the heart be peculiarly drawn in spiral lines, when the fibres of all other muscles are made by a transverse rectilinear motion? What could determine the fluid matter into that odd and singular figure, when as yet no other member is supposed to be formed, that might direct the course of that fluid matter? Let mechanism here make an experiment of its power, and produce a spiral and turbinated motion of the whole moved body without an external director.""

The last three Lectures (vi., vii., viii.) deal with the proofs from "the origin and frame of the world." These are by far the most striking of the series. Newton's Principia had now been published for five years. But, beyond the inner circle of scientific students, the Cartesian system was still generally received. Descartes taught that each planet was carried round the sun in a separate vortex; and that the satellites are likewise carried round by smaller vortices, contained within those of the several

planets. Centrifugal motion would constantly impel the planets to fly off in a straight line from the sun; but they are kept in their orbits by the pressure of an outer sphere, consisting of denser particles which are beyond the action of the vortices.

Newton had demolished this theory. He had shown that the planets are held in their orbits by the force of gravity, which is always drawing them towards the sun, combined with a transverse impulse, which is always projecting them at tangents to their orbits. Bentley takes up Newton's great discovery, and applies it to prove the existence of an Intelligent Providence. Let us grant, he says, that the force of gravity is inherent to matter. What can have been the origin of that other force-the transverse impulse? This impulse is not uniform, but has been adjusted to the place of each body in the system. Each planet has its particular velocity, proportioned to its distance from the sun and to the quantity of the solar matter. It can be due to one cause alone-an intelligent and omnipotent Creator.

This view has the express sanction of Newton. His letters to Bentley-subsequent in date to the Lectures -repeatedly confirm it. "I do not know any power in nature," Newton writes, "which would cause this transverse motion without the divine arm." ... "To make this system, with all its motions, required a cause which understood and compared together the quantities of matter in the several bodies of the sun and planets, and the gravitating powers resulting from thence; the several distances of the primary planets from the sun, and of the secondary ones from Saturn, Jupiter, and the Earth; and the velocities with which these planets could revolve about those quantities of matter in the central bodies; and to com

pare and adjust all these things together, in so great a variety of bodies, argues that cause to be, not blind and fortuitous, but very well skilled in mechanics and geometry."

The application of Newton's discoveries which Bentley makes in the Boyle Lectures was peculiarly welcome to Newton himself. "When I wrote my treatise about our system," he says to Bentley, "I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity; and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose. But if I have done the public any service this way, it is due to nothing but industry and patient thought."

The correspondence between Bentley and Newton, to which the Boyle Lectures gave rise, would alone make them memorable. It has commonly been supposed that Bentley first studied the Principia with a view to these Lectures. This, as I can prove, is an error. The Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, contains the autographs of Newton's four letters to Bentley, and of his directions for reading the Principia; also a letter to Wotton from John Craig, a Scottish mathematician, giving advice on the same subject, for Bentley's benefit. Now, Craig's letter is dated June 24, 1691; Bentley, then, must have turned his mind to the Principia six months before the Boyle Lectures were even founded. We know, further, that in 1689 he was working on Lucretius. I should conjecture, then, that his first object in studying Newton's cosmical system had been to compare it with that of Epicurus, as interpreted by Lucretius; to whom, indeed, he refers more than once in the Boyle Lectures. Craig gives an alarming list of books which must be read before the Principia can be understood, and represents the study as most arduous. Newton's own directions to Bentley are simple and en