To a Europe exhausted by nearly two centuries of religious wars,
[Isaac] Newton's works were first and foremost a message about God;
that He did not behave in a capricious or arbitrary fashion, in response
to either His will or human prayer, but in accordance with absolute,
unwavering, and humanly discoverable laws of nature which governed
him and all his works. He had become the infinitely perfect Clock-Maker,
his works fathomable by the human mind.
-- Forrest MacDonald
