Thus he eliminated the barrier beteen earthly mechanics and celestial mechanics setting forth empirical and mathematical proof for the existence of universal laws. The implications of Newton's formulation of universal laws that are everywhere the same in heaven and earth was so astounding that a group of French scholars called philosophes invented a name for the their period of history from publication of Principia in 1687 to the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789. They saw themselves as enlightened by knowledge, living in the Age of the Enlightenment.
Human beings are no longer at the center of the universe.
Universal gravitation rather than God's hands kept the celestial bodies moving. Miracles had no place in a world governed by the predictable laws of physics. Having created the universe and set it in motion there was no longer need for his intervention. By the end of the eighteenth century some scholars thought that not even a God was necessary to set things in motion. Our knowledge of God comes from Nature and our own reasoning powers.