That the forces by which the primary planets are continually drawn off from rectilinear motions, and retained in their proper orbits, tend to the sun; and are reciprocally as the squares of the distances of the places of those planets from the sun's centre.
The former part of the Proposition is manifest from Phæn. V, and Prop. II, Book I; the latter from Phæn. IV, and Cor. 6, Prop. IV, of the same Book. But this part of the Proposition is, with great accuracy, demonstrable from the quiescence of the aphelion points; for a very small aberration from the reciprocal duplicate proportion would (by Cor. 1, Prop. XLV, Book I) produce a motion of the apsides sensible enough in every single revolution, and in many of them enormously great.