Religious explanations of gravity

Religious explanations of gravity invoking the direct intervention of God span several hundred years: Isaac Newton suggested divine intervention to stabilize orbital motion, but in the mid 19th century Charles Darwin clearly felt that such an approach would not be countenanced by contemporary astronomers. In 1925 the Rev. William Asbury Williams proposed that gravity was "the power of God" as an argument against evolution.
Isaac Newton
In a letter to the Reverend Dr. Richard Bentley in 1692, Isaac Newton wrote: "To your second query I answer that the motions which the planets now have could not spring from any natural cause alone but were impressed by an intelligent agent." This statement is referenced by Intelligent Design advocate Stephen C. Meyer in The Scientific Status of Intelligent Design, who refers to this statement as "Newton's famous postulation of special divine intervention to stabilize the orbital motion in the solar system" in developing his argument of the methodological equivalence of naturalistic and non-naturalistic (i.e. supernatural) theories.
Charles Darwin's response
Charles Darwin clearly opted for the opposite point of view. In 1842, Darwin wrote his "pencil sketch" of his theory in which he set evidence of common descent against the doctrine of separate creation and asked:
What would the Astronomer say to the doctrine that the planets moved (not) according to the law of gravitation, but from the Creator having willed each separate planet to move in its particular orbit?
Rev. William Asbury Williams
In 1925, Rev. William Asbury Williams, D.D. wrote, in a book titled The Evolution of Man Scientifically Disproved:
The power of attraction, which we may call a property of matter, is really the power of God. The effects are the results of power and intelligence..... Gravitation requires the computation of countless millions of the most complex and difficult problems, every instant, by the divine mind.... These innumerable calculations prove that God is everywhere. We are continually in the immediate awesome presence of an Infinite God.

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