Page:Memoirs of Sir Isaac Newton's life.djvu/135

is owing the good state of health he enjoy'd; & his long life. he knew anatomy very well. he was indeed a master of every science.

he had studyed every thing. his chronology has somewhat very particular, & likewise solid. but whilst he has justly shortend the years of the world; he appears to me, to have done it a little too much. further, if I may be permitted to differ from so great an author, I would venture to assert, that he has assign'd too late an epoch for the origin of the celestial catasterisms, in dating them from the argonautic expedition. I have very good reasons to think them, at least most of them, of a much antienter date, & some of them antediluvian. This I could show amply, & trace them to their several beginnings, were it feasible for a writer to publish his

^~labors

without expence to himself, or for any profit.

^XI have reduced the whole heavens into a number of drawings, on that account, elegantly painted with the azure tincture, which I mentiond, from the solanum lethale.

he had a good notion of

^Xthe prophetic writings, & likewise of

the Apocalypse, especially in one important light; that the Divine lays his mysterious plan of future things, in the scenes of the Jewish temple, & service. but Sir Isaac's scheme of the Saints' festivals, as in the church liturgy, I take to be ill founded.

⁺these kind of works & many more which he had by him, were the effect of his Sunday exercitations. when he turn'd over the sacred volumes, with great diligence, and full conviction of the divine Spirit that dictated them.

he left the University in 1696, as I have heard him say, being calld to Town in k. William's time, by means of his great patron the Earl of