 Newton’s correspondence with Bentley is justly famous for another reason. The criticisms of Newton’s theory of gravity by Leibniz and Huygens, outlined briefly above, would prove essential to the Continental reception of Newtonian natural philosophy more generally in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Since Newton held both of these mathematicians in high regard—he tells Leibniz in a 1693 letter that “Huygens is a master, and his remarks on my discoveries are brilliant” (Newton 2004: 108)—one might assume that their criticisms would have pressed Newton into articulating an extensive defense of the possibility of action at a distance. However, Newton presented no such defense, at least not explicitly. In fact, there is evidence that Newton himself may have rejected the possibility of action at a distance, despite the fact that the Principia allows it as a conceptual possibility, if not an empirical reality. The evidence lies in Newton’s correspondence with Bentley. In February of 1693, after receiving three letters from Newton, Bentley wrote an extensive reply that attempted to characterize Newton’s theory of gravity, along with his understanding of the nature of matter, in a way that could be used to undermine various kinds of atheism. With the three earlier letters as his guide, Bentley makes the following estimation of Newton’s understanding of the possibility that gravity could somehow be an essential feature of material bodies: