Excerpt from The Simplicity of the Creation: Or, the Astronomical Monument of the Blessed Virgin, a New Theory of the Solar System, Thunderstorms, Waterspouts, Aurora Borealis, Etc;, And the Tides; Dedicated to the Mother of God When works are dedicated to other parties, it is done because they have shown some act of kindness, of friendship, to the author, have taken him by the hand, and nursed him under their protection, or are by him loved and respected. I cannot boast, that, in the progress and development of my new theory of the solar system, I have had help from friends, or the great, or learned ones of mankind; but it pleased God so to direct my thoughts and change the proposed end of a business speculation, as to lead to the result of my discovering and propounding "the Simplicity of the Creation." In the subsequent pages I have shown how God created matter, to which He gave laws and properties; that He created no forces, because Heal one is The self-acting force Himself, and that this self-acting force is exercised by Him then only, when He supersedes, abrogates, or suspends those laws which He laid down at the creation; and Here I have the gratification of stating, that, with regard to the latter, besides many other favours, the singular proof and privilege has been bestowed upon me and mine, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, and by a special act of divine goodness, of seeing one of the laws of nature superseded in my own house. And hence my dedication. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.