Cosmologia Generalis

[are derived] from the rules of motion, they are more easily abstracted than they are demonstrated independently of them; I could not entirely pass over the rules of motion which bodies observe in a collision. However, to understand the demonstrations, it suffices to know the four operations of literal calculus and common arithmetic, nor is anything else from mathematics presupposed as known. I have illustrated individual theorems with specific examples, so that anyone may easily understand the most elegant laws of motion; it will be established in its own time and place that these are not only most useful in physics, but are also of the greatest importance in metaphysics, as appears both from the final section of Cosmology, and from Rational Psychology, and especially from Natural Theology, and will appear in the future. We have developed the notion of miracle according to its dignity and established its difference from the natural against Spinoza. We have shown with sufficient clarity how difficult it is to demonstrate the perfection of the world and the order of nature, and we have furthermore made manifest how difficult it is to prove the contingency of the order of nature. And in this way, we have put to shame our adversaries, who have vomited forth every kind of insult against us because we had asserted that the existence of God had hitherto been insufficiently proven through the order of nature. Behold, therefore, how arduous in general cosmology is the dogma-