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Dialogue. I.
11
nor essaies to move whither it is impossible to arrive. And if any one should yet object, that albeit the right line, and consequently the motion by it is producible in infinitum, that is to say, is interminate; yet nevertheless Nature, as one may say, arbitrarily hath assigned them some terms, and given natural instincts to its natural bodies to move unto the same; I will reply, that this might perhaps be fabled to have come to pass in the first Chaos, where indistinct matters confusedly and inordinately wandered; to regulate which, Nature very appositely made use of right motions, by which, like as the well-constituted, moving, disorder themselves, so were they which were before depravedly disposed by this motion ranged in order: but after their exquisite distribution and collocation, it is impossible that there should remain natural inclinations in them of longer moving in a right motion, from which now would ensue their removal from their proper and natural place, that is to say, their disordination; we may therefore say that the right motion serves to conduct the matter to erect the work; but once erected, that it is to rest immoveable, or if moveable, to move it self onely circularly. Unless we will say with Plato, that these mundane bodies, after they had been made and finished, were for a certain time moved by their Maker, in a right motion, but that after their attainment to certain and determinate places, they were revolved one by one in Spheres, passing from the right to the circular motion, wherein they have been ever since kept and maintained. A sublime conceipt, and worthy indeed of Plato: upon which, I remember to have heard our common friend the*Lyncean Academick discourse in this manner, if I have not forgot it. Every body for any reason constituted in a state of rest, but which is by nature moveable, being set at liberty doth move; provided withal, that it have an inclination to some particular place; for should it stand indifferently affected to all, it would remain in its rest, not having greater inducement to move one way than another. From the having of this inclination necessarily proceeds, that it in its moving shall continually increase its acceleration, and beginning with a most slow motion, it shall not acquire any degree of velocity, before it shall have passed thorow all the degrees of less velocity, or greater tardity: for passing from the state of quiet (which is the infinite degree of tardity of motion) there is no reason by which it should enter into such a determinate degree of velocity, before it shall have entred into a less, and into yet a less, before it entred into that: but rather it stands with reason, to pass first by those degrees nearest to that from which it departed, and from those to the more remote; but the degree from whence the moveable began to move, is that of extreme tardity, namely of rest.
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