To the Right Reverend Father in God
SETH Lord Bishop of SARUM.
My LORD,
IApprehended it my Duty in many respects to dedicate to your Lordship this small Volume of the Philosophical Transactions. For We ought to rememher, that 'tis now about 15 or 16 years, since your Lordship Geometrized Astronomy, which did oblige the chief Astronomers of this Learned Age. And that you added Life to the Oxonian Sparkles, I mean that Meeting, which may he called the Embryo or First Conception of the Royal Society: And that to vindicate Universities from a general Deluge, when many had a sinister mind against them, You appeared publickly, even in the rough times, Academiarum Vindex. Whence we may justly inferr, that you will receive much comfort to see both Universities contribute so effectually by their valuable Works to the Advancement of Solid Learning: In Oxford for the Mathematicks and Mechanicks; as you my find here in the Abreviation of Mechanica sive de Motu &c. And we had here also given you the brief of a Noble Argument from Cambridge concerning Opticks, if we had not waited for some Geometrical Lectures from the same Worthy Author, proper to be publisht with those his Opticks. And if in the fore-going Volume some of the chief Branches of the Mathematicks, Algebra, and other parts of real Philosophy (in which your Lordship with much affection and success hath these many years been happily concerned) were diligently sollicited for the benefit of the Studious in those excellent Sciences; I hope, we may not immodestly say, that in their Volume we have given an Accompt of some further Improvements in the same kind (N. 45. 46. 49;) and of a foundation laid, and in some Tables commenced for the rectifying of Astronomy by observing Celestial Appearances in our English Horizon, by a Learned and Ingenuous Person, who professeth good respects and readiness of service to the R. Society N. 55.
My Lord, I must hear forbear at large to represent, How much you have contributed to the promoting all parts of considerable knowledge, both by your own private studies, and in Juncture with the said Society since its Institution. I must be rather careful, that
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