Isaac Newton

“ If any one would ask how a Medium can be so rare, let him tell me how the Air, in the upper parts of the Atmosphere, can be above an hundred thousand thousand times rarer than Gold. Let him also tell me, how an electrick Body can by Friction emit an Exhalation so rare and subtile, and yet so potent, as by its Emission to cause no sensible Diminution of the weight of the electrick Body, and to be expanded through a Sphere, whose Diameter is above two Feet, and yet to be able to agitate and carry up Leaf Copper, or Leaf Gold, at the distance of above a Foot from the electrick Body? ”

“ For the Gospel must be preached in all nations before the great tribulation, and end of the world. The palm-bearing multitude, which come out of this great tribulation, cannot be innumerable out of all nations, unless they be made so by the preaching of the Gospel before it comes. There must be a stone cut out of a mountain without hands, before it can fall upon the toes of the Image, and become a great mountain and fill the earth. An Angel must fly thro' the midst of heaven with the everlasting Gospel to preach to all nations, before Babylon falls, and the Son of man reaps his harvest. ”

“ When the earth had swallowed up the flood, and the Dragon was gone to make war with the remnant of the woman's seed, John stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a Beast rise out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns. And the Beast was like unto a Leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a Bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a Lion. John here names Daniel's four Beasts in order, putting his Beast in the room of Daniel's fourth Beast, to shew that they are the same. And the Dragon gave this Beast his power and his seat and great authority, by relinquishing the Western Empire to him. ”

“ The Principia, above all, glows with the immortality of a transcendant mind. Marble and brass dissolve and pass away; but the true creations of genius endure, in time and beyond time, forever: high upon the adamant of the indestructible, they send forth afar and near, over the troublous waters of life, a pure, unwavering, quenchless light whereby the myriad myriads of barques, richly laden with reason, intelligence and various faculty, are guided through the night and the storm, by the beetling shore and the hidden rock, the breaker and the shoal, safely into havens calm and secure. ”

“ This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all: And on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God παντοκρατωρ, or Universal Ruler. For God is a relative word, and has a respect to servants; and Deity is the dominion of God, not over his own body, as those imagine who fancy God to be the soul of the world, but over servants. The supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect; but a being, however perfect, without dominion, cannot be said to be Lord God; ”

“ There was in him, if we may be allowed the expression, a wholeness of nature, which did not admit of such imperfections and weakness—the circle was too perfect, the law too constant, and the disturbing forces too slight to suffer scarcely any of those eccentricities which so interrupt and mar the movements of many bright spirits, rendering their course through the world more like that of the blazing meteor than that of the light and life-imparting sun. ”

“ Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer: Behold, the Devil shall call some of you into prison, that ye may be tried; and ye shall have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. The tribulation of ten days can agree to no other persecution than that of Dioclesian, it being the only persecution which lasted ten years. By the blasphemy of them which say they are Jews and are not, but are the synagogue of Satan, I understand the Idolatry of the Nicolaitans, who falsly said they were Christians. ”

“ For since the qualities of bodies are only known to us by experiments, we are to hold for universal, all such as universally agree with experiments; and such as are not liable to diminution, can never be quite taken away. We are certainly not to relinquish the evidence of experiments for the sake of dreams and vain fictions of our own devising; nor are we to recede from the analogy of Nature, which uses to be simple, and always consonant to itself. We no otherwise know the extension of bodies, than by our senses, nor do these reach it in all bodies ”

“ God for his benefaction in creating all things, and the Lamb for his benefaction in redeeming us with his blood: God as sitting upon the throne and living for ever, and the Lamb as exalted above all by the merits of his death. And I heard, saith John, the voice of many Angels round about the throne, and the Beasts and the Elders: and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. ”

“ All these things being consider'd, it seems probable to me, that God in the Beginning form'd Matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable Particles, of such Sizes and Figures, and with such other Properties, and in such Proportion to Space, as most conduced to the End for which he form'd them; and that these primitive Particles being Solids, are incomparably harder than any porous Bodies compounded of them; even so very hard, as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary Power being able to divide what God himself made one in the first Creation. ”

“ The plague of the southern wind at the sounding of the third trumpet, was to cause a great star, burning as it were a lamp, to fall from heaven upon the rivers and fountains of waters, the Western Empire now divided into many kingdoms, and to turn them to wormwood and blood, and make them bitter. ”

“ In the year 1401 or 1402, the sun being got below the horizon, there appeared in the west a bright and shining comet, sending out a tail upwards, in splendor like a flame of fire, and in form like a spear, darting its rays from west to east. When the sun was sunk below the horizon, by the lustre of its own rays it enlightened all the borders of the earth ”

“ The human mind had risen from the gloom and bondage of the middle ages, in unparalleled vigour, to unfold the system, to investigate the phenomena, and to establish the laws of the heavenly bodies. Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, and others had prepared and lighted the way for him who was to give to their labour its just value, and to their genius its true lustre. At his bidding isolated facts were to take order as parts of one harmonious whole, and sagacious conjectures grow luminous in the certain splendour of demonstrated truth. ”

“ And John heard a voice in heaven, saying, Now is come salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony. And they loved not their lives unto the death. Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe be to the inhabiters of the earth and sea, or people of the Greek and Latin Empires, for the devil is come down amongst you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. ”

“ For understanding the Prophecies, we are, in the first place, to acquaint our-selves with the figurative language of the Prophets. This language is taken from the analogy between the world natural, and an empire or kingdom considered as a world politic.
Accordingly, the whole world natural consisting of heaven and earth, signifies the whole world politic, consisting of thrones and people, or so much of it as is considered in the Prophecy: and the things in that world signify the analogous things in this. ”

“ Our design not respecting arts, but philosophy, and our subject not manual but natural powers, we consider chiefly those things which relate to gravity, levity, elastic force, the resistance of fluids, and the like forces, whether attractive or impulsive; and therefore we offer this work as the mathematical principles if philosophy; for all the difficulty of philosophy seems to consist in this—from the phænomena of motions to investigate the forces of nature, and then from these forces to demonstrate the other phænomena; ”

“ Teacher is the highest and most responsible office man can fill. Its dignity is, and will yet be held commensurate with its duty—a duty boundless as man's intellectual capacity, and great as his moral need—a duty from the performance of which shall emanate an influence not limited to the now and the here, but which surely will, as time flows into eternity and space into infinity, roll up, a measureless curse or a measureless blessing, in inconceivable swellings along the infinite curve. ”

“ It was the ancient opinion of not a few, in the earliest ages of philosophy, that the fixed stars stood immoveable in the highest parts of the world; that under the fixed stars the planets were carried about the sun; that the earth, as one of the planets, described an annual course about the sun, while by a diurnal motion it was in the mean time revolved about its own axis; and that the sun, as the common fire which served to warm the whole, was fixed in the centre of the universe. ”

“ But shall gravity be therefore called an occult cause, and thrown out of philosophy, because the cause of gravity is occult and not yet discovered? Those who affirm this, should be careful not to fall into an absurdity that may overturn the foundations of all philosophy. For causes use to proceed in a continued chain from those that are more compounded to those that are more simple; when we are arrived at the most simple cause we can go no farther. ”