A detailed analysis is offered—with concomitant clarification, correction, and celebration—of the treatment in Newton’sPrincipiaof the external gravitational field produced by a spherically symmetric mass distribution. It is established, in particular, just how close thePrincipiacomes to achieving the most general result (whereby the sphere can be considered as concentrated at its center); it is also shown how thePrincipiaargument could easily have been extended so as to have gone the whole way.