"Natural Philosophy is placed among those Parts of Mathematics, whose Object is Quantity in general. Mathematics are divided into pure and mixed. Pure Mathematics enquire into the general Properties of Figures and abstracted Ideas. Mixed Mathematics examine Things themselves, and will have our Notions and Deductions to agree both with Reason and Experience. Physics belong to mix'd Mathematics. The Properties of Bodies, and the Laws of Nature, are the foundations of mathematical Reasoning, as all that have examined the Scope of the Science will freely confess. But Philosophers do not equally agree upon what is to pass for a Law of Nature, and what Method is to be followed in quest of those Laws. I have therefore thought fit... to make good the Newtonian Method... Physics do not meddle with the first Foundation of Things. That the World was created by God, is a Position wherein Reason so perfectly agrees with Scripture, that the least Examination of Nature will shew plain Footsteps of supreme Wisdom. It is confounding and oversetting all our clearest Notions, to assert that the World may have taken its Rise from some general Laws of Motion, and that it imports not what is imagined concerning the first Division of Matter. And that there can hardly be anything supposed, from which the same Effect may not be deduced by the same Laws of Nature: and that for this Reason; That since Matter successively assumes all the Forms it is capable of by means of those Laws, if we consider all those Forms in order, we must at last come to that Form wherein this present World was framed; so that we have no Reason in this Case to fear any Error from a wrong Supposition. This Assertion, I say, overthrows all our clearest Notions, as has been fully proved by many learned Men; and is indeed so unreasonable, and so injurious to the Deity, that it will seem unworthy of an Answer to any one that does not know that it has been maintain'd by any antient and modern Philosophers, and some of them of the first Rank, and far removed from any Suspicion of Atheism. Then first laying it down as an undoubted Truth, that God has created all Things, we must afterwards explain by what Laws every thing is governed."