This is a terse version, with concrete cases, of Bolingbroke's vaguer generalities.

"The laws of gravitation," he says, "must sometimes be suspended (if special Providence be admitted), and sometimes their effect must be precipitated.

The tottering edifice must be kept miraculously from falling, whilst innocent men lived in it or passed under it, and the fall of it must be as miraculously determined to crush the guilty inhabitant or passenger." Here, again, we have the alternative of Wollaston, who uses a similar illustration, and in one phrase comes nearer to Pope.

He speaks of "new motions being impressed upon the atmosphere." We may suppose that the two friends had been dipping into Wollaston together.

Elsewhere Pope seems to have stolen for himself.