ESSAYS ON

THECONTEXT,NATURE,ANDINFLUENCE
OF
ISAAC NEWTON'S THEOLOGY

ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES

INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS

129

JAMES E. FORCE AND RICHARD H. POPKIN

ESSAYS ON
THE CONTEXT, NATURE, AND INFLUENCE
OF
ISAAC NEWTON'S THEOLOGY

Directors: P. Dibon (paris) and R. Popkin (Washington University, St. Louis)

Editorial Board: J.F. Battail (Paris); F. Duchesneau (Montreal); A. Gabbey (Belfast; T.
Gregory (Rome); S. Hutton (Hatfield Polytechnic); J.D. North (Groningen); M.J. Petry
(Rotterdam); J. Popkin (Lexington)
Advisory Editorial Board: J. Aubin (Paris); P. Costabel (Paris); A. Crombie (Oxford); H. de
la Fontaine Verwey (Amsterdam); H. Gadamer (Heidelberg); H. Gouhier (Paris); K. Hanada
(Hokkaido University); W. Kirsop (Melbourne); P.O. Kristeller (Columbia University);
Elisabeth Labrousse (Paris); A. Lossky (Los Angeles); J. Malarczyk (Lublin); E. de Olaso
(C.I.F. Buenos Aires); J. Orcibal (Paris); Wolfgang ROd (Miinchen); J. Roger (Paris);
G. Rousseau (Los Angeles); H. Rowen (Rutgers University, N.J.); J.P. Schobinger (Ziirich);
J. Tans (Groningen)

ESSAYS ON

THE CONTEXT, NATURE, AND INFLUENCE

OF
ISAAC NEWTON'S THEOLOGY

by

JAMES E. FORCE
University of Kentucky

and

RICHARD H. POPKIN
University of California, Los Angeles, USA

KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS

DORDRECHT I BOSTON I LONDON

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Force, James E.
Essays on the context, nature, and Influence of Isaac Newton's
theology I James E. Force and Richard H, Popkin,
p,
cm. -- (ArChives Internatlonales d'histolre des Idees
129 = International archives of the history of Ideas; 129)
" Newton, Isaac, Sir, 1642-1727--Rellglon.
2. Antltrlnltarlanlsm--England--History of doctrines.
3. MIIlennlallsm--England--History of doctrlnes--17th century.
4. Blble--Criticls., interpretation, etc.--England--Hlstory--17th
century. 5. Enlightenment. 6. England--Intellectual life--17th
century. 7. MI I lennialism--England--History of doctrlnes--18th
centurv.

8. 61ble--CrltlClsrn.

InterpretatIon. etc.--England-

-Hlstory--18th century. 9. England--Intellectual Ilfe--18th

century.
I. Popkin, Richard Henry, 1923II. Title.
III. Serles, ArchIves Internatlonales d'histoire des Idees
129.
B1299.N34F67 1990
273' .8' 092--dc20
89-29995

ISBN-13: 978-94-010-7368-4
DOl: 10.1007/978-94-009-1944-0

e-ISBN-13: 978-94-009-1944-0

Published by Kluwer Academic Publishers,

P.O. Box 17,3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands.
Kluwer Academic Publishers incorporates
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
1.

Some Further Comments on Newton and Maimonides

(Richard H. Popkin)

2.

The Crisis of Polytheism and the Answers of Vossius, Cudworth, and

Newton
(Richard H. Popkin)

3.
4.
5.

6.
7.

8.

9.
10.

vii

Polytheism, Deism, and Newton

(Richard H. Popkin)

27

The Newtonians and Deism

(James E. Force)

43

Newton's God of Dominion: The Unity of Newton's Theological, Scientific,

and Political Thought
(James E. Force)

75

Newton as a Bible Scholar

(Richard H. Popkin)

103

Sir Isaac Newton, "Gentleman of Wide Swallow"?: Newton and the

Latitudinarians
(James E. Force)

119

The Breakdown of the Newtonian Synthesis of Science and Religion: Hume,

Newton, and the Royal Society
(James E. Force)

143

Newton and Fundamentalism, II

(Richard H. Popkin)

165

Hume's Interest in Newton and Science

(James E. Force)

181

Appendix
Newton's Out of Cudworth

207

Index

215

INTRODUCTION

This collection of essays is the fruit of about fifteen years of discussion and research by
James Force and me. As I look back on it, our interest and concern with Newton's
theological ideas began in 1975 at Washington University in St. Louis. James Force was
a graduate student in philosophy and I was a professor there. For a few years before, I
had been doing research and writing on Millenarianism and Messianism in the 17th and
18th centuries, touching occasionally on Newton. I had bought a copy of Newton's
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John for a few
pounds and, occasionally, read in it.
In the Spring of 1975 I was giving a graduate seminar on Millenarian and Messianic
ideas in the development of modem philosophy. Force was in the seminar. One day he
came very excitedly up to me and said he wanted to write his dissertation on William
Whiston. At that point in history, the only thing that came to my mind about Whiston was
that he had published a, or the, standard translation of Josephus (which I also happened to
have in my library.) Force told me about the amazing views he had found in Whiston's
notes on Josephus and in some of the few writings he could find in St. Louis by, or about,
Whiston, who was Newton's successor as Lucasian Professor of mathematics at
Cambridge and who wrote inordinately on Millenarian theology.
At this time, in a burst of enthusiasm about our work, we applied for a grant from the
National Endowment for the Humanities to start on a vast project of searching out the
links between the rise of modem philosophy and the Millenarian and Messianic concerns
from the Renaissance and Reformation onward. I also applied to the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture to look into specific Jewish materials in Europe. Force applied for
a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. We got all the grants
and started work in earnest. Force went to London where he had access to the primary
sources, Whiston's writings, and to related materials primarily in the British Library.
When I visited him there, in his tiny apartment in Aldgate in the East End which he
shared with his wife, Astrid, he had shelves of original volumes from Dr. Williams's
Library on Gordon Square.
Within a few years many results came from our work. Force received his degree for
his dissertation on Whiston, which was ultimately published in a vastly revised form by
Cambridge University Press. I wrote and published many articles on Millenarianism and
Messianism. One of the most important was a lecture which I gave at U.C.L.A.'s William
Andrews Clark Memorial Library in the fall of 1975. And I put together my book on
Isaac La Peyrere and his influence. In 1981-82, I was invited to be the Clark Professor at
the Clark Library. The duty of the Clark Professor is to arrange a lecture series, which I
did on the topic of "Millenarianism and Messianism in English Literature and Thought,
1650-1800." The series brought several of the leading experts to Los Angeles. Force was
a Clark Research Fellow at the Library through much of the time. Each day we discussed
each other's findings, debated how to interpret the material, interacted with the other
scholars then at the library, and put together our researches. In the spring I wrote my
vii

viii

INTRODUCfION

paper, "The Third Force in Modem Philosophy: Scepticism, Science, and Bible
Prophecy," tracing these ideas from Joseph Mede at the beginning of the 17th century to
Newton. Force finished his revisions for his volume on Whiston and, stimulated by a
sabbatical in Cambridge in spring, 1985, where he worked on the Keynes collection of
Newton manuscripts owned by King's College Library, he started on a series of papers
about Newton, Whiston and deism, and Hume's reaction to Newton's theological ideas.
In December, 1982, I went to Israel and gave a new version of my paper on "The
Third Force" to the Israel Colloquium on the History and Philosophy of Science. While
there I made my acquaintance with the huge collection of Newton's unpublished
theological papers in the A. S. Yahuda collection in the Hebrew National and University
Library. I discussed with myoid friend, Professor Yehuda Elkana, of Tel Aviv University
and Director of the Van Leer Jerusalem Foundation, the possibility of organizing the
publication of those papers. He was very supportive and arranged for two leading experts
on Newton's unpublished materials, R. S. Westfall and B. J. T. Dobbs, to join me in a
symposium on the significance of Newton's alchemical and theological writings at the
Van Leer Foundation in Jerusalem. We formed a group to work on the vast project of
editing and publishing the unpublished manuscript material which are scattered allover
the world. It was in Jerusalem at that time that I gave my first paper on Newton and the
origins of fundamentalism and was asked to contribute a paper on Newton as a Bible
scholar (which has continued to grow until it has emerged as an essay in this volume.)
Since then, Force and I have worked together a few times at the Clark Library and
have been together at various conferences concerning Newton. We have published
various papers and have exchanged ideas and interpretations. We share an interpretation
of the centrality of theological and religious ideas to Newton's thought and to Newton's
seriousness as a Millenarian which can only be understood by examining the intellectual
and theological context of the time. A couple of years ago the thought occurred to us to
put together a joint volume of essays. As we worked, separately and together, much
material that each of us was researching seemed to fit together. Mine dealt with the
background leading up to Newton and how this context affected one's interpretation of
Newton's religious and theological ideas. Force was concerned with Newton, his
disciples Whiston and Clarke and where they fitted into the heterodox religious world of
their time, and the roots of Hume's religious scepticism. In the Spring of 1988, I was
conducting a seminar and doing research at the Folger Shakespeare Library in
Washington, D.C., and Force was back at the Clark Library as an American Society for
Eighteenth-Century Studies Research Fellow. We apprised each other constantly about
what we were doing. With great excitement, we realized that the research I was doing on
17th-century discussions about polytheism fitted almost exactly with what Force was
finding out about the various kinds of deism at Newton's time. We saw how these strands
made much clearer what Newton was trying to do and wherein he differed from his
contemporaries. At this point our volume began to take final shape.
We have been writing and re-working our material over the last two years and now
feel that together it forms a focus for the understanding of Newton's religious and
theological ideas, of his influence on his disciples, and of the religious discussions of the
period and subsequently. Our Newton is not the same as that presented by many, many
other commentators and interpreters. We know that we differ in degree and in detail from
those who have concentrated on his scientific achievements and from those who have

INTRODUCTION

ix

concentrated on his influence in the Age of Reason. And we also differ in various degrees
from those who have taken his religious ideas seriously. We have presented our interpretation with documentation and with the background which we think makes the most sense
out of the material. We have delved into the contemporary Jewish sources of which
Newton was most aware, the context of the Cambridge Platonists, the taxonomical
studies of polytheism then current, the Arian intellectual scene, the mixed milieu of the
Royal Society, and the context of the emerging deistic writers of the time. We hope that
the result is a multi-dimensional picture of the complex theology of one of the greatest
anti-Trinitarian writers of his time. We also hope that this account will be of value to
those seeking to understand the whole Newton--at once a scientist, theologian, alchemist,
historian, and Bible interpreter--and to those concerned to comprehend the most complex
passage from the religious beliefs of the Judaeo-Christian tradition before the Age of
Reason to those that became so important in that Age, and ever since.
We have especially tried to explore aspects of Newton's influence as a religious
thinker which tend to be overlooked: the influence he had while alive on thinkers such as
Whiston and Clarke; the influence he had on 18th-century Millenarians such as Hartley
and Priestley; the counter-influence he had on David Hume; and the influence he had on
the development of what is now called Fundamentalism from the 18th century to the 20th
century. (As the photo on the next page shows, Fundamentalist groups, such as the
Seventh Day Adventists often see Newton as a most important theologian who stands in
the great tradition of interpreters of Biblical prophecy and who has inspired those who
came after him.)
Each of the essays making up this volume developed separately. Some of the articles
contained herein are developments from previous articles or lectures. Most are published
here for the first time. We have not tried to eliminate repetitions and have documented
each essay separately. No attempt has been made to impose a rigid conformity of style.
Perhaps, some years hence, we will have greater distance from the material, and from the
exciting chases involved in uncovering it, and can go back and write a consecutive
narrative. For the nonce, we should like to present our findings and our interpretation and
hope that others will find the material as stimulating as we have.
June 1989
Richard H. Popkin, Pacific Palisades, California

March of the Reformers. By Permission Review and Herald Publishing Association.

RICHARD H. POPKIN

1. SOME FURTHER COMMENTS ON NEWTON AND MAIMONIDESi

In studies of Newton's religious and theological views, he is usually placed in the

tradition of Joseph Mede, the Cambridge scholar of the early 17th century who proposed
a calculus for interpreting the symbolism in Daniel and Revelation. 2 Mede was the
teacher of Isaac Barrow and Henry More, both of whom obviously influenced Newton.
As noted in other essays in this volume, Newton was working with More on interpreting
the Book of Revelation in 1680 when they had a falling out concerning how to interpret
the opening chapter. Newton's theology has been seen almost completely in terms of the
Christian, or, often, the heretical Christian, exegetical context. Many of his views have
been related to, or compared with, those of ancient and modem Christian exegetes while
his heretical anti-Trinitarianism has been compared with that of the Socinians and even
the deists.
There is no doubt that Newton developed his views out of 17th-century Christian
concerns, that he studied with, and conferred with, Christian scholars, and that he used
the methods and tools of their trade. In the 17th century this involved an inordinate
amount of study of the early Church Fathers and of Church history. I should like to
suggest the possibility that another major and serious influence on Newton's theological
views was that of the great medieval Jewish theologian, Moses Maimonides.
Lest this seem too outlandish to consider, I should like to point out that when Lord
John Maynard Keynes gave a lecture on the occasion of the three-hundredth anniversary
of the birth of Newton, entitled "Newton the Man," Keynes ended the lecture by saying
that Newton was not just a closet Unitarian Arian, but "was rather a Judaic monotheist of
the school of Maimonides. "3 I think that this observation by Keynes has been largely
ignored by Newton scholars because they did not know much about Maimonides and did
not know why Keynes would have said this, especially since he was not an expert on
Maimonides.
However, we learn from the unpublished letters of Abraham Shalom Yahuda, the
collector of Newton's theological manuscripts, that Keynes and Yahuda, the primary
purchasers of the largest amounts of Newton's unpublished writings in the Sotheby
auction of 1936, met often for tea in Bloomsbury, in the period between 1936 and 1940,
and discussed their mutual interest in Newton. (These unpublished letters are kept with
Yahuda's collection of Newton's documents.) Yahuda records that they each examined
the other's newly acquired Newton manuscripts. Yahuda, who was an expert on the
Arabic and Jewish Middle Ages and had taught the medieval period in Spain and
Germany, could see Maimonidean elements in Newton's thought, as well as the influence
of Maimonides as a source. When Yahuda, as a refugee in America during World War II,
read Keynes' address, he wrote to a friend that he had told Keynes that Newton was a

RICHARD H. POPKIN

Maimonidean. 4 Among Yahuda's Newton manuscripts is one entitled "On Maimonides."

This work consists of notes which Newton took when he read portions of the 17th
century Latin edition of Maimonides' Mishneh Torah. s Maimonides also appears as a
frequently cited source throughout Newton's religious writings.
The latter statement may look surprising at first until it is realized that the Jewish Sage
of Cordoba was a standard authority for Christian as well as Jewish scholars in the 17th
century. Maimonides had been important in Christian thought since the 13th century
when his great work, The Guide for the Perplexed, reached Christian Europe. This
masterpiece was one of the first great attempts to synthesize Aristotelian and Biblical
thought and to provide a way to accept rational Greek science along with Biblical faith.
Maimonides' theological views in this work bordered on heresy in the Jewish world and
were considered dangerous to the Christian one. A commission, on which St. Thomas
Aquinas sat, studied the Guide and finally banned it. St. Thomas' own solution of the
relation of faith and reason bears much resemblance to the Maimonidean theory.
The Guide was published in Latin in 1629 by Buxtorf and was used by innumerable
Christian scholars. One finds it cited by English divines, such as Bishop Edward
Stillingfleet, and by philosophers, such as Leibniz, Malebranche, and Bayle. Although
one finds it cited all over the place, and although one finds editions of it in many, many
private libraries of Christian scholars, there is as yet no study of the impact of
Maimonides on 17th-century European thought. The simple basic data of the many
editions and citations is still being put together. 6 Newton, with most other intellectuals of
the time who were interested in theology, read Maimonides. It was a source for
knowledge of ancient and medieval views, as well as an important text on how to relate
science and religion. Maimonides is usually cited as the source of knowledge about
Arabic occasionalist thought. He is also frequently cited as the source of information
about the Sabeans (who did not believe that Adam was the first man.) I think that
Maimonides in Latin was more congenial to 17th century Protestant thinkers than St.
Thomas, since he was neither a Catholic apologist nor cited too frequently as an authority
by the Jesuit adversaries of the Protestants. He provided a way of uniting science and
religion which could be used in the 17th-century context.
Besides his role as a theological authority, Maimonides was a, or the, leading exponent of Jewish theology. And Newton's own approach to key theological issues may
well have been influenced by Maimonides. In addition, the great medieval rabbi was a
most important source of information about Jewish religious practices. The interest of
17th-century scholars in such matters was not just a form of antiquarianism or, as a recent
scholar has said, "nostalgia. "7 The concern which Newton and others had about the exact
nature of Solomon's Temple, the type of objects, vessels, cherubims, etc., which were in
it, and the kinds of prayers and sacrifices that were conducted in it had taken on a definite
immediacy for writers in this period. The structure of the Temple was a, or the, key to
understanding the universe, since the Temple was a microcosm of God's plan of the
universe. The sacred cubit of the Hebrews, the precise measure of which Newton
attempted to determine,8 was the divine unit of world construction. And Newton was
only one among many of the time trying to uncover the secrets of the universe through
research into the exact nature of the construction of Solomon's Temple. For instance,
Rabbi Judah Leon Templo of Amsterdam had made what he purported to be an exact
model of the original Temple which he exhibited in Amsterdam. In the middle 1670's he

SOME FURTHER COMMENTS ON NEWTON AND MAIMONIDES

took his model to England to give to King Charles II because of the supposed role
Charles was to play in the Divine events to come. 9
Another factor in the resurgent interest in the ancient Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was
probably of greater importance. Many Christian expositors believed that, in the coming
Millennial kingdom, the Temple would be rebuilt and its religious devotions revived.
Hence, it was all important for those such as Newton, who expected the Millennium to
begin relatively soon, to understand what would be involved. [There are people in
Jerusalem today who are studying how to make the proper prayer garments and other
such things which will be needed the moment that the Temple is rebuilt. And there are
people ready to force God's hand by starting the engineering project of rebuilding on top
of the Mosque of Omar, the Dome of the Rock, the site of the ancient Temple.] Christian
Millenarians of the 17th century were convinced that the Jews knew things about what
was to come which were crucial for true and believing Christians to understand. And
these included Jewish measurements, practices, and so on. The cherubims and all the
vases and paraphenalia of the Temple had to be studied for clues about what was to
come. One was not dealing with ancient history, but with forecasts of near-term world
history, what Antonio de Vieira, S. J., called the history of the future.
When the Messianic Kingdom was established on earth, both Jews and Millenarian
Christians expected (and still expect) that the practices and sacrifices which were part of
the ancient Jewish religion would be reinstituted in the rebuilt Temple in the rebuilt
Jewish world in Jerusalem. In this context, Maimonides, as one of the greatest explicators
of these matters, became someone who should be studied by those who cared. And
Newton cared. Thus, Newton studied Maimonidean texts and carried out his own
researches on Solomon's Temple, on Hebrew measurements, etc.
In Newton's library, which still exists at Trinity College, Cambridge, there are five
works by Maimonides. Four are tractates from Maimonides's Mishneh Torah, his
explanations and interpretations of Jewish religious practices. One is from Maimonides's
commentary on the Mishna. These are all Latin editions: De culto divino ex R. Mosis
Majemonidae secunda lege, ... in quibus exprimatur Hierosolymitani Templa forma
(Parisiis, 1678);10 De Idolatria, with notes by Dionysius Vossius (Amsterdami, 1641);11
De Sacrificis tiber (Londini, 1683);12 Tractatus de juribus anni septimi et jubilaei
(Francofurti ad Moenum, 1708); 13 and Porta Mosis (Oxoniae, 1654-55.)14
The first and third of these works are edited by a curious character who deserves
further study, Charles Marie de Veil. 15 He had been a rabbi in Metz who was converted
to Christianity by Bishop Bossuet. He then studied at the Sorbonne and began publishing
his Latin editions of Maimonides' tractates. He came to the notice of English theologians
when he published a letter to Robert Boyle in 1678 pointing out the dangers of the
Biblical studies of Father Richard Simon (studies which Newton had in his library and
apparently used in his own researches.) De Veil had contended that Simon's work would
not only undermine the original Greek and Roman churches, but also the Jewish tradition
as well.
De Veil devoted himself, after his conversion and after his theological studies at the
Sorbonne, primarily to editing and explicating Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, an immense
series of codifications and explications of Jewish beliefs and practices as set forth in postBiblical Jewish literature. Other Jewish commentators had elaborated on Maimonides'
works over the centuries. This was pretty much an in-group literature until Christians felt

RICHARD H. POPKIN

that they had to understand more fully what Jews actually believed. Part of this concern
was out of interest in converting Jews. It was thought that, in order to convert the Jews, it
would be more helpful to know what Jews actually believed on various matters, rather
than merely to know what various missionary Christians thought Jews believed. As the
concern to bring about conversion became more insistent, because of the belief that the
time of the end was at hand, more effort was devoted to understanding the real nature of
Jewish belief. Consequently, editions of Maimonides, Kimchi, Rashi, Abarbenel, and
other major commentators began to appear in Latin.
It is not known whether Newton knew de Veil. However, there is a small package of
manuscripts by Newton entitled, "On Maimonides."I6 This consists of notes by Newton
which are mainly notes on de Veil's commentary on Maimonides (which is contained in
de Veil's footnotes to his editions of Maimonides.) It would be worth investigating what,
if anything, was new in de Veil's commentary on Maimonides and whether it particularly
interested Newton.
Of course, we also know that Newton studied the commentary on Maimonides' De
Idolatria by Dionysius Voss ius. Although this work is more of a taxonomy of all ancient
religious beliefs and practices and not just a commentary on Maimonides, it is infused
with information gleaned from Maimonides. And, as indicated in other studies in this
volume, Newton drew heavily from Gerard Vossius' work, many of whose pages are
marked up in his copy.J7
It is evident that Newton was interested in Maimonides' views on various topics and
that Newton studied some of Maimonides' texts. He used them in his studies on
Solomon's Temple and on ancient Jewish religion. But, perhaps the most significant use
of Judaic ideas, which may derive from Maimonides, appears in Newton's famous
General Scholium to the third book of the Principia Mathematica. Here Newton offered
his proof of the existence of God, a form of the argument from design. In expounding
what one learned about the nature of God from this proof, Newton made clear that his
conception of God was not a simple deistic one, but one much more akin to the Judaic
view. After offering his version of the deistic argument from design purporting to prove
that an intelligent and powerful Being exists who first created and now continues to
govern the world, Newton says:
This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on
account of his dominion is wont to be called Lord God ... , or Universal Ruler; for
God is a relative word, and has a respect to servants; and Deity is the dominion of God
not over his own body, as those imagine who fancy God to be the soul of the world,
but over servants. The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect; but
a being, however perfect, without dominion, cannot be said to be Lord God; for we
say, my God, your God, the God of Israel, the God of Gods, and Lord of Lords, but
we do not say, my Eternal, your Eternal, the Eternal of Israel, the Eternal of Gods; we
do not say, my Infinite, or my Perfect: these are titles which have no respect to
servants. 18
Newton then explains his point:
The word God usually signifies Lord; but every lord is not a God. It is the dominion of
a spiritual being which constitutes a God: a true, supreme, or imaginary dominion

SOME FURTHER COMMENTS ON NEWTON AND MAIMONIDES

makes a true, supreme, or imaginary God. And from his dominion it follows that the
true God is a living, intelligent, and powerful Being; and, from his other perfections,
that he is supreme, or most perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, his duration reaches from eternity to eternity; his presence from infinity
to infinity; he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done. 19
This is then put in a roughly Judaic form:
He is not eternity and infinity, but eternal and infinite, he is not duration or space, but
he endures and is present. He endures forever, and is everywhere present; and, by
existing always and everywhere, he constitutes duration and space .... It is allowed by
all that the Supreme God exists necessarily; and by the same necessity he exists
always and everywhere. Whence also he is similar, all eye, all ear, all brain, all arm,
all power to perceive, to understand, and to act; but in a manner not at all human, in a
manner not at all corporeal, in a manner utterly unknown to us. As a blind man has no
ideas of colors, so we have no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives
and understands all things. He is utterly void of all body and bodily figure, and can
therefore neither be seen, nor heard, nor touched; nor ought he to be worshipped under
the representation of any corporeal thing. 2
This formulation, of course, very much resembles the Jewish rejection of any kind of
idolatry or any kind of pictorial representation of the Deity.
Newton then returns to the original theme of the argument from design:
We know him only by his most wise and excellent continuance of things and final
causes; we admire him for his perfections; but we reverence and adore him on account
of his dominion: for we adore him as his servants; and a god without dominion,
providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature. 21
Newton's stress on God's dominion, on God's omnipresence and transcendence, and on
God's being beyond all human conceptions definitely sounds very much like the
traditional Jewish view, rather than a deistic conception of a supreme architect. Newton's
statement about God's nature - that God "is not eternity and infinity, but eternal and
infinite, he is not duration or space, but he endures and is present. He endures forever,
and is everywhere present" - seems similar to the Judaic attempt to express the inexpressible. Perhaps it is here that the Maimonidean influence really shows.
The German philosopher, Friedrich Schelling, commented that Newton's philosophy
[Le., his "philosophy of religion"] was better than his science, and his philosophy [of
religion] was better than that of his successors because he saw that "Deitas est dominatio
DeL" The essence of God is not his substance but his domination in the act of his
sovereignty. Schelling writes:
Finally Newton says the decisive word. Deus sive dominio, providentia et causis
finalibus nihil aliud est quam Fatum et Natura: Providence and final cause, that is
intentions executed in nature are only consequences of the dominii. One insight is
enough. God without dominion, or, as I shall say from here on because it is the true
and original meaning of the word: God without Herrlichkeit would be a mere Fatum
or a mere Nature. 22

RICHARD H. POPKIN

What saves Newton's scientific and naturalistic view of God's nature in his version of the
design argument from reducing either to Spinozism or to pure deism is Newton's
insistence on God as dominator.
And this may well be Newton's Jewish inheritance of which Yahuda and Keynes
spoke - Newton as the follower of Maimonides - rather than Newton as only the
complete anti-Trinitarian Arian. Newton's rejection of Trinitarianism may also have
involved his absorption of the Jewish notion of God as Lord in the full sense of
dominator of all that is.

Notes
1. Maimonides was born ca. 1133 and died in 1204. My first comments on "Newton and
Maimonides" appear in A Straight Path. Studies in Medieval Philosophy and Culture. Essays in
Honor of Arthur Hyman, ed. Ruth Link-Salinger, et al. (Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), pp. 216-29.
2. On Mede see Katherine R. Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain 1530-1645
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), chap. vii; and Richard H. Popkin, ''The Third Force in
Seventeenth-Century Thought: Skepticism, Science and Millenarianism," in The Prism of Science.
The Israel Colloquium: Studies in the History. Philosophy. and Sociology of Science, ed. E.
Ullmann-Margalit (Dordrecht: D. Reidel. 1986), Vol. II, pp. 21-50.
3. John Maynard Keynes, "Newton the Man," in Essays in Biography (London: Macmillan, 1961),
pp. 310-23. The quotation is on p. 316.
4. Yahuda letters to Professor G. F. Shiras, Yahuda MS 1.42, box 1.
5. Yahuda MS 13.2, Var. 1.
6. This is being done by Dr. Jacob I. Dienstag who has already published "Christian Translators of
Maimonides' Mishneh Torah into Latin: A Bio-Biographical Survey," in Salo Wittmayer Baron
Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday, ed. Saul Lieberman and Arthur Hyman,
3 vols. (Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1974; Distributed by Columbia
University Press, 1974),1:287-309.
7. Jerome Friedman, The Most Ancient Testimony: Sixteenth-Century Christian-Hebraica in the
Age of Renaissance Nostalgia (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1983.)
8. Isaac Newton, "A Dissertation upon the Sacred Cubit of the Jews and the Cubits of the Several
Nations; in which from the Dimensions of the Greatest Pyramid, as taken by Mr John Greaves, the
Antient Cubit of Memphis is Determined," in Miscellaneous Works of John Greaves, ed. Thomas
Birch (London, 1737), Vol. II, pp. 405-33.
9. See Judah Leon Templo's dedication of his work to Charles II in A Relation of the most
memorable thinges in the Tabernacle of Moses. and the Temple of Solomon. according to the text of
Scripture (London, 1675.) On this, see A. K. Offenberg, "Jacob Jehuda Leon (1602-1675) and his
Model of the Temple," in Jewish-Christian Relations in the Seventeenth Century, ed. J. Van der
Berg and E. Van der Wall (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988), pp. 95-115.
10. The title page states, "Ex Hebraeo Latinum fecit, et notis iIlustravit L. de C. de Veil."
II. Dionysius Vossius' annotated edition of Maimonides' De Idolatria was bound with the work
of his father, Gerard Johannes Vossius, De Theologia Gentili, 3 vols., which is in part a commentary on the Maimonidean work. De Idolatria was also published independently from G. J. Vossius'
work. I own such a copy dated 1668.
12. This work deals with Abarbenel's commentary on Leviticus and some of Maimonides'
tractates, translated from Hebrew into Latin with notes by "L. de C. de Veil."
13. This work was translated and edited by J. H. Majus, filius. The date of the work indicates that
Newton's interest in Maimonides' writings continued until late in his life.
14. This work was edited by Edward Pococke, the famous Oxford Orientalist, and was one of the
first works published by the Oxford "Arabic" press.

SOME FURTHER COMMENTS ON NEWTON AND MAIMONIDES

15. On de Veil, see Louis I. Bredvold, The Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1934), p. 102n, and Dienstag, "Christian Translators of Maimonides'
Mishneh Torah," pp. 302-4.
16. Yahuda MS 13.2, Var. 1.
17. I have examined the copy which is in Trinity College, Cambridge. They only have the flTst
volume of Vossius' work. I have listed all the pages that Newton seems to have marked and will
compare them with Newton's manuscript notes on gentile theology in a future study.
18. Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and his System of the
World, Translated into English by Andrew Motte in 1729, the translations revised by Aorian
Cajori, 2 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1934),2:544.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., p. 545.
21. Ibid., p. 546.
22. Friedrich Schelling, Darstellung des philosophisches Empirismus, in Friedrich Wilhelm Josoph
von Schellings Samtliche Werke, 14 vols. (Stuttgart, Augsburg, 1856-61), 10:261. The translation is
by Professor Fritz Marti who kindly brought the text to my attention.

RICHARD H. POPKIN

2. THE CRISIS OF POLYTHEISM AND THE ANSWERS OF

VOSSIUS, CUDWORTH, AND NEWTON!

From the middle to the end of the 17th century a new, and short-lived, defense of the
Christian religion based on exploring the foundations of pagan theology, ancient and
modem, was developed. This defense seems to resemble what is considered Newton's
most original contribution to theology,! though Newton, on the one hand, and Vossius
and Cudworth, on the other, draw exactly opposite conclusions about the true character of
Christianity from it. To appreciate their contributions in this regard, it is best, I think, to
try to view these authors within the contexts of the eddying sceptical currents, the rapidly
developing prophetic and Millenarian argumentation, and the budding development of
comparative religion in their time.
Starting with the latter, Renaissance humanist scholarship and 16th- and 17th-century
Bible scholarship resulted in an explosion of information concerning the religious beliefs
of ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans, as well as concerning
the diverse beliefs of different fringe groups of ancient Judaism and early Christianity.
More recent data from the explorers, missionaries, and colonizers of the new world was
daily producing an enormous amount of information about Chinese, Indian, American,
and Polynesian religious beliefs and practices. Attempts were made to summarize, to
classify, and to evaluate all of this data in various early 17th-century compendia, such as
the works of Brerewood,2 Alexander Ross,3 and others. Artists such as Bernard Picart
sought to illustrate the religions of the world (in eight volumes and two hundred fifty
plates.)4
What was one to make of all of this data? Writers such as Isaac La Peyrere, Claude
Saumaise, and young Baruch de Spinoza were developing a view that all, or most,
religions were the result of historical developments that had nothing to do with the
scriptural world. 5 Most religions, in their theories, were produced by non-Adamites, Le.,
people not descended from, or related to, the Biblical Adam. Some, or all, religions were
the result of human fears and superstitions or of political machinations by people seeking
political power. 6
In contrast to these naturalistic or deistic or heretical readings of the new data, an
attempt was made to show that the vast collection of material about the varieties of
religious belief reinforced Christian belief and clarified it. Assuming, as a good Jew or
Christian should, that because all of the varieties of religious believing went on in the
world God created and among the many, many descendants of Adam and Eve, as
described in Genesis, then all of the varieties of religious believing should exhibit
something about God's revelation to mankind and about mankind's unfortunate (willful
or unconscious) misunderstanding of that original revelation. What was needed was a
taxonomy of religious beliefs, a way of classifying them in order to understand what they
represented.

10

RICHARD H. POPKIN

The attempt to create such a taxonomy began, fittingly, as a commentary on Moses

Maimonides' quite brief treatise on idolatry. Moses Maimonides, the great medieval
Jewish sage, was a major source of wisdom and insight among 17th-century Christian
thinkers, especially Protestant ones. As the works of Saint Thomas (including his Summa
Contra Gentiles) were set aside as mere apologies for Scholastic Catholicism whose
arguments were therefore useless in the dynamic world of 17th-century Millenarian
Protestantism, Maimonides became significant as a source of information about Judaism,
as a reconciler of religion and science, and as an evaluator of non-revelatory religion. His
various works were edited, translated into Latin, and commented on. 7 Maimonides' short
treatise on idolatry was translated and edited by young Dionysius Vossius in 1632.8 He
was a student of Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel of Amsterdam. Young Vossius died suddenly, and his father, Gerard Johannes Vossius, published his son's edition of
Maimonides' brief treatise with a massive commentary entitled De theologia gentili et
physiologia Christiana; sive de origine ac progressu idololatriae ad veterum gesta, ac
rerum naturam, reductae; deque naturae mirandis, quibus homo adducitur ad Deum
(Amsterdami, 1641), a three-volume work which went through eight editions by 1700.9 It
was stilI being read and admired by a scholar such as Edward Gibbon as late as the
mid-18th century.IO
Gerard Vossius (who was also the father of Isaac Vossius) is a figure like Ralph
Cudworth. People pay homage to his learning, but try to avoid looking into his works. He
was a very important humanist and theologian. He had been a professor of theology at
Leiden and had lost his post after the Synod of Dordrecht because he was an Arminian.
He became a professor at the Ecole illustre in Amsterdam, and was offered the first chair
of secular history established at Cambridge. He wrote voluminously on Greek and Latin
literature, on the theater, and on philosophy and religion. He corresponded with a wide
range of European intellectuals from Mersenne and Gassendi to Archbishop Laud,
Archbishop Ussher, Hugo Grotius, and Herbert of Cherbury, among many others. Grotius
was, perhaps, his closest friend. 11 He used his great erudition in his commentary, which
was published with his son's edition of Maimonides, to try to show that if one did a
taxonomy of what is known of pagan religion beliefs and of how they developed, one
would find traces of man's original religion, given by God, and of the scriptural revelation. Such a study would reinforce Christian belief by making pagan beliefs intelligible as
vestigial fragments of the true religion and as degenerations from it. 12
Vossius, like the Florentine and Cambridge Platonists, accepted the theory of a
tradition of "ancient theology," a prisca theologia, which showed that an original,
initially clear, divine revelation was given to Moses which then trickled down into the
religions of other cultures and became, in this process, corrupted into pagan views when
idolatrous elements were introduced and connections made between natural events and
divine personalities and forces. 13 By tracing back what is known of the earliest forms of
pagan theology, following later developments, and identifying how traces of Hebrew
theology could stilI be discerned in the histories of pagan traditions (for example,
recognizing that the Hebrew Moses must be identified with such pagan figures as
Mocchus, Mises, Moso, Palaestinus, Jockim, or Melehil),14 one could understand the
origin and history of heathen mythologies and cults. Vossius' text is a handbook of
mythology, ancient and modem. The author contended that various mythologies are

THE CRISIS OF POLYTHEISM AND THE ANSWERS

11

picturesque descriptions of historical events, of natural phenomena, and of social

conditions. 15 Vossius sought to uncover what led to the formation of these myths and to
idolatrous practices. His approach combines early anthropology, such as that of Isaac La
Peyrere, with typical literary Renaissance humanism, sifting out texts rather than facts
and artifacts. 16
Some have seen Vossius as an innovator in Christian apologetics rather than as a
founder of anthropological research. He did not see that anything could be achieved by
carrying on scholarly discussions about revealed truth or religious history.J7 His own
career may have made him only too aware of how these learned exercises led to more and
more divisions and quarrels. With his friend, Hugo Grotius,18 he was in favor of religious
peace rather than intellectual confrontation (a view much like that which Cudworth held
during the Puritan period and the Restoration.) Therefore, after developing his taxonomy
of paganism, which provided intellectuals with a way of understanding how most of the
world had strayed from and confused the original revelation, Vossius devoted much of
his huge opus to showing what natural knowledge of God could be found from examining
created nature. This would eliminate confusions that had led to so many theological
quarrels and might make pagans agree to simple and charitable precepts. 19 In saying this,
Vossius refused to adopt the deistic conclusion of Herbert of Cherbury for whom natural
religion sufficed. 20 Vossius "held firmly to the idea that, besides the truth which man
could come to through his own reason, revealed truth is necessary."21
Ralph Cudworth and Isaac Newton studied Vossius' text. Cudworth discussed
Vossius' views and, as we shall see, expressed some disagreement with him on a basic
theological point. Newton's copy of Vossius' work indicates great concern about what is
in the early part of the work, on the origins of gentile theology,22 and Newton's
manuscript papers entitled "On the Origins of Gentile Theology" rely heavily, if not
entirely, on Vossius' materials, as well as those of Samuel Bochart and John Marsham. 23
Whether Newton and Cudworth arrive at the same or similar conclusions, I discuss in the
essay in this volume entitled "Polytheism, Deism, and Newton."
Cudworth was much more of a philosopher than Vossius and saw that, to justify
Christian theology on the basis of the taxonomic and naturalistic historical approach of
Vossius, one would first have to reject the so-called rational theology of either the
Scholastics or Descartes. I think a very important reason for the difference in approach
between Vossius and Cudworth is the entry of Cartesian method and ideas into the
intellectual arena. Vossius published his text in 1641, when Descartes was just beginning
to become known, though Descartes had written it some years earlier. 24 Cudworth was
writing in the 1660's after his colleague, Henry More, had first advocated Cartesianism
and then later severely criticized that view. Cudworth started from a criticism of Cartesianism much like that which More offered in his Antidote to Atheism and his
Immortality of the Soul. 25 Both of them set forth their views as an answer to Cartesianinspired, mechanistic atheism.
More, in order to dispense with Cartesian certainty, offers what I have elsewhere
called an "incurable scepticism," saying that we cannot be completely certain of anything
because our faculties may be misleading or unreliable. We may, Descartes's claims
notwithstanding, be misled every time we reason. But, anyone who would doubt everything, because of this possibility, is mad or bereft of any sanity. More then offers his own
philosophical views which are as certain as any reasonable person could wish.26

12

RICHARD H. POPKIN

Cudworth, having seen the consequences of Cartesianism in Hobbes and Spinoza,

avers that such problems arise if one insists "That Whatsoever is Incomprehensible is
Unconceivable",27 and that we cannot know only that of which we can have clear and
distinct ideas. Our finite minds are imperfect, so imperfect that we cannot have a
conception of God "as doth perfectly Master, Conquer and Subdue" God's Nature. We
cannot even have an adequate or commensurate idea that can match or equalize the object
- God. Still, Cudworth asserts:
Now it doth not at all follow from hence, because God is thus Incomprehensible to our
Finite and Narrow Understanding, that he is utterly Unconceivable by them, so that
they cannot frame any Idea at all of him, and he may therefore be concluded to be a
Non-Entity. For it is certain, that we cannot fully Comprehend our Selves, and that we
have not such an Adequate and Comprehensive Knowledge of the Essence of any
Substantial thing as that we can perfectly Master and Conquer it. It was a Truth,
though abused by the Scepticks, that there is ... something Incomprehensible in the
Essence of the Lowest Substances. 28
This, for Cudworth, includes bodies, objects of sense, time, and motion.

Truth is Bigger than our Minds, and we are not the Same with it, but have a lower
Participation only of the Intellectual Nature, and are rather Apprehenders than
Comprehenders thereof. This is indeed One Badge of our Creaturely State, that we
have not a perfectly Comprehensive Knowledge, or such as is Adequate and
Commensurate to the Essences of things ....29
So, Cudworth presents his case against atheism and for Christianity within the limits of
human understanding, limits which amount to a sceptical doubt about any basic or
fundamental knowledge of the real nature of God, man, or the world. But, like More,
Cudworth insists on the plausibility of his views and the implausibility of his opponents'
position. Cudworth proposes, first, a rejection of rational theology, whether Scholastic or
Cartesian, and, then, a substitution of inductive, plausible evidence based on the
taxonomy of human beliefs about God and the world and about the evidence from nature
that should convince one of God's existence. Further, Cudworth, like Vossius, insists that
this led to Christianity, and not just natural religious belief. Thus, he tries to show the
plausibility of Christianity from Jewish sources on the basis of fulfilled prophetic
predictions and from its congruence with basic human religious beliefs. Although we
might not have rational comprehension of God, and of how he or she operates in Nature
and History, we can conceive of God in terms of the way people have thought and written
of God and in terms of the way Nature appears to illustrate that God exists. Hence, we
may conclude that the Judaeo-Christian religion is correct. 3D
Cudworth, after he states his partial scepticism about what we can know, then
contends that our inability to comprehend God, an infinite, eternal Being, does not
preclude our ability to conceive of such a deity. The modern atheists (primarily Hobbes
and Spinoza) claimed that, if something is incomprehensible, then it is impossible. But
Cudworth argues that it is reasonable that there is always something in the world,
something infinite in duration, eternal without beginning. Otherwise why is there now
something rather than nothing? "Wherefore it cannot be accounted less than Extreme
Sottishness and Stupidity of Mind in these Modern Atheists, thus to impugn a Deity, from

THE CRISIS OF POLYTHEISM AND THE ANSWERS

13

the Impossibility of Infinite Duration without beginning."3I Even the atheist must realize
that what now exists must come from something. So we can reject the two most basic
theorems of the atheists - that whatever we cannot experience as a sensible idea or
phantasm, or that whatever we cannot fully comprehend, does not exist. 32
The atheists pretend that the words "infinite" and "eternal" signify nothing, but only
represent the ignorance of men. People have raised up a "Bugbear" because they are
unable to understand. However, Cudworth answers, "We have shewed with
Mathematical Evidence and Certainty,"33 that we have to accept that there is something
eternal and infinite. Cudworth argues that:
To summ up all therefore, we say that Infinite and Eternal, are not Words that signifie
nothing in the thing itself, nor meer Attributes of Honour, Complement and Flattery,
that is, of Devout and Religious Non sense, Error and Falsehood, but Attributes
belonging to the Deity, and to that alone, of the most Philosophick Truth and Reality.
And though we being Finite, have no Full Comprehension and Adequate Understanding of this Infinity and Eternity (as not of the Deity) yet can we not without some
Notion, Conception and Apprehension thereof, so long as we can thus demonstrate
concerning it, that it belongs to something, and yet to nothing neither but a Perfect
Immutable Nature.3 4
Cudworth goes on to reject Descartes's God, who could change even mathematical truth,
by offering a "reasonable" explanation of God's Infinite Power - he or she "can Produce
and Do, all whatsoever is Possible, that is whatsoever is Conceivable, and Implies no
manner of Contradiction: the very Essence of Possibility being no other than
Conceptibility."35
Cudworth then asserts, "And thus has the Point been stated all along, not only by
Christian Theists, but even the Ancient Pagan Theologers themselves."36
Although this last statement comes up over two-thirds of the way through The True
Intellectual System of the Universe, it underlies a great deal of what has preceded it. For
Cudworth, the basic answer to atheism, ancient and modem, is that pagan thinkers, as
well as Jewish and Christian thinkers, have all been aware of the idea of God as an
infinite and eternal being, including the atheists who knew this idea when they were
denying that a being corresponding to it existed. In chapter IV, which as Cudworth says,
is practically a book in itself (it comprises almost six hundred pages), Cudworth begins to
refute the atheist notions that there is no idea of God and that there is no such thing
existing in Nature, or at least no possible evidence of it. 37 "God," for Cudworth, is not
just a word without signification. There are different words for God in different
languages but "men have the same Notion or Conception in their Minds answering to
them all. "38 So there must be something being talked about and thought about. It is a
"Monstrous Sottishness and Stupidity of Mind, or else Prodigious Imprudence, in these
Atheists to deny, that there is any Idea of God at all, in the Minds of men, or that the
Word hath any Signijication."39 The atheists must have some idea in their minds of what
they are denying.
Cudworth's main goal in chapter IV is to set forth the evidence that pagans, Jews,
Christians, and Muslims all expressed, however obscurely, the idea or belief in one God.
Going carefully through a wide variety of ancient authors, pagan, Jewish, and Christian,
Cudworth carefully builds up his case. Following the taxonomic method of Vossius, he

14

RICHARD H. POPKIN

classifies all sorts of pagan views and shows in many cases that they derived from
Biblical ones. (Cudworth claimed Democritus got his theory from Moschus, which was
another name for Moses, a point stated in Vossius' De Idolatria.)40 This vast inspection
of pagan views is supposed to show that, despite the presentation of polytheism by many
pagan authors, they did not believe in a plurality of supreme beings. After examining and
categorizing all sorts of ancient religious views, Cudworth says:
And now we see plainly, that though there was a Real Controversie amongst Pagan
Theologers, (especially from Aristotle's time downward) concerning the Cosmogonia
and Theogonia ... the Temporary Generation or Production of the World and the
Inferior Gods; or whether they had any Beginning or no; yet was there no Controversie at all, concerning the Self-existency of them, but it was Universally agreed
upon amongst them, That the World and the Inferior Gods, however supposed by
some to have existed from Eternity, yet were nevertheless all derived from one SoleSelf-existent Deity as their Cause.41
Cudworth insists that the pagan thinkers drew a distinction between "One Supreme
Unmade Deity" and all their other Inferior Generated Gods. 42 The pagans had many
Proper Names for one and the same Supreme God. 43 The only pagan view which verged
on substantial polytheism was Manicheanism.
With stupefying detail Cudworth shows that pagan views, when properly classified
and analyzed, all involved (with one possible exception) belief in a supreme God. Hence,
the historical experience of pagans, Jews, and Christians all showed the naturalness of
such a theistic belief and the unnaturalness, as well as the unreasonableness, of atheism.
The taxonomic study of paganism, in almost any of its written manifestations, exhibits
traces of the true God.
At this point in his much too long exposition, Cudworth turns to one of his main
sources, the treatise of Gerard J. Vossius. Cudworth had culled his historical material
from a great many Greek and Roman sources (especially Sextus Empiricus), from early
Church Fathers, from Talmudic and early medieval Jewish sources, and from Vossius'
Origins of Gentile Theology. Cudworth calls Vossius "this Learned Philologer," cites
long passages from Vossius' Latin text, and then gives translations of them. The portions
he analyzes present Vossius' theory "That according to the Natural Theology, the Many
Pagan Gods, were but so many Denominations of One God."44 Cudworth, though
agreeing with Vossius' taxonomy and explanation of the derivations of various pagan
views, apparently feels that his predecessor goes too far in naturalizing pagan beliefs. He
"doth plainly straiten and confine the Notion of this Natural Theology too much, and
improperly call the God thereof, the Nature of Things; however acknowledging it such a
Nature as was endued with Sense and Understanding."45 Cudworth feels that this makes
paganism into the atheistic view of Epicurus and Strato. If one substitutes, Cudworth
says, "that Great Mind or Soul of the whole, which Pervadeth All Things, and is Dijfus'd
through All; (which was the True God of the Pagan Theists),"46 then the view of Vossius,
that they all believed in one God, "will be unquestionably true" - the pagan poetical and
political Gods "were but One and the same Natural or Real God" who was called by
several names, and worshipped in different manners. 47 The general defect of paganism is
the admission of lesser deities with some supposedly divine powers.
This leads Cudworth to consider whether Trinitarianism could have come out of this

THE CRISIS OF POLYTHEISM AND THE ANSWERS

15

natural pagan view. The kind of Trinity found in Plato or Plotinus of monad, mind, and
soul goes back to Pannenides, then to Pythagoras, then to the Orphic Cabbala, and finally
to the Zoroastrian beliefs and the Chaldaic oracles. 48
This Trinity of Divine Hypostases is thus a most ancient doctrine, but "it cannot well
be conceived"49 how such a view "should be discovered meerly by humane Wit and
Reason, though there be nothing in it (if rightly understood) that is repugnant to Reason. ,,50 Even the most ancient writings of the Old Testament have terms suggesting a
plurality in the Deity [Elohim?] Thus, as Proclus says, the Trinity was first presented in
the Divine Cabbala by the Hebrews and then communicated to the Egyptians and other
nations. The mystery was gradually imparted to the world, "and that first but sparingly to
the Hebrews" in their written or oral Cabbala, and more fully under Christianity. This
doctrine only got clearly stated when the early Christians had to contend with various
heresies. The Platonists, not having this clarity, made the Trinity three Gods. 51
In examining how the doctrine became clarified, Cudworth contends that one can see
that Arianism, the denial of Jesus' divinity, is a form of paganism and that the Trinitarian
formulation by Athanasius is the true religious view. Athanasius, Cudworth says, is
someone "we can think no otherwise than as a person highly Instrumental and Serviceable to Divine Providence for the preserving of the Christian Church. "52
Cudworth sees in the Platonic notion of the Trinity, as derived from the Jewish
Cabbalistic one, an anti-Arian position. The fact that such a Platonic view derives from
more ancient pagan and, especially, Jewish antiquity indicates that the original revelation,
despite being incorporated and corrupted into various pagan forms, nonetheless denies
the really corrupt pagan view finally incorporated into Arianism, which is really "a kind
of Paganick and Idolatrous Christianity. "53
Having used the taxonomic method to show that Trinitarian Christianity is the correct
expression of the most ancient revelation to the Hebrews and to the rational pagans,
Cudworth turns to attack a view that was becoming a different kind of threat - the
interpretation of all religious traditions as social and political developments. After
dismissing the psychological atheistic challenge to religion, which held that it was merely
the product of fear and concern about future events, Cudworth turns to another atheistic
view: that religions result "from the Fiction and Imposture of Civil Sovereigns, Crafty
Lawmakers and Designing Politicians"54 who use religion to get people to obey them.
Spinoza and Hobbes are quoted (but not named) as advocates of this view.
This social and political interpretation of religion would undermine the value of the
Vossius-Cudworth approach. No matter what resulted from the taxonomic research, all
religious formulations could be accounted for as the result of political developments. The
similarities in religious belief just showed that the problem of gaining political control
over people had been more or less the same at all times and places. Cudworth argues
against the plausibility of such an interpretation of human history and also that such a
view is unable to account for either the idea of a supreme deity which people have or for
the commitments that they make to this deity.
Before looking at the details of Cudworth's response, a couple of things should be
mentioned. Curiously, Cudworth's main source for his answer is the critique of atheism
in Sextus, "the philosopher," that is, Sextus Empiricus, the Greek sceptic who opposed all
sorts of dogmatisms, including dogmatic atheism. Cudworth's use of Sextus, rather than
of Plato, Aristotle, the Church Fathers, or anyone else, is , I think, unique. I have shown

16

RICHARD H. POPKIN

elsewhere that Sextus, even called "Ie divin Sexte" by the 17th-century French sceptic,
Fran~ois de La Mothe Le Vayer, was used to justify belief without reasons, i.e., fideism,
by Catholics and Protestants from Montaigne to Pascal to Bayle.55 Sextus' arguments
were used to bring about suspense of rational judgement on epistemological, metaphysical, and theological matters. Then, it was contended, one should believe on faith, not on
evidence.
Cudworth was not in this Christian fideist tradition. But he saw that Sextus had
levelled a devastating attack on atheism as a dogmatic position. (Of course, Sextus did
the same with theism, but Cudworth ignored that.) Sextus is quoted at length six times in
five crucial pages in Greek which are then translated into English.56 No other thinker is
used as much in support of Cudworth's response. And it is curious to see classical
scepticism used to undermine modem atheism on the eve of the Age of Reason when it
would be used over and over again to undermine Judaeo-Christianity.
A second preliminary observation is that, in the period when Cudworth wrote The
True Intellectual System, there was a great deal of concern with the political interpretation of religion. Machiavelli had offered such a view, of course exempting Judaism and
Christianity, and Hobbes, in De Cive and Leviathan, had done the same. In 1656, Henry
Oldenburg reported from Oxford that a theory was being offered that Moses, Jesus, and
Mohammed were political impostors who had set forth religious views in order to gain
political power. This theory, the thesis of the notorious Trois Imposteurs, was floating
around the European intellectual world. It was rumored that there was a book setting
forth the evidence for the thesis. Queen Christina offered one million dollars for a copy,
but could not obtain one. Oldenburg begged his friend, Adam Boreel, the leader of the
Dutch Collegiants, to write an answer to save Christianity. Boreel wrote a huge answer,
Jesus Christ, Legislator of the Human Race, which was never printed. Robert Boyle and
Henry More had copies. So Cudworth probably knew of the thesis and of Boreel's
answer from his close associate, More. Cudworth surely knew Boreel, who was involved,
as was Cudworth, in the negotiations on re-admitting the Jews to England in 1655.
Spinoza also apparently knew of the thesis, probably from Boreel, whose group took
Spinoza in after his excommunication from the Synagogue in 1656. 57
Cudworth's discussion shows no direct concern with the thesis, though this must be
part of its background. Spinoza's formulation, published in 1670, was used by Cudworth
as the statement of the view he had to oppose. 58 When he begins his answer, Cudworth
concedes that politicians "may sometimes abuse Religion and make it serve for the
promoting of their own private Interests and Designs."59 But this would not explain the
universality of the religious phenomena. Religion is everywhere and "it is not conceivable, how Civil Sovereigns throughout the whole World, some of which are so distant,
and have so little Correspondence with one another, should notwithstanding, all so well
agree in this One Cheating Mystery of Government, or Piece of State Coozenage.'>60
Also, how should they be able to take in all of mankind "(as well wise as unwise) with
such a Constant Fear, Awe and Dread of a meer Counterfeit thing, and an Invisible
Nothing,"61 which has no basis in sense or reason? Further, if religion is a fraud, is it not
strange that in the whole history of the world, people should not have "suspected or
discovered this Cheat and Juggle of Politicians, and have Smelt out, a Plot upon themselves, in the Fiction of Religion, to take away their Liberty and enthral them under
Bondage"?62 Every other fraud has been discovered and then lost its hold. Atheists, for

THE CRISIS OF POLYTHEISM AND THE ANSWERS

17

two thousand years, have continually been "buzzing into mens Ears that Religion is
nothing but a meer State Juggle and Political Imposture," but this view has not been
given any credit in all this time. So religion appears to be "deeply rooted in the
Intellectual Nature of man. "63 The case of Christianity shows that this is the case because
it is not founded as the result of any policy to promote any political ends.
That theistic religion is no fraud or imposture is also shown by the fact that all
mankind agree in acknowledging a Supreme Deity, an eternal and necessary being, as
illustrated in Cudworth's and Vossius' taxonomies of pagan religions. Sextus is then
quoted as saying that everyone has a view, a "prolepsis," about God, that he is a living
Being, perfect, etc. Even Epicurus uses this notion in opposing God's existence. "Now, I
say that if there be no such thing as this Existing, and this Idea of God be a meer
Fictitious Thing",64 then the idea is arbitrary and it is inconceivable that everyone except
a few atheists should agree "in one and the same Arbitrarious Figment." Sextus Empiricus is then quoted to the same effect. For, after all, how could statesmen and
politicians all over the world, before any international communication, "universally
Jump, in one and the same Fictitious and Arbitrarious Idea"?65
Further, if there were no God, "it is Not Conceivable" that the idea of God would have
been formed by anyone. Lawmakers could tell people all sorts of things, but this does not
put such an idea in their minds. Words do not become ideas. Words are only sounds and
phantasms. They can be the occasion of the soul exciting such notions "as it had before
itself," whether innately or adventitiously (from experience). "Wherefore the meer
Telling of men, There is a God, could not infuse any Idea of him into their Minds, nor yet
further giving this Definition of him, that he is a Being Absolutely Perfect, Eternal and
Self-Existent" could not make people understand, or have the idea, if they did not have
the notion within their minds. So, could a lawgiver have the idea of God, supposing that
there is no God, and convey this non-entity to others? Obviously not. "And this was
Judiciously Hinted also by the same Sextus.'>66
But, atheists will say, we can feign ideas. What about golden mountains, centaurs,
etc.? These are compounds of ideas we already have. Cudworth insists that "the Mind
cannot make any New Cogitation, which was not before, but only Compound that which
Is." We cannot invent new colors. We cannot make something out of nothing, nor can we
make or compound ideas that imply contradictions. The example offered is Triangular
Square. It is a contradictious thing, and thus has no possible existence, and "therefore is
not Conceivable as such," though both "triangle" and "square" are conceivable. Even
God, with all of His Power, cannot make a positive idea of something that has no positive
existence.67
Cudworth next challenges the claim that the idea of God is a compound or an aggregate of existing things. If so, then we should each have arbitrary, different ideas. But,
as the taxonomy of ancient religions and appeals to Sextus show, "the Idea of God, is
One most Simple Idea, of an Absolutely Perfect Being,"68 even though it is partial and
inadequate. The partial conceptions are not items in the world, but must be from a Being
with the properties.
The atheist may claim that we not only can compound ideas, but that we can also
amplify them. Sextus is quoted as stating how the idea of God could be developed by
amplifying the features of our idea of man. Thus Sextus, "the philosopher," is used to
show that we could never, by this means, arrive at an idea such as "absolute perfection"

18

RICHARD H. POPKIN

which is not in the original data. 69

Cudworth concludes the discussion of the political interpretation of religion by saying,
"Our humane Soul cannot Feign nor Create any New Cogitation or Conception, that was
not before, but only variously compound that which Is: nor can it ever make a Positive
Idea of an Absolute Non-Entity."70 Our imperfect beings could not create the idea of an
Infinitely Perfect Being out of Nothing. "We affirm, therefore, that Were there no God,
the Idea of an Absolutely or Infinitely Perfect Being, could never have been Made or
Feigned, neither by Politicians, nor by Poets, nor Philosophers, nor any other. "71
After discussing some of the evidence of the works of the Deity (miracles) and
attacking Spinoza's views on miracles, Cudworth offers a version of the argument from
prophecy to show that Christianity is the right formulation of ancient natural and revealed
religion.72 Unlike the deists (whom I discuss in "Polytheism, Deism, and Newton"),
Cudworth tries to retain both natural and revealed religion. He asserts that there is a kind
of prediction of future events that cannot be accounted for by "the Natural Presaying
Faculty." It has to come from the Supernatural Prescience of God. This kind of prediction occurs when there is a great distance in time between events and no obvious causal
chain between a prophecy and its historical fulfillment (in other words, when the course
of events could be otherwise because of contingencies.)
Cudworth contends that it has been known for ages that "there is Foreknowledge of
Future Events,'073 which is naturally unknowable to the generality of mankind. Various
classical texts, such as those of Cicero, illustrate that this is the case. However, scripture
triumphs over paganism in that scriptural predictions have to involve supernatural
foreknowledge. Cudworth offers examples from Jewish history, e.g., the coming of the
Messiah, the rise and fall of empires, and the prophecies in Daniel and Revelation up to
the end of the World, which he claims require supernatural revelation.
"And thus do we see plainly, that the Scripture-Prophecies Evince a Deity; neither can
these possibly be imputed by Atheists as other things, to mens Fear and Fancy, nor yet to
the Fiction of Politicians. Nor do they only Evince a Deity, but confirm Christianity
also."74
From all of Cudworth's discussion of scripture prophecy and from his refutation of
atheism, he concludes that although we cannot demonstrate God's existence a priori, we
can have certain knowledge of God and of Christianity. This certain knowledge, "from
the Necessity of Irrefragible Reason," is not logically demonstrable, but is established by
reasoning from facts we cannot doubt (such as our own existence.) Such reasoning,
which Cudworth even calls a Demonstration, shows "That the thing is, though not Why it
is."75
Before resting his case Cudworth presents his answer to the radical scepticism of "a
late Eminent Philosopher," apparently Descartes, though the formulation offered is that
of the radical scepticism of Pascal's pensee 434, published in French in 1669:
that there is no possible Certainty to be had of any thing, before we be Certain of the
Existence of a God Essentially Good: because we can never otherwise free our minds
from the Importunity of that Suspicion, which with irresistible force may assault them;
That our selves might possibly be so made, either by Chance, Fate, or by the pleasure
of some Evil Demon, or at least of an Arbitrary Omnipotent Deity, as that we should
be Deceived in all our most Clear and Evident Perceptions; and therefore in

THE CRISIS OF POLYTHEISM AND THE ANSWERS

19

Geometrical Theorems themselves, and even in our Common Notions.

If we believe God is Essentially Good and neither will nor can deceive, "then and not
before, will this Suspicion utterly vanish" and we can be certain and trust our faculties.
But, on a voluntarist theory such as Descartes's, one "can never be reasonably Certain, of
the Truth of any thing, not so much as that Two and Two are Four" since "an Arbitrary
Omnipotent Deity, might designedly make them [people] such, as should be deceived in
all their Clearest Perceptions."76
Because the Cartesian solution depends on knowing that God is essentially good, this
involves using our suspect faculties - "this I say is plainly to move round in a Circle, and
to prove nothing at all.'>77
If we are to claim to have any certainty at all about God's existence, then "we must of
necessity explode this New Sceptical Hypothesis." So, Cudworth insists, no power, no
matter how great, even omnipotence itself, "can make any thing to be indifferently either
True or False." Truth, Cudworth insists, cannot be arbitrarily made. It is! Intelligible
ideas of the mind, those clearly perceived, are true and cannot possibly be false. This
Platonic view allows Cudworth to dismiss Cartesian doubts about general truths, as well
as the radical, irremediable scepticism stated by Henry More. If one has rational understanding, and if one knows what "part" and "whole" are, and if one knows what "cause"
and "effect" are, then one cannot conceive a part to be greater than a whole, or an effect
to precede a cause:

Wherefore we may presume with Reverence to Say, that there could not possibly be a
world of Rational Creatures made by God, either in the Moon, or in some other
Planet, or else where, that should Clearly and Distinctly Conceive, all things contrary
to what are clearly Perceived by us; nor could Humane Faculties have been so made.,
as that we should have as clear Conceptions of Falsehoods as of Truths. 78
God cannot do anything contradictory, Le., he cannot do anything which is repugnant to
our rational conception. Thus, "Conception and knowledge are hereby made to be the
Measure of all Power; even Omnipotence."79 But the same does not apply to human
perceptions, to sense experience, where we can only be sure of how things seem to us.
But can created human beings pretend to absolute certainty of any thing? Cudworth
claims that by participation in the Divine Mind, they should be able to know certainly
that 2+2=4, that the whole is greater than the part, and "such like other Common Notions,
which are the Principles from whence all their knowledge is derived." If we could not
have such certainty, life would be a mere dream or shadow and we should be naught but
"a Ridiculous and Pompous Piece of Phantastick Vanity." Cudworth continues and argues
that "it is no way Congruous to think, that God Almighty should make Rational Creatures so as to be in an utter Impossibility, of ever attaining to any Certainty of his own
Existence; or of having more than an Hypothetical Assurance thereof, If our Faculties be
True (which may possibly be otherwise) than there is a God."80 So much for Descartes's
circular scepticism.
Next, Cudworth proceeds to advance his Platonic Christian theology and to insist that
it is reflected in the history of human thought and in nature. He concludes that:
there is One only Necessary Existent, the Cause of all other things, and this an
Absolutely Perfect Being, Infinitely Good, Wise and Powerful; Who hath made all

20

RICHARD H. POPKIN

that was Fit to be made, and according to the Best Wisdom, and exerciseth an exact
Providence over all. Whose Name ought to be Hallowed and Separated from all other
things.S!
Looking back on his forbidding 899 pages, one can see, I think, that Cudworth undertook
a monumental effort to resolve a crisis of confidence in revealed religion produced by the
flood of polytheistic information and by the naturalistic explanations of the varieties of
religions offered by Hobbes and Spinoza which undermined the special status of Judaism
and Christianity. Cudworth saw that one had to limit one's rational expectations to a level
below that set by Descartes and that one had to rest the case first on a taxonomic analysis.
Using the treasure house of taxonomy delineated in Vossius, Cudworth proceeded to
"justify" Trinitarian Christianity as the Ur-religion, the primal revelation. He used a semiscepticism and a common sense Platonism to rebut the overall attack of Hobbes and
Spinoza, thereby "justifying" the appeal to universal religion based on an innate conception of an infinite deity.
Newton knew both Vossius' and Cudworth's works. As mentioned above, Newton's
copy of Voss ius exists and is heavily marked. There is a manuscript of Newton's, located
at the William Andrews Clark Library in Los Angeles, called "Notes on Cudworth.,,82 It
is in Newton's hand and is nothing but Newton's notes taken on reading Cudworth's True
Intellectual System of the Universe. The notes are all items dealing with the taxonomic
analysis of pagan religion. 83 Nothing in the notes indicates whether Newton agrees or
disagrees with Cudworth on these matters. The manuscripts of Newton on the origins of
gentile theology seem to be a massive collection of items from Vossius and other
taxonomists. Newton's only complete work on the subject. The Chronology of Ancient
Kingdoms Amended of 1727, shows him using the taxonomic materials to argue for the
greater antiquity of the Hebraic world than any of the pagan ones and for the original
revelation being given to the Hebrews.
Richard Westfall has contended that Newton, in his use of these materials, is striking
out in a deistical direction and offering a view as radical as that of the deists Toland and
Tindal. 84 (I discuss Westfall's view in "Polytheism, Deism, and Newton.") Newton also
used them, as Cudworth and Vossius did, to buttress a claim that Judaeo-Christianity was
superior, or was the Ur-religion.
One critical matter on which Newton differs from Vossius. and even more from
Cudworth, is whether Trinitarianism is part of the basic revelation or is a pagan corruption of it. Newton spent over forty years trying to prove that Arianism was true Christianity and that Saint Athanasius had corrupted this true Christianity by foisting pagan
Trinitarianism (a form of polytheism) upon it. For Newton, Athanasius was the villain in
Christian history.85 Though Newton and Cudworth were colleagues for many years, there
is no evidence that they discussed this most basic disagreement. (In fact, Newton was
very guarded in advancing his Arian views, knowing the possible political and social
consequences. He disowned his disciple, William Whiston, when the latter publicly
proclaimed the Arianism which Newton held in private. 86) It has been suggested,
notwithstanding all the textual evidence to the contrary, that Cudworth is really an Arian
too. 87 And, it is worth noting that Cudworth is a hero to the early 19th-century American
Unitarians. 88
It is hard to tell if Newton was particularly interested in Cudworth's other causes,

THE CRISIS OF POLYTHEISM AND THE ANSWERS

21

especially that of fighting back against the Hobbes-Spinoza political analysis of religion
or that of rejecting Scholastic and Cartesian theology. Newton, using the VossiusCudworth taxonomic data, argues that political systems develop out of the degeneration
and corruption of the original divinely inspired form of government and he offers
psychological and sociological theories as to how this happens. It is difficult to say to
what extent, Newton accepts, with Cudworth, that the Hobbes-Spinoza analysis helps
explain all religions except the original one. Unfortunately, Newton never put all of the
pieces of his explanation of religious history and development together, as Vossius and
Cudworth do, and so one can only surmise the extent to which he shares their views. For
our purposes here, it suffices to point out that Newton is interested in the taxonomic
information which is offered by both Vossius and Cudworth and that he uses it in the
ChrOlwlogy of Ancient Kingdoms Amended to make out his case for the historical priority
and accuracy of the original revelation to the ancient patriarchs and the early Hebrews.
The vast collection of materials and their interpretation by Vossius, and the elaborate
taxonomic and philosophical solution of Cudworth, weighty as it was, failed to resolve
the polytheistic crisis, or to forestall people drawing conclusions incompatible with the
privileged status of Judaism and Christianity. Hardly a day beyond the publication of
Cudworth's opus in 1678, the deistic theory started to appear. Even before the publication
of Cudworth's work, Herbert of Cherbury had used Vossius' taxonomic data to show that
natural, unrevealed religion was the basic human belief. Right after the appearance of
Cudworth's tome, the deist, Charles Blount, used Herbert's efforts and more of Vossius'
material, plus a forceful use of Spinoza's political and psychological explanation of the
origins of religion, to launch the deistic attack on Judaism and Christianity. Soon
thereafter, too, Newton, Whiston, and Clarke used the Cudworth-Vossius material to
argue for an~i-Trinitarian Christianity. And further taxonomy brought into question
whether Judaeo-Christianity was the UR-religion, or whether it was just one of many
derivatives (as claimed in the Turkish Spy, Toland, or Tindal.) Nonetheless, Cudworth's
solution was treated as a dominant bulwark against rising deism and naturalism. His
enormous opus was translated into Latin and was read and commented on allover Europe
and America at the same time as deistic writings took over the center of the intellectual
stage.
Nevertheless other scholars controverted Cudworth's work as unsound scholarship.
The first historian of modem philosophy, Jacob Brucker, brushed the Cabbalistic,
Pythagorean, Platonic views of Cudworth aside as unclear, unsound, and unphilosophical. 89 Hume, hitherto unnoticed, turned Cudworth into an object of ridicule. 90 From the
Treatise through the Enquiries, the Natural History of Religion, and the Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion, Hume used Cudworthean themes to establish the scepticalempirical point of view but reduced Cudworth's defense of religion to buffoonery - the
final last gasp of the previous superstitious age. 91
Thereafter, Cudworth, though often mentioned, was hardly ever read, even though his
treatise was reprinted into the 19th century. Vossius' monumental effort was replaced by
newer and less Christian studies of comparative religion based on greater historical
information and a new secular perspective. By seeing the efforts of Vossius, Cudworth,
and Newton in the historical context of the crisis caused by the realization of the ubiquity
of polytheism and of the possibility of a naturalistic explanation of religion, we can
appreciate how they were trying to answer these threats. What they were offering may

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RICHARD H. POPKIN

have been the best that could be done, but their efforts were drowned in the rising waters
of deism and naturalism. Cudworth represents, perhaps, one of the last of the rational
theologians and, as such, is an interesting and key figure in understanding the passage
into the Age of Reason and into the age of fideistic and fundamentalist religious theories.
Cudworth, Vossius, and Newton were perhaps the greatest of the last remnant of those
who tried to keep literal historical belief in the Bible consonant with the best of modem
science and modem thought. If we can consider them as men of their times, we can gain a
greater appreciation of the enormous intellectual traumas of that age and of the roots of
our own ideology.

Notes
1. Cf. Richard S. Westfall, "Isaac Newton's Theologiae Gentilis Origines Philosophicae," in The
Secular Mind: Essays Presented to Franklin L. Baumer, ed. Warren Wagar (New York: Holmes &
Meier, 1982), pp. 15-34.
2. Edward Brerewood, Enquiries Touching the Diversity of Languages, and Religions through the
chiefe parts of the world (London, 1614.)
3. Alexander Ross, A View of the Religions of the World, 4th ed. (London, 1664.)
4. See Bernard Picart's illustrations of the religions of the world in Ceremonies et coutoumes
religieuses de tous les peuples du monde ... representees par des figures dessinees de la main de
Bernard Picart (et autres): avec une explication historique, & quelques dissertations curieuses, ed.
Jean F. Bernard, et aI., 8 tom. (Amsterdam, 1723-43.)
5. See Richard H. Popkin, Isaac La Peyrere (1596-1676). His Life, Work and Influence (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1987), esp. chaps. III-VI, and Paolo Rossi, The Dark Abyss of Time. The History of the
Earth and the History of Nations from Hooke to Vico, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1984.)
6. Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan (London, 1651), offered such a theory about all religions except
Judaism and Christianity. This view had also been stated by Gabriel Naude in his Considerations
politiques sur les coups d'estat (Rome, 1639), probably drawing it from the discussion in
Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio. The blanket thesis that all religions are the
result of political activities appears in the notorious Les Trois Imposteurs ou l' Esprit de M. Spinoza
at the end of the 17th century.
7. The study of the influence of Maimonides in Latin in the 17th century is just beginning. An
inventory of Latin editions of Maimonides is being prepared by Dr. Jacob I. Dienstag. He has
already published "Christian Translators of Maimonides' Mishneh Torah into Latin: A BioBibliographical Survey," in Salo Wittmayer Baron Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of his Eightieth
Birthday, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1974; Distributed by
Columbia University Press, 1974), 1:287-309. Aaron Katchen deals with some of the Latin
publications of Maimonides in his Christian Hebraists and Dutch Rabbis (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1984.)
8. On the history of this edition, see C. S. M. Rademacher, The Life and Work of Gerardus
Joannes Vossius (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1981.) See also Katchen, Christian Hebraists and Dutch
Rabbis, pp. 287-90.
9. Cf. the listings in the catalogue of the British Library. Katchen, Christian Hebraists and Dutch
Rabbis, pp. 287-90, offers evidence that the work was started much earlier, and independently of
Dionysius Vossius' edition of De Idolatria. It obviously builds on previous work by Selden,
Marsham, and others.
10. Gibbon's Autobiography, ed. M. M. Reese (London: Routledge, 1970), pp. 64-5.
11. On his life, see Rademacher, Life and Work of G. J. Vossius, and Hugh Trevor-Roper,
Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans. Seventeenth Century Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1988), pp. 145-6 and passim.

THE CRISIS OF POLYTHEISM AND THE ANSWERS

23

12. This is the message of Liber I of Vossius' De theologia gentili et physiologia Christiana; sive
de origine ac progressu idololatriae ad veterum gesta, ac rerum naturam, reductae; deque naturae
mirandis, quibus homo adducitur ad Deum (Amsterdami, 1641.)
13. Vossius, De theologia gentili, Liber I.
14. Ibid., Lib. I, cap. xxx, pp. 224-34.
15. Ibid., Liber II.
16. Cf. Rossi, The Dark Abyss of Time, pp. 153-6, and C. S. M. Rademacher, Gerardus Joannes
Vossius (Zwolle: Wej Tjeenk Will ink, 1967), pp. 249-50.
17. Rossi, The Dark Abyss of Time, pp. 153-6, and Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans and
Puritans, pp. 97ff and 192-5.
18. See discussions of both Grotius and Vossius in Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans and
Puritans.
19. Rademacher, Life and Work ofG. J. Vossius, pp. 304-6, and Vossius, De theologia gentili, esp.
Liber II. What Vossius may have had in mind were what are called the "Noachide principles."
20. See Richard H. Popkin, "Polytheism, Deism, and Newton," infra.
21. Rademacher, Life and Work ofG. J. Vossius, p. 309.
22. Newton's own copy, which is preserved at Trinity College, Cambridge, has markings on over
one hundred and twenty pages of Vol. 1. These markings consist of folds in the pages, sometimes
as many as two or three per page.
23. Newton's manuscript text consists of a draft of part of his study, "The Origins of Gentile
Theology," plus lots of notes and alternative drafts of particular passages. To ascertain both
Newton's originality and the degree of his reliance upon other sources, a detailed comparison of his
manuscript text (and his marked passages in his copy of Vossius) to what is in Vossius, Boehar!,
and Marsham is needed. At this point, one can say that Newton uses Vossius' material extensively.
Whether Newton comes to significantly different conclusions, as Westfall claims, needs to be
examined in terms of the actual texts in Vossius.
24. See Katchen, Christian Hebraists and Dutch Rabbis, pp. 287-90, for a possible date of
composition.
25. Henry More, An Antidote against Atheism, Or, An Appeal to the Natural Faculties of the
Minde of Man whether there be not a God, 2nd ed. (London, 1655.) A study by Alan Gabbey on
More's critique of Descartes will appear in the forthcoming volume of papers, edited by Alan
Gabbey and Sarah Hutton, issuing from the conference in commemoration of the 300th anniversary
of More's death held in Cambridge in 1987.
26. See Richard H. Popkin, "The 'Incurable Scepticism' of Henry More, Blaise Pascal and Sl1lren
Kierkegaard," in Scepticism from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. Richard H. Popkin and
Charles B. Schmitt, Wolfenbiitteler Forschungen, Bd. 35 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1987),
pp.169-74.
27. Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678), p. 638.
28. Ibid., pp. 638-9.
29. Ibid., p. 639.
30. Ibid., Preface, p. ***.
31. Ibid., p. 642.
32. Ibid., p. 643.
33. Ibid., p. 645.
34. Ibid., pp. 645-6.
35. Ibid., p. 647. Is this, perhaps, the source of Hume's overworked maxim, that "whatever is
conceivable is possible," which plays such an important role in Parts I and II of A Treatise of
Human Nature? A detailed comparison is needed to see if Cudworth is an as yet unrecognized
source of Hume's ideas.
36. Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the Universe, p. 647.
37. Ibid., p. 192.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid., pp. 192-3.
40. See Vossius, De theologja gentili, Lib. I, cap. xxx, and Cudworth, True Intellectual System of
the Universe, chap. IV.

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RICHARD H. POPKIN

41. Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the Universe, p. 253.

42. Ibid., p. 255.
43. Ibid., p. 256.
44. Ibid., p. 526.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid., p. 527.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid., pp. 546-8. This is the "prisca theologia" tradition discussed by D. P. Walker, The
Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century
(London: Duckworth, 1972.)
49. Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the Universe, p. 547.
50. Ibid., p. 547-8.
51. Ibid., pp. 546-8.
52. Ibid., p. 620.
53. Ibid.
54. Ibid., p. 655.
55. Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), esp. chaps. iii-v; see also Popkin, "Introduction," in
Pierre Bayle: Historical and Critical Dictionary Selections (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965);
Popkin, "Introduction," in Pascal Selections (New York: Macmillan, 1988); and Popkin, articles
s.v. "Bayle, Pierre," "Fideism," and "Pascal, Blaise," in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 8 vols.
(New York: Macmillan, 1967.)
56. Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the Universe, pp. 692-6.
57. On all of this, see Richard H. Popkin, "Spinoza and Les Trois Imposteurs," in Proceedings of
the International Spinoza Symposium, Chicago, 1987, ed. E. M. Curley (forthcoming from E. J.
Brill) and Popkin, "Could Spinoza have known Bodin's Colloquium Heptaplomares?," in
Philosophia 17, Nos. 3-4 (Dec., 1986), pp. 307-14.
58. Some of the literature suggests that it is questionable whether Cudworth had read Spinoza.
However, his book, the Tractatus-Theologico-Politicus, is cited in the True Intellectual System of
the Universe, p. 658.
59. Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the Universe, p. 691.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid., p. 692.
63. Ibid.
64. Ibid., pp. 692-3.
65. Ibid., pp. 693-4.
66. Ibid., p. 694.
67. Ibid., p. 695. The text here looks very much like parts of Hume's discussions of mathematics
and the origin of ideas in Part II of Hume's Treatise.
68. Ibid., p. 695.
69. Ibid., p. 696.
70. Ibid., p. 697.
71. Ibid.
72. Ibid., p. 711.
73. Ibid., p. 712. On the similarity of Cudworth's views on prophecy to those of Newton see
Richard H. Popkin, "Polytheism, Deism, and Newton," infra.
74. Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the Universe, p. 714.
75. Ibid., p. 716.
76. Ibid., pp. 716-7. The earliest translation of Pascal, which postdates Cudworth's book, omits
this pensee.
77. Ibid., p. 717.
78. Ibid., p. 718.
79. Ibid., p. 719.
80. Ibid., p. 721.

THE CRISIS OF POLYTHEISM AND THE ANSWERS

25

81. Ibid., p. 899.

82. This manuscript is reproduced in the Appendix with the kind permission of the William
Andrews Clark Memorial Library.
83. A recent study of these notes by Newton on Cudworth by Danton B. Sailor appears in
"Newton's Debt to Cudworth," Journal of the History of Ideas 49, No.3 (July-Sept., 1988), pp.
511-8.
84. Westfall, "Isaac Newton's Theologiae Gentilis," pp. 24-31.
85. The Catalogue of the Newton Papers Sold by Order of the Viscount Lymington to whom they
have descended from Catherine Conduitt, Viscountess Lymington, Great-niece of Sir Isaac Newton.
Which will be Sold by Auction by Messr. Sotheby and Co .... (London, 1936) states (p. 73) that there
are "Drafts of various Portions, some in several states, in all about 30,000 words on 120 pp.,
unnumbered and confused ... and many sheets imperfect" of Newton's manuscript entitled
Paradoxical Questions concerning T morals & actions of Athanasius & his followers. The three
main versions of this manuscript are located in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los
Angeles; King's College Library, Cambridge (Keynes MS 10); and the Jewish National and
University Library, Jerusalem (Yahuda MS 14.) A fourth, long and unpublished, manuscript,
entitled The Mystery of the Grand Iniquity of the Church, is located in the Martin Bodmer Library,
Geneva, and develops the theory of the corruption of Christianity by the Trinitarians.
86. See James E. Force, William Whiston. Honest Newtonian (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985.)
87. See David Berman, A History of Atheism in Britain. From Hobbes to Russell (London: Croom
Helm, 1988), chap. I.
88. Cf. [George B. Cheever], Cudworth Defended: and Unitarianism Delineated, by a lover of
Cudworth and Truth, in the Salem Gazette, 1833. See Daniel Walker Howe, "The Cambridge
Platonists of Old England and the Cambridge Platonists of New England," Church History 57
(1988), pp. 470-85, in which he shows how indebted the New England Unitarians were to the
Cambridge Platonists.
89. Johann Jacob Brucker, Historia Critica Philosophiae, a Mundi Incunabulis ad nostram usque
aetatem deducta, 6 vols. (Lipsiae, 1742-67), 4:437-8, a section entitled "The Restoration of
Pythagorean Platonic Cabbalistic Philosophy." Constance Blackwell is writing a translation and
exegesis of this section, and of other important sections, in Brucker's work.
90. Hume's Natural History of Religion appears to be a satire on Cudworth's position. After I
wrote this, I was sent a dissertation done at Columbia by Charles S. Karsh entitled The Development of Hume' s Philosophy which makes this point in some detail.
91. Once again, a full scale study of Hume's debt to Cudworth needs to be undertaken. As of now,
Cudworth hardly appears in the Hume literature as a possible source for Hume.

RICHARD H. POPKIN

3. POLYTHEISM, DEISM, AND NEWTON

Deism became an all-important movement in England in the latter part of the 17th
century. But it was not a movement in the normal sense; it was not a church, or even an
organized collection of people. In fact, it is not certain whether there were more than a
handful of deists in England, France, or The Netherlands at the time of the Glorious
Revolution in 1688. However, the views attributed to them, and which were expressed by
Charles Blount, by the author (or authors) of the Turkish Spy, and by the few followers of
Spinoza, played a most important role in providing a basis for religious and political
toleration in England, the British American colonies, and, later, in Revolutionary France.
There is a great deal of disagreement about the meaning of the term, "deism," and
about when deism develops in Europe after the Renaissance. l Without dealing with these
vexing questions, I will start with trying to account for the theories of natural religion of
the two individuals who are credited with being the first English Deists - Herbert of
Cherbury and Charles Blount.
It has not been sufficiently realized that their views emerge as comments upon the vast
taxonomic researches concerning the varieties of polytheistic religion, ancient and
modem. Scholars were trying to find rational patterns in both the ancient religions of
Greece, Babylon, Phoenicia, and Persia and the newly discovered religions of the native
Americans, the South Sea Islanders, the Africans, the Eskimos, and others. Some pointed
to similarities between some of these religious traditions and practices and those of
Judaism and Christianity. And some saw the implication that all religions might be, as the
Jewish heretic, Uriel da Costa, declared, just human ways of confronting man's situation. 2
A "sceptical crisis" was developing in the first half of the 17th century as the result of
polygenetic evidence concerning the origin of the first men and polytheistic evidence
concerning the nature of man's first religion. The data indicating that the varieties of
mankind could not be encompassed within Biblical history, chronologically or geographically, and that the varieties of human belief could not be squared with the Biblical
account raised most serious problems about the then generally accepted Jewish and
Christian framework. Elsewhere, I have treated the attempt to deal with polygenesis and a
non-Biblical chronology, with "saving the appearances" of scriptural religion, and have
shown how this led to some aspects of the modem conception of man and his place in the
cosmos. 3 Here I should like to focus on the problems posed by the inundation of data
about polytheism, ancient and modem, and on the two opposite movements - one deistic
(and anti-Christian) and one theistic (and pro-Christian) - which emerged from this
context.
A most heroic attempt to compile all the new historical data about ancient and modem

28

RICHARD H. POPKIN

polytheistic systems is contained in the huge, three-volume work by the Dutch Arminian,
Gerard Vossius, entitled De theologia gentili et physiologia Christiana; sive de origine ac
progressu idololatriae ad veterum gesta, ac rerum naturam, reductae; deque naturae
mirandis, quibus homo adducitur ad Deum (1641) (which I also analyze in "The Crisis of
Polytheism and the Answers of Voss ius, Cudworth, and Newton," supra.) Vossius, a
close friend of Hugo Grotius, was a professor at Leiden before the Synod of Dordrecht.
He was perhaps one of the last great Renaissance humanists. He wrote many, many
works on Greek and Latin literature and on history.4 (He wrote the first history of
philosophy in modem times.)5 Because of his moderate theological views, he was purged
from the faculty at Leiden by the hard-line Dutch Calvinists and became a teacher at the
Ecole illustre in Amsterdam. And, as Trevor-Roper has pointed out in his recent volume
of essays, efforts were made to appoint Vossius as the first professor of civil (secular)
history at Cambridge and as assistant to Archbishop Ussher in Ireland. 6 Vossius had
taken a trip to England to visit Archbishop Laud and was appointed canon of Canterbury.
Apparently the boat voyage was so ghastly that Vossius could not entertain taking
another such trip.?
Gerard Vossius' De theologia gentili appeared together with an edition prepared by
his late son, Dionysius Vossius, of Moses Maimonides' short treatise on idolatry.
Scholarly evidence has been offered to show that the father's work was written earlier
and was only put into final form when it was added to the son's edition of the
Maimonidean text. The concern with the views of one of the greatest monotheistic
theologians by Christian thinkers reflects some of the developing strains which led to
deism. Vossius dedicated his De theologia gentili to the Church of England. 8 The work
was reprinted eight times by 1700 and Edward Gibbon, in the mid-18th century, still
considered it one of the major historical writings of modem times. It is one of those
works that is frequently quoted or cited at the time, but that recent scholars rarely seem to
want to venture into very deeply. Ralph Cudworth and Isaac Newton, among others, use
it extensively, and build on it, but it appears forbidding to a contemporary reader.
Vossius' huge work is, first, a taxonomical listing and analysis of the varieties of
polytheism and, second, an attempt to show that the personages and activities of ancient
pagan religions are degenerative fictions derived by a variety of reductive processes from
the original of all religion - the Mosaic religion. Richard S. Westfall, the biographer of
Isaac Newton, describes Vossius' book as "a bottomless pit of erudition."9 It is, I believe,
much more. It is a careful classification of polytheistic religious views, based on an
amazing use of classical sources, Jewish and early Christian materials, plus information
from the explorers, missionaries, and colonizers concerning what was then going on all
over the world. Vossius seeks to show that the characters of the different polytheistic
religions are really Biblical characters in disguise.
Various scholars before him, such as Bochart and Selden, had argued that specific
gods of pagan theology were imitations of Biblical characters. 10 Vossius took on the task
wholesale, tracing all the pagan divinities back to their Judaeo-Christian originals and
explaining how the pagan deities had been derived as the result primarily of identifying
natural events and political figures with personalities mentioned in the Bible. We thus
find traces of the original figure of Moses in the pagans Mocchus, Mises, Mose, Palaestinus, Jockim, and Melehil. Through this process of tracing ancient deities back to their
Biblical prototypes, one could understand the origin and history of heathen mythologies.

POLYTHEISM, DEISM, AND NEWTON

29

These could be comprehended by seeing the various pagan mythologies as picturesque

descriptions of historical events, of natural phenomena, or of social conditions clothed in
remnants of Judaism and Christianity. This would enable one to find out what led to the
formation of these myths and their associated idolatrous practices.
Vossius developed a quite different form of Christian apologetics than what was usual
at the time. He was not concemed about theological arguments, about religious truth, or
about the controversies concerning Church history. As Trevor-Roper shows, Vossius and
his friend, Grotius, sought religious peace rather than intellectual confrontation. I I
Vossius apparently felt that his taxonomy of paganism would provide intellectual
Christians of his time with a way of understanding how most of the world had strayed
from, and had subsequently confused or debased, the original revelation. Most of
Vossius' three volumes are devoted to showing what natural knowledge of God could be
found from the examination of created nature. This would eliminate confusions that have
led to too many theological quarrels and it might also make pagans all over the planet
agree to simple and charitable precepts. But Vossius also held firmly to the conviction
that, besides the truth which man could come to through his own natural reason, man also
needed revealed truth. So, in spite of his emphasis on the natural, anthropological
investigation of religion, he remained a Christian apologist. 12 (In fact, his son's edition of
Maimonides was undertaken to convert the Jews, an activity the father endorsed
throughout his close friendship with the Dutch rabbi, Menasseh ben Israel.)13
Vossius' work became a most important handbook of ancient and modem pagan
mythology. Besides providing valuable source material for those indulging in the
growing interest and concern about the comparative varieties of human activities and
beliefs, Vossius' text provided a point of departure for two opposite movements of
thought, one a last-ditch effort to save belief in Christianity from drowning in the
bewildering flood of data about the variety of human beliefs, and one a new effort to
show that, behind all religion, there is a natural religion without creed or sect, knowable
by reason alone.
Ralph Cudworth and Isaac Newton (at least as I read them) sought to develop the first
outlook. Cudworth's The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678), much
admired, but also rarely read in recent times, is an 899-page attempt to combine Vossius'
data with a semi-sceptical philosophical defense of theism (by casting doubt on arguments for atheism), a Neo-Platonic theory of the spiritual world, and a Millenarian
conception of Christianity. Cudworth used a good deal of Vossius' material, occasionally
disagreed with him, and sometimes added findings of his own. This was supposed to
show that every polytheistic pagan view was modelled on and pointed to its JudaeoChristian monotheistic original. Then, in the most philosophical part of Cudworth's work,
he argued, without the anthropological or philological data, that atheism and polytheism
could only be stated if one had a conception of Divinity, a conception, when clarified,
that was of one all-encompassing Deity. In the True Intellectual System, Cudworth, like
Vossius before him, insisted that the Trinitarian Deity of Christianity was "clearly"
involved in this conception. Hence, one came to appreciate the truth of Christianity both
through Vossius' taxonomy of polytheism and through philosophical analysis.
Cudworth's Cambridge colleague, Isaac Newton, was also imbibing from Vossius'
vast collection of materials. There are several unpublished manuscripts of Newton's,
especially in the Yahuda collection in the Hebrew National and University Library in

30

RICHARD H. POPKIN

Jerusalem, on the origins of gentile theology and the philosophical origins of gentile
theology.14 Some are notes, some seem to be more organized. There is also a short
Newton manuscript at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in Los Angeles,
entitled, "Notes on Cudworth." It is just that and lists quite a few passages in Cudworth's
text about various polytheistic theories and their relation to pagan philosophies and
theologies. IS The other theological manuscripts contain a great deal of material from
Vossius, as well as Bochart and Marsham. Newton owned a copy of Vossius' text which
is in the Trinity College Library in Cambridge. 16 Over one hundred and twenty pages of
the first volume are marked.
Richard Westfall has been arguing that Newton's "Philosophical Origins of Gentile
Theology," and the several manuscripts related to it, represent a departure from Newton's
prophetic Biblicism and a movement towards a kind of rational deism similar to that of
Toland and TindalP Westfall traces this side of Newton from the early 1680's into the
18th century.lS
One way to evaluate Newton's effort in this direction is to examine whether his
manuscript texts and notes on the origins of gentile theology are significantly different
from what appears in Vossius and in Newton's other main sources, Bochart and Marsham. If they are not, then Newton's views on the matter may not constitute a uniquely
different theology.
Yahuda MSS 16.2, 17.1, and 17.2 contain many items that can be traced back to
Vossius. Even in some of the places where Westfall says that Newton uses the material
differently as, for example, in his citing of the pagan authors Sanchuniathon and Berossus, the Newtonian material seems the same as what is in Vossius and is used to establish
the same historical developments. A close examination of Newton's texts and notes with
the relevant passages in Vossius is needed to assess Newton's originality in his evaluation of the origins of gentile theology. Most of Newton's manuscript looks like a
taxonomical venture similar to those found in Vossius and Cudworth. The pagan
equivalents of the Biblical figures are worked out in detail for various Near Eastern
religions by all three authors.
Westfall writes as if Vossius' work is just "a bottomless pit of erudition," a simple
exercise in Christian apologetics,19 and as if Newton is going much beyond this and
seeking a basic religion beyond all of the polytheistic corruptions, a basic religion that is
natural and accessible to uncorrupted reason.20 Both Vossius and Cudworth said the same
thing.21 They also said, with Newton, "So then the first religion was the most rational of
all others till the nations corrupted it. For there is no way (wthout revelation) to come to
ye knowledge of a Deity but by the frame of nature.,,22 They pretty much agreed that the
original religion consisted in the precepts of Noah23 and that the original religion became
corrupted by various political and social developments within the religious organizations.
Vossius and Cudworth both emphasized, in their works, that they were supporting "true
Christianity." Newton from early on was an Arian and most aggressively concerned to
show that the Church, at least from the time of St. Athanasius, had deliberately corrupted
"true Christianity" by introducing the doctrine of the Trinity.
Vossius and Cudworth, in publishing their views, had to make sure that the unorthodox possibilities that might arise from the study of polytheism were not attributed to
them. Even so, Vossius was charged with Arminianism, Socinianism, and all sorts of
other nasty things. He was condemned at the Synod of Dordrecht and considered a

POLYTHEISM. DEISM. AND NEWTON

31

dangerous character by the orthodox Calvinists in The Netherlands. 24 Cudworth had

managed to survive as an official theologian during the Puritan period. the Cromwell
Protectorate, and the Restoration. He seems to have prospered under each of these
regimes and to have formally done whatever was necessary to stay in favor. 25 They both
did this, in part, by saying that they were Christian apologists, and saying it as often as
necessary. And, if they had not said this, their works might have been banned. Cudworth,
in fact, delayed publication of The True Intellectual System of the Universe from 1671,
when it was finished, until 1678 and then only published the first part. 26 Newton did not
publish his views on polytheism except for his posthumously published Chronology of
Ancient Kingdoms Amended, which Westfall describes as "a sanitized rendition" of the
Theologiae Gentilis Origines Philosophicae manuscript "suitable for public consumption."27
Newton used the materials about polytheism to make essentially the same point as
Cudworth and Vossius and to establish that there was an original, uncorrupt, monotheistic
Ur-religion which had degenerated, through various reductive mechanisms, into
polytheism. In his Chronology ofAncient Kingdoms Amended, Newton used astronomical
data to argue that the Bible was the oldest document in the world and that the events of
Biblical history preceded those of other ancient histories. 28 The development of stages of
learning and other good things came from the ancient Israelites, who had been given the
pure form of Divine revelation or wisdom. Where Newton, on the one hand, and
Cudworth and Vossius, on the other, parted company, of course, was that the latter two
insisted that the pure form included at least a glimmering of Christian Trinitarianism and
that Arianism was a pagan corruption of the Ur-religion. For Newton the reverse was
true. Trinitarianism was a pagan polytheistic corruption of the pure religion and Newton
argued that this idolatrous corruption had infected the Church from St. Athanasius' time
to the present and must be excised.
Newton's Arianism and Vossius' and Cudworth's Trinitarianism were defended in
their taxonomical approaches to classifying ancient poly theisms in which they sought the
fundamental pure religion behind all of the varieties. Newton's Arianism may be close to
the real natural religion of the deists but is, I think, still a form of Christianity, albeit
extremely unorthodox, if not heretical. Its "cash-value" may not be much different from
that of the natural religion of Herbert of Cherbury, but Newton expressed himself as a
theist who devoutly believed in a world created and dominated by the all-powerful Deity
in which Jesus, the Lamb of God and a human being, played an important, even essential,
role in God's relationship to men. Jesus, for Newton, provided the epistemological
guarantee of the correctness of the text of the Book of Revelation. 29 (It should be noted
that Arianism, from its initial formulation by Arius, the Spanish Church Father who was
condemned as a heretic at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, down to its 17th-century
versions was always presented by Arians as the actual Christian message of the New
Testament, as "true" Christianity, and not as a demythologized version amounting to
deism. The Arians held Christian church services and that Jesus had a special place in
Divine and human history.)30
The deistic consequences of Vossius' efforts appeared first in the writings of his
friend, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, who had been the English Ambassador in Paris while
Grotius was the Swedish ambassador. Vossius and Herbert corresponded about the
former's taxonomic researches into polytheism. 31 In 1644, Vossius told Herbert that he

32

RICHARD H. POPKIN

was indebted to Selden's work, De Diis Syriis, for his basic outlook that all pagan
religions derived from Judaeo-Christianity.32
Herbert took Vossius' work as the basis for his De Religione Gentilium, the Ancient
Religion of the Gentiles and the Causes of their Errors Considered, which was published
posthumously in 1663 by Gerard Vossius' publisher, Blaeu, in Amsterdam. The publication of Herbert's treatise was arranged by Isaac Vossius, the son of "magus Gerard J.
Vossius. "33 Henning Graf Reventlow has pointed out that "Herbert was not sufficiently
competent in this sphere to make his own independent contribution."34 Consequently, he
relied heavily on Vossius' material, but he began to draw a quite different conclusion namely that the ancient pagans were aware of the five Common Notions of natural
reason. These Common Notions were that there was one supreme God, that he ought to
be worshipped, that virtue and piety were the main parts of divine worship, that we ought
to repent sins, and that .there were divine rewards and punishments both here and
hereafter. These Common Notions could be found in the various kinds of polytheism as
well as in Christianity.35 They were all based on natural religion and all had been
distorted or corrupted by priestcraft. Herbert did not challenge Christianity but, by
implication, made its special revelation unnecessary.36
Herbert's so-called disciple, Charles Blount (1654-1693), was the one who really
launched deism in England.3 7 (I say "so-called disciple" because Blount was born after
Herbert had died and only had contact with him through his written works, published and
unpublished.) Blount has been categorized as a popularizer of deistic thought rather than
as an original thinker.38 But who was he popUlarizing? Was there anyone saying, in more
technical fashion, what Blount was proposing? I think he deserves more credit, first, for
seeing how far one could push the results of Vossius' taxonomic researches, second, for
relating the ideas of Hobbes and Spinoza to the quest for a statement of pure natural
religion, third, for seeing the relationship between polygenesis and pre-Adamism to
dethroning the privileged status of Judaism and Christianity and, fourth, for making the
dissemination of deistical ideas a crucial political concern.
Blount's first writings included two efforts to find a natural religion in ancient
religious materials. His Anima Mundi: or an Historical Narration of the Opinion of the
Ancients Concerning Man's Soul after this Life, According to Unenlightened nature
(1679)39 and his Great is Diana of the Ephesians, or the Original of Idolatry (1680)40
both utilized a survey of ancient pagan opinions to suggest quite strongly that these nonChristian views, based only on natural reason, suffice to understand the nature and
destiny of man. Blount insisted that, before there was any organized religion among the
Heathens, "there was no worship of God but in a rational way, whereof the Philosophers
pretending to be the Masters, did to this end, not only teach Virtue and Piety, but were
also themselves great examples of it in their lives and Conversations."41
Rather than assuming that one would find the Mosaic or Noachide and Christian
revelations at the beginning of human history, Blount saw Vossius' taxonomic approach
to ancient polytheistic systems as a means of finding the true, non-Judaeo-Christian,
original, natural Ur-religion. He also saw that two modem philosophers, Hobbes and
Spinoza, had presented a metaphysical and epistemological basis for deism or natural
religion. (It is interesting that Cudworth, whose book was published in 1678, saw Hobbes
and Spinoza as offering the greatest threat to Christianity in their political interpretation
of how religions develop.) Blount tried to get in contact with Hobbes in the last year of

POLYTHEISM. DEISM. AND NEWTON

33

Hobbes' life. He published a letter to Hobbes in which he pointed out that Arianism was
the form of Christianity presented by eight early Church Councils. Blount also remarked,
of the Trinitarians of old, that "I cannot but esteem them as Enemies to all human learning,"42 (a sentiment Newton recorded at about the same time.) Blount pointed out why
we should trust neither the Church fathers nor the Church Councils. 43 There is no evidence that Hobbes took notice of Blount's views. But shortly after Hobbes' death, at age
91, Blount published The Last Sayings, or Dying Legacy of Mr. Thomas Hobbes of
Malmesbury who departed this Life on Thursday, December 4, 1679, in which he put
together a collection of Hobbes' passages on religion which made him seem sceptical,
rationalistic, or deistic. 44 (Of course, Blount omitted Hobbes' disclaimer that his psychological and sociological analysis of religion did not apply to Judaism or Christianity.)45
Blount published the first English translation of any of Spinoza's writings in 1683, the
chapter on miracles from the Tractatus-Theologico-Politicus,46 in which Spinoza
contended that no miracles were possible and that any pretended miracles could be
explained either as natural phenomena or as metaphorical or exaggerated use of language.
The full text of Spinoza's Tractatus appeared in English only in 1689 (and was reprinted
in 1739.)47 The translator has not been identified but, from the introduction and the
inclusion of the same text on miracles, I would think that it is also by Blount.48 Spinoza
and Hobbes provided a theoretical basis for denying any supernatural events and for
interpreting all religious developments as man-made.
In the collection of papers by Blount and others, The Oracles of Reason (1693),49
Blount and his friend, Charles Gildon, presented evidence that there were men before
Adam, that the Jewish chronology was not as old as some Oriental ones, and, hence, that
Jewish history was not world history. 50 The material presented by Gildon in The Oracles
of Reason had all appeared in another work, Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy living at Paris,
in eight volumes. 51 The first volume was published in Paris and was written by a
Genoese, G. P. Marana. 52 The rest of the volumes appeared first in English, from 1692
onward, and then were translated into French, Dutch, German, Italian, and even Russian. 53 (The work, all eight volumes, was reprinted in English until 1801.)54 Nobody
knows who wrote volumes II-VIII, whether it was Marana, whose efforts were translated,
or some English writer. 55 The work is very deistic. (Volume I has been called the first
genuine French deistic writing, though the manuscript is in Italian).56 It may have been
done by someone connected with Blount. At any rate, the work contains a report,
repeated by Gildon in The Oracles of Reason, that Indian and Chinese history had gone
on for thousands of years before Jewish history began. The Turkish Spy claimed that his
brother had made a trip to Asia and had learned from Brahmin books about the history of
the world miIIions of years before the events recorded in the Bible. 57 (This theory only
became widely known a century later when Nathaniel Brassey Halhed translated some of
the Hindu scriptures from Persian and, then, when Sir WiIIiam Jones learned Sanskrit,
studied the original texts, and published the same conclusion.)58 The Turkish Spy's
report attempted to dethrone the Bible from its privileged status as the first book which
gave the history of the world. (Newton, in sharp contrast, of course, had been working
since the 1680's on his Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended in which he sought
"to make Chronology suit with the course of Nature, with Astronomy, with Sacred
History, with Herodotus ... and with itself." Newton assumes in this project that the Bible
is the oldest book in the world.)59

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RICHARD H. POPKIN

The Turkish Spy sought to diminish the status of Judaism and to show that it was in no
way superior to other religions. Its author also wanted to show that the original religion,
the natural and deistic Ur-religion, was just a humanistic ethical view. Some of the
Spy's letters are purportedly written to the Jewish agent of the Sultan based in Vienna.
The Spy tried to wean him away from Talmudic Judaism by "showing" him that this
was just a human invention. Pure Judaism, the Spy reported, was the religion of the
Ten Lost Tribes. And, fortunately, the Spy had had the opportunity to meet with
Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, who had passed through Paris after his visit with the Lost
Tribes. The Lost Tribes, reported Ahasuerus, practiced the true natural religion, a
combination of Spinozism, vegetarianism, and pacifism - a religion of reason, the natural
religion. 60
This work, in an oblique way, presented the central deist message as a counter-claim
to Vossius, Cudworth, and Newton. The basic religion of mankind was not a revealed
religion but a natural, ethical way of life. This could be uncovered not only historically,
by identifying the earliest primitive forms of human behavior, but also philosophically,
by uncovering the rational components that all religious belief systems presupposed.
Then, the priestly superstructure would be seen to be superfluous, if not downright
dangerous (in that it inhibited reasonable religion.) John Toland, in his Christianity not
Mysterious (1696),61 and Matthew Tindal, in his Christianity as Old as the Creation
(1730),62 could combine taxonomic research and rational analysis to show that the
original Ur-religion is natural, reasonable religion.
Blount, in developing the central themes of deism, saw the political problem of stating
this view. It was not the creed of a church or, as far as I can discern, of any strong interest
group. And, there was much pressure for suppressing deistic views. Polemics were being
written by influential Churchmen against deism, for example, Bishop Stillingfleet's
Letter to a Deist.63 Liberal thinkers such as John Locke were accused of deism. 64 The
number of actual identifiable deists was small in the period from 1679 to 1700. Nevertheless, there is reason to believe that there were real, existing deists, and even atheistic
sympathizers, especially among the aristocracy.65 The Earl of Rochester, Charles SaintEvremond, and his doctor, who was also Spinoza's confidant, Henri Morelli, were both
active participants in upper class society and deistic, or worse, in their religious out100ks. 66
Blount saw that the deism he was expounding needed political protection and that it
could, if publicly disseminated, bring about a more tolerant world by making people,
including the authorities, realize that no religious view was privileged and that none
deserved protection from intellectual questioning. The theory of deism could become the
basis for modem toleration, if the theory could be published. Censorship everywhere was
an inhibiting factor and led to disguised, disingenuous works, which covertly promulgated the deistic view.
Blount, in his blunt way, took on the British system of censoring publications through
licensing. Building on John Milton's arguments, Blount published both A Just Vindication of Learning, And the Liberty of the Press and Reasons humbly offered for the Liberty
of Unlicensed Printing67 shortly before he committed suicide. His last work, published
pseudonymously, showed how the system of licensing could be subverted. The work,
after being licensed and printed, was ordered - by the House of Commons - to be burned
by the common hangman,68 just as Toland's work was three years later. 69 But, because

POLYTHEISM. DEISM. AND NEWTON

35

Blount's work had been licensed, the licenser was dismissed in disgrace. This episode
became most important in the history of freedom of the press (and led to the end of the
Licensing Act).70
The justification for toleration was being pressed from several sides. John Locke,
Pierre Bayle, and the English Deists all had their arguments. One could say that Bayle's
argument was essentially negative and sceptical - nobody could be sure they knew the
truth about anything. 71 The deist view was positive - there was a natural and rationally
knowable basis for human belief and action in addition to a natural and rationally
knowable way for people to live good lives. This natural and rational knowledge was
being hidden and suppressed by censorship, by the benighted powers of the clergy, and
by their oppressive governmental allies. Mankind was being stifled by censorship and
intolerance and the potentially unlimited progress of the human spirit was being retarded.72
The end result of the Vossius-Cudworth-Newton taxonomic theory was to turn the
question of what constituted the original religion over to the historians and the question
of what constituted natural religion over to the philosophers, psychologists, and
sociologists. For these groups, if all extant religions are on the same level as human
expressions, then they can be examined on other standards. Are they equally beneficial to
human existence? Are they equally moral in terms of natural or rational morality? Are
they, as one of the last taxonomists, Boulanger claimed, reflections of man's horror of the
Flood and fear of its re-occurrence?73
Beginning with the writings of the English Deists, the Turkish Spy, the anonymous
work on the Three Impostors ,74 and the Bible criticism of Pierre Bayle, the religion of
the Old Testament - the actual practices of the Patriarchs and the other heroes of ancient
Israel - was re-evaluated in terms of rational human ethical values. It has been claimed
by the late Shmuel Ettinger of Hebrew University,7S and by Arthur Hertzberg of
Dartmouth,16 that modern anti-semitism began with this critique of the Biblical morality
of the early Hebrews.
Without arguing about whether they have a case, it is an interesting and important
development, especially as presented by Pierre Bayle in his Historical and Critical
Dictionary. Bayle set forth two shocking theses, first, that a society of atheists could be
more moral than a society of Christians and, second, that some of the leading figures of
the Old Testament often behaved highly immorally. His most famous example of the
latter was his article on the career of King David, though he exposed many others, such
as Abimelech, Ham, etc. 77
In making out a case for the first thesis, Bayle contended that the religious life was
based on faith. People, religious or otherwise, were motivated by custom, education, and
passion. Human beings, as observed historically, committed all sorts of immoral actions
whether they were believers or non-believers. In fact, as Bayle looked over ancient and
modem human history, Jews, Christians and infidels all appeared to behave immorally, at
least for part oftheir lives. 78
If religion does not cause moral behavior, then Bayle's claim about the possible
morality of a society of atheists becomes reasonable. Bayle used an enormous amount of
historical data to suggest that religion had not caused good behavior. His analysis of what
it meant to be a believer separated religion from morality. He then traced the data known
about the few public atheists from Diagoras to Spinoza and pointed out that nobody

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RICHARD H. POPKIN

accused them of immoral behavior. (When his Calvinist congregation in Rotterdam was
scandalized by this, Bayle asked, even begged, his readers to send in any information
they might have come across about the immoral activities of atheists. He promised to
print it in the next edition of the Dictionary.)79
If the discussion of the moral atheists shows that religion and morality operate in
different spheres, then the inspection of the conduct of Biblical figures should illustrate
this thesis. It is, of course, interesting that Bayle's analysis and inspection is carried on
about Old testament characters and post-New Testament Christian personages. Bayle's
omission of any discussion of the characters in the Gospels, or the Acts of the Apostles,
may reflect caution, or possibly his own peculiar Christian convictions (if he was a
Christian, rather than a deist or agnostic.)80 Bayle, for one reason or another, was not
about to plunge into a controversy similar to that now enveloping the film of
Kazantzakis' Last Temptation of Christ. But he was more than willing to give distinctly
perverse interpretations of the motivations of almost anyone in the Old Testament. At one
point in the notorious article, "David," after Bayle had shown David to be, among other
immoral things, an adulterer, a liar, and a murderer, Bayle stopped and insisted that he
was not making it up. He was just reading the Biblical text as if it was a secular chronicle
of how some people from years ago behaved. 81 And, on any ordinary moral standards
applied to historical conduct, one would have to say that David's behavior was bad, very,
very bad.
In the course of the Dictionary, sprinkled with articles on Biblical characters, sacred
and secular history became co-mingled and the same rational moral standards were
applied to each. Bayle may not have intended that his successors would make Biblical
moral behavior (or immoral behavior) worse that normal secular human behavior. But the
anti-semitism, e.g., in Diderot's early articles in the Encyclopidie, in Voltaire's Essai sur
les Moeurs, and in d'Holbach's L'Esprit du Judaisme,82 went far beyond anything
suggested by Bayle's examination of the Bible. Following Bayle, English Deists such as
Toland, Tindal, and Anthony Collins belabored Judaism and Christianity using Jewish
materials against Christianity and vice versa.
Demoting Judaism and Christianity to the level of man-made religions carried with it a
somewhat intolerant attitude towards the established Judaeo-Christian religious tradition
which was seen as intellectually and morally disreputable. In the actual political situation
in Europe before the American and French Revolutions, all of the sneering and scoffing
of the deists, of the Voltaires and the Humes, could not change the fact that Christian
churches were entrenched in England, France, and the British American colonies. But
they could change the degree to which these societies would act to protect the status and
privileges of the churches. The eroding effect of deist criticism was fairly slow. Witness
the troubles of deists in Germany in Kant's day.83 The new situation in the American
colonies and in France enabled the deistic agenda to move from theory to practice with
both tolerant and intolerant results.
Because there was no established church, because there were so many persecuted
religious groups, because Catholicism was the religion of only one per cent of the
population, and because there was no "Jewish problem," the deists in the American
colonies could move from criticizing traditional Christianity to setting up a deistically
oriented social framework in which no religion was favored or supported by the government. Due to the power of Millenarian groups,84 the deists also had to prevent the federal

POLYTHEISM, DEISM, AND NEWTON

37

government from being able to interfere in the activities or beliefs of religious groups (or
even being able to define what, in fact, constituted a religious group.) No matter how
intolerant a person such as Tom Paine may have wanted to be towards what he regarded
as superstitious religion, the Bill of Rights protected religious groups from the state and
the state from religious groups. And, by and large, this has worked, although sometimes
the state does interfere and sometimes religious groups are able to exert governmental
influence.
In the American case, it became clear in the first decade of the United States that
blasphemy could not be a crime. This has not, of course, eliminated censorship, but it has
eliminated religious censorship by the state. The deistic leadership in the early days of the
American government did not have to dethrone any religious establishments. But there
was enough friction to move the first director of the U.S. Mint, Elias Boudinot, a leading
fundamentalist, to resign his position when Thomas Jefferson was elected President and
to say that he could not serve in a deistic government. Part of the problem for Boudinot
was that he was convinced that the Second Coming was imminent and that it was his duty
to do what he could to prepare for this momentous event. But he had to do so as a private
citizen. He founded the American Bible Society and started a society for converting the
Jews in order to bring about the Second Coming while Jefferson's state carried on its
secular activities. 85
The fairly tolerant situation created across the Atlantic Ocean by deists stands in sharp
contrast to what happened in France at almost the same time. The French
Revolutionaries, deist and Millenarian, saw that one of the first problems to be dealt with
was to erode the power of the established Catholic Church. A Constitutional Church was
created, making the clergy civil servants. The attempt was made to eliminate the
entrenched symbols of religion including street names, names of holidays, days of the
week, and so on. As a more radical deist group gained power, a strong form of intolerance emerged in the form of government action to establish the "religion of Reason,"
government action to end the practice of traditional religions, and govemment action to
force the abjuration of traditional religion by its leaders, for example, the Archbishop of
Paris. 86 Tom Paine set up an actual deistic "church" in Paris to serve as an alternative to
the decadent, corrupt, existing ones. 87 As Paine and others pointed out, all religion was
false, superstitious, inhuman, and inhumane. The taxonomic study of the history of
religion had led not to an uncovering of any pure original religion, but to an understanding of the initial theological stupidities which had caused the tragic religious history of
the world up to the moment of liberation in France. 88 Condorcet could see it as the
progress of the human mind from ignorance and superstition to enlightened scientific
reasoning. 89 Only the latter could lead to the happy solution of human problems.
Consequently, there was no need to tolerate any of the superstitious and reactionary
forces of the past which were deflecting people away from the rational progress they had
made or could make.
The progress version of deism sought no wisdom from the past, only a sad lesson, the
short history of human stupidity, immorality, and cruelty. Hence, in this view, there was
no need to tolerate non-deistic views. As we know only too well, this intolerant form of
deism came to grief, first in 1794, and many times since.
The attempt to find a natural, universal, moral set of beliefs has played an important
role in developing some features of the modem world and has, in some cases, been a vital

38

RICHARD H. POPKIN

force for toleration. It grew out of the attempt to deal with polytheism in the 17th century.
In spite of the small numbers of adherents, the deistic outlook became very important in
Enlightenment thought and came to shape the remaking of society in the American
colonies and France. Without trying to be jingoistic about it, I think the American effort
has been more successful, or more beneficent, but this is in large measure due to the fact
that it did not have to deal with a huge amount of baggage from the past. The last two
hundred years has seen the ebb and flow of deistic thinking as it moves forward only to
be pushed back again by entrenched religious institutions and newly vigorous theologies
and ideologies. It still remains to be seen whether the deistic legacy is sufficient to
provide the basis for a wholly tolerant world.

Notes
1. See C. J. Betts, Early Deism in France. From the so-called 'deistes' ofLyon (1564) to Voltaire's
"Lettres philosophiques" (1734) (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1984), chaps. 1--6.
2. Uriel cia Costa, Exemplar Humanae Vitae, in Die Schriften des Uriel Da Costa, ed. Carl
Gebhardt (Amsterdam: Biblioteca Spinozana, 1922), Tom. II.
3. Richard H. Popkin,lsaac La Peyrere (1596-1676). His Life, Work and Influence (Leiden: E. J.
Brill, 1987). See also Paolo Rossi, The Dark Abyss of Time. The History of the Earth and the
History of Nations from Hooke to Vico, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1984).
4. Paul Sellin has termed Vossius' Poetical Institutions "the Last of the Renaissance Monsters"
and complained about how little attention is paid to Vossius' critical or philosophical works by
historians of ideas. See Sellin's paper, "The Last of the Renaissance Monsters; the Poetical
Institutions of Gerardus Joannis Vossius, and some Observations on English Criticism," in his
Anglo-Dutch Cross Currents in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Papers Read at a Clark
Library Seminar, May 10, 1975, by Paul R. Sellin and Stephen B. Baxter (Los Angeles: William
Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1976), p. 7.
5. Gerardus J. Vossius, De Philosophorum Sectis Libri 11 (The Hague, 1658.)
6. Hugh Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans. Seventeenth Century Essays (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 81.
7. C. S. M. Rademacher, Gerardus Joannes Vossius (Zwolle: Wej Tjeenk Willink, 1967), pp.
238-41.
8. See the title page and dedication of Vossius's De theologia gentili et physiologia Christiana;
sive de origine ac progressu idololatriae ad veterum gesta, ac rerum naturam, reductae; deque
naturae mirandis, quibus homo adducitur ad Deum (Amsterdami, 1641.)
9. Richard S. Westfall, "Isaac Newton's Theologiae Gentilis Origines Philosophicae," in Warren
Wagar, The Secular Mind: Essays Presented to Franklin L. Baumer (New York: Holmes & Meier,
1984), p. 22.
10. See Samuel Bochart, Geographia sacrae (Cadomi, 1646) and John Selden, De Diis Syriis
Syntagmata (London, 1617.)
11. Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans, pp. 97 and 145--6.
12. See Rademacher, The Life and Work of Gerardus Joannes Vossius (Assen: Van Gorcum,
1981), pp. 308-10. See also Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans, pp. 145--6 and 195.
13. See the statements by Gerard and Dionysius Vossius, quoted in Rademacher's work in Dutch,
Gerardus Joannes Vossius, pp. 212-13, and in Rademacher's work in English, The Life and Work
of Gerardus Joannes Vossius, pp. 264-65; See also Aaron L. Katchen, Christian Hebraists and
Dutch Rabbis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984), chap. iii.
14. See Yahucla MSS 16 and 17.
15. This manuscript is published as an appendix to this volume.
16. John Harrison, The Library of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978),

POLYTHEISM, DEISM, AND NEWTON

39

p.258.
17. Richard S. Westfall, "Isaac Newton's Theologiae Gentilis," pp. 15-34.
18. Ibid., p. 17.
19. Ibid., p. 22. The evidence which Westfall offers for his claim that Vossius is just another old
fashioned Christian apologist is two chapters from De theologia genti/i (Lib.!, chaps. 41-42) where
Vossius states that this is what he is doing. The chapters may well have been a cover-up because
Vossius had been under attack for his liberal views since before the Synod of Dordrecht in 1619
and because he was constantly being criticized, along with his friend, Hugo Grotius, for Arminian
views.
20. Westfall, "Isaac Newton's Theologiae gentilis," pp. 23-31.
21. This is what seems to be involved in the appeal they both make to pagans to accept simple
religious truths. See Popkin, ''The Crisis of Polytheism and the Answers of Vossius, Cudworth, and
Newton," supra.
22. Newton, Yahuda MS 41, f. 7. Vossius and Cudworth held roughly the same view, though
perhaps in different ways. The frame of nature provided the knowledge of divinity if one did not
have awareness or knowledge of revealed truth.
23. See Steven S. Schwartzchild's article, s.v. "Noachide Laws," in the Encylopedia Judaica, 16
vols. (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1972), 12:1189-90. According to Maimonides, the
righteous man of the gentile nations has a share in the world to come, even though he is a not a
Jew, if he keeps the Noachide Laws, which include a rejection of idolatry and a natural morality.
This is a traditional Jewish view and appears in a modem dress in Moses Mendelssohn's Jerusalem
where the principles of religion and morals - knowledge of the existence of God, of the immortality
of the soul, and of future rewards and punishments - are available to any enlightened person using
his or her natural reason. Living according to such knowledge suffices. In 1660, the Quaker,
Samuel Fisher, advances the thesis that knowledge of God's Word is accessible to those who lived
before there was any written Word, and to those who have no access to the written Word, if they
have the Spirit within them.
24. See Rademacher's intellectual biography of Vossius for the details of how he was hounded by
the Dutch Calvinist clergy because of his liberal Anninian views.
25. He received his posts of Master of Clare College and then Master of Christ's College,
Cambridge, under the Puritans and Cromwell. The latter appointed him to the commission to decide
whether or not to readmit the Jews into England and he was so appointed because he was a known
Millenarian at the time. During the Restoration, Cudworth was the first to signify his loyalty to
Charles II (in an official document now in the Cambridge University Library.) He was subsequently appointed Regius Professor of Hebrew.
26. We do not know why he delayed publication of the work or what became of the rest of it.
There are several large manuscripts by Cudworth in the British Library, but none relating to the
True Intellectual System, Part II.
27. Westfall, "Isaac Newton's Theologiae Gentilis," p. 16. Newton was not responsible for the
publication of the Chronology. See the account in Westfall, Never at Rest. A Biography of Isaac
Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 805-15.
28. On Newton's attempts to use astronomical observations to prove the antiquity of the Bible, see
Frank E. Manuel, Isaac Newton, Historian (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963),
pp.67ff.
29. See Popkin, "Newton as a Bible Scholar," infra.
30. There is an interesting unpublished paper by John Dury, the irenicist, in the Hartlib papers at
Sheffield University, on whether it is right to worship Jesus even though he was only a man. Dury
held that the answer was "yes," even on the Arian supposition that he was only a man.
31. See the correspondence between Herbert and Vossius in Gerardi Joannis Vossii et c1arorum
virorum ad eum epistolae, collectore Paolo Colomesio (London 1690), and in Mario Rossi, La
Vita, Ie opere, i tempi di Eduardo Herbert di Chirbury, 3 vols. (Firenze, 1947), Vol. III.
32. Vossius to Herbert, letter dated "Dec. 1644," in Rossi, La Vita, 3:238.
33. See the title page.
34. Henning Graf Reventlow, The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World, trans.
John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), pp. 189 and 522, note 44. Herbert's debt to

40

RICHARD H. POPKIN

Vossius appears in Herbert's De Re/igione Gentilium errorumque apud eos causis (Amsterdam,
1663.) In GUnther Gawlick's "Einleitung" to the facsimile reprint of the 1663 edition of this work
(Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1967), p. v, Gawlick states that Herbert's
main source of data about religions is "das grosse Werk des Humanisten Gerardus Ioarmis Vossius
(1577-1649): De Theologia Gentili."
35. This is the message of Herbert of Cherbury's De Religione Gentilium, which was first
published in English as The Ancient Religion of the Gentiles and Causes of their Errors Consider'd
(London 1705.)
36. See Ernest Campbell Mossner's article s.v. "Herbert of Cherbury," in The Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, 8 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1967),3:484-6.
37. It is surprising that there is no real scholarly biography of Blount.
38. See Ernest C. Mossner's article s. v. "Deism," in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2:328.
39. The work was published in London. No publisher or printer is named on the title page.
40. This was also published in London without the name of any publisher or printer.
41. Blount, Great is Diana of the Ephesians, or, The Original of Idolatry: Together with the
Politick Institutions of the Gentile Sacrifices (London, 1695), p. 3.
42. Published in Blount, Oracles of Reason (no place, 1695), p. 100, as a letter "For Mr. Hobbs, to
be left with Mr. Crook, a Bookseller, at the Sign of the Green Dragon without Temple-Bar, near St.
Clement's Church."
43. Ibid., pp. 97-105.
44. This was published in London in 1680.
45. This disclaimer is all-important in determining whether Hobbes was in some sense religious, or
even pro-religious, or whether he was undermining all religion and was, as some of his contemporaries suggested, an atheist.
46. It was published under the title Miracles No Violations of the Laws of Nature in 1683.
47. It was published, without the name of any author, publisher, or printer, under the title A
Treatise partly Theological, and partly Political, translated out of the Latin (London 1689.) It was
reprinted in 1739 without any changes. A copy of the 1739 edition was in Benjamin Franklin's
library and may have been used as a reference work at the time of the discussions at the American
Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia concerning the separation of church and the state and
freedom of thought.
48. The introduction makes no critical remarks about the content of the work which, by then, was
quite notorious. Instead the unprejudiced reader is urged to look at what is said and to reflect upon
it.
49. This work, consisting of sixteen pieces by Blount, Gildon, and others, was published in
London in 1693 without the name of any printer and was republished in Blount's Miscellaneous
Works in 1695.
50. The same material appears in a part of Thomas Burnet's Archaeologiae Philosophicae, which
was only published in complete form, with all the relevant text, in 1723. In the article s.v. "Burnet,
Thomas," in the Dictionary of National Biography, it is claimed that Gildon took the material from
Burnet. The first four sections of the Oracles of Reason, pp. 1-86, deal with Burnet's materials
about pre-Adami sm. The first item is Blount's defense of Burnet's views.
51. This work appeared over and over again from the late 17th century through the 18th century. A
list of editions is given in Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy, by Giovanni P. Marana, ed. Arthur I.
Weitzman (London: Routledge, 1970), p. 232; and C. I. Betts, Early Deism in France, chap. 7.
52. The Italian manuscript of the first sixty-three letters is in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Fonds
Italien 1006-1007. These have been published by G. Alamsi and D. A. Waner in Studi Secenteschi,
in issues appearing between 1968 and 1973.
53. See the lists of editions in the catalogues of the British Library, the Bibliotheque Nationale, and
the National Union Catalogue. UCLA has a microfilm copy of a Russian edition of 1778.
54. Weitzman, Turkish Spy, p. 232. The 1801 edition is called the thirty-fITst edition!
55. See Betts, Early Deism in France, chap. 7, and Weitzman, Turkish Spy, in the bibliography;
both discuss some possible authors.
56. Betts, Early Deism in France, chap. 7.
57. Turkish Spy, VoI.III, letter XIII, p. 253. (References are given to the London 1723 edition.

POLYTHEISM, DEISM, AND NEWTON

41

Most editions have the same text and pagination.)

58. See the discussion about this in Popkin, La Peyrere, pp. 128-30.
59. See Manuel, Isaac Newton, Historian, chaps. v-vi.
60. Turkish Spy, Vol. VI, letters III and IV, pp. 212-19. On this see Popkin, "A Gentile Attempt to
Convert the Jews to Reformed Judaism", in Israel and the Nations, Essays Presented in Honor of
Shmuel Ettinger, ed. S. Almog, et al. (Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel and the Zalmen Shazar
Center of Jewish History, 1987), pp. XXV-XLV. As I point out there, Daniel Defoe, in the
supplementary ninth volume of the Letters of a Turkish Spy, Continuation of Letters Written by a
Turkish Spy (London 1718), carried on this campaign.
61. John Toland, Christianity not Mysterious: Or, A Treatise Shewing That there is nothing in the
Gospel Contrary to Reason, Nor above it: And that no Christian Doctrine can be properly call'd A
Mystery (London, 1696.)
62. Matthew Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation: Or, The Gospel, A Republication of the
Religion of Nature (London, 1730.)
63. Edward Stillingfieet, Letter to a Deist, in Answer to several Objections against the Truth and
Authority of the Scriptures, (London, 1677.) As to what the point of all the polemics against deism
was, if there were only a couple of deists, see the provocative new work by David Berman, A
History of Atheism in Britain: From Hobbes to Russell (London: Croom Helm, 1988.)
65. See Berman, History ofAtheism, chaps. 1 and 2.
66. On Spinoza, Morelli, and Saint-Evremond, see R. H. Popkin, "Serendipity at the Clark:
Spinoza and the Prince of ComIe," The Clark Newsletter No. 10 (Spring, 1986), pp. 4-7.
67. See E.C. Mossner's article s.v. "Blount, Charles," The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1:325.
68. Ibid.
69. See Mossner's article s.v. ''Toland, John," The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 8:141.
70. Mossner, article s. v. "Blount," in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1:325.
71. On Bayle, see Elisabeth Labrousse, Pierre Bayle, Vol. I, Du Pays de Foix a la cite d' Erasme
(The Hague: Nijhoff, 1963), and Vol. II, Heterodie et Rigorisme, (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1964), and
Labrousse, Bayle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.) See also Richard H. Popkin, article s.v.
"Bayle, Pierre," in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1:257-62, and "Introduction," in Pierre Bayle:
Historical and Critical Dictionary Selections, (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965.) Finally, see
Harry M. Bracken, "Bayle Not a Sceptic?," Journal of the History of Ideas 25, No.2 (April-June,
1964), pp. 169-80, and "Toleration Theories: Bayle, Jurieu, Locke," in Mind and Language
(Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1983), chap. 5.
72. Mossner, article s.v. "Deism," The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2:334-5.
73. On Boulanger's theory, published just before the French Revolution by Baron d'Holbach, see
Paul Sadrin, Nicolas-Antoine Boulanger (1722-1759), ou avant nous Ie deluge (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1986.)
74. On this work, see Silvia Berti, '''La Vie et L'Esprit de Spinosa' (1719) e la prima traduzione
francese dell 'Ethica'," in Rivista Storica Italiana XCVIII (1986), pp. 7-46. See also Richard H.
Popkin, "Spinoza and Les Trois Imposteurs," Proceedings of the International Symposium on
Spinoza, Chicago, 1987, ed. E. M. Curley (forthcoming, E. 1. Brill); and Bertram Eugene
Schwarzbach and A. W. Fairbairn, "Sur les Rapports entre les editions du'Traite des Trois
Imposteurs' et la tradition manuscrite de cet ouvrage," in Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres II
(1988), pp. 111-36.
75. In his "Jews and Judaism as seen by the English Deists of the 18th Century," [in Hebrew] in
Zion XXIX (1964), pp. 182-207.
76. Arthur Hertzberg, The French Enlightenment and the Jews (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1968.)
77. On this see E. Labrousse, Bayle; Popkin, article s.v "Bayle, Pierre," in The Encyclopedia of
Philosophy; and Walter E. Rex, Essays on Pierre Bayle and Religious Controversy (The Hague:
Nijhoff, 1965.)
78. Popkin," Introduction," in Bayle: Historical and Critical Dictionary Selections.
79. See the "clarification" on atheism in the last volume of the Dictionnaire. Much of this is
included in Popkin, Bayle: Historical and Critical Dictionary Selections, pp. 399-408.
80. The last note Bayle wrote just before his death said, "je meurs en Philosophe Chretien,

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RICHARD H. POPKIN

persuade et penetre des bontes et de la misericorde de Dieu et vous souhaite un bonheur parfaite."
On what this could have meant, see E. Labrousse, Pierre Bayle, 2nd ed. (Dordrecht: Nijhoff, 1985),
pp. 269-71. See also Popkin's suspicions in his "Introduction" to Bayle: Historical and Critical
Dictionary Selections.
81. See Bayle's article s.v. "David" in the Dictionnaire.
82. See Diderot's various articles on the history of Judaism; Voltaire's Essai sur les Moeurs; and
d'Holbach's L' Esprit du Judaisme. The last work is so bad that it is still being reprinted by antisemitic societies in the Ukraine. Diderot modified his views in later life. See Leon Schwartz,
Diderot and the Jews (Rutherford, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1981.)
83. See the article by Paul Edwards s.v. "Atheismusstreit," in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
1:189-92.
84. On this see Ruth Bloch, Visionary Republic: Millennial Themes in American Thought
1756-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.)
85. On Boudinot, see Richard H.Popkin, "The Age of Reason versus The Age of Revelation. Two
Critics of Tom Paine: David Levi and Elias Boudinot," in J. A. Leo Lemay, editor, Deism,
Masonry, and the Enlightenment. Essays honoring Alfred Owen Aldridge (Newark: University of
Delaware Press, 1987), pp. 158-70.
86. See Henri Gregoire, "Discours preliminaire," in Histoire des sectes religieuses (paris, 1814),
Tom. I; R. H. Popkin, "An Aspect of the Problem of Religious Freedom in the French and
American Revolutions," Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association:
Freedom, Vol. L, (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1976), pp. 146-61.
87. For a detailed account of Paine's church of "Theophilantropie," see Gregoire, Histoire, Tom.
II.
88. This is the thesis throughout Tom Paine's The Age of Reason.
89. See Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, Equisse d'un Tableau
historique des progres de /' esprit humain, ed. Alain Pons (paris: Fiammarion, 1988.)

JAMES E. FORCE

4. THE NEWTONIANS AND DEISM

I. Deism, Atheism, and the Growing Polarity Between

Natural and Revealed Religion in the Early 18th Century
"Deism," from the Latin deus, denotes belief in some form of deity. As with
"latitudinarianism," the term "deism" resolutely resists definitions both now and when it
is first used. In England in the 17th and 18th centuries, the term applies to a range of
people from un-Christian theists to anti-Christian theists. Paradoxically, many, if not all,
18th-century crusaders on behalf of the Christian revelation simply equate it with atheism
despite its etymology.
Thus, Joseph Trapp (1679-1747), the first professor of poetry at Oxford and an ardent
high church Tory, writes:
But soft - We stand arrested in our Course: Objections here, of mighty Weight, and
Force, Against these suppositions, fancy'd Things, The bloated, or the meagre, Atheist
brings. ATHEIST I stile him; for He's much the Same, Tho' chusing DEIST'S
somewhat milder Name. Speak then, dull Infidel, thy inmost Thought: Death's
Nought, thou say'st, and after Death is Nought; future State, vile Priestcraft's bugbear
Theme, And all Reveal'd Religion is a Dream. I
Daniel Waterland (1683-1740), Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and Regius
Professor of Divinity writes that "What Atheism chiefly aims at is, to sit loose from
present Restraints and future Reckonings; and these two Purposes may be competently
served by Deism, which is a more refined kind of Atheism." The deist, Peter Annet,
quotes Waterland and dismisses his equation of atheism with deism as "not only groundless, but apparently stupid and ridiculous."2 Despite Annet's denial of Waterland's
charge of atheism, the tactic of equating atheists with deists persists throughout the early
18th century.
At the same time that defenders of Christianity are loudly identifying deists as atheists,
they are also stoutly arguing that it is genuinely impossible to be an atheist in the light of
modern advances in knowledge. They argue that there are no genuine deists in their
modern era who are not atheists and, furthermore, that there cannot possibly be any real
atheists save for those with a perverse and libertine spirit. In the Preface to his Boyle
Lectures for 1697, Francis Gastrell acknowledges that:
There are few, if any, that can properly be called Atheists, because the generality at
least of those who are commonly thought to deserve that Name do profess to believe a
43

44

JAMES E. FORCE

God of all those Attributes I have ascribed to him, and to acknowledge that Men are
under some Obligations of Religion; but, if we examine all their Principles together
and consider the necessary Consequences of them, they are by Title and Profession
only distinguish'd from Atheists, and not by any real Difference in their Faith: For the
Religion of these Men is nothing else but a few honest Principles relating to Justice,
Friendship, and Society, which are wholly owing to their Complexion or Education,
and not to their Belief of a God; and the practical Influence even of these commonly
reaches no farther than that particular Set of Men whose Company or Interests they are
most ingaged in, and is intirely bounded and regulated by their present Ease, Advantage, or Reputation, and not by any Future Prospects in another Life; and those of
them who seem to allow some future State, when they come to explain themselves,
make it such a one as Men need have very little regard for in this. 3
Gastrell's destruction of any meaningful distinction between deism and atheism is
possible only in a society where the possibility of serious speculative atheism, for
whatever reason, simply cannot be taken seriously.4 Gastrell's general view of the
identity between deism and atheism accords well with the taxonomy of the varieties of
deism which Samuel Clarke provides in his Boyle Lectures for 1705. Clarke distinguishes four classes of deist.
For members of the first class, God is "an Etemal, Infinite, Independent, Intelligent
Being" who "made the World" but "does not at all concern himself in the government of
the World, nor has any regard to, or care of, what is done therein."5 The second sort of
deist believes in a Supreme Being and in the attribute of divine providence but restricts
the operation of God's providential "Power" to the sphere of "every natural thing that is
done in the world." Consequently, for deists in the second class, God "takes no notice of
the morally good or evil Actions of Men; these things depending, as they imagine, merely
on the arbitrary constitution of Humane Laws."6
Clarke defines deists of the third category as those who believe in a deity of total
dominion whose all-powerful providential government of the world extends into both the
natural and moral realms which he rules in accord with his infinite attributes of justice,
truth, and goodness. Deists of this third sort go on to deny any future state for mankind,
however. 7
Those in Clarke's fourth deistic category have all the right theories about the nature
and attributes of God. Such deists believe that God is "One, Eternal, Infinite, Intelligent,
All-Powerful, and Wise"; that God is a "Being of infinite Justice, Goodness, and Truth,
and all other moral as well as natural perfections"; that God made the world "for the
manifestation of his Power and Wisdom, and to communicate his Goodness and Happiness to his Creatures"; that God preserves the world by his "continual All-Wise
Providence, and governs it according to the eternal Rules of Infinite Justice, Equity,
Goodness, Mercy and Truth"; and that man has moral duties and obligations on which
turn his reward or punishment in a future state. 8 In Clarke's view, this fourth category of
deism (when it is sincerely maintained) is the only one which does not ultimately reduce
to atheism. The only difference between deists in this fourth category and Christian
theists such as Clarke is an epistemological one. These deists, states Clarke, "pretend to
believe only so far, as it is discoverable by the Light of Nature alone; without believing
any Divine Revelation."9 Deists who hold these views about the nature and attributes of

THE NEWTONIANS AND DEISM

45

God solely on the basis of rational inquiry and analysis (rather than on the basis of
scriptural authority or a combination of the two) and who live according to them, are
"very close to the Kingdom of God" and worth engaging in dialogue "in order to
convince them of the Reasonableness, Truth, and Certainty of the Christian Revelation."IO
Alas, writes Clarke, "there are very few or none such Deists as These, among our
modem Deniers of Revelation."ll Rather, in Clarke's opinion, most professed deists
obstinately and wrongheadedly reject all the weighty evidence in favor of "pure and
uncorrupt Christianity"12 even "when proposed to him in its original and genuine
Simplicity, without the mixture of any corruptions or inventions of Men."13 Clarke, who
seems genuinely sad that there are no sincere deists of the fourth category around in his
day with whom to argue, notes that most deists of his era are in fact simply atheists with a
mean streak:
But alas, their Trivial and vain Cavils, their bantering and ridiculing, without and
before examination; their directing the whole stress of their Objections, against
particular Customs, or particular and perhaps uncertain Opinions or Explications of
Opinions, without at all considering the main Body of Religion; their loose, vain, and
frothy Discourses; and above all, their vitious and immoral Lives; show plainly and
undeniably, that they are not really Deists, but mere Atheists, and consequently not
capable to judge of the Truth of Christianity. If they were truly and in earnest such
Deists as they pretend and would sometimes be thought to be; those Principles ...
would unavoidably lead them to Christianity.I 4
The negative element of deism, especially its mockery of Christianity, according to
Clarke, had come to overshadow any positive, systematic deistic theory about the nature
and attributes of God such as that maintained by deists of the fourth kind, none of whom
any longer existed.
William Whiston completely agrees with Clarke's analysis of the psychological
temperament of early 18th-century deists and goes on to emphasize the tremendous
influence of the Newtonian design argument among the deists of his day, who act as if
that one argument is the complete basis for a fully rational religion. Such is the perceived
strength of the design argument in the first decades of the 18th century that Whiston can
argue that it is impossible to be a true atheist, given all the elements in the Newtonian
system supporting an inference to a divine architect. Atheism is impossible. Deism
becomes a possibility but only for those whose temperaments lead them to ignore the rest
of the rational evidence derived from comparing the book of nature with the book of
scripture (and, ultimately, with the profane histories of ancient pagans):
... as to Deism, or the Denial of the Scriptures, and of Divine Revelation, it is really III
Mens last Refuge, and taken up of late, not by honest Enquirers, impartially searching
after Truth and discovering upon Evidence, that all Revealed Religion is false; but that
it is chiefly fallen into of late, by some Irreligious Persons, in the Distress of their
Affairs, and upon that surprizing and overbearing Light, which Sir Isaac Newton's
wonderful discoveries have afforded; whereby they have perceived that Natural
Religion, with its Foundations, were now become too certain to bear any farther
Opposition. That this is true, I appeal to a certain Club of Persons, not over-religiously

46

JAMES E. FORCE

dispos'd, who being soberly asked, after Dr. Bentley's remarkable Sermons at Mr.
Boyle's Lectures, built upon Sir Isaac Newton's Discoveries, and level'd against the
prevailing Atheism of the Age, What they had to say in their own Vindication against
the Evidence produc'd by Dr. Bentley? The Answer was, That truly they did not well
know what to say against it, upon the Head of Atheism: But what, say they, is this to
the fable of Jesus Christ? And in Confirmation of this Account, it may, I believe, be
justly observ'd, the present gross Deism, or the Opposition that has oflate so evidently
and barefacedly appear'd against Divine Revelation, and the Holy scriptures, has taken
its Date in some Measure from that time. IS
The "present gross Deism" of Whiston's and Clarke's day is, simply, the "Denial of the
Scriptures, and Divine Revelation," the result, in their opinion, of a spirit of negative
libertinism rather than the result of the rational comparison of all the texts now available
by "honest Enquirers" such as Whiston and Clarke. The force of Clarke's and Whiston's
remarks on deism is to underscore that there is a difference between the deism of their
day, which is "Ill Mens last refuge," and the deism of an earlier unspecified historical
epoch when genuine Category Four deists sincerely held the correct metaphysical views
about God on the basis of a rational, naturalistic epistemology. By the middle of the 18th
century, John Leland underscores this negative, anti-scriptural aspect of modern deism
and writes that however the modem day deists have changed the particulars of their
attack on Christianity and whatever "disguises and appearances they have put on," the
deists have a simple epistemological goal:

viz. to set aside revelation, and to substitute mere natural religion, or, which seems to
have been the intention of some of them, no religion at all, in its room. 16
The deistic controversy in England, then, comes to assume a basic epistemological
polarity between natural and revealed religion. On one side, there are the deists who favor
reason and rational, natural religion and whose aim is "to set aside revealed religion." On
the other, there are theistic writers, such as "the English Mystic," William Law, who
favor literal revealed religion as the one sure guide to knowledge of God. In between
these poles range a variety of theological positions which are all devoted to synthesizing
these two epistemologies of religious knowledge. It is in this middle ground that we find
the Newtonians, William Whiston and Samuel Clarke.

ll. Working the Middle Ground Between Natural and

Revealed Religion: Whiston and Clarke
William Whiston, Newton's successor in the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics and a
notable opponent of the deists, begins his rise to prominence in 1696 with the publication
of his first book, A New Theory of the Earth. In this work, Whiston illustrates how the
history of the earth, as depicted in the first chapters of Genesis, is simply a vulgarized
account of real natural forces which shape the earth out of the initial chaos of a cometary
seedling and which then proceed to operate through successive transformations (most
notably the cataclysmic deluge caused by the close approach of yet another comet) until
the evolution of our present planet.

THE NEWTONIANS AND DEISM

47

Whiston's speculations on terrestrial and extra-terrestrial forces in creation place him

squarely into the late 17th-century "world-making" tradition. But his introduction to this
book makes it something much more radical than speculative geology. At the core of
Whiston's New Theory is a self-conscious attempt to describe a method of inquiry fully
cognizant of the relationship between the literal description of earth history found in the
Bible, which Whiston agrees must be taken fully into account, and purely naturalistic
explanations for the history of the earth proposed by such contemporaries of Whiston as
Thomas Burnet, whose earlier "world-making" work entitled the Sacred Theory of the
Earth, essentially aims to "set aside" the Biblical account as a mere fable and to replace it
completely with a series of entirely mechanical causes and effects. For Whiston, neither
the unimaginative literalism of the ardently religious nor the dismissive deism of Burnet
does justice to scripture or to the nature of God. Whiston urges a "third way" between
these two "Erroneous Extremes" when he writes that:
'Tis hard to say whether those dishonour God most who embrace Doctrines, suppos'd
deducible from Scripture, tho' plainly absurd and unreasonable in themselves; or those
who venture to deny or at least wrest and prevaricate with the obvious meaning of
such Texts whence those Doctrines us'd to be infer'd. Both these methods of procedure are bold and dangerous; Effects of our own Pride, and too high an opinion of our
proper apprehensions and abilities, and of sad consequence to our selves, to others,
and to Divine Revelation. There is a third or middle way, which, tho' an instance of
real self-denial, we both may and ought to take.J7

II. A. Whiston's "Third Way": Comparing the Divine Volumes

of Scripture and Nature to Historical Tradition
Fully to understand scripture and nature, according to Whiston, one must be as learned in
the "true and demonstrable Principles of [natural] Philosophy" as one is in the "History of
Nature." Science is combined with historical interpretation of scripture to counteract the
scoffing ridicule of a deist such as Charles Blount who echoes the more deistic strains in
Thomas Burnet. Whiston urges that genuinely wise men, i.e., Newtonian scientists who
are also Biblical critics, ought to
set themselves carefully to compare Nature with Scripture, and make a free Enquiry
into the certain Phaenomena of the one, and the genuine Sense of the other; which if
Expositors would do, 'twere not hard to demonstrate in several such cases, that the
latter is so far from opposing the truths deducible from the former ... that 'tis in the
greatest harmony therewith .... 18
Whiston's chief concern in comparing the two divinely authored volumes of scripture and
nature is to interpret the Biblical account of a natural phenomenon in a fashion which
"shall at once keep sufficiently close to the Letter of Moses, and yet be far from allowing
what contradicts Divine Wisdom, Common Reason, or Philosophick Deduction."19
While Moses' description of the phenomena of the first six days of creation or of the
Noachian deluge is not a "Nice and Philosophical account of the Origin of All
Things,"20 neither is it, as the Deists insist, "a meer Popular, Parabolick, or Mythological
relation."21

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JAMES E. FORCE

Though Whiston and Newton have their differences over the interpretations of
particular Biblical prophecies - one sore point is their split over the prophecy of the
seventy weeks in Daniel - there is no evidence that they ever differ on the crucial
question of the ultimate harmony between at least some parts of scripture, natural history,
and future events. The Bible, in large part, is, for both of them, a document capable of
rational, scientific exegetical comparison with other sources of evidence such as the book
of nature.
In his Astronomical Principles of Religion, Natural and Reveal'd (1717), an extraordinary work dedicated "To the illustrious Sir Isaac Newton, President, and to the Rest of
the Council and Members of the Royal Society," Whiston drives home his Newtonian
conception of the relationship between the book of nature and the book of scriptural
revelation:
Since it has now pleased God, as we have seen, to discover many noble and important
Truths to us, by the Light of nature, and the Systems of the World; as also, he has long
discovered many more noble and important Truths by Revelation, in the Sacred
Books; It cannot be now improper, to compare these two Divine Volumes, as I may
well call them, together; in such Cases, I mean, of Revelation, as relate to the Natural
World, and wherein we may be assisted the better to judge, by the knowledge of the
System of the Universe about us. For if those things contained in Scripture be true,
and really deriv'd from the Author of Nature, we shall find them, in proper Cases,
confirm'd by the System of the World; and the Frame of Nature will in some Degree,
bear Witness to the Revelation. 22
Such obscure texts as the history of the transformations of the earth recorded in prophetic
history are, in Whiston's view, perfectly reconcilable with "(not ingenious and precarious
Hypotheses, but) true and demonstrable principles of philosophy ... ."23 If only critics
would follow this procedure, Whiston claims that it
would more contribute to the recovery of the Ancient Honour, and due Esteem of the
Sacred Scriptures, than all the most Zealous and general Harangues from some
popular topicks, either for them or against their contemners, the loose Deists and
pretended Socinians of this Age. 24
In his New Theory, Whiston shows how the divine volume of Genesis is perfectly
reconcilable with, and supported by, the best Newtonian understanding of the divine
volume of nature. Genesis 1:2 literally describes a comet without form or void, a
veritable chaos of particulate matter. Each facet of the creation story in Genesis refers to
a change in state in the cometary atmosphere, as its particles settle out in accordance with
their specific gravities, or as it shifts in its orbit around the sun. From this "creation,"
through Noah's flood (the effect of the close approach of another comet), to the inevitable final dissolution of this earth as predicted in unfulfilled prophecies about the
future course of natural history, Whiston believes that the divine volume of nature has
confirmed, or will confirm, the divine volume of scripture.
Not accidentally, it is part of Whiston's approach to comparing the two volumes
which leads him to place such importance on the design argument, which he does not
view as a separate argument of purely rational, natural religion after the fashion of the
deists, but rather as a part of the way of comparison that is the essence of the "third way."

THE NEWTONIANS AND DEISM

49

Just as Newton in the "General Scholium," so, too, Whiston, in his Astronomical
Principles of Religion, Natural and Reveal'd, argues that the whole Newtonian frame of
nature exhibits systematic order and design which implies a divine architect which both
Newton and Whiston identify as the God of dominion depicted in the other divine volume
authored by God, the Bible.
While Whiston acknowledges the higher degree of certainty obtainable in natural
philosophy, comparing it to revelation produces no tension, paradox, or warfare, so
implicit is his faith in the ultimate rationality of scripture and in the ability of human
reason to understand large portions of it by comparing it with nature and history. As with
a trial lawyer seeking to establish the credibility of a witness, Whiston utilizes the many
instances of "plain agreement" of nature and properly understood scripture to establish
the overall reliability of revelation regarding those prophecies which are, as yet, unfulfilled. Whiston writes that
If I am once fully satisfy'd that a Witness is Upright and Honest, even in several

Points where there was the greatest Suspicion to his Sincerity, he will deserve the
better Credit in other Cases ....25
Thus, Whiston regards the prophecies of the second coming of the Messiah and of the
final earthly conflagration as inherently believable. The vast number of prophecies which
Whiston's historical and scientific scholarship had shown to be congruent with the true
principles of Newtonian natural philosophy and ancient history, as well as the hundreds
of examples Whiston adduces of God's specially provident fulfillment of promises made
to his prophets and revealed by them in scripture, constitute more than adequate
"preludes and pledges"26 that these future events will happen as predicted and that we
will then understand how they fit into God's providential framework.
Still, Whiston recognizes that the "third way" is limited by the finite grasp of human
understanding. Whiston writes that:
Our understandings are finite, our Capacities small, our sphere of Knowledge not
great. We depend on God Almighty as to what we know, as well as what we have, or
what we are. Tis possible it may not yet be the proper season for unravelling the
Mystery, and so the requisite helps not yet afforded: our own unskillfulness or
prejudices; some false Notions or precarious Hypotheses we have embrac'd; our
misunderstanding the nature of the Scripture Stile; a mistake of a Copy; the ignorance
of the Various Stages and Periods of the World to which the particulars belong; with
many other such circumstances, may justly be supposed the occasions of our difficulties, without calling in question either the truth of our humane Faculties, the
Attributes of God, the Phaenomeno of Nature, or the genuine sense of the Holy
Scriptures. And truly were I asked in such a case how I could satisfie my self or
resolve this point; I could not more properly answer than by alluding to the Jewish
Proverb ... Cum Messias venerit Solvet Nodum.27

II. B. Comparing the Divine Volumes o/Nature and Scripture

with Other Theistic Traditions
A final, but most important, aspect of Whiston's "third way" is the manner in which he

50

JAMES E. FORCE

uses it to connect the Christian revelation with non-Judaeo-Christian religious traditions

as well as with Newtonian natural philosophy. Whiston recognizes that the various pagan
religions of the classical world have in fact contained bits and pieces of religious truth,
especially those portions derivable by natural reason operating alone, unaided by such
outside "requisite helps" as that provided either by Judaeo-Christian scripture or by
Newtonian natural philosophy. To extract that partial truth embedded in such pagan
traditions, the texts from such traditions must be carefully compared with the two divine
volumes of natural philosophy and revealed Judaeo-Christian scripture. The comparison
must be a careful one and must proceed on the following assumption:
What Ancient Tradition asserts of the constitution of Nature, or the Origin and
Primitive States of the World, is to be allow'd for True, where 'tis fully agreeable to
Scripture, Reason, and Philosophy.28
Just as Newtonian natural philosophy becomes the criterion by which to judge Christian
scripture, both Newtonian natural philosophy and Christian scripture together become the
criterion by which to judge of the truth and validity of "Ancient Tradition." Proceeding
on this basis, there is no reason to suppose an automatic conflict between these ancient,
pagan religious traditions and Christianity. All these traditions contain some parts which
remain in accord with the standard of both Newtonian natural philosophy and Christian
revelation properly interpreted. With regard to those "Natural and Divine Doctrines" in
other ancient religious traditions which precede the Judaeo-Christian religious tradition,
Whiston writes that such doctrines are
received by Tradition from their first Founders, and which most probably were
originally deriv'd from the first Parents of Mankind, or at least from the earliest of
their Progenitors after the Deluge. Those I mean whose Traces and Fragments are still
extant in the earliest Sacred Books of the Egyptians, Druids, Tyrians, and Zoroastres,
&c. and in the Sybilline Oracles; those Parts, I mean, of them which are well attested
to by Heathen, Jewish, and Christian Antiquity. These most ancient Traditions, as has
been largely and fully shewn by Grotius, Bishop Stillingf/eet, and many others, do for
the main, admirably agree with the Jewish and Christian Revelations, not only as to
the particular Histories and Facts contained in the Old Testament ... but as to the
principal Points on which those Religions are grounded; I mean, the Unity and
Attributes of God; the Creation of the World by him; its Deluge already past, and
Conflagration still future; the Immortality of the Human Soul; and the Judgement to
come; with the Rewards and Punishments of the Next World. 29
Samuel Clarke's 1705 Boyle Lectures, where he taxonomizes the four categories of
deists, are instructive at this point. In Clarke's view, it will be recalled, only the fourth
category of deists - those deists who believe in all the "correct" attributes of God on the
basis of natural reason only and who consequently, and most importantly, reject utterly
the Judaeo-Christian revelatory scriptures - are serious enough to engage in fruitful
dialogue. The other three types of deists are simply atheists in disguise and, hence, of too
"loose and cavilling" a disposition to take seriously. But, since the revelation of Christianity, especially "in its original and genuine simplicity," and since the wonderful
discoveries of Newton about the fabric of nature, it is no longer possible to be a consistent deist of the fourth sort. Such deism is a real possibility only prior to the Judaeo-

TIlE NEWTONIANS AND DEISM

51

Christian revelation. True deists of Clarke's fourth sort existed long ago prior to IudaeoChristian revelation, especially given the new supporting evidence of Newton's natural
philosophy. Clarke writes that:
The Heathen Philosophers, those few of them, who taught and lived up to the
Obligations of natural Religion, had indeed a consistent Scheme of Deism, so far as it
went; and they were very Brave and Wise Men, if any of them could keep steddy and
finn to it. But the Case is not so Now. The same Scheme of Deism is not any longer
consistent to its own Principles, if it does not Now lead Men to embrace and believe
Revelation, as it Then taught them to hope for it. Deists, in our Days, who obstinately
reject Revelation when offered to them are not such Men as Socrates and Tully were;
but under pretense of Deism, 'tis plain they are generally Ridiculers of all that is truly
excellent even in natural Religion. 30
As with Whiston, so, too, with Clarke, the rational arguments which demonstrate the true
nature of God's attributes to ancient pagans outside the Iudaeo-Christian tradition are so
perfectly isomorphic with what is revealed on these points in Iudaeo-Christian revelation,
especially as interpreted in the light of Newtonian natural philosophy, that they, too, have
a role in explaining the ways of God to man.
Clarke's 1705 Boyle Lectures on the "Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion
and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation" aim, in part, to illustrate just this
point. Both Whiston and Clarke maintain that human reason is finally weak and truncated
when it operates alone, as in pagan times, independently of such "requisite helps" as the
books of nature and scripture. 31
Both Whiston and Clarke make extensive use of the best comparative religious
scholarship of their era - e.g., Grotius, Stillingfleet, Vossius, and Cudworth - to illustrate
that many particulars contained in the testimonies of religious writers from outside the
Iudaeo-Christian tradition are "fully agreeable to Scripture, Reason, and Philosophy."
For Whiston and Clarke, the world consists of various texts, all written by God and all
capable of providing clues regarding the nature of God and the course of human and
natural history, past and future. Ancient religious testimonies stand next to the testimony
of Newton's newly deciphered text of nature and to Christian revelation interpreted in the
light of Newtonian natural philosophy as yet another "requisite help" to enable man, in so
far as he is capable, to understand God and nature. Whiston and Clarke (and Newton)
devour the testimonies of ancient pagans especially as compiled in the such humanistic
compendia of ancient religions as Cudworth's, True Intellectual System of the Universe,
Stillingfleet's Origines Sacrae, Bochart's Sacred Origins of Gentile Theology, Grotius'
Of the Truth of the Christian Religion, and Vossius' Of Idolatry. 32
It is interesting to note in passing Clarke's rationale for ignoring the scholastic writers
of the Middle Ages who had written extensively on the distinction between a "natural"
knowledge of God and a "revealed" knowledge of God. Clarke notes the deficiencies of
the Medieval writers in textual interpretation, the result of their basically a priori
approach to the texts instead of the comparative, empirical approach encapsulated in
Whiston's "third way." Clarke writes that:
It is not to be denied but the Schoolmen, who abounded in Wit and Leisure, though
very few among them had either exact Skill in the Holy Scriptures, or in Ecclesiastical

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JAMES E. FORCE

Antiquity and the Writings of the antient Fathers of the Christian Church: I say, it
cannot be denied but that these speculative and very acute Men, who wrought a great
part of their Divinity out of their own Brains, as Spiders do Cobwebs out of their
Bowels, have started a thousand Subtilties about this Mystery [the Trinity], such as no
Christian is bound to trouble his Head withal. 33
In Clarke and Whiston we have paradigmatic examples of the attempt to knit reason and
revelation, natural and revealed religion, together through a comparison of historical
texts, some pagan, some Biblical, and some based on the new Newtonian understanding
of the book of nature and which accordingly differ in the manner and clarity of our
human understanding of them but which are by the same divine Author and contain - in
varying degrees of completeness - the same divine truths. The work of such encyclopediasts of ancient religious traditions as, for example, Cudworth and Vossius,
becomes central for Whiston and Clarke who utilize and frequently quote from the works
of these and other authors in this tradition. Cudworth and Vossius especially become
important secondary sources of information about these ancient pagan religious traditions
for these Newtonians to utilize in their own work in comparative religion.
Latter day humanist encyclopediasts such as Cudworth and Vossius compile the raw
scholarly data about the various doctrines and beliefs of ancient pagans and become, in
their turn, the sources for popularizing encylopediasts such as Ephraim Chambers, who
acknowledges his debt, in this case, to Voss ius, Selden, Godwyn, and Tennison:
Several have written of the origin and causes of Idolatry; among the rest, Vossius,
Selden, Godwyn, and Tennison; but it is still a doubt who was the first author of it. It
is generally allowed, however, that it had not its beginnings till after the deluge, and
many are of opinion that Belus, who is supposed to be the same with Nimrod, was the
first man that was deified. 34
What makes Clarke's analysis of deism so intriguing is his insistence that the only
"consistent" deist is one in his fourth category (Le., one who believes in all the "correct"
divine attributes on the basis of natural reason alone) and his utilization of the encyclopediasts such as Cudworth, Vossius, Bochart, Grotius, and Stillingfleet to identify
those ancient theologians who had grasped at least part of the truth about the divine
nature in advance of the Iudaeo-Christian revelation. But, insists Clarke, since the
Iudaeo-Christian revelation and its further clarification and support by the discoveries of
Newton, such deists can no longer exist in their pure, unalloyed state. Since that revelation, reasonable theists compare scripture, nature, and the testimonies of the ancient
religious traditions (as compiled by humanistic antiquarians such as Vossius) in order to
come to the complete truth about the nature of God. By utilizing all the texts now
available - especially the book of nature, but also the Bible and pagan sources - errors
and corruptions which have crept into religion over the centuries may be, in large part,
though never perhaps completely, identified and eradicated. This method has resulted in a
basically purified Christianity and it requires a truly perverse nature to ignore all the
evidence in favor of just one part as do modern deists who rely solely on the design
argument and who reject all the evidence derived from the comparisons of the "third
way." It is their method which characterizes the religious tradition to which Whiston and
Clarke belong. Newton, I will argue, also fits into this Renaissance humanist tradition of

THE NEWTONIANS AND DEISM

53

comparative religion. Is this method and this tradition itself, in any sense, deistic, and is
Newton himself, if he really does belong to this tradition, in any sense, a deist?

HI. Sir Isaac Newton and Deism

Newton has often been identified as a deist. In Newton's time, and echoing the text of
Whiston above (citation 15), the high-church, non-juring bishop, George Hickes, writes
to his fellow high-churchman, the layman, Roger North. Hickes writes that "It is their
Newtonian philosophy weh hath Made Not onely so many Arians but Theists, and that
Not onely among ye laity but I fear among our devines."35 In the 19th century, William
Blake seems to have put Newton into the deistic camp.36 Scholars in the 20th-century
have often continued to view Newton as a deist. Gerald R. Cragg views Newton as a kind
of proto-deist and, as evidence, points to Newton's belief in a true, original, monotheistic
religion first discovered in ancient times by natural reason. This position, in Cragg's
view, leads to the elimination of the Christian revelation as neither necessary nor
sufficient for human knowledge of God. This agenda is indeed the key point, as Leland
describes above, of the deistic program which seeks to "set aside" revelatory religious
texts. Cragg writes that, "In effect, Newton ignored the claims of revelation and pointed
in a direction which many eighteenth-century thinkers would willingly follow.'037 John
Redwood has also recently linked anti-Trinitarian theology with both "Newtonianism"
and "deism."38
The immensely erudite and subtle voice of Richard S. Westfall has joined this chorus
in a most important paper from 1982 entitled "Isaac Newton's Theologiae Gentilis
Origines Philosophicae." Westfall's analysis of this significant unpublished manuscriptwhich he dates 39 from "the period soon after late 1683" - is the clearest and most
powerful argument ever made to show that Newton holds "a frankly deistic position."40
While specifically acknowledging that the "essentially negative spirit" of the later deists
does "not belong to Newton," Westfall, in the light of his comprehensive reading of
Newton's theological manuscripts, carefully elaborates Cragg's position and concludes
that "for all their differences in ultimate outlook, Newton arrive[s] at conclusions
remarkably similar to theirs.'>41
Westfall's exposition of this holograph manuscript is exact and scholarly. Westfall
traces Newton's development, in this work, of three major themes. The first two themes,
acknowledges Westfall, are in the mainstream of 17th-century scholarship and thus not in
the least deistic. The third theme, in Westfall's view, transcends the boundaries of
mainstream 17th-century historical comparative religion and prefigures the main
"conclusion" of later deists such as Toland and, especially, Tindal.
The first theme which Newton is concerned to develop - as Westfall analyzes this
manuscript - is that the ancient theologians, especially the Egyptians, develop a rational
monotheistic religion based on astronomical observations of the heavens which teach
them that the earth moves around the central fire of the sun. Furthennore, Newton
maintains that the content of this religion is esoterically symbolized by Egyptian priests
in both hieroglyphs and in such Egyptian religious rituals as the annual procession of the
priests in which the singular importance of scientific observations of the heavens to their

54

JAMES E. FORCE

theology is symbolized by the order of precedence in the procession. 42

Newton's second goal in this manuscript is to interpret the heroes and demi-gods of
pagan antiquity to illustrate how all of these "gods" must be identified with Noah and
Noah's descendants and also how these men are first idolized by their people as gods and
ultimately identified with stars, planets, terrestrial elements, and mythological creatures
recognized through various symbols, e.g., Saturn's scythe. The genealogy of the gods of
these gentiles also becomes for Newton, just as for other 17th-century euhemerists,43 the
political history of the kingdoms of the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and the Assyrians.
Westfall deftly traces the glibness with which the historian, Isaac Newton, here identifies
Noah with Saturn apd the three sons of Noah with the three sons of Saturn. The most
important of these sons, as Newton sees ancient religious history, is the outcast, Ham,
who becomes the original of the god (and the planet) Jupiter. Ham had four sons - Cush,
Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan. Newton identifies these men as the originals for the gods
Hercules, Osiris, Anateus, and Busiris, respectively. Osiris/Mizraim had three children,
including the bastard son Thoth (known much later to the Greeks as Mercury.) Thoth
succeeded his father (Osiris/Mizraim) as the ruler of Egypt and became the founder of
idolatrous gentile theology, first, by naming the planets after his forebears (Saturn after
Noah, Jupiter after Ham, etc.) and, second, by combining astronomical learning
(especially the heliocentric theory) with religious rites and, third, by encoding these
esoteric doctrines in hieroglyphic symbols. With the Egyptian conquest of her neighbors,
including the Jews, these now idolatrous hieroglyphic symbols were taken as the cause of
the polytheistic worship of the gods, as symbolized in this language system, by the
conquered peoples. Elsewhere, Newton explains:
As the Egyptians, Phoenicians and Syrians in those days Deified their Kings and
Princes, so upon their coming into Asia minor and Greece, they taught those nations to
do the like, as hath been showed above. In those days the writing of the Thebans and
Ethiopians was in hieroglyphicks; and this way of writing seems to have spread into
the lower Egypt before the days of Moses: for thence came the worship of their Gods
in the various shapes of Birds, Beasts, and Fishes, forbidden in their second commandment .... Now this emblematical way of writing gave occasion to the Thebans and
Ethiopians, who in the days of Samuel, David, Solomon, and Rehobbam conquered
Egypt, and the nations round about, and erected a great Empire, to represent and
signify their conquering Kings and Princes, not by writing down their names, but by
making various hieroglyphical figures; as by painting Ammon [Ham, the son of Noah]
with Ram's horns, to signify the King who conquered Libya, a country abounding
with sheep; his father Amosis [Noah or Saturn] with a Scythe, to signify that King who
conquered the lower Egypt, a country abounding with corn; his son Osiris [Mizraim,
son of Ham] by an Ox, because he taught the conquered nations to plow with oxen; ...
Jupiter [Ham again] upon an Eagle to signify the sublimity of his dominion, and with
a Thunderbolt to represent him a warrior; ... Thoth [son of Osiris/Mizraim and known
as "Mercury" to the Greeks] with a Dog's head and wings at his cap and feet, and a
Caduceus writhen about with two Serpents, to signify a man of craft; ... and Hercules
[Cush, son of Ham] with Pillars and a Club, because Sesostris set up pillars in all his
conquests, and fought against the Lybians with clubs ....44
Newton traces a similar pattern of polytheistic and, therefore, idolatrous accretions to an

THE NEWTONIANS AND DEISM

55

original rational monotheism in his account of the historical origins of the Babylonian
and Assyrian dynasties and religions. Just as Ham's son, Osiris/Mizraim, is the founder
of the Egyptian dynasty and of Egyptian theology, Ham's son Cush (later known as
Hercules), a mighty warrior, conquers Babylonia. Cush's son, Nimrod, later proceeds to
the conquest of Assyria. 45 In both these empires, a similar idolatrous deification of their
own kings occurs. 46
Westfall is in agreement with Manuel that this euhemeristic and syncretistic project of
tracing all ancient history back to Noah and Noah's offspring and then explaining the
polytheistic and idolatrous religions of these gentile nations as the result of the posthumous deification of their leaders and heroes is a common project among 17th-century
historians. Westfall cites the development of similar themes in writers well known to
Newton, especially Samuel Bochart, Sir John Marsham, and Gerard Vossius.47 Westfall
clearly recognizes that these two themes in the "Origines" manuscript (Le., the rational
knowledge of God from the "frame of nature" possessed by the gentiles antecedent to
scriptural revelation and the progressive corruption of this natural, rational monotheism
into idolatrous polytheism) are the direct result of Newton's working within a common
intellectual orientation and literary substrate and that his own work in this area, though
recognizable as the sort of treatment a natural philosopher might give "of themes well
established in the learned community of the day,"48 is in no sense "deistic."
But the third theme of this manuscript, according to Westfall's reading of it, goes
beyond the explicitly Christian apologetics of these authors and makes Newton a
forerunner of such deists as Toland and, especially, Tindal. Westfall reads Newton as a
deist for two reasons. First, in Westfall's interpretation, Newton is a deist because
Newton goes beyond the euhemerism of Vossius, Bochart, and Marsham - all of whom
claim that their goal is to defend Christianity - and places such ancient historical sources
as Beroussus the Babylonian and Sanchuniathon the Phoenician on an equal plane of
authority with such Biblical historical accounts as that of Moses. In the "Origines,"
claims Westfall, these ancient pagan sources appear "as independent authorities on the
period after the Flood, authorities as reliable as Moses and frequently more useful."49
Part of what makes Newton a deist, for Westfall, is the epistemological status of the
Bible. Newton plainly rejects the view that the Bible is, in every passage, true and divine.
Newton seems to agree with Whiston that it is a great "dishonor" to God to embrace a
supposedly Biblical doctrine which is "plainly absurd and unreasonable," when there is
evidence from another ancient source which is agreeable to "Reason and Philosophy.,,50
Second, Westfall categorizes Newton as a deist because, through his use of a variety
of sources including ancient pagans, Newton comes to a deistic "conclusion" similar to
that later held by Tindal. This deistic "conclusion" consists of a "hatred of superstition
and mystery," a concept of an immutable monotheistic god known to these ancients
through reason alone, and, finally, the idolatrous corruption of this monotheism. Thus,
Westfall writes:
Newton's religion of Noah was identical to Tindal's Christianity, as Old as the
Creation. Both insisted on the two basic precepts to love God and to love one's
neighbor, and both argued that Christ came, not to deliver a new religion, but to
restore the original pure one. 51
In response to Westfall's emphasis on the independent authority of pagan historians and,

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JAMES E. FORCE

seemingly, the demotion in status and authority of holy scripture, several related points
must be made. First, Newton does consider Berossus a more reliable historical source
than Moses for historical details of events between the creation and the flood (e.g.,
Nimrod's conquest of Assyria), but he never questions the divine origin and the
reliability, when properly interpreted, of the prophecies concerning the Messiah (which
he believes are fulfilled in the person of Jesus) or of those prophecies in Daniel and
Revelation which predict the events leading to the apocalypse. 52
Yet the central defining characteristic of a deist at the tum of the seventeenth and well
into the eighteenth centuries is not so much any positive view of a monotheistic god
accessible purely to reason, especially through the design argument, as it is this view
coupled with the rejection of any use of the scripture whatever. For most deists, including
Tindal, the religion of reason is complete in itself and contains all that is true and
knowable to humanity concerning god. Tindal therefore observes:
How unhappy were we of the Laity, had we not the Reason and Nature of Things
(which no Priests can alter) to depend on; but were intirely oblig'd to take our
religious Sentiments from Men, who as far as we have any Account of Things, have,
even from the earliest Times, not scrupl'd to forge, not only whole Passages, but
whole Books. 53
Tindal goes on to argue that, because of the rational nature of man, God cannot "reveal"
to him any truth save by "shewing its Agreement with those self-evident Notions, which
are the Tests by which we are to judge of everything, even the Being of a God and natural
Religion. "54
This religion of reason, which makes man's mind the measure of what God is
empowered to make understood to man, is precisely the religion of those scoffing deists
who acknowledge that the Newtonian design argument given by Bentley in his Boyle
Lectures defeats atheism, but that it has nothing to do with the ''fable of Jesus Christ."
(See note 15.) Tindal also mocks the Judaeo-Christian pretension that God might possibly
reveal his will "by Visions, Dreams, Trances, or any other Way besides the Light of
Nature" as merely probable and, hence, that it is also only probable "that he made this, or
that Revelation.,,55 Tindal's goal, in his book, is more than the positive deistic goal of
describing the doctrines of a religion of reason. It is that, but it is also, in Leland's apt
characterization from the middle of the century, simply to "set aside" revealed religion in
favor of the natural religion of a priori reason.
And this negative deism is in no way shared by Newton who, in the fashion later made
public by Whiston, utilizes the books of nature, scripture, and pagan antiquity to get to
the truth about God. It is the case that the scriptures become one source among three for
comparison. One might argue that this method may possibly make Newton's theology
heterodox. But, precisely because the scriptures, especially the prophecies, retain a role in
Newton's theology, Newton is no deist.
Furthermore, in this regard, the deistic attempt to make man's mind the limit of what,
and how, it is possible for God to communicate with man would have struck Newton as
idolatrous. Nothing dilutes God's absolute power over his dominion in Newton's
theology and this means that God is capable of communicating knowledge of his will, or
anything else, to man in a prophetic vision, a trance, or by whatever means he chooses.
Newton is no deist in this, or any other, manuscript, although he is distinctly unor-

THE NEWTONIANS AND DEISM

57

thodox, if not heretical, in both his method for discerning the truth about the nature of
God and about man's relationship with God and his conclusions on these points. Newton's view that the ancients obtained religious knowledge through reason alone and then,
also through reason, corrupted it places him, as Westfall acknowledges, in the camp of
such euhemerists as Vossius and Cudworth and, more importantly, of St. Paul who writes
that:
Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and
deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they [the
Gentiles] are without excuse; for although they knew God they did not honor him as
God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless
minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the
glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or
reptiles. (Rom. 1:21-3.)
Newton, in his Theologiae Gentilis Origines Philosophicae, elaborates St. Paul's thesis in
the light of the modern scholarship of Voss ius, Cudworth, and others. His conclusions do
not, except for the one point of his Arianism, differ from his sources. As for his method
in which he "demotes" the Bible from the position of sole authority for divine knowledge
to one source among others, Newton is again well within one strain of received Biblical
tradition. Newton, on this point, is no more a deist than St. Paul who writes:
Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is
pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is
anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (Phil. 4:8.)56
Despite his minimal concession that Newton does not share the "negativity" of the deists,
Westfall's interpretation does not do justice to the central importance of the hostility of
such deists as Tindal to all scripture and their consequent proscription of the use of any
aspect of it for the purpose of understanding god. Westfall correspondingly fails to
acknowledge what Newton's use of the Bible in constructing his positive theology means
in terms of "deism." Newton adamantly maintains that the Bible is always a key - one of
three and one requiring careful explication according to rational rules, but a key nonetheless - for understanding God and man.
There is a frequently overlooked point in all of this: those who portray Newton as a
deist seem always to ignore the fact that, in Newton's account of gentile rational religion,
the gentiles do not utilize scriptural revelation for the simple reason that they do not have
it to utilize. Lacking the revelation which God initiates much later with Moses and his
followers, the gentiles have only their reason to guide them. For them, the special
revealed religion delivered in the time of Moses is not an optional source of additional
knowledge about God. Their natural rational religion, rooted in the design argument, is
antecedent to revelation. Even though Newton believes that "The Books of Moses,
Joshua, and Judges, contain one continued history down from the Creation to the death of
Sampson," he also believes that "all these books have been composed out of the writings
of Moses, Joshua, and other records, by one and the same hand, after the beginning of the
reign of Saul, and before the eighth year of David.,,57
Mosaic history, and the essential prophecies delivered by God to man which become
progressively embedded in this historical tradition, is introduced as a source of

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JAMES E. FORCE

knowledge about God and man's duty to God long after the historical events it describes.
Consider the Mosaic account of the creation, for example. Early in the 1680's, Thomas
Burnet describes his deistic position that the Mosaic account is neither a physically
accurate description of what happened nor a scientifically adequate account. In a letter to
Newton, Burnet writes that the Mosaic story is only "ideall, or if you will, morall,"58 and
that its purpose is only to impress the vulgar understanding of Moses' followers.
Newton takes issue with Burnet's deistic attempt to "set aside" the books of Moses in
his reply. Newton agrees that the Mosaic account of creation is not "philosophical," but
neither is it "feigned." Newton writes that for Burnet to declare that Moses described
events "when there was no such thing done neither in reality nor in appearance ... is
something hard."59 Rather, in Newton's view, Moses describes actual historical events at
the creation in the language of what a witness would have seen "had he lived & seen ye
whole series of wI Moses describes: 060 Newton prefers natural mechanical explanations
for such events (such as Whiston's later theory of the cometary origins of the earth and
the flood) but concludes that "I doe not think them alone sufficient for the creation."61
And just as he utilizes gentile historians to elaborate on the details of human history after
the creation about which Moses is silent, so, too, Newton observes that other ancient
historians provide a kind of negative corroboration of his own rational understanding of
Gen. I: 1. Newton conjectures that "one may suppose that all ye planets about our Sun
were created together, there being in no history any mention of new ones appearing or old
ones ceasing."62
Newton's remarks to Burnet in this letter are given a lengthy elaboration in Whiston's
1696 work, a New Theory of the Earth, which is prefaced with a ninety-five page
"Discourse Concerning the Nature, Stile, and Extent of the Mosaick History of the
Creation." It is in this "Discourse" that Whiston develops his "third way" between
simple-minded literalists and deists who, in their characteristic preference for the design
argument of natural religion, laugh at the idea that revelation may be utilized as a serious
source of knowledge about God. The three Postulates which summarize Whiston's
approach to reconciling scripture with natural philosophy represent the heart of Newton's
own approach in his work on chronology, church history, prophecy, ecclesiastical polity,
Solomon' Temple, and in his manuscript entitled Theologiae Gentilis Origines

Philosophicae.
While the deists dismiss the Bible in principle and insist that true rational religion does
not demand anything which reason is itself unable to supply, Newton, and, later,
Whiston, utilize whatever they judge to be the best evidence available - the design
argument of natural religion, fulfilled historical prophecies, profane histories - and wrest
from them the truth about the nature of God and about man's duty toward God. Newton's
conception of the relationship between natural and revealed religion is not that held by
most orthodox divines for whom natural religion (and the design argument) functions as a
"foundation" upon which the religion of reason is erected. 63 When Newton, in his private
theological papers, and Whiston, in his published theological tracts, collate all these
different types of evidence they are following what Whiston describes as the "third or
middle path." Newton, in all his private theological papers, including this highly
significant manuscript, always adheres to the Postulates later published by Whiston as the
summary of what Whiston comes to call "the third way":

TIlE NEWTONIANS AND DEISM

59

I. The Obvious or Literal Sense of Scripture is the True and Real one, where no
evident Reason can be given to the contrary. II. That which is clearly accountable in a
natural way, is not without reason to be ascrib'd to a Miraculous Power.
And, most importantly:
ill. What Ancient Tradition asserts of the constitution of Nature, or of the World, is to
be allow'd for True, where 'tis fully agreeable to Scripture, Reason, and Philosophy.64

But Newton is able to use pagan authorities to help explicate such texts only because he
lives after the time of Moses and so has the text available to him, an option not available
to the gentiles living prior to the time of Moses. Such gentiles are the "true deists" of
Clarke's fourth category who hold all the correct theories about the nature of God (Le.,
prior to their idolatrous corruption) on the basis of the design argument of rational natural
religion - the only possible source of such knowledge prior to the initiation of the
progressive scriptural revelations to man from God. Clarke is very positive about such
deists and laments that there are none left to convert with the use of a revelation unknown
to them. But it is no wonder that Clarke believes that there are "very few or none such
Deists as Those, among our modem Deniers of Revelation." Such modem denying deists
can only ignore the added source of revelatory evidence properly interpreted in the light
of Newtonian natural philosophy and comparative history because of a hardness of heart
and an excessive pride in their rational ability to understand God independently of
revelation. The following text from Newton is consequently most important:
So then the first religion was the most rational of all others till the nations corrupted it.
For there is no way (wthout revelation) to come to ye knowledge of a Deity but by the
frame ofnature. 65
Westfall observes that the parenthetical phrase in this text, "wthout revelation," is inserted
in the manuscript "as an afterthought'>66 and so tends to discount its importance. I am
inclined to interpret this significant phrase in an opposite manner. Given Newton's
lifelong involvement in the study of how properly to understand Mosaic history and the
fulfillment of divine prophecies in history given in revelation, I believe that we have
good reason to acknowledge the importance of such revelation as a source of religious
knowledge for Newton.
Newton is not one of Clarke's fourth category of deists. He lives after the delivery of
revelation, not antecedent to it, and he lacks the hardness of heart of such modem deists
as Tindal, who seek to reject scripture completely in favor of the sufficieneligion of
reason, just as he also lacks their arrogant faith in their own a priori reason. On the
contrary, Newton believes in the divine origin of a core element of revealed prophetic
scripture which must be properly interpreted. In the Theologiae Gentilis Origines
Philosophicae Newton adheres to what Whiston later describes as the "third or middle
way" between Christian literalists and deists. As for the arrogance of the deists, with their
smug assurance that human reason is the measure of all things, including God, Newton
constantly warns against feigning hypotheses and urges instead a cautious empiricism
through which he recognizes the power of God to effect changes even in created natural
law. Newton's epistemological caution is legendary. It is reflected in his advice to

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interpreters of prophecy not to attempt to necessitate God almighty by predicting in

advance when or how God will choose to fulfill his prophetic promises. 67 It is reflected
in his fourth Rule of Reasoning in which he makes experience, not a priori hypotheses,
the great guide of common life. 68 Jt is reflected in his analysis of the repeated pattern of
the corruption of true monotheism in the hands of self-serving schemers such as Thoth in
ancient times and Athanasius in the fourth century. Newton's cautious empiricism and
the underlying mistrust of human reason in the face of both the power of God and what
history reveals about the natural tendency towards idolatry, upon which his epistemology
is based, is also reflected in his heterodox disciple, Samuel Clarke, who writes:
Indeed in the original uncorrupted State of Humane Nature, before the Mind of Man
was depraved with prejudicate Opinions, corrupt Affections, and vitious Inclinations,
Customs and Habits; right Reason may justly supposed to have been a sufficient
Guide, and a Principle powerful enough to preserve Men in the constant Practice of
their Duty. But in the present Circumstances and Condition of Mankind, the wisest
and most sensible of the Philosophers themselves have not been backward to complain, that they found the Understandings of Men so dark and cloudy, their Wills so
byassed and inclined to Evil, their Passions so outragious and rebelling against
Reason; that they lookt upon the Rules and Laws of right Reason, as very hardly
practicable, and which they had very little Hopes of being able to perswade the World
to submit to: In a Word, they confessed that Humane Nature was strangely corrupted;
and acknowledged this Corruption to be a Disease whereof they knew not the true
Cause, and could not find out a sufficient Remedy. So that the great Duties of
Religion, were laid down by them as Matters of speculation and dispute, rather than as
the Rules of Action .... To remedy all these Disorders, and conquer all these Corruptions; there was plainly wanting some extraordinary and supernatural Assistance;
which was above the reach of bare Reason and Philosophy to procure ...69
One final point must be made about how, on the basis of his method, Newton actually
does go well beyond the results of such writers as Vossius and Cudworth and comes to
view Jesus Christ as neither co-substantial nor co-eternal with God. This Arian position is
definitely unorthodox, even heretical, but it is clearly not deistic. Even in his Arianism,
Newton takes the Bible seriously. Nor is Newton's Arianism paradoxical as Westfall
claims when he writes that "the Origines appears to be incompatible with Arianism, to go
beyond its recognition of the special status of Christ, who was more than a man even if he
was not wholly divine, and to verge on a frankly deistic position.,,70 I maintain that
Newton's view about Jesus is a natural consequence of his taking the Bible to be a
serious source of religious knowledge. For Newton, even if Jesus is neither co-substantial
nor co-eternal with God, Jesus is nevertheless a commanding figure who is deputed by
God to be his vice-regent. Jesus dominates both the Old and the New Testaments in a
startling and crucially important fashion in Newton's scripturally based Arian Christology. Among other things, God deputes his vice-regent, Jesus Christ, in the Old Testament, to walk in the Garden of Eden with Adam, to appear as an angel to Abraham, to
fight with Jacob, to give the prophecies to the prophets, and, ultimately, in the New
Testament, to preach again the pure and uncorrupted religion of Noah to Jew and Gentile
alike. In some fragments from Yahuda 15 in which Newton interprets John's description
of Christ as the Word of God. the range of Jesus Christ's vice-regal activities and shared

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61

dominion over the world of creation in Newton's heterodox theology becomes clear. The
fragment begins:
- bom of the virgin by the power of the most High. And so the description which John
in the beginning of his Gospel gives of Christ in calling him the Word & saying In the
beginning was the Word & the Word was with God & the Word was God: The same
was in the beginning with God: All things were made by him & without him was
nothing made that was made: This description I say has a manifest relation to what is
said of him in the books of Moses, & signifies that Christ was with God before his
incarnation, even in the beginning when God made the heavens & earth. For Christ
himself declared as much when he said to his Father: Glorify me with the glory which 1
had with thee before the world began. It signifies that he being then with God, it was
he to whom God said Let us make man, & That it was he who appeared to Adam in
paradise by the name of God & to the Patriarchs & to Moses by the same name: For
the father is the invisible God whom no eye hath seen nor can see. It signifies that he
was one of the three Angels who appeared to Abraham & of whom it is said Jehova
rained upon Sodom & upon Gomorrah brimstone & fire from Jehova out of heaven:
For the name Jehova is given to none but the God of Israel. It signifies that he is the
God who wrestled with Jacob & to whom Jacob erected an altar Gen. 35.1,12, & the
Angel who appeared to Moses in the bush by the name of the God of his fathers
Abraham Isaac & Jacob, (Exod. 3) & was with Moses in the wilderness & spake to
him on mount Sina giving lively oracles to the people & to whom the people were
disobedient thrusting him from them & worshipping the Calf (Act. 7.38,39,40). It
signifies that he was the Angel of God's presence of whom God said to Israel Behold
1 send an Angel before thee to keep thee in the way & to bring thee into the place
which 1 have prepared: beware of him & obey his voice, provoke him not: for he will
not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him. Exod. 23.20,21.
Newton continues:
Christ is therefore called the Word to signify that before his incarnation he was the
Oracle & mouth of God the Angel by whom God gave the law on mount Sina &
commanded Israel & whose voice was to be obeyed: And also to signify that in his
mortal body he was the Prophet predicted by Moses: & that after his resurrection he
was the faithful & true witness, whose testimony was the spirit of prophecy & who
shall come to destroy the wicked with the breath of his mouth as with a two edged
sword, & to judge the quick & the dead. 71
Though not of the same substance with God and though not co-existent from eternity
with God, it is clear that Jesus has had his moments of glory in the divine cosmic drama.
His "special status" as God's vice-regent, deputed to cut across human time and space in
different physical shapes and with different missions, is indeed a radical departure from
orthodoxy. Yet Newton's interpretation is within the pale of, at least, unorthodox
Christianity just because it insists upon Jesus Christ's "special status" on the basis of a
particular understanding of scripture. Richard H. Popkin has pointed out (in "Newton as a
Bible Scholar," infra, note 66) that Jesus is, for Newton, the epistemological guarantor of
the prophecies in the book of Revelation. Newton's understanding of Christ's final
mission of recalling fallen humanity to the true religion of Noah, though a radical

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JAMES E. FORCE

departure from traditional and orthodox interpretations of ChriSt's life, is perfectly

consistent with heterodox Christian theism, but it is totally inconsistent with both
orthodox Christianity and the scoffing dismissal of "the fables of Jesus Christ" by the
deistic natural theologians.
Because Newton differs radically from most other Christian apologists (save for
Whiston and Clarke) in his understanding of scripture is no reason to argue either that
Christianity is false or that Newton (or Whiston or Clarke) is a deist. The very multiplicity and variety of ways of understanding the revelation ought not to count against the
theoretical possibility that one of these interpretations, perhaps even Newton's heterodox
one, is true. The problem is on what standard are we to judge which is true? Commenting
on the deist Anthony Collins, Samuel Chandler observes that the deists have a similar
criteriological problem. He writes:
Thus our author for his diversion sets our Christian writers together by the ears, and
pleasantly laughs at them for their various and contradictory opinions. I doubt not, but
if some of our modern Deists were to write their several schemes of religion, and
publish their principles to the world, we shou'd see these great masters of reason fall
into very different thoughts, and reasoning as contrary to one another, as the most
differing Christians can be shewn to do. We should find materialists and spiritualists,
some pleading for the eternity of the world others for its being the produce of time;
some for the liberty of human action, some mechanically arguing against it; some for a
stricter, others for a looser set of morals, just as they happened to be more or less
disposed for virtue or vice.12
While Newton does in fact arrive at a conclusion about the nature of God which one may
argue is roughly similar to some particular forms of deism, his means of getting to that
conclusion make him a "differing Christian" rather than a true deist. Newton simply does
not fit the definition of "Deist" as given in Chambers' Cyclopaedia:
The appelation Deist is more particularly given to such as are not altogether without
religion, but reject all revelation as an imposition, and believe no more than what
natural light discovers to them ....73
Accordingly, Derek Gjertsen's briefly sketched judgement about Newton's alleged
"deism" is an accurate assessment. Gjertsen writes that:
Wishing to stress the supreme role of reason in matters of religion, Deists tended to
dismiss as naive, arguments from revelation and prophecy. It would thus be misleading to describe Newton as a Deist. He certainly accepted part of the Deist case that
God's existence could be seen in the operations of Nature. His frequent insistence,
however, of the vital role played by divine prophecy in religion conflicts strongly with
the main Deistic programme. 74

IV. The Reception of the "Differing Christianity" of

Whiston's "Third Way"
Newton's secrecy concerning his heterodox Christianity safely buffers him from any
unpleasant financial or social repercussions. William Whiston, by way of contrast,

TIlE NEWTONIANS AND DEISM

63

publicly announces the nature of the "third way" and, eventually, its heterodox results
and is immediately beset by orthodox Christian literalists, real deists, and Tory High
Church apologists such as Jonathan Swift. He loses his professorship in Cambridge, is
charged with heresy, and ekes out a living for himself and his family by public lectures
concerning the approaching millennium.
Whiston's controversies with uncritical, fideistic "literalists" and scoffing deists begin
with the publication of his New Theory of the Earth and its "Introductory Discourse" in
which he outlines the method of the "third way." Opposition to Whiston's truly Newtonian "third way" builds quickly with the sort of volatile public controversies which
Newton abhors and strives to avoid.
From the side of the literalistic fideists thunders John Edwards (who also writes
against John Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity). Edwards argues that Whiston's
"third way" leads Whiston to depart too far from the literal word of scripture in his
attempts to render it consistent with Newtonian science and with other ancient histories.
Edwards writes that Whiston
hath lately so far imbibed his Notions as to shew little regard to the letter of Moses's
Writings: which I take to be a very false Step, and a dangerous one, in a person
especially that is not Profess'd Deist, and by his Character seems to own the Authority
of the Scriptures. It is very strange and ominous that such a one should give so little
deference to Revelation and assert things which palpably interfere with the Sacred and
Infallible Records of Moses. 75
Edwards berates Whiston for his Newtonian assumption that the Mosaic history of the
creation is not an accurate scientific explanation of the events recounted, but is only a
story adapted
to the capacity of the Blockish Brick-makers that were merely come out of Egypt, and
scarcely understood Common Sense, and therefore any Story of a Cock and a Bull
would serve them. 76
Whiston's "third way" leads him finally into the Arian heresy which he openly proclaims
in his Sermons and Essays upon Several Subjects (1709). Whiston's adoption of this
heresy on scriptural grounds provokes another round of abuse from the establishment
camp. Ultimately, he is forced to forfeit his professorship in the University in Cambridge.
Samuel Parker, the second son of the Bishop of Oxford and a non-juring theologian,
mocks Whiston's middle path. Parker writes that Whiston's literary production on the
basis of that method is "such a Carybdis ... as is enough to frighten the vulgar sort of
Christians and Scholars upon the Scylla of Popish Infallibility." Parker then inquires:
To what purpose do you dispute with Mr. Whiston about what is in Scripture, when he
runs out such a further length of Scepticism, as to make it a doubt what is Scripture?
How many, not only Parts, but BOOKS, of the Old Canon are quite lost and extinct?
and how many yet to be added to those still extant and Receiv' d ... ? and can any body
of men be sure they are Christians, that know not whether they believe all the Original
Articles of the Christian Faith? So that, upon the whole, Mr. W has in a few lines (and
to the same purpose is meditating perhaps Volumes) endeavour'd to establish such
notions and opinions about the Word of God, as make it highly improbable, that for

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JAMES E. FORCE

several hundred years there has been, or could be, a Church of Christ upon Earth. I
hope these Pestilent Positions are as some people have thought, only the workings of a
distemper'd brain.71
When Whiston publishes his Memoirs in 1749, they are immediately answered by an
obviously orthodox, but anonymous, pamphleteer who asserts that Whiston's "third way"
has only served to put his work "exactly upon a footing" with the deistic positions of
Matthew Tindal and William Wollaston. Addressing Whiston, this anonymous writer, in
a stunning refutation of Whiston's lifelong attempt to refute the deists, asserts that:
Your friend Wollaston indeed says, that such truth may be come at by reasoning, but
he might as well have said, that two and two are five; for if eternal truth may be come
at by reasoning, then every degree of probability (of which reasoning consists) must
be an argument for the truth in question; but every argument for the truth in question
can only stand against an objection which must have existed before that argument
could be made; therefore such reasoning must ever leave eternal truth just where it
was. Hence it appears, that eternal truth being self-evident only by the negation of
error, whenever it is revealed, it must reveal itself. Hence it is, that God must work in
us both to will and to do, because the utmost that we can do of ourselves is only to
depart from error and probability. Hence it is, that treatises of morality, and defences
of Christianity, have had so little effect upon the world; we say it is because people do
not attend to them, but the true state of the case is, they cannot prove anyone single
proposition that they pretend to; when they talk of morality, they constantly, like
Tindal ... refer to a knowledge we have not, else should we not want their morality;
and when they pretend like you [Whiston], to defend Christianity, behold they come
off with probabilities concerning the truth of the New Testament. And hence it is .. .
that mankind are in deeper ignorance, than ever they were since the creation. It is .. .
because they think, that, by reasoning, and reading such books as yours, and Tindal's,
and Wollaston's, they can come at it; whereas, by beginning there, they cannot take a
more effectual way to keep themselves in error.78
Whiston's use of the "third way" to reveal to the world the role of current events as part
of the fulfillment of prophecies leading up to the millennium provokes the wrath of the
High Church party and, especially, Jonathan Swift who, with other Scriblerians, also
castigates Whiston's Arianism and projected scheme for determining the longitude. Swift
ironically attacks Whiston for rational arrogance in presuming, through the "third way,"
to reveal so effortlessly the pattern of God's providential involvement in human history
and the frame of nature. In an intentionally opaque and unintelligible poem, which Swift
purports to be a "Surprizing Prophecy Written by St. Patrick ... Above a Thousand Years
ago," Swift claims to find a "prediction" of Marlborough's triumph over the French
army. At the conclusion of his effortless "interpretation," Swift parallels Whiston's (and
Newton's) insistence that historical events must be interpreted as fulfillments of prophecy
only after the fact and never in advance. Of the fulfilled "predictions" in this "Surprizing
Prophecy" from St. Patrick, Swift modestly proposes that
some of the Predictions are already fulfilled; and it is highly probable the rest may be
in due 'Time: And I think, I have not forced the Words of my Explication into any
other Sense than what they will naturally bear.79

THE NEWTONIANS AND DEISM

65

Whiston is thus unable to persuade the various pro-scripture forces of his day, ranging
from Puritans to High Church men of letters to Dissenters, of the power and efficacy of
his "third way" to resolve "Ancient Knots" of Biblical interpretation. They despise him
and mock his rational reconstructions of scriptural history, past and future, in a series of
strident controversies. Nor does Whiston convince the polar opposites of the fideistic
literalists. He is unable to deflect the deists from their goal of simply setting aside the
Bible as rationally incomprehensible and, therefore, of no intellectual value in man's
quest to know the nature of God.
Of the more important deists, Whiston appears to have known Anthony Collins the
best. He frequently dined with Collins in 1711 at Lady Caverly's house in Soho Square
after he had lost his chair at Cambridge owing to his public Arianism and had moved to
London. Lady Caverly was a sincere Christian who often invited eminent divines to
dinner. Her paramour and co-host, Sir John Hubern, invited his deistic friends such as
Collins and Tindal. According to Whiston, at these parties, he "used to meet, and to have
frequent, but friendly debates, about the truth of the bible and christian religion. "SO
One aspect of Whiston's "third way" provokes a protracted exchange in print between
Whiston and Collins who charges that Whiston's attempt to reconstruct a true text of the
Old Testament prophecies by utilizing the oldest and least corrupt versions extant is
doomed to failure. Whiston believes, for example, that the main problem in the prophecy
in Isaiah about the Messiah being born of a "virgin" results from the erroneous accretions
of copyists. A true text, restored through the use of the oldest copies, will make plain how
Jesus is literally and singularly the fulfillment of this prophecy. Collins, in a passage
which echoes the criticism of Samuel Parker, scoffs that "a Bible restored, according to
Mr. W.'s Theory, will be a mere WHISTONIAN BIBLE, a BIBLE confounding and not
containing the True Text of the Old Testament. "SI
Collins concludes his deistic argument against the cognitive respectability of Christian
scripture by stating that because singularly determinate messianic prophecies cannot be
shown to be fulfilled in Jesus our only choice is to interpret them allegorically, an equally
hopeless undertaking in the absence of any rational criterion for decoding the encrypted
"hidden" meaning behind the literal prophetic texts. For Collins, no amount of Whistonian rational reconstruction based on the best historical data or of imaginative symbolic
readings can establish that Jesus is the prophesied messiah; therefore, Christianity is
false. S2
The fact that Whiston is unable to convince many opponents does not deter him or
shake his confidence in his basic project of synthesizing Newtonian mechanics and
astronomy and historical and textual scholarship from both the Judaeo-Christian tradition
and other historical sources to cut through the "Ancient Knots" of scriptural conundrums.
Whiston and Newton both believe that, toward the end of time, "Many shall run to and
fro; and knowledge shall be increased," (Dan. 12:4) but most will only run to and fro
while only for some will knowledge be increased. Newton himself tells us why he is no
deist (while shedding much light on the sort of Christian he understands himself to be)
when he answers a question he poses to himself about the purpose of the Judaeo-Christian prophetic revelations concerning "ye last times." Newton inquires:
If they are never to be understood, to what end did God reveale them? Certainly he did
it for the edification of ye church, & if so, then it is as certain yt ye church shall at

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JAMES E. FORCE

length attain to ye understanding thereof. I mean not all that call themselves Christians, but a remnant, a few scattered persons which God hath chosen, such as without
being led by interest, education, or humane authorities, can set themselves sincerely &
earnestly to search after the truth. For as Daniel hath said ye wise shall understand, so
he hath said also that none of ye wicked shall understand. 83

Notes
I. Joseph Trapp, Thoughts upon the Four last Things; Death; Judgement; Heaven; Hell. A Poem
in Four Parts. Part I. Death. (London, 1734), p. 11. In Part IV of the Poem, entitled Hell (London,
1735), Trapp again makes the straightforward identity (p. 5) between atheism and deism:

Where is his [i.e., God's] Greatness, Majesty, Awe;

If Man be with Impunity his Foe?
Under Pretext, in impious vain Dispute,
Of honouring his ONE mild ATIRIBUTE;
Thou mak'st Him despicable, a God of small,
Or no Account; that is, no God at all.
In thy Mock-Robe the Deity thus dress'd,
Appears a perfect Ridicule, and Jest:
The DEIST quite unmask'd; the ATHEIST stands confess'd.
In his note glossing this text, Trapp writes that this example - denying God's absolute power to
punish sinners - "is one instance among Others; by which it appears that DEISM (as it is Now
call'd) resolves at last into downright ATHEISM. Such a God as These Men have painted out to us
is a most contemptible, ridiculous Being; that is no God." The unknown deistic author responsible
for republishing Charles Blount's A Summary Account of the Deists Religion: In a Letter to that
Excellent Physician, The late Dr. Thomas Sydenham (London, 1745) prefaces his edition with the
observation that the "disingenuous Conduct of those, who endeavour'd to persuade the unthinking
Part of Mankind that DEISM and ATHEISM are the same Things [here the anonymous
editor/author quotes the above lines from Trapp's poem], induc'd me to republish this Summary
Account of the Deists Religion, to undeceive such who had been lead into mistaken Notions
concerning that Sect, many of which are the very best of Men, yet have the Misfortune to be
branded with Atheism."
2. Peter Annet, Deism fairly stated, And Fully Vindicated From the Gross Imputations and
Groundless Calumnies of Modern Unbelievers. Wherein Some of the Principal Reasons contained
in Dr. Benson's Answer to "Christianity not founded on Argument" are fully considered, and
proved to be far from conclusive. In a Letter to a Friend (London, 1746), p. 4.
3. Francis Gastrell, The Certainty and Necessity of Religion in General: Or, The First Grounds &
Principles of humane Duty Establish'd; In Eight Sermons Preach'd at S. "Martins in the Fields" at
the Lecturefor the Year 1697,founded by the Honourable Robert Boyle, Esquire (London, 1697),
The Preface, pp. vi-vii.
4. Charles Gildon, in The Deists Manual (London, 1705), argues that "Hobbists" constitute one of
the few groups, "the very Foundation of whose System is Atheism in speculation." But besides the
Hobbists, according to Gildon, "there are a very numerous Party of Practical Atheists, who ... are
really Atheists in their Opinions, as well as Practice. For if they really believ'd in God and thought
justly and truly of him, they cou'd not Act, as they do." As Gildon's title proclaims, one of this
"numerous" group of practical atheists is Blount. See Charles Gildon, The Deists Manual: Or, A
Rational Enquiry into the Christian Religion, With some Considerations on Mr. "Hobbs,"
"Spinoza," the "Oracles of Reason," "Second Thoughts," &c. (London, 1705), the Epistle
Dedicatory.
5. Samuel Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion,

THE NEWTONIANS AND DEISM

67

and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation. Being Eight Sermons Preach'd at the
Cathedral-Church of St. Paul, in the Year 1705, at the Lecture Founded by the Honourable Robert
Boyle Esq. (London, 1706), p. 19. For Clarke, this first sort of deism "must unavoidably terminate
in absolute Atheism" for reasons precisely paraJIel to those he later outlines to Leibniz. Clarke
writes that while it may be possible, through "very nice and abstract reasoning," to hypothesize
about a creator god who set the world machine up so precisely in the beginning that "worthy
Effects" might have successively been produced "without the immediate interposition of his
Almighty Power upon every particular occasion," it still is difficult to reconcile our particular
world, with its particular quantities of matter and motion and its particular ordering of causal laws,
especially gravity, with such an absconding deity. Clarke writes that "to fancy that God originally
created a certain Quantity of Matter and Motion, and left them to frame a world at adventures,
without any determinate and particular view, design or direction ... must of necessity recur to
downright Atheism." (Ibid., pp. 19-20.)
6. Ibid., pp. 26-7. Once again, this kind of deism, Clarke argues, must terminate in "downright
Atheism" because the "Practice and Behaviour" of such deists "is exactly agreeable to that of the
most openly professed Atheists." (Ibid., p. 28.)
7. Ibid., p. 32. Clarke once again argues that deists in the third group "must finally recur to
absolute Atheism." This is because "the Moral Attributes of God, however they be acknowledg'd in
words, yet in reality they are by these Men entirely taken away" just because God's Justice and
God's Goodness are so wholly "Transcendental" to human justice and human goodness that we
"mean nothing when we say that God is necessarily Just and Good." (Ibid., pp. 33-4.)
8. Ibid., pp. 34-6.
9. Ibid., p. 37.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid., p. 41.
13. Ibid., p. 39.
14. Ibid., pp. 41-2.
15. William Whiston, Astronomical Principles of Religion, Natural and Reveal'd (London, 1717),
pp.242-3.
16. John Leland, A View of the Principal Deistical Writers that Have Appeared in England in the
Last and present Century; With Observations upon them, and Some Account of the Answers that
have been published against them. In several Letters to a Friend. 3rd ed., improved. 2 vols.
(London, 1757), I:ii.
17. William Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth, From its Original, to the Consummation of all
Things. Wherein The Creation of the World in Six Days, The Universal Deluge, And the General
Conflagration, As laid down in the Holy Scriptures, Are shewn to be perfectly agreeable to Reason
and Philosophy. With a large Introductory Discourse concerning the Genuine Nature, Stile, and
Extent of the "Mosaick" History of the Creation (London 1696), from the separately paginated
"Introductory Discourse," pp. 72-3.
18. Ibid., p. 64.
19. Ibid., p. 3.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., p. 2.
22. Whiston, Astronomical Principles of Religion, Natural and Reveal'd (London, 1717), p. 133.
23. Ibid., p. 65.
24. Ibid., p. 64.
25. Ibid., p. 134.
26. Ibid., Whiston, "Introductory Discourse," p. 64.
27. Ibid., pp. 74-5.
28. Ibid., p. 95.
29. Whiston, Astronomical Principles, p. 289.
30. Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, pp.
39-40.
31. Clarke cites Cicero's Tusculan Disputations (Lib. 1II.i.2-ii-3.) with regard to the ''present

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corrupt State of Humane Nature," Ibid., pp. 196-7. A little further on, just before a section entitled
"A Divine Revelation absolutely necessary for the recovery of Mankind," Clarke returns to the
theme of the contrast between man's ability to obtain knowledge now compared to his ability
before the Fall:
Indeed in the original uncorrupted State of Humane Nature, before the Mind of Man was
depraved with prejudiced Opinions, corrupt Affections, and vitious Inclinations, Customs and
Habits; right Reason may justly be supposed to have been a sufficient Guide, and a Principle
powerful enough to preserve Men in the constant Practice of their Duty: But in the present
Circumstances and Condition of Mankind, the wisest and most sensible of the Philosophers
themselves have not been backward to complain, that they found the Understandings of Men so
dark and cloudy, their Wills so biassed and inclined to evil, their Passions so outrageous and
rebelling against Reason; that they lookt upon the Rules and Laws of right Reason, as very
hardly practicable, and which they had very little Hopes of ever being able to persuade the
world to submit: In a Word, they confessed that Humane nature was strangely corrupted; and
acknowledged this Corruption to be a Disease whereof they knew not the true Cause, and could
not find out a sufficient Remedy. So that the great Duties of Religion, were laid down by them
as Matters of speculation and dispute, rather than as the Rules ofAction; and not so much urged
upon the Hearts and Lives of Men, as proposed to the Admiration of those, who thought them
scarce possible to be effectually practised by the generality of Men. To remedy all these
Disorders, and conquer all these Corruptions; there was plainly wanting some extraordinary and
supernatural Assistance; which was above the reach of bare Reason and Philosophy to procure,
and yet without which the Philosophers themselves were sensible there could never be any truly
Great and Good Men. (Ibid., pp. 239-40.)
For both Whiston and Clarke, divine revelation aids enfeebled human rational understanding to
understand God when properly read, i.e., read in the light of all the external and comparative guides
available to modem scholarship.
Matthew Tindal quotes long portions of the above text from Clarke's A Discourse the Unclumgeable Obligations of Natural Religion (relying upon the fourth edition, corrected, of 1716), and
points out that such a view of human nature supposes that, for nearly 4,000 years, right up to
Tindal's day, God has left mankind
destitute of sufficient Means to do their duty, and to preserve themselves from sinking into a
corrupted and degenerate State; and that it was impossible for them when thus sunk, to recover
themselves; and yet that God (their Duty being the same after, as before the Fall,) expected
Impossibilities from them; viz. either to preserve themselves from thus falling; or if fallen, to
recover themselves. But if they had not Power to do This, and it was not their Fault, that they at
fITSt were in, and after remain'd in what he calls a State of universal Degeneracy and Corruption; this must then be the State God design'd they shou'd be in: And it wou'd seem not only to
be in vain, but a Crime in them, to endeavour to change that State, in which, God, of his infinite
Wisdom and Goodness, thought fit to place them .... The Dr's Scheme outdoes That of the most
rigid Predestinarians; for That at all Times saves the Elect: But here are no Elect; but all, for
many Ages, are inextricably involv'd in a most deprav'd, corrupted, and impious State.
[Matthew Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation: Or, The Gospel, A Republication of the
Religion ofNature (London, 1730), octavo ed., pp. 375-7.]
32. Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, pp. 306ff.
Cf. Whiston, Astronomical Principles, Part VII ("Important Principles of Divine Revelation
confmn'd from the foregoing Principles, and Conjectures") and, especially, Part VIII ("Such
Inferences shewn to be the common Voice of Nature and Reason, from the Testimonies of the most
considerable Persons in all Ages.")
33. Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, pp.
295-6n.
34. E. Chambers, Cyclopaedia: Or, An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, 2 vols.
(London, 1738), Vol. 2., s.v. "IDOLATRY."
35. George Hickes to Roger North, May 23, 1713. B.M. Add. MSS 32551, f. 34. Cited in Larry

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69

Stewart, "Samuel Clarke, Newtonianism, and the Factions of Post-Revolutionary England,"

Journal of the History of Ideas 42, No.1 (Jan.-March, 1981), p. 65.
36. For Blake, Newton is the supreme spokesman of pernicious materialism based upon the
evidence of the "Five Senses." Thus, in "Europa, a Prophecy," Blake writes
A Mighty Spirit leap'd from the land of Albion Nam'd Newton: he seized the Trump & blow'd
the enormous blast! Yellow as leaves of Autumn, the myriads of Angelic hosts Fell thro' the
wintry skies seeking their graves, Rattling their hollow bones in howling lamentation. [From
The Complete Writings of William Blake. With All the Variant Readings, ed. Geoffrey Keynes
(London: The Nonesuch Press, 1957), p. 243.]
Blake concludes the second chapter of his "Jerusalem" with a section entitled "To the Deists."
Newton is not specifically mentioned here, although Voltaire, Rousseau, Gibbon, and Hume are.
Blake describes the nature of deistic religion:
Deism, is the Worship of the God of this World by the means of what you call natural Religion
and Natural Philosophy, and of Natural Morality or Self-Righteousness, the Selfish Virtues of
the Natural Heart. This was the Religion of the Pharisees who murder'd Jesus. Deism is the
same & ends in the same. (See The Complete Writings, p. 682.)
Accordingly, I think Paul J. Korshin is correct when he writes that, for Blake, "The Deists of
history - Locke, Newton, Voltaire, Rousseau, Gibbon, and their ilk - are the Pharisees and
hypocrites responsible for human suffering." See Paul J. Korshin, Typologies in England,
1650-1820 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 351.
37. Gerald R. Cragg, Reason and Authority in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: At the
University Press, 1964), p. 13.
38. John Redwood, Reason, Ridicule and Religion. The Age of Enlightenment in England.
1660-1750 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), p. 169.
39. Richard S. Westfall, "Isaac Newton's Theologiae Gentilis Origines Philosophicae," in The
Secular Mind: Essays Presented to Franklin L. Baumer, ed. Warren Wagar (New York: Holmes &
Meier Publishers, Inc., 1982), p. 15.
40. Ibid., p. 31. In a brief descriptive catalog of books prepared recently in conjunction with a
library exhibition, Westfall makes an exceptionally brief and clear statement of his argument that
Newton is a deist. Describing the context and nature of Matthew Tindal's Christianity as old as the
Creation, Westfall writes that:
Matthew Tindal was another of the prominent Deists. The title of his book suggests its central
argument, that true Christianity consists solely of the natural religion known to all men by their
natural reason from the beginning of the world, that the Gospels only republished the religion of
nature, and that all the rest of Christianity during the previous fifteen hundred years, was a
packet of superstitions foisted onto believers by priests serving their own self interest.
Newton's published works contain the argument from design for the existence of God, an
argument so similar to a thousand other arguments common in his age that commentators have
assumed his orthodoxy. His extensive theological papers, however, which he kept very private
during his own life and which have become available to scholars only recently, indicate a much
more religiously troubled man, who believed that the ground was shifting under the traditional
structure of Christianity and that it was necessary to rethink some of its teachings. He rejected
the doctrine of the Trinity as irrational. He pursued the themes of natural religion, and in one
manuscript treatise composed shortly before the Principia and thus long before Tindal even
thought of his book, he adopted a position on what he called the one true religion that was very
close to the position Tindal expressed nearly half a century later. Newton manifestly considered
this treatise important; he continued to draw upon it for the rest of his life. [See Newton and the
Scientific Revolution. An exhibition prepared and described by Richard S. Westfall
(Bloomington: The Lilly Library, Indiana University, 1987), pp. 66-7.]
41. Westfall, "Newton's Theologiae Gentilis," p. 31.
42. Ibid., pp. 18-9. Westfall here cites the basic manuscript which alone is entitled Theologiae
Gentilis Origines Philosophicae, which is now known as Yahuda MS 16, and which is a sizeable

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lAMES E. FORCE

and nearly complete Latin treatise in five chapters. Westfall rightly suggests that this manuscript is
the basis for Newton's treatise entitled "The System of the World." Newton wrote "The System of
the World" sometime before the fall of 1685. An English translation was first published in 1728.
The title of this work is the same as the title of Bk. III of the Principia. This separate treatise was
intended to be the second book in Newton's original conception of the Principia in two books.
When he decided in the summer of 1685 to expand the Principia to three books he also decided to
change the nature of Book III and to shift it from the open accessibility of his original "System of
the World" to a treatise for mathematicians. He therefore wrote an entirely new Bk. III at this time
and entitled it "System of the World (In Mathematical Treatment.)" His original treatise was copied
in part by his amanuensis, Humphrey Newton, and deposited in the University Library. Originally
composed by Newton in Latin, this work was published in English in 1728 by an anonymous
translator. This translation was followed into print by the original Latin text which was published
by John Conduitt who changed the title from Newton's original, De motu corporum (Uber
secundus), which no longer made any sense, to De mundi systemate. A modernized English
translation was published by Florian Cajori along with his updated edition of the Principia. Newton
is most clear in this statement of his view about the nature of ancient rational theology:
It was the ancient opinion of not a few, in the earliest ages of philosophy, that the fixed stars
stood immovable in the highest parts of the world; that under the fIXed stars the planets were
carried about the sun; that the earth, as one of the planets, described an annual course about the
sun, while by diurnal motion it was in the meantime revolved about its own axis; and that the
sun, as the common fire which served to warm the whole, was fIXed in the centre of the
universe.
This was the philosophy taught of old by Philolaus, Aristarchus of Samos, Plato in his riper
years, and the whole sect of the Pythagoreans; and this was the judgment of Anaximander, more
ancient still; and of that wise king of the Romans, Numa Pompilius, who as a symbol of the
figure of the world with the sun in the centre, erected a round temple in honor of Vesta, and
ordained perpetual fife to be kept in the middle of it.
The Egyptians were early observers of the heavens; and from them, probably, this
philosophy was spread abroad among other nations; for from them it was, and the nations about
them, that the Greeks, a people more addicted to the study of philology than of Nature, derived
their first, as well as soundest, notions of philosophy; and in the Vestal ceremonies we may yet
trace the ancient spirit of the Egyptians; for it was their mysteries, that is, their philosophy of
things above the common way of thinking, under the veil of religious rites and hieroglyphic
symbols. [See Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and his
System of the World, Translated into English by Andrew Motte in 1729, the translations revised
by Florian Cajori, 2 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1934),
2:549.]
Just as Newton's "Theologiae Gentilis" serves as the Ur-source for the above text, it also serves as
the spring for what are now known as the "classical scholia." These scholia were composed by
Newton in the 1690's when he was considering a second edition of the Principia in which these
"classical scholia" would be additions to Propositions IV through IX of Book III. This contemplated second edition was never published. In these "classical scholia," Newton tries to show
that important elements of his natural philosophy - atomism, gravity, the inverse square law, and
the cause of gravity by a "certain infinite spirit," an "anima mundi," which "pervades all space into
infinity, and contains and vivifies the entire world" - were known by ancient philosophers. On
these scholia, see the original groundbreaking article by J. E. McGuire and P. M. Rattansi, "Newton
and the 'Pipes of Pan'," in Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 21, No.2 (Dec.,
1966), pp. 108-43. McGuire and Rattansi's study must now be examined in the light of Paolo
Casini's more recent essay entitled "Newton: The Classical Scholia," History of Science, 22 (1984),
pp.I-57.
43. About 300 B.C., Euhemerus of Messene wrote The Sacred History in which he theorized that
the traditional deities were merely earthly rulers deified and worshipped by their subjects. See Jean
Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods. The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance
Humanism andArt, trans. Barbara F. Sessions (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1953), pp. 11-36.

TIlE NEWTONIANS AND DEISM

71

44. Newton, The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (London, 1728), pp. 225-6. Newton's
basic project in this massive work is to apply a version of what Whiston calls the "third way" to the
chronological data of scripture and "to make Chronology suit with the course of Nature, with
Astronomy, with Sacred History, with Herodotus ... and with itself." Cited in Derek Gjertsen, The
Newton Handbook (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), p. 565.
45.Westfall, "Newton's Theologiae Gentilis," pp. 19-21.
46. Ibid., p. 20.
47. Ibid., pp. 2~. Cf. Frank E. Manuel, Isaac Newton, Historian (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 104, and Manuel, The Eighteenth Century Confronts
the Gods (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959), pp. 103-25.
48. Westfall, "Newton's Theologiae Gentilis," pp. 18 and 22. In a recent article, Danton B. Sailor
shows how Newton's keen interest in both the rational religious knowledge of the gentiles of
antiquity and its progressively idolatrous subversion through ancestor, hero, and kingly deification
is influenced by Newton's reading of his long-time Cambridge colleague, Ralph Cudworth. Sailor
has carefully analyzed Newton's notes on Cudworth's True Intellectual System of the Universe
(London, 1678) which are contained in four pages of folio holograph manuscript by Newton
entitled "Out of Cudworth" and in the possession of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
in Los Angeles. (This manuscript is included as an Appendix in this volume.) Newton is interested
in Cudworth, therefore, in precisely the same way that he is interested in the works of Bochart,
Marsham, and Vossius. See Danton B. Sailor, "Newton's Debt to Cudworth," Journol of the
History of Ideas 49, No. (July-Sept., 1988), pp. 511-8.
49. Westfall, "Newton's Theologiae Gentilis," p. 24.
50. Whiston, "Introductory Discourse," p. 95.
51. Westfall, "Newton's Theologiae Gentilis," p. 29.
52. Ibid., pp. 22-3.
53. Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation, p. 163.
54. Ibid., p. 184.
55. Ibid.
56. These Pauline texts are quoted in Edward Synge's work of practical devotion entitled A
Gentleman's Religion: With the Grounds and Reasons of It. In Which the Truth of Christianity in
general is vindicated; Its Simplicity asserted; And some Introductory Rules,jor the discovering of
its particular Doctrines and Precepts are proposed (London, 1693), pp. 132-3. Synge, p. 130, cites
St. Paul in support of his 43rd Rule - "That the knowledge of God Almighty, his Attributes, and his
Law, may, in part, be gathered from the Light of Nature (antecedent to any Revelation) is evident
from Reason, and acknowledged by St. Paul." Synge, the son of a bishop, the nephew of a bishop,
himself an archbishop and father of two bishops, is never accused of deism.
57. Newton, Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John. In Two
Parts (London, 1733), p. 6.
58. Burnet to Newton, January 13, 1680/1, in The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, Vol. 2,
1676-1687, ed. H. W. Turnbull (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), p. 324.
59. Ibid., p. 332.
60. Ibid., p. 331.
61. Ibid., p. 334.
62. Ibid., p. 332.
63. Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation, p. 247. Here Tindal writes that: "Among the
numerous Answerers of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion, Mr. Chandler is
deservedly reckon'd to stand in the foremost Rank; and this judicious Divine says, that "Natural
Religion is the only Foundation, upon which Revelation can be supported and which must be
understood, before any Man is capable of judging either of the Nature and Evidence of Christianity." Tindal here gives the following source for this text: "Chandler's Dedic. to Serm. preach'd
in the Old Jury, p. 8." Tindal is referring here to the "judicious Divine," Edward Chandler, Bishop
of Litchfield and Coventry.
64. Whiston, "Introductory Discourse," p. 95.
65. Newton, Yahuda MS 41. ff. 9-10. Cited by Westfall, "Newton's Theologiae Gentilis," p. 25.
66. Ibid.

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JAMES E. FORCE

67. Newton is adamantly cautious in his treatment of prophecies. One must never attempt to
predict exactly how, where, and when God will fulfill his prophetic promises. Such an ability
exceeds our rational power. God gives us such prophecies not to gratify human curiosity but so
"that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the Event, and his own Providence, not
the Interpreters be manifested thereby to the world." (Newton, Observations upon the Prophecies,
p. 251.) In contrast to Newton's explicit voluntarism, Tindal, again, argues that, because of the
rational nature of man, God cannot "reveal" to him any truth save by "shewing its Agreement with
those self-evident Notions, which are the Facts by which we are to judge of everything, even the
Being of a God and natural religion" (Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation, p. 184.) Tindal
here echoes Ralph Cudworth who adopts this position to argue against the voluntarism of Descartes. In Cudworth's view, God is unable to do anything repugnant to human reason and urges that
"Conception and knowledge are hereby made to be the Measure of all Power; even Omnipotence"
[Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678), p. 719.] Newton, by
contrast to both Cudworth and Tindal, adopts a voluntarism akin to that of Descartes and emphasizes God's omnipotence over the constraints of human rationality. Similarly, Whiston writes
that "We depend on God Almighty as to what we know, as well as what we have, or what we are."
(Whiston, "Introductory Discourse," p. 77.) See Richard H. Popkin's commentary on this passage
in Cudworth in "The Crisis of Polytheism and the Answers of Vossius, Cudworth, and Newton,"
supra. Of course, in his agreement with Tindal on the point of the constraints on God's power by
the limits of human understanding, Cudworth sounds more like a deist than Newton who adamantly
maintains the totality of God's power and dominion over creation.
68. The absolute nature of God's dominion over creation makes human knowledge of nature and
nature's laws necessarily contingent upon God's power and will to change the ordinary course of
events. Thus, Newton writes in Rule IV that: "In experimental philosophy we are to look upon
propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true,
notwithstanding any contrary hypothesis that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena
occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exception." See Sir Isaac
Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 2:400. See also James E. Force,
"Newton's God of Dominion," infra, under the section headed "Newton's God of Dominion,
Matter, and Knowledge."
69. Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, pp.
239-40. In his "Newton's Theologiae Gentilis," p. 30, Westfall cites this text as evidence that
Newton's "deism" goes well beyond the slightly more orthodox theology of his disciple, Samuel
Clarke. For the reasons which I give, I take this text to represent Newton's own position and to be
the reason why he utilizes the evidence of scripture in contrast to a deist such as Tindal whose chief
desire is simply to proscribe the use of scripture totally. Newton shares with Clarke an acute
awareness of the cyclical rise and fall of purely rational religions. They also share the same view
about the nature of Jesus Christ. See Note 7 I.
70. Westfall, "Newton's Theologiae Gentilis," p. 29.
71. Newton, Yahuda MS 15, Ch. 2, ff. 96-7. Cited in David Castillejo, The Expanding Force in
Newton's Cosmos as Shown in his Unpublished Papers (Madrid: Ediciones de Arte y Bibliofilia,
1981), p. 77. Clarke agrees exactly with Newton about how the Supreme Father has delegated a
portion of his own dominion to Jesus. Clarke writes that:
The reason why the Scripture, though it stiles the Father God, and also stiles the Son God, yet at
the same time always declares there is but One God; is because in the Monarchy of the
Universe, there is but One Authority, original in the Father, derivative in the Son: The Power of
the Son being, not Another Power opposite to That of the Father, nor Another Power coordinate to That of the Father, communicated to, manifested in, and exercised by the Son.
[Samuel Clarke, The Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity (London, 1712), pp. 332-3.]
72. Samuel Chandler, Reflections on the Conduct of the Modern Deists, In their late Writings
against Christianity: Occasioned Chiefly By Two Books, Entitled, A Discourse of the Grounds and
Reasons, &c. And the Scheme of Literal Prophecy considered. With a Preface containing some
Remarks on Dr. Rogers's Preface to his Eight Sermons (London, 1727), pp. 73-4. Most significantly, the dissenter Samuel Chandler observes how untenable is CoIlins' scoffing argument

THE NEWTONIANS AND DEISM

73

against the very possibility of a true text of the Bible solely because Whiston is in opposition "to
the generality of Christians" and differs with them about whether the Apostolical Constitutions are
divinely inspired and, therefore, possess the same "authority" as the other books of the New
Testament. (p. 71) The mere fact that Christians disagree with one another is not a sufficient
argument for setting the pursuit of the true text aside as impossible a priori. Chandler asks, "Is this
the impartial debate, the fair reasoning, that our adversaries, these strenuous asserters of liberty,
plead for?" (p. 74)
73. Chambers, Cyclopaedia, s.v. "Deists." Cf. Samuel Johnson's more succinct definition: ''The
opinion of those that only acknowledge one God, without the reception of any revealed religion."
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, 2 vols. (London, 1755), Vol. 1, s.v.
"DEISM."
74. Gjertsen, The Newton Handbook, p. 155-6.
75. John Edwards, Brief Remarks upon Mr. Whiston's New Theory of the Earth (London, 1697), p.
3.
76. Ibid., pp. 1-2.
77. Samuel Parker, Censura Temporum, or the Good and III Tendencies of Books, Vol. II (August,
1709), pp. 613-4.
78. Anonymous, A Letter to the Revd. William Whiston A. M. Occasioned by his Publication of the
Memoirs of His Own Life (London, 1750), pp. 37-8.
79. Jonathan Swift, Dean Swift's True, Genuine, and Authentic Copy of that most Strange,
Wonderful, and Surprizing Prophecy Written by St. Patrick, the Patron of Ireland, Above a
Thousand Years ago: Faithfully Translatedfrom the Irish Original above two hundred years since,
in the reign of K. Henry VII. New Publish'd with Explanatory Notes (London, 1740), p. 7.
80. Whiston, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Whiston, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London,
1753),1:158.
81. Anthony Collins, A Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (London,
1724), p. 196.
82. Ibid.
83. Newton, Yahuda MS I, f.l.

JAMES E. FORCE

5. NEWTON'S GOD OF DOMINION:

THE UNITY OF NEWTON'S THEOLOGICAL,
SCIENTIFIC, AND POLmCAL THOUGHT

Introduction: The Hues and Shades of Newton's Genius

(or Torturing a Metaphor)
Today, when we consider Newton and his work, there is a tendency among both
popularizers and scholars to see Newton through a prism, so to speak, and to study
Newton in refraction just as Newton studies light by passing it through a prism and
breaking it down into its primary colors. Newton is seen, at different times, as a heretical
theologian, a scientific genius, or a politically connected man of affairs. There often seem
to be as many Newtons as there are primary colors and we study Newton by studying the
many manifestations of his multi-hued genius independently. Failing to appreciate the
synthetic unity in Newton's thought is the inevitable result of overemphasizing one or
another of its integrated components.
Primarily, of course, Newton is for us the father of modem, i.e., of our, physics. We
mean it as a compliment to Newton when we induct him into our Pantheon of scientific
heroes whose work has culminated in our scientific world-view and our splendid
technological achievements. In his recent trashing of American universities and
American university students, Allan Bloom unhesitatingly enlists Newton in his personal
cult of the custodians of our civilization. Bloom explains that the differences between
ancients and modems
is not like the differences between Moses and Socrates, or Jesus and Lucretius, where
there is no common universe of discourse but more like the differences between
Newton and Einstein. It is a struggle for the possession of rationalism by the
rationalists.)
In Bloom's view, Newton and Einstein share a "common universe of discourse" which is
rational and, therefore, scientific. Newton is one of the intellectually respectable elite
because of his rationality; he certainly would have hated rock and roll.
The three-hundredth anniversary of the publication of Newton's Principia on July 5,
1987, has provided the occasion for a number of conferences and lectures celebrating that
"watershed work" with its rigorous experimental method in alliance with an elegant
mathematical description of the natural forces at work in the frame of nature. To quote
one elegy commemorating this tricentenary:
In short, Newton opened up one of the main avenues of modem scientific research and
showed how to follow it. No other figure in the history of science has done as much
75

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JAMES E. FORCE

except Charles Darwin, whose 19th-century work with evolution established an

equally rigorous strategy for the scientific study of the development of organic life.
This is why even the greatest scientists today hold Newton in awe.
Earlier, the same writer states:
The next time you're flying, you might give a thought to Sir Isaac Newton. Engineers
need modern quantum theory to design the aircraft's electronics. But Newton's
classical mechanics still accounts for the jet engine's thrust, the aerodynamic forces
that hold the craft up, and gravity'S tug, which tries to pull it down. Furthermore, were
your plane forced down in the wilderness or at sea, the satellite that would relay its
search and rescue signal travels on an orbit that Newton showed how to calculate 300
years ago. 2
Color the right stuff of Newton's steely-eyed, essentially modern, scientific rationalism
the blue of the wild blue yonder or the jet black of deep space. One refracted image of
Newton as seen through the prism of anachronism, then, is Newton the heroic scientist
who has, with other scientific hall-of-famers (Darwin, Einstein) "charted the course" of
modern thought. An intermediate shade is, of course, the blue-black of Newton the
mathematician. 3
There is a second Newton: the heretical theologian who disbelieves in the Holy Trinity
and believes in the literal fulfillment of the apocalyptic scenario in the book of Revelation. The pioneers in revealing this second Newton have been Frank E. Manuel and
Richard S. Westfall. Westfall's work has been particularly valuable both in its gargantuan
scope and in its absolutely meticulous precision. Westfall's glorious biography of
Newton, Never At Rest,4 establishes a new paradigm of excellence and comprehensiveness in the study of Newton. Westfall is the only writer in the world today who knows
intimately all the hues and shades in Newton's rainbow: the blues of his scientific
rationalism, the reds of his theological concerns ("reds," perhaps, because of the apocalyptic destruction of the earth by fire [Rev. 20:9] or, perhaps, because of Newton's identification of the woman arrayed in purple and scarlet [Rev. 17:4] as the Church of Rome), the
greens of a former member of parliament who perhaps owes his job at the Mint to his
political connections among influential Court Whigs.
But, in considering the relationship between Newton's theology and Newton's
science, for example, Westfall holds to studying each hue separately. It is highly
significant when a scholar of Westfall's attainments and stature writes:
Having studied the entire corpus of his theological papers, I remain unconvinced that
it is valid to speak of a theological influence on Newton's science. I say specifically
"theological influences," not "religious influence." The second can, I believe, be
readily shown and is generally admitted. A theological influence, by which I mean the
influence of Newton's central Arian position and his allied view of the prophecies, is
another matter. As I indicated earlier, perhaps we can find the source of the God of the
General Scholium in his Arianism. It is not clear which came first, however, his view
of God or his Arianism; and even if we grant the influence we remain still on a plane
of high generality from which it is difficult if not impossible to demonstrate an
influence on some concrete element of his science.

NEWTON'S GOD OF DOMINION

77

Westfall concludes that he is

inclined to examine the relation [between Newton's "theology" and his science] from
the other side. At the end of the 17th century, theology was the study with a firmly
established, long dominant role of [sic] European civilization, a role then beginning to
be challenged by the early success of modem science. It appears to me that we are
more likely to find the flow of influence moving from science, the rising enterprise,
toward theology, the old and (as we know from hindsight) fading one.5
Westfall's view on this point issues from his complete mastery of all the sources,
manuscript and printed, primary and secondary. It is not a view to be lightly challenged.
On Westfall's view, Newton probably must remain permanently refracted into scientist
and theologian. If there is any leakage across wavelengths, it is Newton's science which
colors his theology and not vice-versa.
Refracted, finally, through the prism of our 20th-century perspective is a third Newton
who is a political appointee (Master of the Mint) in his nation's capital. In his biography,
Westfall has detailed Newton's political life and involvements: his efforts to obstruct
James II's Catholic candidates for positions in the university, his service as a member of
parliament, his interest in the success of the Revolution, and his (and his niece's)
relationship - whatever it may have been - with the Whig minister, Baron Halifax of
Halifax (Charles Montague.)
Regarding the case of Newton and Halifax, Westfall recounts Voltaire's story of his
London visit in the 1720's (first published by Voltaire in 1757) in which Voltaire writes:
I thought in my youth that Newton made his fortune by his merit. I supposed that the
Court and the City of London named him Master of the Mint by acclamation. No such
thing. Isaac Newton has a very charming niece, Madame Conduitt, who made a
conquest of the minister Halifax. Fluxions and gravitation would have been of no use
without a pretty niece. 6
Westfall examines the tangled skein of evidence surrounding this allegation and concludes that it seems to be dubious but that we lack the necessary data to pass final
judgement. The important point for Westfall is that "The Principia remains the Principia
for us whatever the relation of Catherine Barton to Halifax and whatever Newton's role
in the affair."7 Newton's science remains as uncolored by his politics as his theology.
By way of contrast, Margaret C. Jacob has shown how Newton's science, in the hands
of latitudinarian churchmen between 1689 and 1721, becomes the basis for a political
argument to support the status quo and, consequently, their own position, together with
their Whig sponsors, in the ruling elite. From the orderly and law-abiding behavior of
matter in Newton's frame of nature, these latitudinarian churchmen argue by analogy to
the fittingness of order and law-abiding behavior in the socio-political fabric. As above in
the "world natural," so below in the "world politic."g Jacob is the first writer to have
emphasized the connection between Newtonian science and the political theorizing of his
day and to have treated the subject in depth. Nevertheless, Jacob's focus is on the
latitudinarians and their use of Newtonian science to bolster the established church and
state and not on any connection which Newton may have held between his theology or
his science and his political viewpoint.
Having briefly traced how Newton has been refracted into various shades and hues,

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my project in this essay is to take these shades of Newton and to send them back through
the lens of Newton's incandescent genius. As Newton himself demonstrates, the whiteness of the sun's light is compounded of all the primary colors 9 and so, too, is the
blinding white light of Newton's intellect.
I want to argue that Newton's theology, not just his religion, influences his science
every bit as much as his science influences the rigorous textual scholarship of his
theology. The key to understanding the integrated nature of Newton's thought is to
appreciate fully his view about the nature of God. His God is the Lord God of Dominion.
Westfall is quite right to observe that it is possible to find the "source" for Newton's God
of Dominion, articulated so clearly in the General Scholium, in Newton's Arianism. But,
if that is the case, then one must acknowledge a true influence of theology upon all
aspects of Newton's thought if it can be demonstrated that Newton's God of Dominion
finally comes to be seen by Newton as underlying his various other theories in science,
metaphysics, epistemology, and politics. At least a sketch of the possible role of Newton's Lord God as the metaphysical underpinning for his theology, science, and politics is
the purpose of this paper. I maintain that Newton's God of Dominion is the key to
understanding how he finally integrates his world and his theories in whatever field into a
synthetic unity of a startling coherence. I do not claim that this voluntaristic theory of the
nature of God develops first in any historical sense although it seems clear that Newton
comes to this view early in his career at the time when he becomes a committed Arian in
the early 1670's. I claim only that Newton's view concerning God's dominion - a theory
in which Newton emphasizes God's totally free will in conjunction with his absolute
power - finally becomes the common denominator in all his intellectual work of
whatever shade or hue and so provides the key to understanding the systematic unity and
coherence of all of his thought. It doesn't matter whether Newton's science or his
mathematics precede, in any temporal sense, his theory of the nature of God. Once he
comes to that metaphysical view - and he comes to it quite early - it provides the
background for all his other work and provides the key to seeing how Newton's true
genius is greater in the aggregate whole than it is in any of its refracted parts.

Theology: Newton's God of Dominion

Westfall rightly argues that it is impossible to determine whether Newton's philosophical
conception of the nature of God precedes his Christological doctrine of Arianism. 10 It
probably is the case that they develop in Newton's thought simultaneously because they
are two sides to the same coin.
The doctrines of Arius began to emerge following the year 318 AD., when Arius,
Presbyter of Alexandria (260-336 AD.), first challenged the eternity of Christ thus
precipitating the "Arian Crisis" in the early church which culminated, in one sense, with
the rejection of Arius' doctrines and the adoption of the Trinitarian Athanasian creed in
325 AD. at the Council of Nicaea. In fact, this controversy continued to rage throughout
the fourth century.
For Arius, there is a fundamental distinction between God, the Creator, and all his
creation. Jesus is one of God's creatures, he is a "work" of God, who is neither co-eternal
nor co-substantial with God the Father. Jesus is sinful mankind's redeemer, the divine
son of God, but only because of the power and will of the Lord God.

NEWTON'S GOD OF DOMINION

79

The diminution of Christ's nature and powers in the Arian doctrine involves necessarily the augmentation of the powers and nature of God the Father. All God's creatures,
even Jesus Christ, are under the dominion of God the Father, the true Lord God.
But whether Newton's theological doctrine of Arianism precedes or follows Newton's
voluntaristic theory of the dominion of God (again, I think it more likely that they are
logically connected and, hence, emerge together) both emerge early. Faced with the
necessity of entering the Anglican priesthood to retain his fellowship at Trinity College,
in the early 1670's Newton began an intensive study of theology and of the history of the
early church. From the period between 1672 and 1675 there is a sheet summarizing
Newton's conclusions about both the nature of Christ and the nature of God the Father.
Proposition 5, for example, proclaims that "The Son in several places confesseth his
dependance on the will of the father."ll Proposition 10 is even more instructive:
It is a proper epithete of ye father to be called almighty. For by God almighty we
always understand ye Father. Yet this is not to limit the power of ye Son, for he doth
what soever he seeth ye Father do; but to acknowledg yl all power is originally in ye
Father & that ye son hath no power in him but WI derives from ye father for he
professes that of himself he can do nothing. 12
Forty years later, we find Newton repeating this combined Arian Christology and
voluntaristic metaphysical theory emphasizing the ultimate will and power of the Lord
God of Dominion. And we find it both in his manuscripts and in his General Scholium to
the second edition of the Principia published in 1713. No more clear statement of
Newton's view of the nature of God's dominion exists than the General Scholium:
The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect; but a being, however
perfect, without dominion, cannot be said to be Lord God; for we say, my God, your
God, the God of Israel, the God of Gods, and Lord of Lords; but we do not say, my
Eternal, your Eternal, the Eternal of Israel, the Eternal of God; we do not say, my
Infinite, or my Perfect: these are titles which have no respect to servants. The word
God usually signifies Lord; but every lord is not a God. It is the dominion of a
spiritual being which constitutes a God: a true, supreme, or imaginary dominion
makes a true, supreme, or imaginary God. 13
For Newton, only a God of true and supreme dominion is a supreme and true God. A
manuscript note from 1710 reaffirms the Christological consequences of this metaphysical voluntarism regarding the deity. Newton still, forty years after his intensive theological researches of the early 70's, views Jesus as deriving from God a
unity of dominion, the Son receiving all things from the Father, being subject to him
executing his will, sitting in his throne and calling him his God, and so is but one God
with the Father as a King and viceroy are but one King. For the word God relates not
to the metaphysical nature of God but to dominion. 14
Ordinary mortals are no less under the dominion of God than Jesus Christ. In an entry to
his theological notebook from the 1670's there is a tantalizing hint that Newton is much
impressed by St. Paul's comparison of the relation between God and man to that between
a potter and his clay. In an entry entitled simply "Predestinatio," Newton quotes the

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famous ninth chapter of Romans where St. Paul places the etemal fate of men under the
dominion of their supreme Lord God:
What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith
to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, & I will have compassion on
whom I will have compassion. So than it is not of him that willeth, or of him yt
runneth, but of God that sheweth merch. For ye scripture saith unto Pharoh Even for
this same purpose have I raised thee up that I might shew my power in thee, & that my
name might be declared throughout all ye Earth. Therefore he hath mercy on whom he
will have mercy, & whom he will he hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto me; why doth
he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but 0 man, who art thou that
repliest against God? Shall ye thing formed say to him yt formed it why hast thou
made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay of ye same lump to make one
vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour?15
God's very "deitas" results, on Newton's view, from his "dominium" over the whole of
his creation. For Newton, the nature of God's "dominium" is his infinite will and
omnipotent power over everything else that there is. Everything that God created in the
world of physical nature such as drops of dew (Job 38:28), the world of natural inconstant
creatures (Deut. 32:18), the human world including inconstant sons (lsa. 1:2), even Jesus
Christ, falls under the dominion of God. All his creatures are consequently his servants
and all the rest of his physical creation, the fabric of nature itself, is likewise owned,
possessed, and used in accord with the dictates of God's will and power.
Newton's theory about the dominion of God is central to all the other aspects of his
theology in particular and to the rest of his thought in general. For example, one of his
central theological concerns throughout his life is to combat what he calls idolatry.
Worshipping anything but the Lord God of true and supreme dominion lessens the
absolute nature of God's dominion and constitutes idolatry. The Roman Church is his
chief target beginning with his theological notebook of the early 70's owing to its
Trinitarian creed which lessens the Father's dominion by promoting the co-eternality and
co-substantiality of the Son. "Never," he writes, "was Pagan Idolatry so bad as the
Roman."16
Newton's studies in the early 70's render him incapable of submitting to ordination in
the Church of England which would have required him to subscribe to the 39 Articles
(including its loathsomely idolatrous Trinitarian creed.) Yet, in Newton's day, most
fellowships required ordination. By early 1675, as his deadline for taking orders approached, Newton fully expected to have to leave Cambridge and vacate his fellowship.
At the eleventh hour, by nothing less than a Royal dispensation exempting in perpetuity
holders of the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics from the necessity of entering the church,
Newton, who had held the Lucasian Chair since 1669, was enabled to remain in the
university as a very low-profile, i.e., silent, Arian heretic and not as a public, if insincere,
subscriber to an idolatrous creed. 17
Even more importantly, Newton's voluntaristic God of Dominion, with his concomitant Arian Christology, directly influences his views on Biblical prophecy. Newton
begins an intensive study of prophetic language in the very early 1680's and returns to it
between 1705 and 1710. Newton is vitally concerned with what the language of the
prophets means because the prophecies, properly interpreted, illustrate the extent of

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81

God's dominion over his creation. Westfall is absolutely right that all the theological
manuscripts on the interpretation of prophecy, with Newton's emphasis on "methodising"
the prophetic language, reveal the rigor and orderliness of a great scientific mind. But the
most important aspect of the prophetic prediction of events to come and the cataloging of
the historical fulfi11ment of them is that it is Newton's favorite method for demonstrating
God's providential dominion. In the famous reply to Bentley of December 10, 1692,
when Newton rejoices in Bentley's adaptation of his Principia for the purposes of
developing a design argument, he goes on to say that, in addition to the design argument
of natural religion,
There is yet another argument for a Deity wch I take to be a very strong one, but till ye
principles on wch tis grounded be better received I think it advisable to let it sleep.IS
It seems clear to me that behind this passing reference are the many years of disciplined
and historical work revealed only in the many manuscripts on the interpretation of
fulfilled prophecies. Newton permitted their argument to continue sleeping for political
reasons.
For Newton, the central point in studying the prophecies in such detail over so many
years is just because they illustrate the dominion of God over nature and man. As
Westfall rightly puts it:
To Newton, the correspondence of prophecy with fact demonstrated the dominion of
God, a dominion exercised over human history even as it is exercised over the natural
world. 19
In addition to prophetic predictions regarding natural and political events already fulfilled
and of which we have testimony from the sacred prophets, there are those prophecies
regarding natural and political events predicted for the future but which remain unfulfilled. It is within this context that one must understand Newton's keen interest in the
millennial prophecies. By the 1670's he regards the future prophecies recorded in
Revelation to be especially preserved by God for mankind's instruction: "There [is] no
book in all the scriptures so much recommended & guarded by providence as this. "20
In the 80's, Newton begins to spell out his differences with the standard interpretation
of the Apocalypse of St. John. In the standard view of the Puritans in the preceding
generation, the opening of the seventh and final seal (Rev. 8:1-5) is often identified with
the diplomatic and political triumph of the Catholic Church at the Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D. To this date is often added 1260 years, the "time, two times, and half
a time" of Daniel 8:25 when, it is hoped, the messianic kingdom will commence.
The equation of this obscure text from Daniel with the figure of 1260 years results
from interpreting one "time" to equal one year. "Time, two times, and half a time,"
therefore, equals 3 and 1/2 years. Assuming a year to equal 360 days, 3 and 1/2 such
years equals 1260 days. This figure corresponds to Rev. 12:6 according to which:
And the woman [identified as God's persecuted apostolic church] fled into the
wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a
thousand two hundred and threescore days.
One obtains 1260 years from the figure of 1260 days by the simple and widespread
expedient among Biblical interpreters in Newton's day of assuming that one day equals

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one year. This dating places the advent of Christ's messianic kingdom at 1641 AD. (381
A.D. + 1260 years.) As the decades slip by the date is adjusted forward by dating the
opening of the seventh seal forward from the year 381 AD.
By Newton's day, scholars try to preserve the framework of the Book of Revelation by
accommodating it to a new date for the opening of the seventh seal. William Whiston,
Newton's hand-picked successor in the Lucasian Chair at Cambridge, dates the opening
of the seventh seal from 476 AD. when Odoacer and his Goths capture the last Emperor
of the West, Romulus Augustulus and relegate him to a Campenian villa on a pension. By
1736, consequently (476 AD. + 1260 years), Whiston expects momentous events at least
to begin which will lead subsequently to the millennial reign of Christ on earth and the
rest of the apocalyptic scenario described in Revelation. Up to and after that date,
Whiston is busily engaged in illustrating how the penultimate events in Revelation have
come to pass in the events of contemporary history, a current history project which he
states is first suggested to him by Isaac Newton and which results in Whiston's set of
Boyle Lectures The Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecy (London, 1708).21
In the early 70's, Newton spells out his own differences with other millennial
interpreters. Newton dates the beginning of the 1260 year period to begin with the year
607 AD. (an event he correlates with the blowing of the fourth trumpet in Rev. 8:12-3)
when the idolatrous Trinitarianism of the Roman Church triumphs. Because of his
intensive historical research into the barbarian invasions of the fifth and sixth centuries,
Newton reckons that by 607 AD. the invading barbarians - all of whom were Arian
Christians when they began despoiling the empire - had been converted to the idolatrous
trinitarian apostasy of the conquered empire. 22 In the 80's at least, Newton does not
expect the second coming and the subsequent messianic kingdom to begin until the
middle of the nineteenth century (607 A.D. + 1260 years).
The central point behind this recounting of Newton's basic view of prophecies is to
show that the scriptural histories of these prophesied events, predicted by God and then through his will and power - brought to pass, illustrate God's dominion and providential
control over creation. Scriptural history reveals a continuously present God, not simply a
God who observes events. His will and power direct both the "world politic" and, as we
shall see in the next section, the "world natural." One extremely important consequence
of this view is that God has permitted the spread of apostasy, with its eternally damning
consequences, through his dominion. Just as God permits the apostasies of the scribes
and pharisees in Christ's day and those of the Trinitarian Catholic Church in the 4th
century (a virulent apostasy which continues down to his own day), so he permits those
of any Trinitarian Protestant sect in Newton's time. Newton writes of his contemporary
learned apostates:
Are not these men like the Scribes and Pharisees who would not attend to the law and
the prophets but required a signe of Christ? Wherefore if Christ thought it just to deny
a signe to that wicked and adulterate generation notwithstanding that they were God's
own people, [even] and the Catholique Church; much more may God think it just that
this generation should be permitted to dy in their sins, who do not onely like the
Scribes neglect but trample upon the law and the Prophets ...
And from this consideration may also appear the vanity of those men who regard
splendor of churches and measure them by the external form and constitution.

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83

Whereas it is more agreeable to God's designe that his church appear contemptible
and scandalous to the world of men. For this end doubtless he suffered the many
revoltings of the Jewish Church under the Law, and for the same end was the grand
Apostacy to happen under the Gospel. Rev. [sic]23
Newton is convinced that God possesses dominion over the wise who will understand as
well as over the wicked who, through vanity and idolatry, will not. Newton does not cite
which text he has in mind from Revelation in the above quotation, but I would suggest
the following from Chap. 17, verses 17-8, which suggests Newton's point that the forces
of iniquity fulfill the purposes of the Lord God because God chooses them for that
purpose and enables them to succeed in their iniquities. Of the success of the harlot
sitting astride the beast, St. John writes:
God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and
giving over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God be fulfilled. And the
woman that you saw is the great city which has dominion over the kings of the earth.
But, so what? So what if Newton is an extreme metaphysical voluntarist who emphasizes
the absolute primacy of God's will and power over creation (even at the expense of
God's love and, apparently, God's intellect), who therefore simultaneously adopts an
Arian Christology, and who is also, consequently, keenly interested in understanding
historically fulfilled events in prophetic history and prophetically predicted future acts of
God as testimony to God's dominion? Is not the Principia still the Principia? What has
Newton's science really got to do, beyond the superficial level of the Newtonian design
argument, with Newton's voluntaristic theory ofthe absolute dominion ofthe Lord God?
The short answer is that, for us, Newton's theology is not necessarily related to his
science in any way. The longer, less anachronistically refracting, answer is that, for
Newton, God's real and absolute dominion profoundly affects his metaphysical view of
nature and of how we can know nature.

Newton's God of Dominion, Matter, and Knowledge

It is perhaps Hume who first systematically undertakes to sever Newton's physics from
Newton's theology in the middle of the 18th century. By the end of the 18th century, a
confident natural philosopher of the Enlightenment such as Laplace remarks that he has
no need of the "hypothesis" of God in his physical system. Since then generations of
critics have celebrated Newton's "gift" to the modem world of a pre-eminently rational
material order which mechanically flies along obedient to necessary natural laws and to
nothing else. A recent writer exults that
Newton's universe, when stripped of metaphysical considerations, as stripped it would
be, is an infinite void of which only an infinitesimal part is occupied by unattached
material bodies moving freely through the boundless and bottomless abyss, a colossal
machine made up of components whose only attributes are position, extension, and
mass. Life and the sensate world have no effect upon it and are banished, a la Descartes, from its rigorously mechanical operations. And yet, for all its lack of feeling,
Newton's universe is a precise, harmonious, and rationally ordered whole. Mathematical law binds each particle of matter to every other particle, barring the gate to chaos

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and disunity. By flinging gravity across the infinite void, he was able to unite physics
and astronomy in a single science of matter in motion, fulfilling the dream of
Pythagoras ... . And even though Newton was unable to discover a demonstrable
principle with which actually to explain the phenomenon of gravitation, the laws he
formulated provided convincing proof that man inhabits a preeminently orderly world.
We remember and honor him today not for providing us with ultimate answers to the
most profound scientific questions but because, in apprehending the Pythagorean
power by which number holds sway above the flux, Isaac Newton contributed more
than any other individual of the modem age to the establishment and acceptance of a
rational world view. 24
Hume first argues that metaphysics is a "shelter to superstition" and finally urges the
burning of any volume "of divinity or school metaphysics."25 On the above interpretation, given in citation 24, Newton is part of Hume's brave new positivistic world in
which superstitious metaphysics is banished and replaced by the mathematical study of
the principles of natural philosophy.
I will argue that the above reading is a misunderstanding of the role of metaphysics
and, consequently, of epistemology in the natural philosophy of Isaac Newton. It has
been time honored tradition since Hume to banish metaphysics from natural philosophy,
but it has nothing to do with Newton's position. What the impact of theology and
metaphysics is upon Newton's conception of matter and upon how we can gain
knowledge about the laws governing matter we shall see. Newton's thought is a seamless
unity of theology, metaphysics, and natural science. Newton's view of God's Dominion,
i.e., the total supremacy of God's power and will over every aspect of creation, colors
every aspect of his views about how matter (and the laws regulating the ordinary
operation of matter) is created, preserved, reformed, and, occasionally, interdicted by a
voluntary and direct act of God's sovereign will and power. Newton's commitment to the
Lord God of Dominion issues necessarily in the dependence of nature upon God's will.
He creates it and (at the same time) he creates it to operate by the ordinary concourse of
the laws of nature. He preserves it, he reforms it, from time to time he directly suspends
its ordinary operation through a specially provident act of will, and he has promised in
prophecy to destroy it as the wise have good reason to understand and to believe. Hume's
universe is stripped of metaphysical considerations, not Newton's.
Matter does not move, as it generally does, in accord with mathematically precise laws
of nature such as those described in the Principia because of any Neoplatonic overflow of
God's being into the world or because of any Hobbist, Cartesian, or Leibnizian notion of
necessary rational order intrinsically immanent within matter or imposed once and for all
long ago by a deity who long since has absented himself from the daily operations of
creation. Such metaphysical views dilute the total subordination of matter to the will of
God and are the metaphysical equivalent of theological idolatry. Rather, matter exists and
ordinarily operates in accord with natural law for one reason: God wills it so by divine
fiat. Both matter and natural law originate in the will and power of God. God's dominion
is the fundamental first metaphysical principle underlying Newtonian mechanics. Newton
writes (in Query 31), therefore, that because
Matter is not necessarily in all places, it may be also allow'd that God is able to create
Particles of Matter of several Sizes and Figures. and in several Proportions to Space,

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85

and perhaps of different Densities and Forces, and thereby to vary the Laws of Nature,
and make Worlds of several Sorts in several Parts of the Universe. 26
God is the Lord God, the "Pantocrator," as Newton styles him in the General Scholium,
of creation. God, exercising the dominion which makes him to be God, chooses one
material system by an act of his will. That is the system which we study through mathematical empiricism for the time being. In future, it might be that God chooses to reorder
his "new heaven and new earth," predicted in prophecy (Rev. 21:1), into a physical
system totally beyond the current grasp of our limited human reason. The mathematically
demonstrable, necessary, "universal" laws of nature operate as they ordinarily do only in
this particular creation and, even then, as we shall see, there are specially provident
exceptions. Truly, there are more things possible in Newton's philosophy, on heaven and
on earth, than are dreamed of in Hume's philosophy.
Having chosen matter of particular densities and forces of particular sorts (chiefly,
gravity) this time around, God's ordained frame of nature has since been wheeling
routinely along betraying in almost every motion the generally provident dominion of the
Lord God of creation. God's will and power are detectable in the routine, everyday
operation of secondary causes as described in the laws of nature. At the heart of this view
is the medieval distinction between God's "potentia ordinata" and "potentia absoluta."
These terms have been happily translated by J. E. McGuire, the most philosophically
sophisticated of all of Newton's many commentators, as "ordinary concourse" and
"extraordinary concourse," respectively.27
One measure of God's dominion, then, is the regularity, persistence, and mathematically describable and predictable recurrence of natural phenomena in accordance with the
laws of nature established at the creation by the Lord God of Dominion. God's Dominion
over the material world which he chose to create is further demonstrated by the nearly
continuous operation of the forces governing matter since that time. Preserving this order
in being is one more aspect of the Lord God's dominion. In his sermon on 2 Kings
17:1~, which Westfall dates from the 80's, Newton foreshadows the General Scholium
while pointing out the preserving role which the Lord God of Dominion continuously has
exercised over physical nature. God requires us, writes Newton, to worship him not
because we can fathom his innermost essence. Rather, God,
the wisest of beings require[s] of us to be celebrated not so much for his essences as
for his actions, the creating, preserving, and governing of all things according to his
good will and pleasure. 28
God's preservation of the created order is necessary owing to the original forces he
created. Because of gravity, he writes, "a continual miracle is needed to prevent the sun
and fixed stars from rushing together through gravity."29 The most important use of
Divine Will since the creation is God's usual maintenance, in continuous routine
operation, of the laws governing the forces and densities of matter which he created. As
William Whiston, Newton's successor in the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at
Cambridge writes:
'Tis now evident, that Gravity the most mechanical affection of Bodies, and which
seems most natural, depends entirely on the constant and efficacious, and, if you will,
the supernatural and miraculous Influence of Almighty God.3

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The physical world of creation, with all its demonstrable regularity and its nearly
continuous operation since the creation, betokens God's voluntary dominion. A more
lengthy quote from Whiston drives home the Newtonian view of God's will and power as
both "potentia ordinata" and "potentia absoluta" while simultaneously dispelling the
myth that Newtonian voluntarism emphasizes God's power at the expense of God's
intellect. Whiston notes how even the most religious and philosophical persons are
perplexed about the interaction between God's special, direct, interventionist providence
(his "potentia absoluta") and God's ordinary providence displayed in the lawful operations of secondary causes (his "potentia ordinata"):
... while the Philosopher was in Danger of doubting of the Success, and so ready to
grow cold in his Devotions; and the more unthinking, yet more religious Man rejected
the Consideration of the Manner, or the Operation of second Causes, and more wisely
look'd up only to God, and imagin'd him immediately concem'd in every Occurrence,
and on that Principle doubted not the Effect of his Prayers. But 'tis, methinks, evident
that neither of these were exactly in the Right ... 'Tis true that Natural Causes will
operate as usual. 'Tis also true that Miracles are not ordinarily to be expected: But
withal 'tis as true that the same all-wise Creator, who appointed that constant Course
of Nature, foresaw at the same time all those Dispositions of Men, and in particular
those Devotions of his Worshippers, to which suitable Rewards were to be provided,
and suitable Answers retumed. 31
In short,
God's Prescience enables him to act after a more sublime manner; and by a constant
Course of Nature, and Chain of Mechanical Causes, to do everything so, as it shall not
be distinguishable from a particular Interposition of his Power .... 32
The nearly continuous, daily, routine operation of the secondary mechanical causes
mathematically described by natural laws, such as that of gravity, reveal God's dominion
in "a more sublime manner" than the extraordinary concourse of God's will interposing
itself in a miraculous fashion involving the breaking or suspending of the ordinary
concourse of the laws of nature. Nevertheless, when pressed (as in the case of Leibniz
who chides Newton and his followers for reducing God to the status of an inferior c1ockmaker/repairman), Newton and his closest followers such as Clarke and Whiston agree
that God's will is supreme: real miracles have occurred in the past and, because of God's
unlimited power and dominion, such miracles may occur in the future. Newton's clearest
statement of his insistence upon the possibility of God's specially provident disruption of
the mechanics he originally created is found in a manuscript draft of his views on God's
power (a text first revealed by McGuire), and which dates from the early 90's:
That God is an entity in the highest degree perfect, all agree. But the highest idea of
perfection of an entity is that it should be one substance, simple, indivisible, living and
lifegiving, always everywhere of necessity existing, in the highest degree understanding all things, freely willing good things; by his will effecting things possible;
communicating as far as it possible his own similitude to the more noble effects;
containing all things in himself as their principle and location; decreeing and ruling all

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87

things by means of his substantial presence (as the thinking part of man perceives the
appearances of things brought into the brain and thence its own body); and constantly
cooperating with all things according to accurate laws, as being the foundation and
cause of the whole of nature, except where it is good to act otherwise.33
Of course, Newton and Whiston prefer not to demonstrate the specially provident aspect
of God's dominion over nature by recourse to miracles, if at all possible. Most
"miracles," observes Newton, are not really examples of voluntary acts of God's will in
which he first suspends the ordinary concourse of nature and then supplants them with an
extraordinary, specially provident, miracle. Most miracles "are not so called because they
are the works of God, but because they happened seldom and for that reason excite
wonder."34 In his manuscript concerning the various crimes, lies, and forgeries perpetrated by Athanasius, Newton devotes much time to showing how "that crafty
Politician" almost single handedly, foists the idolatrous Trinitarian doctrine upon the
heathen through the use of "monstrous Legends, fals miracles, veneration of reliques,
charmes, ye doctrine of Ghosts or Demons, & their intercession & worship .... "35
Apart from the creation and the continued overseeing of the survival of that creation,
Newton's preferred argument for illustrating the specially provident aspect of God's
dominion is the record of fulfilled scripture prophecy. Prophecies are uniquely suited to
demonstrating the dominion of God in the historical events predicted and then brought to
pass in both the "world natural" and the "world politic." Owing to God's omniscience
and power to effect his will, he is able to synchronize most natural and political events
(predicted through the mouths of his chosen prophets) with the ordinary concourse of
natural law while always reserving his sovereign right directly to interpose his will. As
the historical events of the natural and political past have illustrated God's dominion, the
signs of Newton's own times will continue progressively to unfold the true state of God's
dominion over creation:
For the event of things predicted many ages before, will then be a convincing argument that the world is governed by providence. For as few and obscure prophecies
concerning Christ's first coming were for setting up the Christian religion, which all
nations have since corrupted; so the many and clear Prophecies concerning the things
to be done at Christ's second coming, are not only for predicting but also for effecting
a recovery and re-establishment of the long-lost truth, and setting up a Kingdom
wherein dwells righteousness.
Furthermore, writes Newton:
But if the last age, the age of opening these things, be now approaching, as by the
successes of late Interpreters it seems to be, we have more encouragement than ever to
look into these things.36
Behind the mechanical framework of the Principia is Newton's God of Dominion
creating and then preserving creation. The Lord God exercises dominion either through
secondary, mechanical causes (which is the usual case) or through extraordinary, direct,
voluntary interpositions of his will (which are very unusual but, owning to God's power,
are still possible at any time.)
The metaphysics of the Principia is absolutely pervaded by Newton's God. But, one

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might ask, what has metaphysics to do with mathematics? Is not Newton's raw
mechanism of a world devoid of metaphysics? Is not at least the mathematical aspect of
the method of the Principia sacrosanct from any sort of metaphysical "sideshow."37
The dominion of God over his creation is just as important to Newton's epistemology
as it is to his metaphysics. They are clearly inseparable in Newton's integrated system of
thought. Newton is most famous for combining mathematics with empirical observations
but both these elements of his scientific method are intrinsically related to his voluntaristic conception of God's dominion.
Without the metaphysically justified conception of the perseverance of the ordinary
concourse of natural laws, which Newton derives from the will and power of the Lord
God of Dominion, there could be no mathematical demonstration of the "necessary"
forces of nature within this particular order of material creation chosen so long ago by the
deity. Without God first creating and then sustaining the generally regular operations of
nature, there could be no ordinary concourse of natural law to describe with mathematical
principles.
Beyond this point, but closely allied to it, is Newton's best known contribution to
mathematics, his famous method of fluxions which dates from 1665. Newton's method of
fluxions is inevitably connected with his theory of the continuous dominion of God since
the creation; fluxions are a method which view geometrical quantities as arising from a
continuous motion as if they were computer-generated. Any line or curve can be seen as
the result of the continuous flowing motion of a point. The rate of flow Newton calls a
"fluxion." The flowing line itself is called a "fluent." Newton's early mathematical work
is given over to demonstrating, their corresponding fluxion given any particular relationship between two fluents. Inversely, Newton demonstrates how to determine the necessary relationship between two fluents given two related fluxions.
Newton's calculus is based on the continuity of flow as supervised by the God of
Dominion operating in his generally provident mode of creator and preserver of the
current state of natural law. A. Rupert Hall, in his exacting treatise on the "war" of
priority in the discovery of the calculus waged between Leibniz and the followers of
Newton, has pointed out that Newton's method is conceived in an entirely different
metaphysical framework than that of Leibniz' s differential calculus which is rooted in the
relative discontinuity and individual freedom of monads created by an absconding deity
long ago. 38
But perhaps the most important reason for regarding Newton's theology as part of his
scientific methodology is his empiricism. Why, for example, does not Newton go along
with Leibniz's necessitarian and rationalist view that experiments and empirical observations are completely unnecessary? Newton, after all, begins with observations of the
phenomena of nature before seeking to describe the covering law behind those
phenomena in necessary mathematical terms.
While mathematically necessary descriptions will hold as "universally" true, for the
most part, owing to the ordinary concourse of God's dominion, ultimately God suffers no
restraint upon his absolute will and power. Because God is so powerful that he can alter
the course of nature at will, scientific knowledge of nature must necessarily be based
upon repeated empirical observations just because we humans do not know when or
where he might exercise his specially provident power of miraculous will and suspend or
reverse what we have been pleased to call the "laws" of nature generally operative in this

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creation until now. Our knowledge of whether scientific "laws" of nature imposed by the
Lord God of Dominion at the time of creation will continue to be "laws" in the future,
and to express then the same relationships previously discovered to hold between forces,
can ultimately be only very highly probable owing to the contingent aspect of our
knowledge of nature which results from Newton's conception of the unlimited power and
will of the Lord God of Dominion.
Newton's experimentalism is inextricable from his theology and his voluntaristic
metaphysics because of the contingency which it introduces into human knowledge of
nature. In the 1713 Preface to the second edition of the Principia, Roger Cotes explains
how the Newtonian God of Dominion forces us to be experimentalists:
Without all doubt this world, so diversified with that variety of forms and motions we
find in it, could arise from nothing but the perfectly free will of God directing and
presiding over all.
From this fountain it is that those laws, which we call the laws of Nature, have
flowed, in which there appear many traces indeed of the most wise contrivance, but
not the least shadow of necessity. These therefore we must not seek from uncertain
conjectures, but learn them from observations and experiments. 39
Newton, in his Fourth Rule of Reasoning first added in 1723 to the third edition of the
Principia, underscores Cotes' concern to refute the God of the rationalists who, once
finished with creating matter and the laws governing it, absents himself from further
involvement. Newton notes the methodological impact for human knowledge of a
physical nature subservient either to God's ordinary or to his extraordinary acts of will:
Rule IV In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by
general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding
any contrary hypothesis that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena
occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exception.
This rule we must follow that the argument of induction may not be evaded by
hypotheses. 40
Newton's universe is in one sense necessary and in another contingent. For God, the
universe is always necessarily dependent upon his will. As the generally provident author
of the physical laws which ordinarily govern motion in the current structure of the
material realm or as the specially provident interventionist, Newton's God rules on earth
and in heaven. But the absolute nature of God's dominion over creation makes human
knowledge of the usually lawful structure of the material world necessarily contingent
upon the will of God. Human knowledge is contingent upon whether God is exercising
his will through the ordinary concourse of nature (as has ordinarily been the case in the
past) or through the very rare instances of an extraordinary direct interposition of his will.
Mathematically demonstrable laws of nature which apply to a great many observed
phenomena are "necessary" only while God sustains and preserves them in their ordinary
concourse. As Whiston puts it, '''Tis true that Natural Causes will operate as usual," but
only if God wills them to continue doing so in the future as they have in the past.
Because of the basic Newtonian view about the voluntaristic nature of God's
dominion which underlies any attempt to seek knowledge - whether in the interpretation

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of prophecies or the understanding of the laws of nature - finally what matters most is a
cautious empiricism. Newton writes, for example, of the "design" of God in giving men
prophetic predictions. It is not to enable interpreters to gratify
men's curiosities by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were
fulfilled they might be interpreted by the Event, and his [God's] own Providence, not
the Interpreters be manifested thereby to the world.41
So, too, in natural philosophy Whiston, echoing the fourth Rule, explains why empiricism
is the only path to follow:
Our imperfection is such, that we can only act pro re nata, can never know beforehand
the Behaviours of Actions of Men; neither can we forsee what Circumstances and
Conjectures will happen at any certain time hereafter ....42
The contingent nature of our knowledge, which is the direct result of the nature of God's
power and will to change the ordinary concourse of events, results for Newton and the
Newtonians in a characteristic note of caution in both theological speculations about
future prophecies and scientific "predictions" about the course of future events.
Nevertheless and however reluctantly, Newton accepts the possibility that God may
choose to suspend or overturn the ordinary course of nature by a specially provident act
of his sovereign will. Though such acts are possible, Whiston says that they "are not
ordinarily to be expected." The contingent feature which God's will and power introduce
into what humans may know about the fabric of God's creation limits human knowledge
of the natural laws ordinarily governing mechanical causes to probabilistic inductions
based upon repeated observations. To the question of whether "there be a continual
immediate Government of the Universe; or whether god so disposed all things at first, as
not to interpose by a continual actual Operation upon them," Clarke gives the characteristically Newtonian response that God "preserves and governs, disposes and directs
continually all the Motions and Powers of Things in the natural world. "43
For Newton, there are real consequences in his science for his theological view that
the whole of nature is subordinate to God "and subservient to his Will'>44 just as it is no
doubt the case, as Westfall has persuasively argued, that there are real consequences
introduced into Newton's method of studying theology which result from his rigorously
trained scientific intellect. They are mutually influential. Newton would have been
astonished to learn that some of his interpreters, following Hume's lead, have claimed
that theology, metaphysics and epistemology have no necessary, integrated, synthetic
relationship in themselves, much less that he has himself been placed into this school.
Newton's own thought is in fact a seamless unity composed of theology, metaphysics,
and epistemology all mixed together simply because, at their base, is the Lord God of
supreme dominion. It is permissible, of course, to refract Newton's thought into its
various hues and shades and to study them independently so long as we remember not to
take anyone element as logically prior to any other element. Refracting Newton into
shades and hues may be a reasonable learning aid but we miss the blinding incandescent
light of his true genius if we forget finally to recombine his many parts into the integrated
whole which is the totality of his genius.

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91

Newton's God and Newton's Politics

Many writers, in Newton's day and in ours, have been convinced that science and politics
are woven tightly together in Newtonian thought. Nick Herbert, in his fine book Quantum
Reality, has correctly pointed out that
For better or for worse, humans have tended to pattern their domestic, social, and
political arrangements according to the dominant vision of physical reality. Inevitably
the cosmic view trickles down to the most mundane details of everyday life. 45
In Newton's case, Herbert states baldly that Newton's conception of passive, inert matter
gliding through space, like the giant spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey, in accord with
the forces of nature as computed by the HAL-9000 computer, overturns the medieval
metaphysics of hierarchical gradations of celestial matter arranged in successive spheres.
This metaphysical revolution occurs "coincidentally" with a profound political revolution. Just at the time when Newton substitutes, in his Principia, a universe "of ordinary
matter governed by mathematical laws" for a Dantean (medieval) universe of hierarchical
quintessences presided over by the direct command of God, society moves from a feudal
monarchy (which mirrors the metaphysics of the medievals) to democracies where
individual parts, composed of Newtonian matter, are both equal and equally under the
rule oflaw. Herbert writes:
Coincident with the rise of Newtonian physics was the ascent of the modern
democracy which stresses "rules of laws rather than men" and which posits a theoretical equality between the parts of the social machinery. The Declaration of Independence, for example, [sic] "We hold these truths to be self-evident" reads more like a
mathematical theorem than a political document. As above, so below. The egalitarian
mechanism that Newton discovered in the heavens has insinuated itself into every
aspect of ordinary life. For better or worse, we live today in a largely mechanistic
world. 46
It is reasonable to expect such a viewpoint to be expressed in passing in the Introduction
to a book devoted primarily to describing the development of modern quantum
mechanics. One is quite surprised to encounter such an anachronism in a scholarly
treatment of Newton, however. Nevertheless, of the law of gravity, Gale E. Christianson
writes:
With this single law of physics Isaac Newton "democratized" the universe, as it were,
by laying permanently to rest the concept of a hierarchical dominance among the
celestial bodies .... In the seemingly infinite universe envisioned by Newton, no one
body is more important than any other. 47
There is, certainly, a relationship between the metaphysics of scientific world-views. And
one may even wish to read an embryonic declaration of political independence back into
Newton's view of matter. But to do so loses sight of the fact that Newton's God creates
that matter, installs the laws which regulate it, continually supervises the maintenance
and repair of those laws, and occasionally suspends them. A God without such dominion,
writes Newton, "is nothing else but Fate and nature."48 Newton simplifies the hierarchy,
but he strengthens the basic ontology of hierarchical dependency by his emphasis upon

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the Lord God of Dominion. Newton rails against the atheistic tendencies of Descartes
precisely for forgetting the nature of this relationship:
Indeed however we cast about we find almost no other reason for atheism than this
notion of bodies having as it were, a complete, absolute and independent reality in
themselves. 49
But there is a much more sophisticated position which relates Newton's physical theories
to the developing Whig ideology of his day. Newton's thought emphasizes order and
simplicity in both the rules of reasoning and in his theological notebooks. This
methodological preference for order and simplicity is echoed in Newton's many
manuscripts "methodizing" the interpretation of prophecies: God is "the god of order not
confusion," writes Newton. 50 In the "Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy," this attitude is
expressed in Rule I, the principle of the simplicity of nature, according to which "Nature
is pleased with simplicity, and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes."51 As
Margaret C. Jacob and others have argued, latitudinarian low churchmen are quick to
seize upon this aspect of Newton's thought and to make the orderliness of the Newtonian
heavens the political and social ectype for the rising Whig ideology of the first decades of
the eighteenth century. 52 In his The Newtonian System of the World, The Best Model of
Government, J. T. Desaguliers makes this analogy crystal clear:
ATTRACTION now in all the Realm is seen, To bless the Reign of George and
Caroline. 53
Jacob's point is well taken, but one may still inquire whether such a use of Newton's
science is one which Newton himself makes or would have sanctioned. Does Newton
wish to make the same connection between the orderliness of the heavens and the
political theory of the moderate Whigs and their latitudinarian apologists? Within the
context of the high and low church parties and the Whig-Tory struggle for power which
is central in England from the 1690's onward,54 it is tempting to argue that Newton is
himself a latitudinarian Whig, albeit a silent one. He owes his job to the rising Whig tide
and his arguments and positions are quickly adapted by latitudinarian churchmen to
support the Whig party. 55
But William Whiston records a conversation which indicates that Newton's distance
from the politicians of his day is more than just another manifestation of his shyness to
engage in controversy and which also suggests that there is a real intellectual difference
between Newton and his Whig patrons. Whiston writes that he
early asked him [Newton], why he did not at first draw such Consequences from his
Principles, as Dr. Bentley soon did in his excellent Sermons at Mr. Boyle's Lectures;
and as I soon did in my New Theory; and more largely afterward in my Astronomical
Principles of Religion; and as that Great Mathematician Mr. Cotes did in his excellent
Preface to the later Editions of Sir I. N.'s Principia: I mean for the advantage of
Natural Religion, and the Interposition of the Divine Power and Providence in the
Constitution of the World; His answer was, that He saw those Consequences; but
thought it better to let his Readers draw them first of themselves: Which Consequences however, He did in great measure draw himself long afterwards in the later
Editions of his Principia, in that admirable Genera [sic] Scholium at its conclusion;

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93

and elsewhere, in his Opticks .... Nor can I dispence with myself to omit the Declaration of his Opinion to me, Of the Wicked Behavior of most modem Courtiers, and the
Cause of it, which he took to be their having laughed themselves out of Religion; or, to
use my own usual phrase to express both our Notions, because they have not the fear
of God before their Eyes, Which Characters being, I doubt, full as applicable to our
present Courtiers, as they were to those of whom he apply'd them long ago, is a Cause
of Lamentation.
Whiston concludes that his own experience has led him to distrust all politicians and
courtiers. When even honest Christians go to court his experience has shown them rarely
"to amend those Courts, but to be almost always greatly and fatally corrupted by
them."56
Amidst the raging tumult of party, sectarian, and intellectual strife which characterizes
his society before and after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Newton calmly goes about
the business of illustrating the true nature and extent of God's dominion in theology, in
science, and in politics for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. He is secure in his
view that in the latter days such knowledge will increase even while "many will run to
and fro." (Daniel 12:4) While Newton is in fact very much interested in eradicating any
Roman Catholic influence, once the Catholic menace evaporates his job reverts to
illustrating the dominion of God to all remaining idolaters whether Whig or Tory, high
church or low church, deist or Anglican who have the ears to hear and eyes to see. In
London increasingly in the 1690's where he is seeking an appointed public office, he
seeks to accomplish this goal through his role as one of those who helps to select the
Boyle Lecturers, through his revisions to the Principia which he works on in the early
90's and which remains in a most important manuscript in which he anticipates the Lord
God of the 1713 General Scholium,57 and through such controversies as the debate with
Leibniz which begins over the question of the priority of the discovery of the method of
fluxions but, by 1710, enlarges beyond the priority dispute into a debate conceming the
dominion of God.
In the realm of politics, there is no reason to read Newton as a kind of latitudinarian
moderate Whig just because he owes his political appointments at the Mint to the
political ascendancy of that party. As the above text suggests, he may have mistrusted
"most Courtiers." Certainly, the retention of the Trinitarian idolatry in the established
Anglican church, high or low, idolatrously continued to mock the power and will of the
Lord God of Dominion as illustrated in fulfilled prophetic predictions and also
demonstrated in the Newtonian fabric of the heavens.
Herbert is correct that for better or for worse there is a linkage between metaphysics
and politics. In Newton's case, this linkage simply does not produce a latitudinarian, low
church, moderate Whig. Rather, the one-way dependency of created mankind upon God
the creator underpins a political philosophy in which God's dominion is the central
feature in explaining man's moral and political duties both to God and to other men.
God voluntarily creates the world and preserves it through acts of will. God's act of
will in making the world is exactly analogous to the way a human being wills his body to
move. Newton writes that "God ... created the World solely by an act of the will, just as
we move our bodies by an act of the will. ,,58 We understand God's will and power to act
over the whole of creation to be analogous, in a limited way, to our will and power to act

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over our bodies. We remotely understand God's infinite dominion over the totality of his
creation by analogy with our finite dominion over our bodies.
And this understanding of the extent and nature of God's dominion is the key to
Newton's political and moral views about the duties and obligations of man. Newton
writes that
so far as we can know by natural philosophy the first cause, what power He has over
us, and what benefits we receive from Him, so far our duty towards Him, as well as
that towards one another, will appear to us by the light of nature. 59
A clear statement of the sorts of duties owed to the Lord God of Dominion and to our
fellow men is found in the first paragraph of Newton's brief manuscript note entitled
"Religion":
Our Religion to God: God made the world and governs it invisibly, and hath commanded us to love, honour and worship him and no other God but him and to do it
without making any image of him, and not to name him idly and without reverence,
and to honour our parents, masters and governors, and love our neighbors as ourselves, and to be temperate, moderate, just and peaceable, and to be merciful even to
brute beasts.60
Because man and God both have will and the power to create, the analogy may be
extended from God's dominion over us, his creations, to our dominion over property, our
creation. The implications of this voluntaristic theory of God's dominion for human
property are largely drawn out by John Locke in both his Essay Concerning Human
Understanding and in his Two Treatises of Civil Government where Locke discusses the
ability of human beings to understand God's dominion by analogy with how the human
will operates to move our bodies. 61 In a footnote which Pierre Coste writes for the third
French edition of Locke's Essay (1734), Coste reports a discussion that Coste had with
Newton long after Locke had died. Coste records that Newton then informed him that he,
Newton, had suggested this theory to Locke when he once met with Locke at the Earl of
Pembroke's house. 62
Newton's God of dominion causes him to spurn as idolatrous anyone who dilutes the
dominion of God whether through deistic mockery of God's power or through misguidedly worshipping false images of God or false metaphysical conceptions of God.
This includes deistic radical Whigs who laugh at the story of Moses and the flood as well
as moderate low churchmen who subscribe to the Trinitarian heresy and the moderate
Whig political establishment which supports that false creed. But he does so in an
enigmatic way through the metaphysical statements in the General Scholium which are
designed only for the illumination of the wise. Newton's religion is at the root of
Newton's political activity. His view of God's dominion keeps him steady in the swirling
eddies of his contemporary political surroundings. It is a fact that he gets along with all
sides. He wins Royal release by the Stuart king from ordination in the Church of England
as a condition for maintaining his Cambridge Fellowship in 1675 and is appointed
Warden of the Mint in 1696, with the help of the Whig minister Halifax, and Master of
the Mint in 1700, this time without the intercession of Halifax who was no longer in
office.
There is one possible way to interpret Newton as a member of the moderate Whig

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party and that is the fact that he does support the will of the people over the will of the
king at the time of the Glorious Revolution. This doctrine is a defining characteristic of
the moderate Whigs who displace the king in spite of the Tory argument that the king's
dominion over his kingdom derives directly from God. To find Newton supporting the
will of the people would seem to make him some sort of Whig. So, one might argue, yet
again, that here is a good example of how Newton's religion is separated from his
political theorizing and activity. But, it seems to me that here, too, Newton's guiding
intellectual principle of the dominion of God is central and probably places him in the
moderate Whig camp for reasons which have more to do with his metaphysical view of
the nature of God's dominion rather than with any republican allegiance to the sovereign
will of the people. William Whiston has outlined how this is possible and while I am
fully aware of the dangers involved in taking Whiston's position to be isomorphic with
that of Newton on this (or any other) point, Whiston's "compromise" seems to me at least
suggestive of how it is possible for a committed Arian, who despises idolatry and
emphasizes God's dominion, might support the Parliament over the king in a revolution.
Whiston develops a moderate position midway between the radical republican Whigs according to whom the will of the people is absolutely sovereign - and the Tories according to whom the people always owe passive obedience to their monarch by virtue
of his divinely ordained right to rule, a right which is transferred by hereditary succession. Whiston modifies the notion of divine right to show that God still providentially
directs the political affairs of his creatures by guiding the will of the people in their
choice of a new king. God's dominion is completely preserved by this new mechanism in
which the choice of the people, and not the institution of primogeniture, is divinely
guided. The analogy is complete because such an extraordinary act of God operating
directly through the will of the people does not happen always or even often. Ordinarily,
God does confer his dominion to his chosen kings through the ordinary concourse of the
mechanism of heredity. But his power is such that he can choose to alter this means of
succession by an act of extraordinary concourse. Whiston combs the Bible for examples
to show that God has operated in just such a fashion in the prophetic histories. 63 And
what if the new monarch supports a false and idolatrous doctrine such as the Trinity?
Well, God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. It may be his way of
effecting his plan for the end of times, we'll just have to wait and see. But his dominion is
never in doubt for Whiston or for Newton.

Conclusion
It is certainly possible to study Newton's many various theories over the wide range of
his thought separately but we do less than full justice to the range and scope of his genius
if we neglect his emphatic regulative principle concerning the dominion of the Lord God
of creation which underlies all his work. Newton's conception of a voluntaristic deity, a
supremely powerful, absolute sovereign who is the Lord God of creation directly
influences his theology, his natural philosophy, and his politics and provides the key to
understanding the synthetic unity in his thought which constitutes the true incandescence
of his genius. To overemphasize anyone aspect of Newton's philosophy by neglecting
the implications of his underlying view of the God of Dominion is to run the risk of

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completely misunderstanding him in his own terms even though we may thereby
anachronistically induct him into the modem Pantheon of heroes who have created our
present culture. He is neither a scientist, nor a theologian, nor a political theorist in any
recognizably individuated, modem sense. 64

Notes
1. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), p.
264. Consider the sort of modern Valhalla into which modern scientific rationalists seek to enshrine
Newton. In the Introduction by Zev Bechler to a collection of essays entitled Contemporary
Newtonian Research (Oordrecht: D. Reidel, 1982), Bechler writes that "This belief in the overall
rationality of the scientist is the unbreakable tie that unifies historians of scientific ideas into one
big loving family in which disputes can't really be fundamental. Here everyone works for the
common good and deviations are negligible, and the common good is an exhibition of true
rationality silently throbbing wherever science exists." (p. 2)
2. Robert C. Cowen, "Sir Isaac Newton: Charting the Course of Modern Thought," The Christian
Science Monitor (July 17, 1987), p. 16. Other journalists have helped to define Newton as the
positivistic father of all that is "good," Le., rational, and, therefore, serious and "objective," in
modern science. But journalists tend to write their stories based on what the people they interview
tell them. Writing in The New York Times (March 31, 1987), Malcolm W. Browne "pegs" his story
of the three-hundredth anniversary of the publication of Newton's Principia to the many events
celebrating this anniversary, from specially issued postage stamps to symposia and conferences.
His story features a long interview with Dr. Subrabmanyan Chandrasekhar, one of the "leading
physicists participating in the current symposiums on Newton's Principia .... " In answering
Browne's question about how Newton would have felt about the course of science since his death,
Dr. Chandrasekhar replies, "I think he would have been troubled by the development of quantum
theory since so much in quantum physics is indeterminate and acausal. But he would have been far
less surprised by today's science than would any of his contemporaries. He would have been much
more disturbed, I think, by today's religious evangelism." (p. 21)
3. D. T. Whiteside, "Newton the Mathematician," in Contemporary Newtonian Research, ed. Zev
Bechler (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1987), pp. 109-27.
4. Richard S. Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1980.)
5. Richard S. Westfall, "Newton's Theological Manuscripts," in Contemporary Newtonian
Research, pp. 139-40.
6. Westfall, Never At Rest, p. 596.
7. Ibid., p. 597.
8. Margaret C. Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689-1720 (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1976), passim, but especially, p. 175.
9. Sir Isaac Newton, Opticks or A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions,Inflections & Colours of
Light. Based on the fourth edition, London, 1730. With a Foreword by Albert Einstein, and
Introduction by Sir Edmund Whittaker, a Preface by I. Bernard Cohen, and an Analytical Table of
Contents prepared by Duane H. D. Roller (New York: Dover Publications, 1952), Book One, Part
II, Prop. v, Theor. iv, p. 134.
10. Westfall, "Newton's Theological Manuscripts," p. 130.
11. Newton, Yahuda MS 14, f. 25, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
12. Ibid. Frank E. Manuel, in his book The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1974), discusses a fragment from Yahuda MS 15.5 (dated by Westfall as from the period around
1710) on p. 21. Manuel argues that the Lord God of the General Scholium must not be seen as
merely the result of the great dispute with Leibniz. It is a view reiterated too many times in too
many other contexts. The text pointed to by Manuel reads:
If the father or son be called God, they take the name in a metaphysical sense as if it signified

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Gods metaphysical perfections of infinite eternal omniscient omnipotent whereas it relates only
Gods dominion to teach us obedience. The word God is relative and signifies the same thing
with Lord and King, but in a higher degree. As we say my Lord, our Lord, your Lord, the King
of Kings, and Lord of Lords, the supreme Lord, so we say my God, our God, your God, the God
of Gods, the supreme God, the God of the earth, the servants of God, serve other Gods: but we
do not say my infinite, our infinite, your infinite, the infinite of infinities, the infinite of the
earth, the servants of the infinite, serve other infinities. When the Apostle told the Gentiles that
the Gods which they worshipped were not Gods, he did not meane that they were not infmities,
(for the Gentiles did not take them to be such:) but he meant that they had no power and
dominion over man. They were fals Gods; not fals infinities, but vanities falsely supposed to
have power and dominion over man. (Yahuda MS 15.5, folios 96 verso, 97 recto, and 98 recto.)

13. Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the
World. Translated into English by Andrew Motte in 1729. The translations revised, and supplied
with an historical and explanatory appendix by Florian Cajori. 2 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1962), 2:544. In a footnote to this text, Newton states that, according
to Dr. Edward Pococke (the Biblical scholar and orientalist who had introduced the study of Arabic
into Oxford and then become the first Professor of Arabic there), the Latin word Deus derives from
the (transliteration ot) du in the Arabic which means lord.
14. Newton, Yahuda MS 15.1, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Newton's conception of the nature
of God's dominion and its necessary consequence that Jesus is not divine in his metaphysical
nature is adopted by his disciples Samuel Clarke and William Whiston. The following text from
Clarke, for example, resoundingly echoes the quotation cited above from Newton's General
Scholium. In his The Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity. In Three Parts. Wherein All the "Texts" in
the New Testament relating to that Doctrine, and the principal Passages in the Liturgy of the
Church of England, are collected, compared, and explained (London, 1712), Clarke writes:
The reason why the Scripture, though it stiles the Father God, and also stiles the Son God, yet at
the same time always declares there is but One God; is because in the Monarchy of the
Universe, there is but One Authority, original in the Father, derivative in the Son: The Power of
the Son being, not Another Power opposite to That of the Father, nor Another Power coordinate to That of the Father; but it self The Power and Authority of the Father, communicated
to, manifested in, and exercised by the Son. (pp. 332-3)
One author, the low church Whig, William Stephens, clearly recognizes the heterodoxy of Clarke's
position in this text, which Stephens quotes, and then controverts, in his sermon entitled The Divine
Persons One God by an Unity of Nature: Or, That Our Saviour is One God with his Father, by an
Eternal Generation from his Substance, Asserted from Scripture, and the Ante-Nicene Fathers
(Oxford, 1722.) Stephens quotes the entire text of Clarke cited immediately above and then writes:
In this Proposition, the Unity of the Godhead is plainly resolv'd into an Unity, not of Nature and
Essence, but of Dominion and Authority: And, if this be the Scripture-Doctrine, as this Author
would perswade us, Our Saviour is no otherwise God, than as his Father has been pleas'd to
associate him with Himself in the Government of the Universe.
This Artifice of speciously continuing to our Saviour the Name and Title of God, (and yet in
reality of denying it him,) by supposing him to be God only by Authority and Power, and not by
Nature, is not a novel or late-invented Scheme. The Arians of the fourth Century pleaded the
same thing: And hence it came to pass, that in the Great Defenders of the Nicene Faith in that
Century we find so much Labour expended in shewing that the Word God is not a Name of
Office and Authority, but of Being and Substance; that it does not denote Ruler, Governour, and
the like; but a Nature and Essence, Infinite, Eternal, and Divine, in that Person of whom it is
praedicated. When the Followers of Socinus reviv'd the same Plea, they met with no better
Success than their Predecessors in the Evasion: and, the Godhead has been by many Hands so
accurately shewn to be a Substance, not an Office, that it would be Superfluous and Unnecessary to attempt a further Proof of it. (pp. 4-5)
15. Newton, "Commonplace Book," s.v. "Predestinatio," Keynes MS 2, King's College Library,

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Cambridge.
16. Newton, Yahuda MS 14, f. 9 verso. Cited in Westfall, Never At Rest, p. 315.
17. See Westfall, Never At Rest, pp. 330-4.
18. Newton to Bentley, December 10, 1962, in The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, 7 vols., ed.
H. W. Turnbull, J. F. Scott, A. R. Hall, and Laura Tilling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1963),3:233.
19. Westfall, Never At Rest, p. 329.
20. Newton, Yahuda MS 7.2, f. 4. Cited in Westfall, Never At Rest, p. 319.
21. See James E. Force, William Whiston, Honest Newtonian (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985), p. 76.
22. Newton, Yahuda MS 1.2, ff. 60-1; Yahuda MS 1.3; ff. 40-8. Cited in Westfall, Never At Rest,
p.325.
23. Manuel reproduces Newton's "Fragments from a Treatise of Revelation," Yahuda MS. I, as
Appendix A in his The Religion of Isaac Newton. The citation is from p. 124 of Manuel's book.
Westfall dates this work from the early 70's.
24. Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator. Isaac Newton and His Times (New York:
The Free Press, 1984), pp. 312-3. Christianson also reminds us that "we remember Newton and
honor him today not for providing us with ultimate answers to the most profound scientific
questions but because, in apprehending the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above
the flux, Isaac Newton contributed more than any other individual to a rational world view." These
statements must be juxtaposed with the following quotation from Christianson's Preface:
Historians have tended increasingly to interpret Newton and his intellectual achievements not in
seventeenth-century terms but in the light of our times. In doing so we have been made ever
more conscious of his limitations and ever less appreciative of the revolutionary nature of his
many accomplishments. Moreover, the twentieth century has made out of Newton something
that he was not - an Enlightenment figure whose dedication to the principle of a mechanical
universe became his reason for being and his single most important legacy to posterity. That
Newton did adhere to a philosophy of mechanistic causation in the physical world is undeniable;
but to argue, as did Voltaire, that this is the whole Newton, or even the essential Newton, is
erroneous. Isaac Newton held tight the conviction that science (or natural philosophy, as it was
known in his day) must be employed to demonstrate the continuing presence of the Creator in
the world of nature.
Christianson, like Westfall, feels that what influence there is between Newton's theology and
Newton's science runs from Newton's science to Newton's theology. As Christianson points out,
for Newton and the Newtonians, science is used to reveal a God with "continuing presence," but it
also reveals, in conjunction with the argument from prophecy, a God of supreme dominion, a Lord
God whose will and power are sovereign. Another way to put this point is to argue that, for
Newton, natural philosophy is something beyond what we today would call science and that it
contains a heavily metaphysical approach to nature which, in Newton's case especially, is
necessarily related to theology. Newton does not strip his universe of metaphysical considerations
simply because in his voluntaristic theory of God's nature, God is always supervising nature,
whether directly or indirectly.
25. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding in Enquiries Concerning Human
Understandings and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, third edition with
text revised and notes by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975) pp. 16 and 165.
26. Newton, Opticks, pp. 403-4.
27. The line of interpretation which I am adopting in this paper was first established nearly thirty
years ago by Alexandre Koyre in his From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins Press, 1957), Chap. XI. Koyre is not always given the respect which is his just
due. In the mid-fifties, he clearly saw the connection between empiricism and a priorism in physics
and a deus artifex and adieu faineant in theology. Twenty years ago, J. E. McGuire wrote a
fundamental article based on first rate and highly original research in manuscript sources which
further established beyond doubt that Newton's theology is inextricably and mutually bound up
with his metaphysics and his natural philosophy. See J. E. McGuire, "Force, Active Principles, and

NEWTON'S GOD OF DOMINION

99

Newton's Invisible Realm," Ambix 15, No.3 (1968), esp. pp. 187-94. The writer who has done the
most to link Newton's conception of God with such medieval metaphysical theologians as Ockham
and Suarez has been Francis Oakley. See his The Political Thought of Pierre d'Ailly: The Voluntarist Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1964); his "Medieval Theories of Natural
Law: William of Ockham and the Significance of the Voluntarist Tradition," Natural Law Forum 6
(1961), pp. 65-83; and his "Christian Theology and the Newtonian Science: The Rise of the
Concept of the Laws of Nature," Church History 30, No.4 (1961), pp. 433-57.
28. Newton, Yahuda MS 21, fol. I recto. In the General Scholium, Newton writes, "We know
[God] only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things, and final causes; we admire him
for his perfections; but we reverence and adore him on account of his dominion: for we adore him
as his servants; and a god without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate
and Nature." Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 2:546. The point
is that what makes a king to be a king is his dominion, Le., his ability to exert his will and power.
One worships God because of his power over us unless one is wickedly vain and thus caught up in
idolatry. The text of 2 Kings 17:15-6, which is the text for this sermon, is most significant. After
journeying to Damascus where he met the King of Assyria, Tiglath-Pileser, the King of Judah saw
a bronze altar. He sent the details of the construction of the altar home to "Uriah the Priest"
ordering him to build a copy for use in the temple at Jerusalem. Ahaz is regarded as one of the
worst kings in the history of Judah because of his reinstitution of human sacrifice. The text for
Newton's sermon is preceded in verse 14 by the remark that the people of Israel and Judah "were
stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the LORD their God." Newton's text
then reads:
They despised his statutes, and his covenant that he made with their fathers, and the warnings
which he gave them. They went after false idols, and became false, and they followed the
nations that were around them, concerning whom the LORD had commanded them that they
should not do like them. And they forsook all the commandments of the LORD their god, and
made for themselves molten images of two calves; and they made an Ashe'rah, and worshipped
all the host of heaven, and served Ba' al.
29. Memoranda by David Gregory, 5, 6, 7 May 1694, in The Correspondence of Isaac Newton,
3:336.
30. William Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth, second ed. (London, 1708, p. 284. In this text,
Whiston cites as corroboration for this point Dr. Bentley's seventh sermon from his Boyle Lectures
delivered in 1692 under the title A Confutation of Atheism From the Origin and Frame of the World
(London, 1693.)
31. Whiston, A New Theory, pp. 435-6.
32. Ibid., pp. 432-3. I have emphasized the term "act."
33. David Gregory MS.245, fol. 14a, Library of the Royal Society, London. This translation is
found in the seminal article by J. E. McGuire, "Force, Active Principles, and Newton's Invisible
Realm," p. 190. As an example of how this distinction works in the writing of one of Newton's
followers, consider William Whiston. Whiston accepts some events to be genuine transgressions of
natural law by a special, voluntary interposition of God's power: the Creation of the matter of the
Universe out of nothing; the changing of a chaotic comet's orbit into that of a planet; the formation
of the seeds of animals, especially "our First Parents," and vegetables. And
The Natures, Conditions, Rules and Quantities, of those several Motions and Powers according
to which all Bodies, (of the same general nature in themselves,) are specifi' d, distinguish' d, and
fitted for their several uses, were no otherwise determin' d than by the immediate Fiat,
Command, Power, and Efficiency of Almighty God (New Theory of the Earth, pp. 287-95.)
As for Clarke, he, too, makes a place for real miracles in the ordinary coursing of nature. In his
1705 Boyle Lectures, he writes that a miracle
is a work effected in a manner unusual or different from the common and regular method of
Providence by the interposition either of God Himself, or some intelligent agent superior to
man, in the proof or evidence of some particular doctrine or in attestation to the authority of

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JAMES E. FORCE

some particular person. [A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural

Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation, Being Eight Sermons
Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in the Year 1705 in A Defence of Natural and
Revealed Religion, 2 vols. (London, 1707), 2: 165.]
34. Quoted in Sir Isaac Newton's Theological Manuscripts, ed. H. McLachlan (Liverpool,
University Press, 1930.), p. 17. Like Whiston who wrote a book on when miraculous acts ceased in
the early church, Newton believed that true miracles ceased being performed by God early in the
church's history. See Newton to Locke, 16 February 1691-2, The Correspondence of Isaac
Newton, 3:195.
35. Newton, "Paradoxical Questions concerning ye morals & actions of Athanasius & his
followers," Clark Library Manuscript. Cited by Westfall, Never At Rest, p. 345.
36. Newton, Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John. In Two
Parts (London, 1733), pp. 251-2.
37. The term is Frank E. Manuel's and comes in the context of Manuel's reluctance to entertain
any metaphysical significance beyond the debate over who discovered calculus first in the dispute
between Newton and Leibniz. See his A Portrait of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1968), p. 333.
38. A. Rupert Hall, Philosophers at War. The Quarrel Between Newton and Leibniz (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 258. To Hall, the relationship between metaphysics and
mathematics is a "Pandora's box" which he mentions in passing:
Let me release from this Pandora's box no more than the simplistic affirmation that Leibniz's
was a calculus of discontinuity, of monads, while Newton's was concerned with the continuity
of flow, with time; or, one might say, differentials belong to the relative, fluxions to the
absolute. Does not this involve seeing different things?" (p. 258.)
The irony of finding this position stated in a book in which the author has already stated his general
position that the path of the argument from the priority dispute into the realm of metaphysics was
"a largely regrettable and pointless diversification" is pointed out by Steven Shapin, "Licking
Leibniz," History of Science 19 (1981), p. 302.
Another famous scholar who argues for the complete autonomy of Newton's scientific
mechanics from any taint of metaphysics, is Edward W. Strong. He believes that Clarke departs
from Newton's own line of thinking
by taking the religious addendum to be fundamental to his science, for therein [Clarke does]
violence to the autonomy of science in methods and results upon which Newton had clearly and
vigorously insisted. [Strong, "Newton and God," Journal of the History of Ideas 7, No.2 (April,
1952), p. 167.]
39. Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, "Cotes's Preface to the
Second Edition," 1:xxxii. Just as Strong has argued that Clarke departs from Newton's position so,
too, he argues that Cotes in this Preface "might have prompted Newton to relax his caution as a
scientist." ("Newton and God," p. 167.)
40. Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Book III. 2:400. Newton's
view about the contingency of human knowledge in the light of God's total dominion over nature
parallels that of Robert Boyle who puts
this point most clearly when he observes that in this very phenomenal world of partial
regularity, at any moment all our science may be upset by the elimination, or change of
regularity through the operation of Him who is the guider of its concourse. For the most
optimistic investigator must acknowledge that if God be the author of the universe, and the free
establisher of the laws of motion, whose general concourse is necessary to the conservation and
efficacy of every particular physical agent, God can certainly invalidate all experimentalism by
withholding His concourse, or changing these laws of motion, which depend perfectly upon His
will, and could thus vitiate the value of most, if not all the axioms and theorems of natural
philosophy. Therefore reason operating in the mechanical world is constantly limited by the
possibility that there is not final regularity in that world, and that existential regularity may

NEWTON'S GOD OF DOMINION

101

readily be destroyed at any moment by the God upon whom it depends. [Mitchell Salem Fisher,
Robert Boyle: Devout Naturalist. A Study in Science and Religion in the Seventeenth Century
(philadelphia: Oshiver Studio Press, 1945), pp. 127-8, citing Reconcileableness of Reason and
Religion, ill The Workr of the Honourable Robert Boyle, 6 vols, ed. Thomas Birch (London,
1772),4:161.]
This text is cited by Mitchell Salem Fisher in Robert Boyle: Devout Naturalist. A Study in Science
and Religion in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: Oshiver Studio Press, 1945), pp. 127-8.
Fisher goes on to note that Newton agrees with Boyle's view about God's power over creation:
"[Boyle's] God, like that of Newton's was an absolute, free, and omniscient being who governed
all the phenomena of nature not at all as any indwelling soul of the world, but as the mechanical
master and lord of the universe." (p. 160)
41. Newton, Observations Upon the Prophecies, p. 251.
42. Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth, p. 432.
43. A. A. Sykes, ''The Elogium of the late ... Samuel Clarke," The Present State of the Republic of
Letters 4 (1729), pp. 54-6.
44. Newton, Opticks, Query 31, p. 403.
45. Nick Herbert, Quantum Reality. Beyond the New Physics (Garden City: Anchor
Press/Doubleday, 1987), p. xi.
46. Ibid., pp. xi-xii.
47. Gale E. Christianson, In the Presence of the Creator, p. 307. A. J. Meadows has also found in
the American Constitution the "logical culmination" of Newton's "mechanical" frame of nature.
See his The High Firmament (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1969), p. 148. It may very well
be the logical culmination of the frame of nature once that framework is ripped out of the dominion
of God. But it is not the logical culmination for Newton just because he cannot imagine eliminating
God from the structure of the heavens. This logical consequence is first arrived at by Hume who
starts from vastly different metaphysical suppositions.
48. Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 2:546.
49. Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton, ed. A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), p. 144.
50. Newton, Yahuda MS 1, bundle 1, folio 14r.
51. Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles ofNatural Philosophy, 2:398.
52. Margaret C. Jacob's book, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689-1720, will
remain the standard work on how Newton's work is taken up for the purpose of low church
latitudinarian apologetics. Another approach is found in Steven Shapin, "Of Gods and Kings:
Natural Philosophy and Politics in the Leibniz-Clarke Disputes," Isis 72 (June, 1981), pp. 187-215.
Shapin is concerned to cast the Leibniz-Clarke dispute over the dominion of God into the context of
the Whig-Tory, low church-high church, dynastic politics of the day. On the whole, he is quite
successful; certainly he is correct in emphasizing the centrality of the metaphysical issue of the
debate. Like Jacob he is primarily concerned with the uses others make of Newton's work and not
about inquiring "Whether or not Newton ... intended that his philosophy of nature should be put to
specific political uses .... " (p. 189)
53. J. T. Desaguliers, The Newtonian System of the World, The Best Model of Government
(London, 1728), lines 191-2, p. 34.
54. Geoffrey Holmes, "Science, Reason, and Religion in the Age of Newton," British Journalfor
the History of Science II, Part 2, No. 38 (July, 1978), p. 168.
55. Perhaps the strongest statement of the contention by both Margaret C. Jacob and James R.
Jacob that the latitudinarian churchmen who utilize Newton's science for the defence of religion do
so in behalf of low church orthodoxy and against the crypto-Republican forces of Radical
Enlightenment is found in their joint article entitled "The Anglican Origins of Modem Science: The
Metaphysical Foundations of the Whig Constitution," Isis 71, No. 257 (June, 1980), pp. 251-67. I
take no issue with the general conclusion that Newtonian scientific arguments are used by others to
give vital ideological support to the Protestant monarchy.
56. WilIiam Whiston, A Collection of Authentick Records Belonging to the Old and New Testament, 2 vols. (London, 1728),2:1073-4.
57. Sec J. E. McGuire, "Newton on Place, Time, and God: An Unpublished Source," British

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JAMES E. FORCE

Journal of the History of Science 11, No. 38 (1978), pp. 115-29.

58. Newton, Unpublished Scientific Papers, p. 107. Cf. Henry Gueriac, ''Theological Voluntarism
and Biological Analogies in Newton's Physical Thought," Journal of the History of Ideas 44, No.2
(April-June, 1983), pp. 219-29.
59. Newton, Opticks, p. 182.
60. Newton, "Irenicum," Keynes MS 3.
61. See James Tully, A Discourse on Property. John Locke and His Adversaries (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 35-50.
62. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Collated and annotated by
Alexander Campbell Fraser, 2 vols. (New York: Dover Publications, 1959), 2:321-2. See also
Alexandre Koyre, Newtonian Studies (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1965), p. 92.
63. See Force, William Whiston, p. 103.
64. This paper is being printed for the first time in this volume. An earlier version of it was
presented by the author as part of a public lecture series devoted to the topic of "Science, Politics,
and Religion in 17th Century England" on December 1, 1987. This lecture series was sponsored by
The Claremont Colleges Program in Critical Studies of Science and Technology and The
Humanities and Social Sciences Department of Harvey Mudd College through the generosity of the
Garrett Fund.

RICHARD H. POPKIN

6. NEWTON AS A BIBLE SCHOLAR

In his views about the text and import of the Bible, Sir Isaac Newton combined a most
interesting mixture of modern Bible scholarship with an application, to the understanding
of the Bible, of some of the findings of modem science and a firm conviction that, in the
proper reading of the scriptural text, one could discover God's plan for human and world
history. Newton wrote much about the Bible as a historical document, about the accuracy
of Biblical chronology, and about the message of the Bible. All of these topics were
burning issues during the 17th century. Newton wrote on these subjects from his early
student years at Cambridge until his death. For many years, including the central ones in
his intellectual career, he was composing manuscripts on these issues. 1
He published none of his writings on the Bible during his lifetime. But after his death
four items appeared in print, The Chronology ofAncient Kingdoms Amended (1728),2 the
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel. and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733), 3 an
essay on the sacred cubit of the Hebrews (1737),4 and two letters written to John Locke
concerning doubts about the textual basis for the Doctrine of the Trinity.5 (A third letter
to Locke on this subject was only published in 1961.)6 In addition to the material that has
been published in the two and one-half centuries since Newton's death. an enormous
amount of unpublished manuscript writings are still unpublished. They are in libraries
from California to Jerusalem.? The largest amount of the unpublished work is in the
Yahuda collection at the National and University Library of Israel. 8
Newton's writings on the Bible seem to have been penned over a sixty-year period.
Because most of the manuscripts have not been published, it is not yet possible to give a
succinct statement of his views on the subject. Newton's views changed and developed
over the years. Early in his career, Newton composed a paper on how to interpret
scripture. He wrote this around 1671. It is the first item in the vast Yahuda collection
(Yahuda MS 1.1.) Part of the text was published by Frank Manuel in The Religion of
Isaac Newton in 1974.9 (This is the only item of the Yahuda collection so far published.)
In this manuscript, Newton presented a view close to the Calvinist literalism of the mid17th century. Newton writes that he prefers to choose "those interpretations which are
most according to the litterall meaning of the scriptures unles where the tenour and
circumstances of the place plainly require an Allegory." I0 A few pages later on, just after
the portion of the text published by Manuel. Newton says that it "is ye wisdom of God
that he hath so framed ye scriptures as to distinguish between ye good & ye bad. that they
should be demonstrative to ye one & foolishness to the other," I I a view similar to that
stated by Pascal whose Pensees were just becoming known.
In subsequent writings, Newton, influenced probably by the Biblical researches of
Father Richard Simon and possibly by Spinoza's work on the subject as well as by
103

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interchanges with John Locke, developed a rather critical view about the accuracy of
existing texts of the Old and New Testaments. Newton owned several of Simon's
works,I2 which were causing quite a stir in England in the 1680's.13 Spinoza's views
were discussed in some detail by Simon. 14 Three of Newton's Cambridge colleagues,
Isaac Barrow, Ralph Cudworth, and Henry More, had access to copies of Spinoza's
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Newton had catalogued Barrow's library and so must
have catalogued this work by Spinoza. 15 Cudworth and More were very concerned about
Spinoza's critical views about the Bible and published critical replies in the 1670's,
which Newton probably read. 16 At that point in his career Newton was involved with
Henry More in working out Biblical exegeses and was consulting Cudworth, the Regius
Professor of Hebrew, on various textual matters.
In various manuscripts at Oxford and Jerusalem (e.g., New College, Oxford, MS n,
fol. 192, and Yahuda MSS 1.7 and 1.9) as well as in the published version of the
Observations on Daniel and Revelation, Newton set forth a picture of how the text of the
Old Testament got into its present state. He presented a theory of how the Biblical texts
were composed and how they became mixed up and corrupted over time. Newton sought
to describe in some detail how various texts became confused. On the basis of his
researches, he concluded that no text of the Old Testament dated before Talmudic
times.!7
Newton based his historical theory of the development of the Biblical text on internal
evidence in scripture and on historical events mentioned in the books. A brief version of
his results appears in the first chapter of the Observations. Much more detail is given in
some of the Yahuda manuscripts. The opening chapter in the Observations is entitled,
"Introduction concerning the Compilers of the books of the Old Testament."!8 After
going over some of the details in the Biblical narrative, Newton says, concerning a
passage in Genesis, "therefore that book was not written entirely in the form now extant,
before the reign of Saul."19 If this were so, Moses could not be the author of that part of
the text. The first five books of the Old Testament, the Pentateuch, are called the Books
of Moses. But, on Newton's account, the historical part about God's people was put
together from several earlier books. These were, according to Newton, a history of the
Creation composed by Moses, a book of the generations after Adam, and a book of the
wars of the Lord, each of which is mentioned in the present text. 20 The book of the wars
of the Lord, Newton claimed, was begun by Moses and was continued by Joshua.
Samuel, writing during the reign of Saul, put them in their present form.2! The later
historical material in the Pentateuch, Joshua, and Judges contained one continuous
history from Creation to the death of Samson. Examining the history therein, Newton
declares, "Therefore all these books have been composed out of the writings of Moses,
Joshua and other records, by one and the same hand,"22 during the reign of Saul or early
in David's kingship. Newton's guess was that Samuel was the author. 23 After the battles
with the Philistines, Newton states that Samuel might have had time to collect "the
scattered writings of Moses and Joshua, and the records of the Patriarchs and Judges, and
compose them in the form now extant.,,24 Newton also ascribed to Samuel the book of
Ruth and the beginning of Samuel. Other books had later authors and "were therefore
collected out of the historical writings of the antient Seers and Prophets. "25 Ezra, Newton
said, was the compiler of the book of Kings and Chronicles. The prophecies of Isaiah
were written at several times, as were the other prophetic writings. 26 The book of Daniel,

NEWTON AS A BIBLE SCHOLAR

105

which is all important in Newton's interpretation of the Bible, "is a collection of papers
written at several times. The six last chapters contain Prophecies written at several times
by Daniel himself: the six first are a collection of historical papers written by others ....
The first chapter was written after Daniel's death ... ," as were the fifth and sixth
chapters. 27 Newton surmises that some of the verses were added by the collector of the
papers, "whom I take to be Ezra. "28 Newton says, too, that the Psalms, which were
composed by Moses, David, and others, "seem to have been also collected by Ezra into
one volume."29
Newton offered some textual evidence for his theory of the various authors of the
books. By and large, Newton offered more or less the same picture which Spinoza and
Father Richard Simon had offered about how the present text got put together. For
Spinoza, this messy and somewhat confused picture was a basic reason for doubting that
scripture was anything more than a collection of ancient Hebrew writings. For both
Simon and Newton, the fact that there were multiple authors, even of the Books of
Moses, did not detract from the revelatory nature of the text.
Spinoza, after presenting his version of how the text got put together, says, "We may,
therefore, conclude that all the books we have considered hitherto are compilations, and
that the events therein are recorded as having happened in old time."30 The books "are
compilations made many generations after the events they relate had taken place" and are
written by a single historian, probably Ezra. 3[ Going over the Pentateuch, Spinoza comes
to the sad conclusion that:
If anyone pays attention to the way in which all the histories and precepts in these five
books are set down promiscuously and without order, with no regard for dates; and
further, how the same story is often repeated, sometimes in a different version, he will
easily, I say, discern that all the materials were promiscuously collected and heaped
together, in order that they might at some subsequent time be more readily examined
and reduced to order. Not only these five books, but also the narratives contained in
the remaining seven, going down to the destruction of the city, are compiled in the
same way.32

Spinoza followed Isaac La Peyrere's view that the text which now exists is nothing but
copies of copies of confused compilations. 33 Understanding what a mess the text is in and
how it got this way during its compilation was enough for Spinoza to be dubious that
there could be any divine message in scripture except for its teaching of the morallaw. 34
Simon and Newton offered much the same account of how Ezra put together various
strands and fragments without giving up confidence in scripture as the crucial source of
God's revelation to mankind.3 5 Until the beginning of modem Bible criticism with
Thomas Hobbes and Isaac La Peyrere, the usually accepted guarantee of the connection
of the Biblical text with God was that Moses wrote what God revealed to him. Aben
Ezra, around 1100 A.D., had pointed out that there were lines in the Pentateuch that were
not written by Moses, including those telling of the death of Moses. Aben Ezra just
indicated that these non-Mosaic verses had some different status but did not try to specify
what that was.
Hobbes said that he accepted canonical Scripture, as recognized by the Church of
England, as Divine Revelation and just wanted to consider the historical question of who
wrote the various parts. Hobbes supposedly shocked his contemporaries with the news

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RICHARD H. POPKIN

that Moses could not have written all of Deuteronomy because of the verses about his
death. So, for Hobbes there had to have been two or more authors. La Peyrere went
further and suggested that Moses was not the author at all and that a diary of Moses was
used by later authors, along with a lot of other materials. 36 Spinoza then worked out a
general theory of how the work grew. Unlike his predecessors, who still at least gave lipservice to the claim that the Bible was a special book of Divine Revelation, Spinoza
presented it as a human production which gave a confused picture of ancient Israelite
history.37
Father Simon, who said that he followed the method of Spinoza but that he disagreed
with Spinoza's radical conclusions, made a much more intensive study of the text. He
concluded, much as Spinoza had, that various narratives had been put together by Ezra.
But, Simon insisted, the text began with a Mosaic core which had the privileged status of
recording a Divine communication. And, Simon said, in answer to Spinoza, that additional parts by later authors did not reduce the value of the Mosaic part. The additional
parts could also be divinely inspired text. 38
Newton, having looked at the evidence, at least in the form that Simon had presented
it, accepted a revelatory core in the documents. For Newton, this consisted of the
prophetic parts, especially in Daniel and Revelation. 39
Before describing Newton's interpretation of these divinely revealed prophecies,
another, second-order problem must be considered. Given the Spinoza-Simon-Newton
theory that Ezra compiled the basic narrative we now have in scripture, mostly out of preexisting materials, is there any accurate copy of the Ezra compilation? From information
in scripture, in the story of the Maccabees in the Apocrypha, in Josephus' History of the
Jews, and in Jewish accounts in the Talmud, we learn that the historical, legal, and
prophetic writings compiled by Ezra were partially destroyed by Antiochus Epiphanes
who "caused the sacred books to be burnt wherever they could be found.,,40 After the
successful Maccabaean revolt, "Judas Maccabaeus gathered together all those writings
that were to be met with .... "41 At this time, some books were entirely lost and others got
jumbled together. In the manuscripts, Newton offered a detailed theory of how pages
from Samuel got mixed with pages of Nehemiah, among other disorders. 42
Newton then said that the reconstructed Maccabaean text was further confused by
copyists. Spinoza and Simon had supplied lots of data about how glosses, errors, etc., got
into the text. Newton then points out that it was only after the Romans captured Judaea
that the Jews sought to preserve their traditions, putting them in writing in the Talmud,
"and for preserving their scriptures, agreed upon an Edition, and pointed it [that is, put in
the vowel markers], and counted the letters of every sort in every book."43 This edition
was the only one which had been preserved. All earlier versions were lost, except for
those in the Greek Septuagint Version. As a result, "such marginal notes, or other
corruptions, as by the errors of the transcribers, before this Edition was made, had crept
into the text, are now scarce to be corrected."44 Spinoza took all of this to mean that one
could never get back to an accurate text. Simon offered a program for reconstructing the
right text that would unfortunately involve an endless amount of research.
Newton accepted this general conclusion, namely that what survives is a corrupt text
which is probably truncated from what the original looked like. Thus, Newton does not
accept the contention of the Westminster Confession of the mid-17th century according
to which "The Old Testament in Hebrew (which was the Native Language of the People

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of GOD of old), and the New Testament in Greek ... being immediately inspired by God,
and by his singular care and Providence kept pure in all Ages, are therefore Authentical".45 Instead, Newton was about as avant-garde as Spinoza and Simon in his view
about how the Biblical text got to be what it is.46 Nonetheless, Newton adamantly insists
that a divinely revealed prophetic message is contained in scripture, as we have it and
that, as Daniel says (xii. 9-10), in the latter days, "the wise may understand, but the
wicked shall do wickedly, and none of the wicked shall understand."
For Newton, "The authority of the Prophets is divine, and comprehends the sum of
religion .... Their writings contain the covenant between God and his people, with
instructions for keeping this covenant; instances of God's judgments upon them that
break it: and predictions of things to come."47 Of the prophets of the Old Testament,
Daniel is the most distinct and the easiest to understand - "and therefore in those things
which relate to the last times, he must be made the key to the rest."48 And so, regardless
of the history of the text and the vagaries of how our current copies have come down to
us, it is all important to try to figure out what is being said by the prophet. Newton
devoted a great deal of time and energy to trying to decipher the symbolism in Daniel's
prophecies.
When Newton tumed to the New Testament, he was much more critical about the
reliability of the texts. His chief concern was to argue for the primacy of the book of
Revelation and to point out the deliberate alteration of New Testament texts by wicked
characters such as Saint Athanasius. 49 With regard to the Old Testament, Newton never
claimed that any of the extant texts had been deliberately falsified. But, since he was an
Arian and was convinced that the doctrine of the Trinity was not stated in the true
revealed text, he had to hold that the lines in John and Timothy, which appear to state a
Trinitarian position, were deliberately forged attempts to deceive the faithful.
From the time of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, Christian Church authorities claimed that
Revelation was a late work and unconnected with Jesus's life on earth, and, therefore, not
to be taken seriously. In opposition to this view, Newton contended that Revelation was
the earliest work in the New Testament and that it was written before the destruction of
the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 A. D. and the expulsion of the Jews from the city. Its
author, John the Evangelist, received the revelation he recorded directly from Jesus and
wrote it down in a style that contains many more Hebraisms than the Gospel of John
(which Newton thought was written by the same person.) Therefore, Newton argued,
Revelation was written when John "was newly come out of Judea, where he had been
used to the Syriac tongue; and that he did not write his Gospel, till by long converse with
the Asiatick Greeks he had left off most of the Hebraisms. ,,50
Newton offered a wide range of scholarly historical details to support his claim that
Revelation was written in the very earliest days of Christianity. This was an old Christian
view, going back before the early Church Fathers. According to the Syriac version of
Revelation, it was written in the time of Nero. In the extant text itself, there are allusions
to the Temple and the Holy City as still standing. Next, Newton pointed out that many
false books of the Apocalypse, attributed variously to Peter, Paul, Thomas, Stephen,
Elias, and Cerinthus, had appeared in ancient times in imitation of the Revelation of John.
This constituted evidence that there was a true Apostolic work on the Apocalypse in the
earliest days of Christianity for the others to imitate. From the possible dates of the false
ones, Newton tried to date when St. John's Revelation was written. 51

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He added to these considerations some evidence that Revelation is alluded to in the

Epistles to Peter and the Hebrews. Newton offered evidence showing that the same
metaphors are used in each. 52 Newton did not consider the reverse possibility. namely.
that their appearance in Revelation may indicate borrowings by a later author. Rather. he
insisted that the text of Revelation had to precede the text of those Epistles and. hence.
that it had to be a very early Christian work. 53
Scouring materials in early Christian writings. Newton came to the conclusion that
John and Peter stayed with their churches in Judaea and Syria until the Romans made war
in the twelfth year of Nero's reign. John was then banished to the Greek island of Patmos.
"It seems also probable to me that the Apocalypse was there composed. and that soon
after the Epistle to the Hebrews and those of Peter were written ... .'.54 Many writings of
the Church Fathers confirmed this. As Newton says. "This account of things agrees best
with history when duly rectified. "55
If one accepts Newton's rectification. then the next question becomes. is the book of
Revelation true? For Newton. the answer is yes. "since it was in such request wjth the
first ages. that many endeavoured to imitate it".56 and because of certain phrases in it.
Christ was not called the Word of God in any book of the New Testament written before
the Apocalypse. 57 All true Christians in the early days of Christianity accepted Revelation as genuine and true. Every one who believed that there would be a millennium
accepted Revelation "as the foundation for their opinion."58 The early Christian Millenarians accepted the text as genuine and most important. "I do not indeed find any other
book of the New Testament so strongly attested. or commented upon so early as this. "59
Later on. for bad reasons. Christians became prejudiced against the work. in part because
of the Hebraisms in it that Greek Christians did not like. So they began. in the fourth
century. to doubt the genuineness or significance of the book.60
Newton goes on to point out that. according to Daniel 10.21 and 12.4-9. Daniel is
commanded to shut up and seal the ultimate prophecy until the end of time:
Tis therefore a part of this Prophecy. that it should not be understood before the last
age of the world; and therefore it makes for the credit of the Prophecy. that it is not yet
understood. But if the last age. the age of opening these things. be now approaching.
as by the great successes of late Interpreters it seems to be. we have more encouragement than ever to look into these things. 61
This was the context for Daniel's cryptic observation that. in the time of the end. the wise
shall understand. but none of the wicked shall understand.
Newton then went on to condemn those who wanted to predict exactly when the great
events forecast in Daniel and Revelation would take place. But from this text - "Amongst
the Interpreters of the last age there is scarce one of note who hath not made some
discovery worth knowing; and thence I seem to gather that God is about opening these
mysteries"62 - there seems to have been no doubt in Newton's mind that Revelation is
the book which Daniel is commanded to shut up and seal and that it is true.
In his discussions of the state of the text of the New Testament. Newton made quite
clear that he thought that there were not only normal errors in the historical transmission
of the documents. but that there were also deliberate corruptions and falsifications in texts
stating the doctrine ofthe Trinity. In sharp contrast to the corruptions of much of the New
Testament. Newton believed that special protection had been given to the conservation of

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the text of Revelation. And, it may be of some interest that, in this view, Newton seems
to hold a reverse view from that of Spinoza who declares that "the books of both
Testaments were not written by express command at one place for all ages, but are a
fortuitous collection of the works of men, writing each as his period and disposition
dictated. '063 (Both Father Simon and Newton agreed and yet insisted that this did not
preclude the writings from containing divine messages.) For Spinoza, the so-called Word
of God "is faulty, mutilated, tampered with, and inconsistent; ... we possess it only in
fragments.'064 But, nonetheless what is important in both Testaments is the statement,
which has "come down to us uncorrupted," of the Divine Law which is:
To love God above all things, and one's neighbour as one's self. This cannot be a
spurious passage, nor due to a hasty and mistaken scribe, for if the Bible had ever put
forth a different doctrine it would have had to change the whole of its teachings, for
this is the comer-stone of religion, without which the whole fabric would fall headlong
to the ground. 65
For Spinoza, the moral message of both Testaments was what was crucial. This moral
message had not been changed by the history of the transmission of the texts. Spinoza's
interest in the New Testament was only in the statement of the moral principle in the
Gospels. He showed no interest in the book of Revelation, although it was probably the
most widely interpreted Biblical book of his time.
Newton, in contrast, concentrated on the prophetic message. And in the one place
where I could find an explanation of the guarantee of the accuracy of Revelation, in an
unpublished note still in private hands (which is actually written by Newton on the back
of an envelope and around the text of a letter to him when he was Director of the Mint),
Newton explained that God was so concerned that John get the text right that he sent
Jesus, the messenger of God, to watch over John as he wrote down the prophecies. 66
Further, for Newton, it was Divine action ever since that had enabled various scholars
to understand parts of the prophecies and it will be Divine action at the end of history
which will make the whole of Daniel and Revelation intelligible to the wise. For Spinoza,
it was solely by the use of human reason that one understood the Divine message. No
matter what language it was written in, no matter what corruptions had occurred, the
Bible would contain the Divine message if it contained only the moral law which was
capable of being understood by reason. And, because this moral law was knowable by
reason, it was also by reason that we could tell whether the text had become too corrupt.
Spinoza writes that:
We remain then unshaken in our belief that this has always been the doctrine of
Scripture, and, consequently, that no error sufficient to vitiate it can have crept in
without being instantly observed by all; nor can anyone have succeeded in tampering
with it and escaped the discovery of his malice. 67
According to Newton, some crucial texts of the New Testament had been changed
deliberately and the Church had kept people from realizing this. Newton was an Arian, a
denier of the doctrine of the Trinity and of the divinity of Jesus. The New Testament
authorized by the Church of England contained passages in the revelation of St. John and
in the letter to Timothy which appeared to justify the doctrine of the Trinity. Newton
insisted that these passages were false and. furthermore, that they had been deliberately

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falsified. In one of the manuscripts in the Yahuda collection, he listed pages and pages of
the variant readings of these texts in as many manuscripts as he could examine. 68 Here he
made no effort to try to decide which of these readings was the accurate one. But, in
1690, he sent two letters to John Locke detailing his case that the doctrine of the Trinity
was not in the original or early texts of the New Testament and was not the view held by
the early Christians. These letters, which apparently grew out of a conversation between
Newton and Locke about Trinitarianism, were intended for anonymous publication in
Jean Le Clerc's Bibliotheque universelle. After sending them to Locke who forwarded
them to Le Clerc, Newton panicked and directed Locke to withdraw them from publication, fearing that people would recognize his authorship of these heretical letters and the
subsequent loss of his post at Cambridge. The letters were only published in 1754, eleven
years after Le Clerc's death. 69 A more accurate text of them appeared in the fifth volume
of the 1785 edition of Newton's Opera Omnia, edited by Bishop Samuel Horsley, who
utilized a holograph manuscript of the letters for his edition.70 Newton showed immense
historical erudition in making out his case. In a third letter to Locke, not published until
the 1961 edition of Newton's correspondence, Newton says that he has been looking over
his earlier two letters and is "so far satisfied in the discoveries that it has put me upon the
curiosity of enquiring whether the like corruptions may not have happened in other
places, & upon search I find reason to suspect a great many more places of this kind then
I expected. "71 He then gave a list of these corruptions. Newton compared all sorts of
versions of the Bible, including the Ethiopic one, looking for corruptions in the text. He
relied on both his own researches and those of other Bible scholars such as Grotius,
Richard Simon, and Gilbert Burnet. 72
One of the questions which Newton was most interested in was who was responsible
for the changes in the Biblical text. On the basis of his study of early Church history,
Newton came to the conclusion that it was primarily through the efforts of Saint
Athanasius and his Trinitarian followers that the Church became corrupt and that these
corrupters had altered Biblical texts and Church council records to support their antiChristian views. There are three unpublished manuscript variants of the "Paradoxical
Questions concerning ye morals & actions of Athanasius & his followers." In all of them,
Newton set forth his indictment of Saint Athanasius.7 3
In the longest unpublished manuscript on this topic, at the Bodmer Library in Geneva,
Newton presented his grandiose theory of how the Church became corrupt and how it
falsified the true doctrines of Christianity, in part by tinkering with the texts of the New
Testament. 74
To pull together various threads of Newton's Bible scholarship, one can say that, with
regard to the scriptural text that has come down to us, Newton, with Spinoza and Father
Simon, accepted the Hebrew Text as corrupted because of various historical events. But,
unlike Spinoza, and like Simon, he insisted that the text was usable. Simon says that:
We may by this same principle easily answer all the false and pernicious consequences
drawn by Spinoza from these alterations or additions for the running down the
Authority of the Holy Scripture, as if these corrections had been purely of humane
Authority; whereas he ought to have consider'd that the Authors of these alterations
having had the Power of writing Holy Scripture, had also the Power of correcting
them.7 5

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Through careful research and evaluation, one could work out an acceptable text of the
Old Testament. With regard to the New Testament, Newton insisted the text had to be
rescued from the Trinitarians and restored to its pristine doctrine according to which
Jesus was the Lamb of God, but was not co-substantial. Because Newton, unlike Spinoza,
was convinced that the essential prophetic message of the Bible survived in the texts of
Daniel and Revelation, he did not become a sceptic about religious knowledge. Newton,
on the other hand, with Spinoza, thought that much of the Old Testament could be
studied as an early historical document and could be evaluated in terms of our other
historical data. In this way its accuracy could be determined.
The first of Newton's writings about the Bible to be published, The Chronology of
Ancient Kingdoms Amended (London, 1728), is a most interesting effort to employ newly
discovered scientific findings to evaluate the historical status of the Bible. In the mid17th century, Archbishop James Ussher ofIreland had carefully worked out the chronology of Biblical events and had dated them from the Creation, in 4004 B.C., onward. 76
Newton, using astronomical discoveries, constructed a chronology based upon the
positions of the stars described in scripture and in other ancient writings which superceded Ussher's effort. Using his astronomical method of dating, Newton came to the
conclusion that the Bible was historically accurate and was the oldest historical record
that we have. Scriptural history is more accurate than Greek, Phoenician, Babylonian, or
Egyptian records. The earliest chronologists, Manetho and Eratosthenes, contradicted
both scripture and 17th-century astronomy. In view of the fact that we do not have any
records older than the Bible, there are good reasons to question the claims to great
antiquity in some of the early pagan authors. We should begin, Newton said, where we
can have reasonable confidence in the available data. This, he thought, involved accepting the history and chronology in the Bible up to the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, as
well as accepting the astronomical records mentioned by Thucydides and Ptolemy. From
the description of the stars in the constellations in the zodiac presented in accounts of the
mission of Jason and the Argonauts and the events in the Trojan War, we could calculate
when these events took place. The procession of various stars in these constellations was
measurable and followed a uniform law. From present observations, we could calculate
backward to where these stars were historically described as being and date when the
stars were in the positions described in early Greek history.77
For Newton, the dramatic result of using this astronomical method to calculate the
date of previous events was that it showed that the earliest events described in the Bible
took place before the earliest events in Greek history. Newton calculated that Jason's
voyage took place in 937 B. C. The earliest known events in Egyptian history also postdated the earliest Biblical events. Therefore, our earliest historical knowledge came from
the Bible. The ancient Israelites were the first civilization and had the first monarchy. All
other cultures and kingdoms, Newton declared, were derivative from the original Hebrew
one.7 8
Newton's elaborate astronomical argument and his debunking of pagan chronological
and historical claims aimed to show that the Bible was accurate as history, no matter how
corrupted the text had become over the years. And, assumed Newton, the message in the
Bible was still of the greatest importance to mankind. The fact that the Bible was accurate
historically meant that God had presented His message from the very beginning of the
world through the history of the Hebrews and through the prophetic insights given to

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them. (This, of course, was another major difference between Newton and Spinoza.
Spinoza contended from the beginning of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus that the
prophets did not have any special information, only very vivid imaginations. 79 For
Newton, in contrast, the prophetic material was the most important element in the Bible
and definitely contained divinely revealed information if only it could be understood.)
As I have discussed in "Newton and Fundamentalism, II" (infra), A. S. Yahuda, the
renowned Arabist who purchased the majority of Newton's unpublished writings on
religion and theology when they were auctioned off at Sotheby's in 1936, did so in part
because he had his own "proof' of the accuracy of the Bible about which he was
lecturing and writing in England at the time. Yahuda contended that the story of the
Exodus had to have been written by an eyewitness because so many Egyptian terms
appear in it. Israelites of subsequent generations would no longer have known Egyptian.
(Various Egyptologists immediately challenged Yahuda's theory.)80 Apparently, one of
the motives for Yahuda's purchase of the Newton material was to see if Newton had
other evidence to establish the accuracy of the Bible. Yahuda's notes, written OIl
Newton's manuscripts, and his own unfinished essay on Newton's religious views
showed that Yahuda, a 20th-century scholar trained in the world of German Higher
Criticism of the Bible and in the best methods of historical scholarship, felt a strong
affinity with Newton in trying to establish some meaningful sense in which it could be
said that the Bible was accurate. 81 (I have been told by an eyewitness that Yahuda's close
friend, Albert Einstein, was present when Yahuda first advanced his theory and that
Einstein wept with joy when he heard that one could establish the accuracy of the Bible
on the basis of historical and philological research.)
For Newton, once one accepted that the Bible was accurate in a significant sense, then
one could use materials contained in it to explain the origins of mankind, of human
institutions, and of human social and cultural abilities, for example, writing. Newton left
a lot of manuscripts on these subjects. He was also convinced that one could find some
basic understanding of the universe in the plans God laid down for building Solomon's
Temple, a microcosm of the macrocosm. Newton's essay on the sacred cubit of the
Hebrews and his analysis of the construction of the Temple show that he was sure that
there was a mystical architecture in its dimensions that explained God's total dominion
over all of creation.
But the most important idea to be gleaned from an analysis of the Biblical records, for
Newton, was that God laid down a plan of human history, as well as a plan for natural
history. One studied the latter primarily in terms of studying the Book of Nature through
scientific researches. The former, the plan of human history, must be studied in the
central prophetic statements about the course of human history put forth in Daniel and
Revelation. No matter what the textual problems about these texts may be, these two
works were continuous and united and presented in cryptic form a blueprint of what
would happen to mankind up to the apocalyptic end of human history.
To those who question whether Daniel and Revelation contain the core of God's
message, Newton replies: why would God have provided so many clues to mankind, in
the form of prophetic symbols, if we are not supposed to figure them out?82 To repeat,
Daniel tells us that the wise will understand and that the wicked will not near the end of
time. So, if one could not find a message, this indicated one's own moral deficiencies or,
perhaps, that the end was not quite yet, rather than the absence of a message. 83

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The message contained in the prophetic writings, Newton contended, was confirmed
by carefully examining human history from the time of the writing of Daniel onward.
And, Newton insisted, much of what had happened was an exact fulfillment of the
prophecies set forth in these works. All during his adult life, Newton was writing
definitive explications of Daniel and Revelation, building upon what scholars such as
Joseph Mede, Isaac Barrow, and Henry More had written. (Newton came to a bitter
disagreement with More around 1680 about how to interpret the opening passage in
Revelation.)
Newton did a great deal of original historical research to discern the events in world
history which constituted the fulfillment of the prophecies. Some of his interpretations
have been accepted by later Bible interpreters, especially among the fundamentalists.
Newton studied the history of the Roman Empire, the European Middle Ages, and the
rise of Islam in the Middle East in order to identify what actually happened in history
with what was predicted in prophecy.
Newton differed from many of those who had worked on the interpretation of
prophecies in denying that we could or should figure out exactly when the climactic
events in world history would occur, when Jesus would return, when the Jews would
return to Palestine and rebuild Jerusalem, etc. Newton, in a famous passage, declared that
God had not intended people to be prophets. What people could do was recognize after
the fact that events which had occurred were in fact those previously predicted in the
prophecies. This post facto reading of history would demonstrate that the course of
historical events was divinely providential. God had laid out the whole sequence. We, in
studying history, could realize that this was the case as we recognized that each major
event which happened had already been forecast in the prophetic writings. 84 When we
realized this, we should be in awe of God's dominion over our history, as well as over
nature, and we should realize that, in studying the scriptural text, we were also learning
what events remained to be fulfilled before the end of human and natural history.
Newton opposed the prophetic seers of his day who were continually announcing the
exact moment of the end of the world. In contrast, Newton offered a theory of the
progressive development of our understanding of the prophecies. As we approach the end
of history, "Then, saith Daniel, many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be
increased." But, Newton continues, "'Tis therefore a part of this Prophecy that it should
not be understood before the last age of the world; and therefore it makes for the credit of
the Prophecy, that it is not yet understood:,85 Newton took the progress made in the 17th
century in interpreting Biblical prophecies by Joseph Mede and his followers (including
Newton himself), as a clear sign that we might be approaching the time of the end. It is at
this point in his Observations that Newton condemns those who predict the end with
precision, as if they are themselves prophets, and says, "The folly of Interpreters has
been, to foretel times and things by this Prophecy, as if God designed to make them
Prophets. By this rashness they not only exposed themselves, but brought Prophecy also
into contempt."S6 So, people should restrain themselves and devote themselves to post
facto interpretations of events in terms of the prophecies. In so doing, we would realize
the on-going fulfillment of the prophecies and might be able to say, with Newton, "I
seem to gather that God is about opening these mysteries."87 The world to come
prophesied in the Bible was near fruition.
Newton's conception of the Bible was that it was a historical document and a cryp-

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togram containing God's historical plan. The historical document was as open to critical
examination as any other historical document. Critical investigations of the sort offered
by Spinoza and Simon helped us to realize the defects in the documents and enabled us to
assess them. Using historical standards and modem scientific information about the
movements of the stars in history enabled us to determine that the Bible was the oldest
historical documents which we possessed. And, except for parts of the New Testament, it
had been preserved fairly well. The Bible was the most accurate account we possessed
about early human history.
But, for Newton, in contrast to Spinoza, the Bible was more than just a historical
document. It was the way in which God had communicated to us in the Book of Words
and was analogous to the way God had communicated to us in the Book of Nature.
Tremendous effort, insight, and pious attention were needed to understand the natural and
verbal messages. Science and the study of Biblical prophecy went hand in hand as ways
of comprehending God's message. Progress in science and progress in deciphering
Daniel and Revelation indicated that God was opening the seals, thereby gradually and
progressively unfolding to us the nature and destiny of man. Newton's role in this process
of progressive understanding was to be in the forefront of those decoding both Nature and
scripture.
Newton as a Bible scholar used the techniques of Spinoza and Simon and accepted a
similar view about how the surviving text developed. But, he did not accept Spinoza's
doubts about the Divine character of the Bible, regardless of its fortunes in human history
as a document. Newton broke new interpretive ground both in the application of modem
scientific techniques to the understanding of the Bible and in the historical interpretation
of prophecies. Newton attempted to provide a better basis for dating ancient literature
through astronomical events. Of course, his method has been superceded by archaeological and anthropological techniques. Those dating the events in the Bible, and dating
events in other cultures by these means, would no longer support Newton's conclusion
that the Biblical world is the most ancient part of human history.
Newton's historical research into the interpretation of historically fulfilled prophecies
was taken over by many 19th-century fundamentalists who regarded him as one of the
very best in this field. When the various components of Newton's Bible scholarship are
examined and evaluated, he can indeed be seen to be in the forefront of the critical
scholarship of his time, in the forefront in applying modem science to understanding the
Bible, and in the forefront of those offering new historical data for interpreting
prophecies. Because many of those who devoted themselves to the first two ventures
became sceptical of traditional religions in the manner of Spinoza, it is at first hard to
fathom how Newton managed to be so serious about the third venture. Perhaps if he is
seen in terms of both 17th-century Biblical criticism and 17th-century Millenarianism,
we can better appreciate the nature of his theological position and his contribution to
theology. Perhaps, when his theological manuscripts have been published, we will be
able to assess more accurately his entire theory and see his originality and his stature as a
commentator on the scriptures. We will then be able to see if he was as great a thinker in
this area as he was in the sciences.

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Notes
1. For the biographical details about Newton's intellectual life, see Richard S. Westfall, Never at
Rest. A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980.)
2. Isaac Newton, The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (London, 1728.)
3. Newton, Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (London,
1733.)
4. Newton, "A Dissertation upon the Sacred Cubit of the Jews and the Cubits of the several
Nations; in which from the Dimensions of the Greatest Pyramid, as taken by Mr John Greaves, the
Antient Cubit of Memphis is Determined," in Miscellaneous Works of John Greaves, ed. Thomas
Birch (London, 1737), Vol. II, pp. 405-33.
5. Newton, Two Letters of Sir Isaac Newton to Mr Le Clerc (London, 1754.)
6. In The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, ed. H. W. Turnbull (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961), Vol. 3, pp. 83-146.
7. No complete list exists. Richard Westfall has prepared an unpublished inventory covering
almost all of what is known to exist, though some items are still in private hands. I have found a
few items not in Westfall's inventory. The unpublished papers were auctioned off at Sotheby's in
1936. These are listed in the Catalogue of the Newton Papers Sold by Order of the Viscount
Lymington to whom they have descended from Catherine Conduitt, Viscountess Lymington, GreatNiece of Sir Isaac Newton. Which will be Sold by Auction by Messrs. Sotheby and Co .... At their
Large Galleries, 34 & 35 New Bond Street W.I. On Monday, July 13th, 1936, and Following Day,
at One 0' clock Precisely (London, 1936.)
8. The majority of Newton's theological manuscripts belonged to the collection of Abraham
Shalom Yahuda, a wealthy Palestinian Jew, who became a professor of medieval Judaism and of
Arabic in Spain and Germany. He moved to England when Hitler came to power. He had an
enormous collection of manuscripts, including his purchases of most of Newton's theological
writings. In 1940, he moved to the United States, where he lived until his death in 1951. He and his
friend, Albert Einstein, tried to get Harvard, Yale, or Princeton to take the Newton papers. All of
them refused. On his death-bed, although he was a strong anti-Zionist, he decided to leave the
papers to the National Library of Israel. Due to legal disputes about his will, the Yahuda papers
only got sent to Jerusalem in 1969, where they are now available for public examination by
scholars.
9. Frank E. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), Appendix A,
"Fragments from a Treatise on Revelation," pp. 107-25.
10. Ibid., p. 118.
11. Yahuda MS 1.1, f. 19v.
12. Among other works by Richard Simon, Newton possessed in his library a copy of Simon's A
Critical History of the Old Testament ... Translated into English, by a person of quality (London,
1682.) He also owned some of the works of the time whose authors were critical of Simon's
position.
13. See, for example, the discussion of Simon's impact in England in Louis 1. Bredvold, The
Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1959), esp. pp.
98-107.
14. See "The Author's Preface," in Simon, A Critical History of the Old Testament.
15. Cf. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton, p. 84.
16. Cudworth offered his criticism of Spinoza in Part V of The True Intellectual System of the
Universe, which was completed in 1671 and published in London in 1678. More wrote two essays
against Spinoza, one a letter to Lady Anne Conway, the other, some demonstrations against
Spinoza's atheism. These are published in Henry More, Opera Omnia (London, 1679), Vol. I, pp.
565-614 and 615-35. More's letter to Robert Boyle, written soon after Spinoza's Tractatus
appeared, shows that More was very upset by the work. See The Works of the Honourable Robert
Boyle (London, 1772), Vol. 6, p. 514.
17. Newton, Observations, Part I, chap. 1.
18. Ibid., pp. 1-15.

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RICHARD H. POPKIN

19. Ibid., p. 4.
20. Ibid., p. 5.
2!. Ibid.
22. Ibid., p. 6.
23. Ibid., p. 6.
24. Ibid., p. 7.
25. Ibid., p. 9.
26. Ibid., pp. 9-10.
27. Ibid., p. 10.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid., p. 11.
30. Benedict de Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, chap. 8, in The Chief Works of Benedict de
Spinoza, trans. R. H. M. Elwes, 2 vols. (New York: Dover, 1965), p. 125. (This English translation
of Spinoza's work is cited hereafter as Treatise.) Cf. Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, ed.
Carl Gebhardt, 4 vols. (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1926), 2:125. (This Latin edition of Spinoza's
work is cited hereafter as Tractatus.)
31. Spinoza, Treatise, chap. 8, pp. 129-30. Cf. Tractatus, p. 126.
32. Spinoza, Treatise, chap. 9, p. 135. Cf. Tractatus, p. 135.
33. Isaac La Peyrere, Men Before Adam (London, 1656), Book IV, p. 208.
34. Spinoza, Treatise, chap. 12, pp. 165-6; Cf. Tractatus, pp. 158-9.
35. For Simon's account, see his A Critical History of the Old Testament, Book I, chaps. 1-8.
36. See Richard H. Popkin, Isaac La Peyrere (1596-1676). His Life, Work and Influence (Leiden:
Brill, 1987), chap. 4.
37. Spinoza, Treatise, chaps. 5-10.
38. Richard Simon, "The Author's Preface" and Book I, chap. 5, pp. 249-50, in A Critical History
of the Old Testament.
39. Newton, Observations, pp. 13-5.
40. Ibid., p. 11.
41. Ibid.
42. Yahuda MS 7.3 and lOB.
43. Newton, Observations, p. 11.
44. Ibid., p. 12.
45. The Confession of Faith ... composed by the Reverend Assembly of Divines sitting at
Westminster (London, 1658), chap. 1, p. 6.
46. Bishop Gilbert Burnet also rejected the claim in the Westminster Confession and offered a
view much like that of Newton. In Burnet's An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church
of England (London, 1699), he explained how the Biblical text could have become corrupted
through the copying process. All sorts of mistakes, additions, and deletions may have occurred:
"There is no reason to think that every Copier was so divinely guided, that no small Error might
surprize him. In Fact, we know that there are many various Readings, which might have arisen
from the haste and carelessness of Copiers, from their guessing wrong that which which appeared
doubtful or imperfect in the Copy, and from superstitious adhering to some apparent Faults, when
they found them in Copies of a Venerable Antiquity." Nonetheless, Burnet also says that the texts
"are preserved pure down to us, as to all those thing for which they were written; that is, in every
thing that is either an Object of Faith, or a Rule of Life." (p. 86) So all of the corruptions and errors
in various manuscripts do not matter.
47. Newton, Observations, p. 14.
48. Ibid., p. 15.
49. Three unpublished manuscripts by Newton deal with his charges against SI. Athanasius. See
note 73.
50. Newton, Observations, Part II, chap. 1, p. 238.
51. Ibid., pp. 238-9.
52. Ibid., pp. 239--40.
53. Ibid., p. 244.
54. Ibid.

NEWTON AS A BIBLE SCHOLAR

117

55. Ibid., p. 245.

56. Ibid., p. 246.
57. Ibid., p. 247.
58. Ibid., p. 248.
59. Ibid., p. 249.
60. Ibid.
61. Ibid., pp. 250-1.
62. Ibid., p. 253.
63. Spinoza, Treatise, chap. 12, p. 170. Cf. Tractatus, p. 163.
64. Treatise, chap. 12, p. 165. Cf. Tractatus, pp. 158-9.
65. Treatise, chap. 12, p. 172. Cf. Tractatus, pp. 164-5.
66. In this manuscript, written in the early 18th century, Newton said that the historical parts of
scripture were written with the ordinary assistance of the Spirit, which the prophets had at all times.
The prophetic sections involved special impulses of the Spirit, which the prophets only had on
certain occasions. St John wrote "his Apocalyps when Christ sent his messen~er to him with that
prophecy. He had yl spirit at all times, but not in that extraordinary manner we made him say that
he was in the spirit of the Lord."
67. Spinoza, Treatise, chap. 12, p. 172. Cf. Tractatus, p. 165.
68. Yahuda MS 1.4
69. On the history of the publication of Two Letters of Sir Isaac Newton to Mr Le Clerc, see
Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 489-91.
70. Isaaci Newton opera quae existant omnia, 5 vols. (London, 1779-85), vol. 5.
71. Newton, Correspondence, 3:144-5.
72. Ibid., pp. 145-6. Discussing the manuscripts that did not contain the vital text from John,
Newton adds in his letters to John Locke that "Dr. Gilb. Burnett has lately in the ftrst letters of his
Travelles noted it wanting in ftve other ancient ones kept at Strasburg, Zurich & Basil, one of we h
MSS he reccons about 1000 years old & ye other about 800." Newton, Correspondence, 3:94.
Newton's reference to Gilbert's ''Travelles'' is to Burnet's Some Letters concerning an Account of
what seemed most remarkable in Switzerland, Italy, etc., flTSt published in Rotterdam by Abraham
Archer in 1687. Burnet begins his discussion of manuscripts he has examined by noting that "I
have taken some Pains in my Travels to examine all the most ancient Manuscripts of the New
Testament, concerning that doubted Passage of St. John's Epistles." (p. 49) Burnet then discussed
manuscripts he had examined in Zurich, Venice, Florence, Basel, Strasbourg, Rome, and London
which did not have the passage in question. (pp.49-51)
Newton says "And by the best enquiry yl I have been able to make [Le., regarding the
Trinitarian passage in John] it is wanting in the manuscripts of all Languages but the Latine."
Newton says that it is not the in the Ethiopic, Syriac, Arabic, Armenian, or Slavonic versions and
that he has been told that "it is not in the Greek mss in Turkey." Correspondence, 3:94. Newton's
evidence is all second hand from EraIllIlUS, Burnet, Simon, and others. He apparently did not even
check the London manuscript at St. James's that Burnet mentioned.
73. There are three variant manuscripts relating to the "Paradoxical questions concerning ye morals
& actions of Athanasius & his followers." One is located in the William Andrews Clark Memorial
Library, Los Angeles. One (Keynes 10) is in the King's College Library, Cambridge. And one
Yahuda MS 14) is in the Yahuda Collection, Jerusalem. Bishop Burnet, who, as we have seen,
checked various manuscripts and reported that the crucial Trinitarian text was missing in the gospel
of John, did not draw Newton's anti-Trinitarian conclusion. In his Exposition of the Thirty-Nine
Articles, he says that, with regard to Article One about the Trinity, "I do not insist on that contested
Passage of St. John's Epistle. There are great doubtings made about it: The main ground for
doubting being the Silence of the Fathers, who never made use of it in the Disputes with the
Arrians and Macedonians. There are very considerable things urged on the other hand, to support
the Authority of that Passage; yet I think it is safer to build upon sure and undisputable grounds. So
I leave it to be maintained by others who are more fully persuaded of its being Authentical. There is
no need of it. This matter is capable of a very full Proof, whether that Passage is believed to be a
part of the Canon, or not." (p. 40)
Burnet's ''proof'' was that the Trinitarian view was accepted by the Church long before the

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RICHARD H. POPKIN

Council of Nicaea. All that the Nicene Council did was make official what was already the Faith of
the Church "with the addition only of the Word Consubstantial." (p. 40) This particular word was,
of course, the heart of what was in dispute between Arians and the Trinitarians.
Burnet was immediately accused of Arianism when his "Travelles" appeared in 1687 with his
account of what he had found, or rather had not found, in his examination of ancient manuscripts
throughout Europe. Antoine Varillas asks, in his Reflexions on Dr. Gilbert Burnet's Travels into
Swizerland, Italy, and certain parts of Germany and France (London, 1688), "Were so many
Copiers therefore exact in every thing else, and did they, through negligence, fail in the Translation
of this onely Passage; or did they commit an errour by joint consent? Nevertheless I do not say this
much to defend Arrianism, which is not indeed my sentiment, but to shew the cunningness and
malignity of our Authour, who (as many others have done) seem to oppose that Sect with such
weak Arguments, on purpose to establish it the better." (p. 48)
In answer to Varillas, Burnet, in his Dr. Burnet's Vindication of Himselffrom the Calumnies
with which he is aspersed, in A Second Collection of Several Tracts and Discourses written in the
Years 1686, 1687, 1688, 1689 (London, 1689), replies that his opponent "represents me as an
Enemy to the Divinity of Jesus Christ, because of the various readings of a verse in St. John's
Epistle, that I gave from some Ancient Manuscripts, which I saw in my Travels." (p. 186) Burnet
points out that all the Church Fathers who write against the Arians accept the doctrine of the
Trinity, but do not cite the passage in question from John, "from which it was reasonable to
conclude, that it was not in their Bibles; otherwise it is not to be imagined, that such men as St.
Athanase and St. Austin, should not have mentioned it." Burnet says he believes in the "Divinity of
the Saviour of the World," whether the passage be legitimate or not. Over the years, Burnet went
on, he had continued to check Bible manuscripts he had come across to see if the passage turned
up. It had not. Even so, writes Gilbert, he has "given the account of what I saw sincerely .... For I
have learned from Job, not to lye for God, since truth needs no support from falshood." (p. 187)
Burnet, in contrast to Newton, claimed that he held the view that the Divine Savior was equal with
God the Father. Further examination of Burnet's theology may show that he was closer to
Newton's view than he admitted in public.
74. This manuscript is a history of the development of the Christian religion and the institutional
church.
75. Simon, "The Author's Preface," in A Critical History of the Old Testament, p. (a)2.
76. On Ussher's achievement, see Hugh Trevor-Roper, "James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh," in
Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans. Seventeenth Century Essasys, chap. 3.
77. Newton's method and his achievements with it are described and analyzed in Frank E. Manuel,
Isaac Newton, Historian (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), esp. chap. 4.
78. Manuel, Isaac Newton, Historian, chaps. 5-6.
79. Spinoza, Treatise, chaps. 1-2.
80. Yahuda's theories were criticized by such leading Egyptologists as Professor Wilhelm
Speigelberg, the father of Herbert Speigelberg.
81. See Richard H. Popkin, "Newton and Fundamentalism, II," infra.
82. Newton, Observations, pp. 252-3.
83. Newton, Yahuda MS 1.1, f. 19v.
84. Newton, Observations, pp. 251-2.
85. Ibid., pp. 250-1.
86. Ibid., p. 251.
87. Ibid., p. 253.

JAMES E. FORCE

7. SIR ISAAC NEWTON. "GENTLEMAN OF WIDE SWALLOW"?:

NEWTON AND THE LATITUDINARIANS

Section I
In seeking to tidy up historical reality. many scholars have. for a variety of reasons.
closely linked Sir Isaac Newton with the latitudinarian movement. Stephen H. Daniel
claims that Newton is an "adherent" of latitudinarianism because of the toleration for
dissent which Daniel claims that they both espouse. I Frank E. Manuel. while noting that
the young Newton's strict Church of England religion never quite disappears. identifies
the "aged autocrat of science" as one who, in a "latitudinarian" spirit of tolerance.
"received French Catholic abbes. a notorious Socinian. High Churchmen. and. thanks to
his last illness, just missed a confrontation with Beelzebub himself in the person of an
importunate visiting Frenchman named Voltaire."2
Apart from this presumed latitudinarian spirit of toleration in Newton, many scholars
have pointed to Newton's close personal ties among the latitudinarian churchmen who,
by the 1690's controlled most of the high ecclesiastical offices in the Anglican Church
and who were especially concentrated in London. The prominent latitudinarian, Thomas
Tenison, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1694 to 1715, according to John Conduitt who
had the story from his wife, Newton's niece, "importuned" Newton "to take any prefermI" that fell Newton's way on the grounds that Newton knew more than all of the rest
of the clergy put together. 3 While Newton did in fact become one of the nine original
trustees of the Golden Square Tabernacle, a chapel endowed by Tenison to provide for
the overflow crowds from St. James's, Westminster, and while he served in that capacity
for twenty-two years,4 Newton resolutely followed the pattern of his earliest Cambridge
days and refused to consider any post requiring ordination in the Church of England. 5 In
addition to pressing Newton to take orders, the path to preferment, Tenison was also one
of the executors of the will of Robert Boyle along with John Evelyn, the famous diarist
who was generally reckoned as a lay member of the latitudinarian movement. When
Boyle died in 1692, as Margaret C. Jacob and Henry Guerlac have shown, Newton very
likely advised Evelyn to select Richard Bentley as the first Boyle Lecturer. Bentley's
topic, of course, was the first public exposition of the Newtonian design argument. 6
Simon Patrick, whose brief tract 7 in 1662 helped to characterize the defining characteristics of the latitudinarian movement, remarked about how "shameful" it was to see
such a "worthy gentleman" as Newton mocked by Cambridge University students as a
"Fanatic" and an "Occasional Conformer" when, in 1705 and at the urging of his political
patron, Lord Halifax, Newton stood as a candidate for Parliament from Cambridge.
Patrick, the Bishop of Ely, describes Newton's difficulties:
119

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JAMES E. FORCE

. .. at the election at Cambridge it was shameful to see a hundred or more young

students, encouraged in hollowing like schoolboys and porters, and crying No Fanatic,
No Occasional Conformity, against two worthy gentlemen that stood candidates. s
The mudslinging charges of fanaticism and occasional conformity apparently stuck and,
in a field of four, Newton ran last. He never again stood for public election.
Gilbert Burnet, latitudinarian Bishop of Salisbury and, with Patrick and Edward
Fowler, one of the chief chroniclers of the latitudinarian movement in his History of His
Own Time, says that he held Newton in high esteem not merely for his philosophical
genius, but for an even more valuable attribute, i.e., "for being the whitest soul he ever
knew.'>9
The diary of William Wake, who was an assistant to Archbishop Tenison and who, in
1716, succeeded Tension as Archbishop of Canterbury, shows that his London house
(near St. James, Westminster, in Newton's own parish), was a frequent meeting place for
the latitudinarians and the Newtonians in the first decade of the eighteenth century.
Latitudinarian divines such as White Kennet, who became a trustee for the Boyle Lecture
series in 1711, and Dr. John Hancock, who was the Boyle Lecturer in 1711, attended
Wake's meetings as did such "Newtonians" as Richard Bentley, Boyle Lecturer in 1692,
and Samuel Clarke, Boyle Lecturer in 1704-05. Newton came twice to Wake's house.1O
Ultimately, after Wake had become Archbishop and after Newton had agreed to become
a member of the commission overseeing the completion and final decoration of St.
Paul's, Newton quarreled with Wake about hanging pictures inside the cathedral.
Following his quarrel Newton never again attended a meeting of the commission. I I
Besides Newton's apparently latitudinarian spirit of toleration and the web of personal
and occasional working relationships which existed between Newton and the
latitudinarian churchmen (and between the latitudinarians and followers of Newton such
as William Whiston I2 ), other scholars have argued that what Newton really shared with
the latitudinarians was a revulsion to any form of "enthusiasm" and an emphasis on the
adjudicating power of reason. Newton's works abundantly display this latitudinarian
attitude. In a letter to John Locke concerning Newton's views on the corruption of
scriptural texts, for example, Newton writes:
If it be said that we are not to determin what's scripture & what not by our private
judgements, I confesse it in places not controverted: but in disputable places I love to
take up wth what I can best understand. Tis the temper of the hot and superstitious part
of mankind in matters of religion ever to be fond of mysteries, & for that reason to like
best what they understand least. Such men may use the Apostle John as they please:
but I have that honour for him as to believe he wrote good sense, & therefore take that
sense to be weh is the best .... 13
In Fowler's analysis of the latitudinarian position regarding reason as the criterion by
which to judge texts and/or doctrines, Fowler (who coins the term "gentleman of wide
swallow"14) writes "nor will an ipse dixit be admitted by them as sufficient argument to
prove any doctrine by"; for the latitudinarian, it is as unreasonable to set up as a standard
any human authority as it is "to deprive each other of their liberty to judge for themselves."IS
Newton's diatribes against superstitious "enthusiasticks" who relied upon personal

SIR ISAAC NEWTON, "GENTLEMAN OF WIDE SWALLOW"?

121

inspiration and the infusion of the Holy Spirit as the standard for interpreting texts (from
either the "Book of Nature" or the "Book of Scripture"), rather than reasoning in a cool
hour, have been urged as the key link between Newton, the latitudinarians, and the
Cambridge Platonists. Consequently, H. F. Kearney has argued that "Isaac Newton
moved theologically in the same gravitational field as Henry More, the Cambridge
Platonist." Kearney takes this claim as evidence for his view that Newton and More stood
shoulder to shoulder as the front line opponents against the enthusiastic remnants and
successors of the sects and soldiers of 1647 who, following the re-establishment of the
monarchy, strongly opposed the use of reason in religion and, consequently, also opposed
the universities. 16
The most vital link forged between Newton and the latitudinarians went beyond
shared intellectual dispositions and mutual friendships and admiration. In a word, the link
was science. Latitudinarian churchmen and the members of the new Royal Society,
including Newton who was President of the Royal Society from 1701 until his death in
1727, were quick to notice the new machine of war against religious scepticism provided
by Newtonian mechanics in the design argument of natural theology. As I indicate above,
this was the subject of the first series of Boyle Lectures by Richard Bentley who was
selected, in all probability, by Tenison and Evelyn with Newton's advice. In the selection
of the Boyle Lecturers and in their emphasis in those lectures upon a providential deity
(who designed, created and continues to maintain both the "world natural" and the "world
politic"), Jacob finds evidence for a formidable alliance between what she calls
"Newtonianism" and latitudinarianism. 17
The appeal to the latitudinarians of Newton's scientific discoveries went beyond their
easy adaptability for the purposes of natural religion. Barbara Shapiro has located their
mutual interest in the potential for science as an Erasmian instrument of unification
which combined both non-doctrinaire piety with great erudition. Shapiro has provided a
clear and accurate analogy between the situation faced by latitudinarians and Newtonian
scientists with the case of Erasmus's conflict with Luther. Shapiro begins by quoting
Erasmus who writes:
'I merely want to learn from anyone and not to judge, to inquire and not to dogmatize.
I am ready to learn from anyone who advances something more accurate or more
reliable ... : And [continues Shapiro] it is Luther who replies, 'Not to delight in
assertion is not the mark of a Christian heart. Indeed, one must delight in assertions to
be a Christian at all.' 18
Shapiro argues that "Luther's criticism of Erasmus could surely have been made by the
critics of the latitudinarians, both Puritan and High Church."19
Shapiro and Jacob have successfully illustrated the common natural religion between
Newton and the latitudinarians with regard to the design argument. The scientific study of
nature provided data for the establishment beyond reasonable doubt of religious propositions concerning the existence and nature of God about which all rational people could
agree. Jacob, of course, has extended this connection into the realm of politics arguing
that it was the express intention of the latitudinarians to underpin the social order by
utilizing the Newtonian cosmos, with its orderly and regular natural laws, as a great
analogical argument in favor of political order and cooperation, social restraint, and
social harmony.20 As Luther might have said of the so-called latitudinarian social

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JAMES E. FORCE

program, the latitudinarians were always thinking of social peace and the maintenance of
the status quo, not of social change and justice. 21
To summarize, it has been claimed that Newton is connected to the latitudinarian
movement in a variety of ways including:
(1) a web of personal and occasional working relationships between Newton and the

highest ranking latitudinarian churchmen such as Tenison, Patrick, and Burnet; (2) a
common intellectual disposition and attitude toward the world best characterized as
anti-enthusiastic, anti-superstitious, pro-rational, tolerant, and, consequently,
"unsympathetic with the bickerings over dogma and ceremony that they felt resulted
in the neglect of true piety";22 (3) a shared interest in the value of science both for
instantiating the inference in the design argument of natural religion to a rational,
powerful, Divine Architect and consequently for promoting a rational core of religion
about which reasonable people might agree and to which reasonable people might
direct their pious devotions. 23
Newton, on such grounds, has been widely recognized as the philosophical flower of the
Anglican latitudinarian movement. Certainly Newton appears to be in agreement with
these latitudinarian churchmen on these points. In what follows, I intend to present a case
for the view that Newton's position is more complicated and that, by and large, we have
put him in the wrong category. Certainly some of these latitudinarian elements are
present in his thought and in his intellectual makeup, but there are other elements as well
which illustrate the complex mixing of various strains of thought in Newton's
philosophy.
I divide this paper into two main sections and follow with a conclusion. In Section I, I
examine the web of personal relationships and intellectual dispositions [(1) and (2)
above] so often claimed as evidence for Newton's latitudinarian sympathies. I argue that
Newton can only be fitted into the latitudinarian mold by ignoring aspects of his thought
and temperament which do not fit. In Section II, I analyze Newton's metaphysical
supposition concerning God's absolute dominion and argue that his ultimately voluntaristic theology leads him finally to the adoption of theological doctrines such as Predestinarianism which would have choked even the most latitudinarian of his friends. I also
argue that Newton's voluntarism has important implications for his own view of his
science and how it relates to theology [(3) above.] I conclude by showing the implications which this analysis has for the relationship between latitudinarianism and deism.

Section II. Newton's Adamant Arianism

In the beginning of their movement, the latitudinarians, as good Erasmians, vastly
preferred to use their reason to debate and to inquire (especially about the nature of
apostolic Christianity), and not to conclude, choose, or pass harsh judgement on those
who differ. Of course, as with all sceptics who win power, they were ultimately forced to
erect standards of doctrinal purity and to require, however reluctantly, that these standards be observed.
Gilbert Burnet reports, in his discussion of how the latitudinarians, Tillotson, Stillingfleet, and Patrick "were formed under those great men," the Cambridge Platonists,

SIR ISAAC NEWTON, "GENTLEMAN OF WIDE SWALLOW',?

123

that these latitudinarian pupils were "infused" with a spirit of free rational inquiry. These
latitudinarians "continued to keep a good correspondence with those who had differed
from them in their opinion, and allowed a great freedom both in philosophy and divinity
...... Burnet concludes by emphasizing that while these latitudinarians did not think it
"unlawful" to live with unorthodox views about such doctrinal issues as the proper
liturgy and form of church government, they themselves remained scrupulously loyal to
the Anglican doctrines on these points. 24
Simon Patrick illustrated the easy and complete fusion of the freedom of reason with a
consciousness of the doctrinal requirements of an established Church in his Brief Account
of the New Sect of Latitude-Men. Patrick writes that "Our Latitudinarians therefore are by
all means for a liturgy, and do prefer that of our own Church before all others ... ."25 So
clearly do his fellow latitudinarians understand the need for a standard liturgy and for the
maintenance of the established government of the Anglican communion "that they would
be loth to adventure the mending of it, for fear of marring it."26 While they completely
accept all the Anglican creeds, including the Athanasian Creed and the Nicene Creed, as
well as the Thirty-Nine Articles, they do not "think themselves bound to believe" that
dissenters must suffer "absolute reprobation."27 If a person - from the light of his own
reasoning and not through a perverse will - simply could not see the rationale for any of
the creeds, then it was not unlawful for that person to dissent. Toleration for diversity
flowed naturally from their Erasmian scepticism.
Fortunately, the latitudinarians believed, it was not merely a case of remaining in the
immobility of those sceptical fideists who advised accepting the faith of one's fathers
because there was no adequate reason to change. Writing in 1662, Patrick was convinced
that the Thirty-Nine Articles were in fact the most rationally acceptable because their
source was neither the Schoolmen, the "Dutch systematics," the Council of Trent, nor the
Synod of Dort. The doctrinal position of the Anglican church is the best, i.e., most
rational, because it is based upon
the writings of the apostles and evangelists, in interpreting whereof, they carefully
attend to the sense of the ancient Church, by which they conceive the modern ought to
be guided: and therefore they [the latitudinarians] are conversant in all the genuine
monuments of the ancient fathers, those especially of the first and purest ages. 28
Writing in his irenicum, the latitudinarian Bishop, Edward Stillingfleet, expresses the
hope that the Church of England will conform to the latitudinarian ideal of the early
church which is distinguished "by its pristine moderation and sweetness of deportment
towards all its members." While citing the latitude of the early Church, he observes
somewhat darkly that "the first who brake this order in the Church were the Arians,
Donatists, and Circumcellians ......29
Stillingfleet had come up against the issues of toleration and authority in religion in
the context of the Restoration when Nonconformist claims regarding "tender conscience"
were opposed to the impositions of the established church. In its epistemological form,
latitudinarians such as Stillingfleet and others carefully developed the concept of "moral
certainty. "30 The belief in the infusion of the Holy Spirit within the mind of an individual
had proven to lead, in the 1650's, to antinomian and socially revolutionary consequences.
Stillingfleet rather strikingly located the source of authority, not in the bishops, as the
High Churchmen did, but in royal authority. Stillingfleet writes that "if we consider

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JAMES E. FORCE

religion as it is publicly owned and professed by a Nation, the supreme Magistrate is

bound by vertue of his office and authority, not only to defend and protect it, but to
restrain men from acting anything publicldy tending to the subversion of it."3! A stonn of
controversy arose over Stillingfleet's "Hobbism" and, over the next few decades, he
revised his initial position to deflect this charge. 32 He continues, however, to write
against the Nonconformist's claim that it is legal to preach against the law on the basis of
inspiration from God and argues that separate sectarian meetings "kept up in opposition
to the legal establishment of Religion" are sinful. 33 Arguing on the basis of Mosaic
theocracy, Tillotson expanded upon Stillingfleet's argument against the right of Nonconformists to preach against the established church's doctrine on the basis of conscience.
He writes:
I cannot think ... that any pretence of Conscience warrants any man, that is not
extraordinarily commision' d ... and cannot justify that Commission by Miracles '" to
affront the establish'd Religion of a Nation (though it be false) and openly to draw
men off from the profession of it in contempt of the Magistrate and the Law: All that
persons of such a different Religion can ... reasonably pretend to, is to enjoy private
liberty and exercise of their own Conscience and Religion. 34
As these latitudinarians moved up the ladder of preferment, their defense of the Anglican
church as the established Church took the fonn of repression of the freedom of speech.
Their more tolerant early latitudinarianism was retained only in their recognition of the
impossibility of prohibiting freedom of thought. In order to comprehend moderate
dissenters within the umbrella of the established church, Stillingfleet indicated a desire to
do away with those elements of the Anglican sacraments such as, for example, the
necessity for a heartfelt assent to the Thirty-Nine Articles, which offended the consciences of dissenters; he reckoned that swearing to thirty-six out of thirty-nine was
sufficient to enable a dissenter to receive communion. Church prefennent, of course,
required allegiance to all the Thirty-Nine Articles. 35
Clearly, the early latitudinarians were gentlemen of a "wide swallow" with an
attractive and modest liberality towards those who differ. Even though this position
changed somewhat over time as they gained positions of power, it remained a fairly
wide-mouthed theory aimed at comprehending as many people as possible. But can the
same be said of Isaac Newton? The latitudinarians could pretty clearly swallow Newton,
as long as he kept his mouth shut, but could he swallow them?
Between 1662 and 1690, while the latitudinarians were working their way up the
Anglican hierarchy and simultaneously developing their position regarding the limits of
established church authority over the inspired consciences of sectarian dissenters and the
authoritarian claims of Papists, Newton, as Westfall has documented, engaged in his own
rational analysis of the documentary sources of the early fathers of the church following a
religious crisis in 1662. 36 By 1672, he concluded that the Trinitarian doctrine of the
Athanasian creed was a "massive fraud," the "perverted legacy" of an anti-Christian
bishop. The power of God the father was undiluted; the son was neither co-substantial
nor co-eternal with the father. This rationally grounded conviction, solidified in his first
set of manuscript notebooks on theology from 1672, "remained unaltered to his death."37
It was because of this fixed viewpoint that Newton refused any position in the established
Church beginning with the need to take orders to preserve his Fellowship (Barrow

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125

intervened to help Newton obtain a royal dispensation from this requirement) and ending
with his refusing the blandishments of preferment from Archbishop Tenison.
So what, it might be argued? Newton's latitudinarianism is revealed in his silence, not
his secretly held view regarding the corrupted and idolatrous Trinitarian legacy of the
early church. His silence really reveals, one might argue, the characteristic latitudinarian
spirit with its typically irenic tolerance, tempered by the usual Erasmian reluctance to
pass judgement or to debate in public, and the customary refusal to commit with warmth
and enthusiasm to any doctrine about which there is disagreement. It is not, one might
argue, what he thinks about the Trinity which matters, it is the dispassionate manner in
which he refuses to say what he does think while, at the same time, refusing to subscribe
to the Thirty-Nine Articles.
This reading of Newton's Arianism is too soft; it does not do justice to the shrill tone
of his theological manuscripts. Frank E. Manuel has it exactly right:
Newton's considered public reticence and the toleration preached in his irenic
manuscripts, which reduced the whole of Christianity to a few simple fundamentals
hardly requiring exposition, should not, however mislead us about the animosity that
pervades his histories of corruption in the Church. These are profuse, vituperative, and
in their attacks on persons, relentless. Commitment to a latitudinarian spirit was one
thing; silence in the face of deliberate distortion of plain scriptural truth and the
introduction of metaphysical concepts in the guise of religion was another matter. 38
The argument that latitudinarianism was more a state of mind than a fixed set of doctrines
may meet the case when the first wave of young latitudinarians came down from
Cambridge and began their long climb up the church hierarchy. But by the time he is
Archbishop, Tillotson can only lament of the Athanasian Creed, "I wish we were well rid
of it."39 But neither his brother latitudinarian bishops nor he could expunge it from the
fabric of Anglicanism and, by the time they reached the highest ecclesiastical offices in
the church, they enforced it as the case of William Whiston illustrates.
William Whiston, Newton's successor as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics in
Cambridge, held the precise views concerning the Trinity and Athanasius that Newton
held, but instead of maintaining Newton's silence, he honestly preached his heresy and
was dismissed from the university and ostracized by intellectual society as a result. There
is much to learn from Whiston's case about both Newton's silence and about the
development of the latitudinarian movement.
Around 1705, Whiston learned that his friend Samuel Clarke doubted the validity of
the Athanasian Creed and that Clarke never read the Athanasian Creed in his parish near
Norwich. Whiston records that, at about the same time, after a conference with his
mentor, Newton, he "return'd much more inclin'd to what has been of late called
Arianism. "40
Shortly after the start of the year 1708, Whiston plunged into a close study of the
Christian records of the first four centuries very much as Newton had done in the 1670's.
Whiston's studies led him to the same conclusions that Newton had achieved regarding
the undiluted power of God the father. Jesus Christ was neither co-substantial nor coeternal. Whiston asserts that, prior to the incarnation, Jesus possesses "A Metaphysic
existence, in potentia, or in the like higher and sublimer Manner in the Father as his
Wisdom or Word before his Creation or Generation ...41

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With his [and Newton's] Arian hypothesis confinned by intensive historical research,
in July, 1708, Whiston wrote to infonn the Archbishops of York and Canterbury that, as
the result of a sustained conspiracy of some fourteen-hundred years, the church had been
teaching an anti-Christian doctrine and also to explain to these divines how to bring the
church into confonnity with true apostolic doctrine. He also states that he might be
mistaken and that he has no intention of upsetting the "Unity and Quiet" of the church in
which he is a "peaceable Member. "42
Like a bolt, Archbishop Tenison replied on July 24, 1708, urging Whiston to drop his
plans of publishing his findings. From York, Archbishop Sharp, in a letter dated August
6, 1708, also urges caution and to delay
at least so long as till you have had opportunity of talking freely about this matter with
your friends at London; which you may have in the Parliament-time, if you will then
be so kind as to make a journey thither. A great many things may be offer'd in
Discourse for the Conviction of either of the differing Parties, which cannot be so
easily writ in Letters. 43
The latitudinarian Bishop of Worcester, William Lloyd, who had ordained Whiston on
December 28, 1693, also wrote to Whiston. Lloyd attempts to dissuade Whiston from
publishing his results and warns him that if he presses forward with his plan to disclose
the anti-Trinitarianism of the early church it will be necessary for Lloyd to "break
friendship" with him "once for all ... God forbid it should ever come to this!"44
In 1709, when two of his friends, Dr. Richard Laughton and one Mr. Priest try to
change his mind during a visit to his house in Cambridge and to warn him of the "hazards
and dangers" in publishing his full scale attack on the Trinity, Whiston replies:
I have studied these points to the bottom, and am thoroughly satisfied the christian
church has been long and grossly cheated in them; and, by God's blessing, if it be in
my power, it shall be cheated no longer. 45
He made a similar response to a plea for silence from Richard Bentley, another fonner
Boyle Lecturer. (Whiston had given the Boyle Lectures in 1707 on the topic of The
Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecy, a subject probably suggested to him by Newton.)46 Bentley, who had become Master of Trinity College through the official nominations of all the most prominent latitudinarians, including Tenison, Lloyd, Burnet, Patrick,
and Sharp, must be reckoned a latitudinarian.47
Whiston writes and, finally, preaches against the co-eternity and co-substantiality of
Jesus and teaches that a rational examination of the most primitive Christian sources
reveals that "the Father alone is the One God of the Christian Religion, in opposition to
the Three Divine Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, being the One God of the
Christian Religion. "48 Having preached publicly against the first, second, and fifth of the
Thirty-Nine Articles, Whiston was deprived of his professorship and banished from the
university. At the age of forty-three, with a wife and four children to support, he moved
to London and endeavored to support himself and his family through public lectures on
Newtonian science and through his publishing efforts.
But with the Tory landslide of 1710 - and their rallying slogan "Church in Danger" it was an inconvenient time for a vocal heretic to be in the capital. Nor were Whiston's
opponents confined to the ranks of the High Churchmen. Whiston appears to have been

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127

the one issue about which the High Flying Tories and latitudinarian Low Churchmen
could agree. The latitudinarian assistant to Archbishop Tenison, William Wake, in whose
London home so many of the latitudinarians, and even Newton himself, had congregated
between 1705 and 1710, urged Whiston to lay his reasoning concerning the Trinity before
the ecclesiastical Convocation which meets in 1710. Whiston did so and published his
Historical Preface to Primitive Christianity reviv'd. He dedicates it "to the Most
Reverend Thomas Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, President; and to The Right Reverend
The Bishops of the same Province, His Graces Suffragans; and to the Reverend The
Clergy of the Lower-House in Convocation Assembled."
The result was that Whiston was charged before the Convocation with heresy and his
trial dragged on for two years. No decision had been reached by the time the Convocation
broke up in 1712 and the matter died. John Pelling, the frustrated High Church rector of
St. Anne's, Westminster, immediately attempted to prefer the charge of heresy against
Whiston before the Court of Delegates. Again, no conviction resulted.
Eamon Duffy has argued, with justification, that it is at least possible that the
latitudinarian bishops, after failing to seal Whiston's lips with cautious advice, set him up
as a target for the High Flyers at the factionalized Convocation so that the latitudinarian
Bishops, such as, especially, John Sharp, could more freely pursue their ecclesiological
agenda of reducing sharply the scope of the Church's political power while the High
Flyers were distracted with prosecuting Whiston.49
Nor were the latitudinarians finished with Whiston after his heresy trials. As late as
In I , Daniel Finch, the second Earl of Nottingham, who is identified by Margaret Jacob
as a moderate Whig politician closely allied with the latitudinarian movement, 50
culminated a vituperative exchange of pamphlets with the Arian Whiston by introducing
a bill into the upper House which called for stiff civil sanctions against anyone who
denied the established doctrine of the Trinity. The bill was defeated 60 to 31, but, as
Newton and Whiston had observed in their long careers, governments and kings were
always subject to change.50
What McAdoo has referred to as "the later type of Latitudinarianism"51 is different
from the gentle Erasmianism of the 1660's. Archbishop Tillotson might lament being
stuck with the Athanasian Creed and long for a church whose members subscribed to it
out of a Christian sense of duty based on the love and fear of God rather than because of
any legal sanctions, but, because of the factionalism of the Anglican church, that view
was not practically open to him. It says much about the development of latitudinarianism
that, by 1710, latitudinarian bishops joined with High Flyers to persecute Whiston.
Latitudinarianism might have started out as an intellectual movement devoted to a gentle
pursuit of the moderate middle ground in politics and religion, but it did not maintain this
character once its adherents were established in power.
In the basement of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in Los Angeles,
there is a holograph manuscript from Newton entitled "Paradoxical Questions concerning
ye morals & actions of Athanasius & his followers." In the hundred folio pages of this
manuscript, Newton reveals that he shared Whiston's exact views on the nature of the
Trinity and on how such a doctrine came to be adopted by the church. Newton's
manuscript was, of course, never published and his views were known during his lifetime
only to his most intimate confidantes such as Samuel Clarke and Whiston. Of course,
Whiston, the honest Newtonian, published a broadside entitled Athanasius Convicted of

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Forgery (1712.) Whiston's case possibly reveals why Newton remained reticent about his
real views. It might not be from a modest sense of his limits and a latitudinarian recognition that he might be wrong. It was perhaps because of the very real possibility of social
and economic martyrdom.
Finally, Newton's reputation as the paradigm of the latitudinarian man of good sense
who was sober and, above all, not enthusiastic must be balanced. Newton was, usually,
sober, quiet, and solitary. But, besides the startling ferocity of his religious manuscripts,
there is at least some evidence that Newton occasionally gave way to rapturous enthusiasm. Writing to John Sharp in 1680, Henry More records that he and Newton met
and discussed the book of Revelation at length. In More's tale, a more complicated
Newton emerges:

For after his reading of the Exposition of the Apocalypse which I gave him, he came
to my chamber, where he seem'd to me not onely to approve my Exposition as
coherent and perspicuous throughout from the beginning to end, but (by the manner of
his countenance which is ordinarily melancholy and thoughtfull, but then mighty
lightsome and chearfull, and by the free profesion of what satisfaction he took therein)
to be in a maner transported. 52

Section m. Newton's Voluntaristic Metaphysics and its Legacy

in his Predestinarianism, Arianism, Millennialism, and
Scientific Method
A distinguishing feature of the latitudinarians was their distaste for the doctrine of
predestinarianism which represented to them the very essence of the Calvinistic
puritanism against which they rationally revolted. The cradle of latitudinarianism is
Cambridge and as early as the 1650's the Cambridge Platonists Ralph Cudworth
(1617-1688) and Henry More (1614-87) repudiate "that hard doctrine concerning fate."
Henry More records his boyhood aversion toward "Calvinistic predestination as it is
called":
... I did (with my eldest Brother who then, as it happened, had accompanied my Uncle
thither) very stoutly, and earnestly for my Years, dispute against this Fate of
Calvinistick Predestination, as it is usually call'd: And that my Uncle, when he came
to know it, chid me severely; adding menaces withall of Correction, and a Rod for my
immature Forwardness in Philosophizing concerning such Matters: Moreover, that I
had such a deep Aversion in my Temper to this Opinion, and so firm and unshaken a
Perswasion of the Divine Justice and Goodness; and that on a certain Day, in a Ground
belonging to Aeton College, where the Boys us'd to play, and exercise themselves,
musing concerning these Things with my self, and recalling to my Mind this Doctrine
of Calvin, I did thus seriously and deliberately conclude within my self, viz., If I am
one of those that are predestinated unto Hell, where all Things are full of nothing but
Cursing and Blasphemy, yet will I behave my self there patiently and submissively
towards God; and if there be anyone Thing more than another, that is acceptable to
him, that will I set my self to do with a sincere Heart, and to the utmost of my Power:

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129

Being certainly persuaded, that if I thus demeaned my self, he would hardly keep me
long in that place. 53
Cudworth also detested any form of determinism as, finally, unrational. Hob~es's theory
Cudworth considered to be mere "divine fatalism natural" in contrast to the equally
detestable "divine fatalism arbitrary" of the Calvinists. Both were inadequate foundations
for moral action and, more significantly, neither adequately assessed the nature and
attributes of God. In his long "Sermon Preached Before the House of Commons,"
Cudworth excoriated the various sects of the riven Parliament of 1647 and singled out the
Calvinists for particular scorn. Cudworth asked whether God - "the father of lights, the
fountain of goodness" - was capable of watching his children pant under the irremediable
effects of original sin with no action available to them to save themselves other than to
await God's pleasure? Cudworth answers:
No, hear the language of God's heart, hear the sounding of his bowels towards them:
"Is it Ephraim, my dear son? Is it that pleasant child? Since I spake of him I do
earnestly remember him ... I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord [Cf. Jer.
31 :20.] If those expressions of goodness and tender affection here among the creatures
be but drops of that full ocean that is God, how can we then imagine that this father of
our spirits should have so little regard to his own dear offspring, I do not say our souls,
but that, which is the very life and soul of our souls, the life of God in us (which is
nothing else but God's own self communicated to us, his own Son born in our hearts),
as that he should suffer it to be cruelly murdered in its infancy by our sins, and like
young Hercules, in its very cradle to be strangled by those filthy vipers that he should
see him to be crucified by wicked lusts, nailed fast to the cross by invincible corruptions, pierced and gored on every side with the devil's temptations, and at last to give
up the ghost; and yet his tender heart not at all relent nor he at all this while impassionated with so sad a spectacle? Surely we cannot think he hath such an adamantine
breast, such a flinty nature, as this is. 54
The rigors of predestinarianism appalled Cudworth and More and they passed this point
of view on to all the young latitudinarians such as Tillotson and Patrick who, while
initially attempting to define religion as a matter of individual conscience, flatly
repudiated predestinarianism. 55 In 1670, John Edwards was forced to relinquish his
fellowship at St. John's College, Cambridge, owing to his severely predestinarian
preaching. He never recanted. But by 1700, he had become an anachronism in the brave
new latitudinarian world. The deist Bolingbroke writing around 1730 summed up the
rational new anti-predestinarianism of his age. Like the latitudinarians, Bolingbroke
refuses to
impute such cruel injustice to the all-perfect Being. Let Austin and Calvin and those
who teach it [Le., predestinarianism] be answerable for it alone. You may bring
Fathers and Councils as evidences ... but reason must be the judge ... in the breast of
every Christian that can appeal to her tribunal. 56
On this crucial point of doctrine, Newton once more silently parted company with his
friend and colleague, Henry More, and with More's more latitudinarian disciples such as,
for example, Tillotson. In his metaphysics, Newton emphasized the will and power of

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God and God's ability to intervene directly and immanently in any aspect of his creation,
natural or moral, if He chose. Ordinarily, God did not intervene directly in His established framework where divinely ordained second causes (in nature) and laws (in
society) hold. Still, there could be no compromise of God's power and will to intervene
directly in the orderly operations of the "world natural" and the "world politic" whenever
He chose to do so. This basic voluntaristic orientation became crucial for Newton's views
concerning predestinarianism, Arianism, millennialism, and scientific method.
In a draft of the General Scholium from the 1690's, Newton gives a particularly clear
statement of his position regarding the nature of God:
That God is an entity in the highest degree perfect, all agree. But the highest idea of
the perfection of an entity is that it should be one substance, simple, indivisible, living
and life giving, always everywhere of necessity existing, in the highest degree
understanding all things, freely willing good things; by his will effecting things
possible; communicating as far as is possible his own similitude to the more noble
effects, containing all things in himself as their principle and location; decreeing and
ruling all things by means of his substantial presence (as the thinking part of a man
perceives the appearances of things brought into the brain and thence rules its own
body); and constantly co-operating with all things according to accurate laws, as being
the foundation and cause of the whole of nature, except where it is good to act
otherwise. 57
The central guiding concept in all of Newton's natural philosophy was the absolute
dominion of God over everything. All things had their beginning and have their continuing existence through the will and power of God. In this draft version of the General
Scholium, the metaphysical idea which became the source for Newton's famous Query
31 in the Opticks is apparent. In Query 31 Newton suggested that space was like God's
sensorium. God, according to Newton, is
a powerful ever-living Agent, who being in all Places, is more able by his Will to
move the Bodies within his boundless uniform Sensorium, and thereby to form and
reform the Parts of the Universe, than we are by our Will to move the Parts of our own
Bodies. And yet we are not to consider the World as the Body of God, or the several
parts thereof, as the Parts of God. He is an uniform Being, void of Organs, Members
or Parts, and they are his Creatures subordinate to him, and subservient to his Will.58
In the same sense that human beings had dominion over their own bodies in a limited
way, God, in an unlimited way, had transcendental dominion over his creation. The
active principle of the divine will was an extraordinary principle. Because of this
attribute, God could cut through the ordinary coursing of nature and nature's laws as He
pleased. The manner in which God governed the world was analogous to the way in
which a human being made an intentional action. Consequently, man (and everything else
in creation) was continuously dependent upon God while God was not dependent upon
anything. So, in the published version of the General Scholium from 1713, Newton writes
that
this Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on
account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God ... Universal Ruler; for God

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131

is a relative word, and has a respect to servants; and Deity is the dominion of God not
over his own body as those who fancy God to be the soul of the world, but over
servants. 59
Several points flowed naturally out of Newton's voluntaristic theory about the nature of
God and the subsequent relationship between the all-powerful Lord God and his creation.
First, Newton's profound anti-Trinitarianism was inevitably affected by his voluntaristic conception of God. In Newton's view, Jesus could not be co-substantial with God, but
must be a divine spirit separate both in substance and nature from the Lord God. Jesus
only shares with his divine liege a
Unity of Dominion, the Son receiving all things from the Father, being subject to him
executing his will, sitting in his throne and calling him his God, and so is but one God
with the Father as a King and viceroy are but one King. For the word God relates not
to the metaphysical nature of God but to dominion.60
Second, Newton's voluntaristic theory about God's dominion and power, exercised
through his infinite will, influenced his theory concerning predestinarianism. Human
beings were as much the vassals of their divine liege as Jesus and so were equally under
his sovereign dominion. Newton noted down in an early manuscript notebook the key
Biblical text utilized by Calvin in Calvin's argument supporting the doctrine of God's
divine and unmitigated right to choose some for salvation and some for damnation.
Calvin inferred his doctrine of double predestination on the basis of Romans 9:18-23. 61
Newton's "Commonplace Book" contains the entry "Predestinatio" where Newton quotes
the ninth chapter of Romans at some length:
What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. For he saith
to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, & I will have compassion on
whom I will have compassion. So than it is not of him that willeth, or of him yt
runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. For ye scripture saith unto Pharoh Even for
this same purpose have I raised thee up that I might shew my power in thee, & that my
name might be declared throughout all ye Earth. Therefore he hath mercy on whom he
will have mercy, & whom he will he hardeneth. Thou wilt say then unto me; why doth
he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but 0 man, who art thou that
repliest against God? Shall ye thing formed say to him yt formed it why hast thou
made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay of ye same lump to make one
vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour?
Does this bald quotation from St. Paul in one of Newton's manuscripts prove that
Newton is in fact a predestinarian? In itself it does not. It does certainly indicate that he
knew the New Testament source for the doctrine. But in connection with his other clearly
articulated remarks concerning the nature and power of God, this text becomes highly
suggestive that Newton was himself a predestinarian.
Third, Newton's focus on God's sovereign dominion over every aspect of his creation
also influenced his particular brand of millennialism. Many commentators who have
found cause to connect Newton with the latitudinarians on the basis of their common
interest in the "new science" have also noted the explicit millennialism of these new
scientists. Latitudinarian and Newtonian alike, claims Margaret Jacob,

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sought to understand the means chosen by providence to control the natural order and
finally to authorize its destruction .... Without the special ingredient of millenarian
fervor ... the impulse to proclaim a natural religion based on the operations of nature
would have been more tenuous, less certain of itself. Millenarianism aided in the
acceptance of scientific enquiry and served to focus the application of natural
philosophy to social and political issues. 63
Jacob's emphasis on the model of order provided to society by the Newtonian natural
philosophy - "a device for curbing self-interest and maintaining social stability"64 - and
her linking of this aspect of latitudinarian and Newtonian thought with millennial
"fervor" breaks down the real distinction in Newton's own thought between ordinary and
extraordinary, or general and special, providence and ignores that, unlike the case of the
latitudinarians for whom the ordinary concourse of nature and social peace were crucial,
for Newton the point of emphasis was always God's power to destroy that natural and
social order at will as predicted in prophecy. The latitudinarians utilized the design
argument on its own simply to illustrate the generally provident creator of natural order.
In Newton's own characteristically "Newtonian" theology, the generally provident
creator of the design argument was always utilized in conjunction with scriptural
arguments, especially the argument from fulfilled prophecy, which illustrated God's
specially provident nature. The payoff of the "Newtonian" synthesis of the design
argument with the argument from prophecy was the generally provident God of dominion
who could, by his will, create the world and finally, through an interposition of his
specially provident will, could destroy all he had created. Finally, for Newton, the design
argument exhibited a supremely powerful designer. Thus, the design argument should
move mankind "to believe that there is a being who made all things and has all things in
his power and who is therefore to be feared. "65
In this view, Newton had more in common with the radical Puritans (who shared his
Biblically based vision concerning God's dominion and power and his consequent
emphasis on the precariousness and contingency of God's creation) rather than with the
latitudinarians of the Revolutionary settlement, who did in fact, as Jacob rightly points
out, base their model of social stability upon the stability of the ordinary concourse of
nature as emphasized in the latitudinarian version of the design argument.
Fourth, and finally, Newton's voluntarism directly affects his scientific method. Many
scholars have argued that in Newton's measured, undogmatic empiricism - with its
implicit recognition of human fallibility - evidence exists for a strong connection with
the latitudinarians whose probabilism constituted the essence of their theory of
knowledge. 66 It is my contention that while mitigated scepticism is in fact a part of the
epistemologies of both the latitudinarians and of Newton, the origin of this theory was
different for Newton than it was for the latitudinarians.67
For Newton, because God was so powerful that he could alter the course of nature at
will, human knowledge must necessarily be based upon repeated empirical observations
because there was no guarantee that the coursing of nature would remain the same in the
future as it had in the past. Our empirically based knowledge of causal scientific laws laws created once long ago by God's creative act of general providence - could only be
probable because of God's utter dominion over creation. God could change his generally
provident laws at any time by an act of will. This is the metaphysical basis for Newton's

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133

most famous methodological statement in his fourth "Rule" of reasoning where Newton
states that
In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general
induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any
contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur,
by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.
This rule we must follow, that the argument of induction may not be evaded by
hypotheses. 68
The metaphysical rationale behind this epistemological expression of mitigated, empirical
scepticism was that one must keep performing experiments and recording observations
because of the possibility of a divinely ordained, specially provident suspension in
nature's heretofore continuous operation. The theological equivalent of Rule IV was
Newton's millennial inductivism. The caution with which Newton scanned the present for
signs of God's prophetically predicted involvement in human and natural history sprang
not from any latitudinarian sense of epistemological moderation, but rather from
Newton's voluntaristic conception of the nature of God. God's power to change nature,
his absolute dominion over all aspects of creation, is before his mind when he sounds his
cautionary note regarding the interpretation of fulfilled prophecy;
There is already so much of the Prophecy fulfilled, that as many will take pains in this
study, may see sufficient instances of God's providence: but then the signal revolutions predicted by all the Holy Prophets, will at once both turn men's eyes upon
considering the predictions, and plainly interpret them. Till then we must content
ourselves with interpreting what hath already been fulfilled. 69
Manuel has asserted that, in Newton's thought, "The historical excluded the metaphysical
as well as the mystical."70 In fact, it was Newton's voluntaristic metaphysical conception
of God which determined his historical method of "gleaning up" instances of prophecies
which had clear fulfillments in history. Newton's God, like Pope Urban YIn's God in the
Pope's violent confrontation with Galileo, suffered no restraints upon his power and
dominion over creation. Newton's historical research on fulfilled prophecies were
immensely different in kind from those of the latitudinarians described by Jacob who
were so keen to emphasize order, regularity, and stability in the natural order as a model
for the new political order. For Newton, owing to God's power to change the future at
will, all the scientists who based their theories upon inductive generalizations rooted in
observation and experiments, including the natural philosopher, the Biblical exegete, the
moral philosopher, and the legal theorist, must repeat their observations ad infinitum.
Thirty years prior to Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, Newton, from a vastly different
metaphysical starting point, told us that the future need not resemble the past.
For a more complete adumbration of the voluntaristic nature of Newton's conception
about God and about how this metaphysical starting point affected the cautious Newtonian approach to knowledge, we can profitably turn once more to William Whiston.
Whiston stated that his 1707 Boyle Lectures, The Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecy,
as well as the "literal" method of scriptural interpretation on which they were based, were
"intimated" to him in his youth by Newton.1' In this work and in his other works on
historically fulfilled prophecies, he listed hundreds of prophetic predictions which were

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JAMES E. FORCE

fulfilled by the power of divine providence as predicted in scripture. Whiston argues that
Newton's methodology is the best way to proceed in such scriptural interpretation
because only through empirical induction may hypothetical "phansies" be avoided:
Till the learned Christians imitate the learned Philosophers and Astronomers of the
present Age; who have almost entirely left off Hypotheses and Metaphysicks, for
Experiments and Mathematicks; I mean till they be content to take all Things, that
naturally depend thereon, from real Facts, and original Records; without the Byass of
Hypothesis, or Party, or Inclination; 'til then I say I verily believe that Disputes and
Doubts, Scepticism and Infidelity will increase upon us.72
For his role in disputing with the free-thinking deist, Anthony Collins, on the authority of
scripture in the interpretation of prophecy, Whiston reports that the latitudinarian Bishop,
Gilbert Burnet, "forgave me all 'my heresy'."73

Section IV. Conclusion: The Deists, the Latitudinarians, and

Newton
Newton, as we have seen, believed in doctrines which were incompatible even with the
minimal doctrinal constraints finally maintained, however reluctantly, by the
latitudinarians. These theological doctrines - Arianism, predestinarianism, "Newtonian"
millennialism, and millennial inductivism - were rooted in Newton's voluntaristic
conception of the power and dominion of God. Furthermore, Newton's keystone
theological beliefs, while based on reason and evidence, were maintained with a sense of
passion foreign to the latitudinarians. Newton's only hope was that the wise would
understand. The latitudinarians might be able to swallow a quiescent Newton (in contrast
to the strident Whiston), but Newton could not compromise his principles sufficiently
enough to maintain that he was himself a latitudinarian. At best, he was a fellow traveler.
If this analysis of Newton's relationship with the latitudinarians is correct, then it has
some implications for Newton's relationship with the chief intellectual opponents of the
latitudinarians in the first decades of the 18th century, the deists.
One of the primary difficulties in failing to delineate the scripturally rooted and
doctrinaire aspect of Newton's privately maintained theology and of identifying Newton's entire theological program with that of the latitudinarians is that it automatically
converts Newton into a latitudinarian at the expense of failing to understand the complexity of his entire theological and metaphysical position. Consequently, when the
latitudinarians become tarred as the progenitors of deism, so, too, does Newton.
The kinship of the latitudinarians with the deistic free thinkers of the early eighteenth
century, such as Anthony Collins and John Toland, has often been identified. For
example, Christopher Hill observes that:
Latitudinarians were closely associated with the scientists of the Royal Society ....
Newtonian scientists saw God as the supervisor of a mechanical universe. Socinians,
deists, and some antinomians virtually abolished a personal God to be propitiated. 74
Henry McAdoo has also observed how the minimalist latitudinarian theology, coupled
with their eagerness to point to a rational designer of a rational (hence, stable) order, can

SIR ISAAC NEWTON, "GENTLEMAN OF WIDE SWALLOW"?

135

lead to the eradication of a personal God of Old Testament power. Of such latitudinarians
as Stillingfleet, Tillotson, Sprat, Tenison, Patrick, Glanvill, Lloyd, and Burnet, McAdoo
writes that
In the overemphasizing of natural religion they unconsciously formed a stepping-stone
to the deism of certain circles in the eighteenth century.75
Whether the latitudinarians themselves can justly be accused of opening up a possible
path to deism is open to dispute.76 Newton's credentials as a anti-deistic Christian, albeit
a heterodox one, are beyond dispute.
Newton cannot be read as some kind of proto-deist because of his voluntaristic
conception of the attributes of God and, especially, because of his philosophical methodology concerning how man arrived at a rational understanding of God's power and
dominion. Certainly, Newton promoted the design argument, but he utilized it in
conjunction with the argument from prophecy to emphasize the nature and the extent of
God's power and argued that, consequently, mankind ought to fear his wrath. In addition
to interpreting the Book of Nature, Newton also interpreted the Book of Scripture. The
Bible, which Newton acknowledged to have many human accretions and errors, contained a central core of truth in key prophecies in Daniel and Revelation and the Newtonian scientific exegete must continue to record fresh instances of fulfilled historical
prophecies as a foundation for inductively justified human expectations regarding the
future (which must, of course, be subject to revision owing to God's power to alter
nature's course.)
Newton's emphasis on the Lord God, the ruler of heaven and earth who exercised his
dominion through general (creative) providence and also through special (miraculous)
providence, was absolutely dismissed by the deists. For them, in the classic statement by
David Hume of the limits of human understanding regarding the nature of the deity,
human knowledge of God (apart from a miraculous - and, hence, impossible - intuition)
is limited to this bare proposition:
That the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy
to human intelligence: If this proposition be not capable of extension, variation or
particular explication; If it affords no inference that affects human life, or can be the
source of any action or forbearance: And if the analogy, imperfect as it is, can be
carried no further than to human intelligence, and cannot be transferred, with any
appearance of probability, to the other qualities of mind: If this really be the case, what
can the most inquisitive, contemplative, religious man do more than give a plain
philosophical assent to the proposition, as often as it occurs .... 77

One may argue whether the natural culmination of the latitudinarian movement is
expressed in this proposition. But it was not Newton's viewpoint. He was no deist.
Voltaire's summation of Newton's anti-deistic theory of the nature of God, as revealed in
the proper interpretation of fulfilled scripture prophecy, is on the mark:
Sir Isaac Newton was firmly persuaded of the Existence of a God; by which he
understood not only an infinite, omnipotent, and creating being, but moreover a
Master who has made a Relation between himself and his Creatures.78
We have no reason to doubt Newton's own words in the General Scholium when he

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JAMES E. FORCE

identifies the Divine Architect of the latitudinarian design argument with "the God of
Israel, the God of Gods, and Lord of Lords. "79

Notes
1. Stephen H. Daniel, John Toland. His Methods, Manners, and Mind (Kingston and Montreal:
McGill-Queen's University Press, 1984), p. 39.
2. Frank E. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 5. I
don't mean to distort Manuel's point which he makes with his usual clarity. He goes on to say that
the early "strict Church of England religion of 1661" is still identifiable even in the "aged autocrat
of science" who receives all these different people. Manuel does not attempt to put Newton into the
wrong category, but attempts to trace the real complexity of Newton's religious views.
3. This text, from Keynes MSS 130.6, Book 2; 130.7, Sheet 1, is cited by Richard S. Westfall in
Never at Rest. A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p.
569.
4. Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 594.
5. A crisis arose for Newton in 1675 when, according to the statutes of Cambridge University, he
was required to become ordained or to resign his Fellowship at Trinity College. Probably through
the intervention of his friend, Isaac Barrow (whom Newton succeeded as Lucasian Professor),
Newton won a most unusual royal dispensation from this requirement. Westfall, Never at Rest, pp.
331-4.
6. Henry Guerlac and Margaret C. Jacob, "Bentley, Newton, and Providence," Journal of the
History ofIdeas 30, No.3 (July-Sept., 1969), pp. 307-18, esp. p. 317.
7. S. P., A Brief Account of the New Sect of Latitude-Men (London, 1662.) Margaret C. Jacob,
Henry R. McAdoo, and Jan Van den Berg have all identified S. P. as Simon Patrick. See Jacob, The
Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689-1720 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976), p. 40;
McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism. A Survey of Anglican Theological Method in the Seventeenth
Century (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1965), p. 19; and Van den Berg, "Between Platonism
and Enlightenment: Simon Patrick (1625-1707) and his Place in the Latitudinarian Movement,"
Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, Dutch Review of Church History 68 (1988), pp.
164-79.
8. William Cobbett, The Parliamentary History of England, 36 vols. (London, 1806-20), 6:496.
Cited by Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 626.
9. Keynes MS 130.7, Sheet 1. Cited by Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 601.
10. The evidence for the character and composition of these meetings comes from G. V. Bennett,
"An Unpublished Diary of Archbishop William Wake," Studies in Church History 3 (1966), pp.
258-66. Cited by Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, pp. 157-9. Jacob utilizes this
record to show that, as party factionalism increases in the first decade of the eighteenth century and
promotes a split between the High Churchmen and the latitudinarians, the latitudinarian alliance
with the "Newtonians" gains in strength. Jacob writes:
In this period of low-church ascendancy the Newtonian natural philosophy as presented in the
Boyle lectures was primarily an expression of latitudinarian thinking, and the circle that included
the Finches, Wotton, Tenison, Evelyn, Bentley, Harris, later Samuel Clarke, and at times Newton
himself was the intellectual center of the church. (p. 159)
11. Westfall, Never at Rest, p 594.
12. For a more complete delineation of the personal connections between all the Newtonians and
the latitudinarians, see Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, pp. 29ff. Regarding
Newton, I have not so far indicated the important role played by the latitudinarian natural
philosopher, Isaac Barrow, in the fonnulation of his views. See McAdoo, The Spirit of
Anglicanism, pp. 230-9. I discuss Whiston's stonny relationships with various members of the
latitudinarian circle in Section I. Here I pause only to point out that, as a young scholar at
Cambridge, Whiston was selected by Archbishop Tillotson to tutor Tillotson's nephew and that,
from 1694 until 1698, Whiston acted as Chaplain to the latitudinarian Bishop of Norwich, John

SIR ISAAC NEWTON, "GENTLEMAN OF WIDE SWALLOW"?

137

Moore.
13. Newton to Locke, 14 Nov. 1690, in The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, 7 vols., ed. H. W.
Turnbull, J. F. Scott, A. R. Hall, and Laura Tilling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1959-77),3:82.
14. E. Fowler, Sermons, 2nd ed. (London, 1671), Pt. I.
15. Ibid., Pt. II, Sennon XXXVIII.
16. H. F. Kearney, "Puritanism, Capitalism and the Scientific Revolution," in The Intellectual
Revolution of the Seventeenth Century, ed. Charles Webster (London and Boston: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1974), p. 234. On the connection between Cambridge Platonism and the latitudinarian
movement, see McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism, pp. 158ff.
17. Jacob acknowledges that her study "does not deal directly with Newton himself, except where
he is representative of commonly held latitudinarian views or aided the latitudinarians .... " She also
remarks that Newton's "religious and ecclesiastical thinking so generally reflects latitudinarian
positions that it is not unique." See Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, pp. 3~.
What Jacob tenns "Newtonianism," then, is just that portion of Newton's views which, from the
start, are identified with the latitudinarians by definition. The alliance is thus between the
latitudinarians and a truncated, public version of Newton. See James E. Force, William Whiston.
Honest Newtonian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 91.
18. Barbara J. Shapiro, "Latitudinarianism and Science in Seventeenth-Century England," in The
Intellectual Revolution of the Seventeenth Century, p. 315.
19. Shapiro, "Latitudinarianism and Science," p. 315.
20. Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, passim.
21. Luther remarks of Erasmus that "He is thinking of peace, not the cross." Cited in Shapiro,
"Latitudinarianism and Science," p. 315. It is worth observing in passing that William Whiston
considered himself to be a new "Luther" and, for that reason, believed himself to be one who was
less interested in peace than truth. William Whiston, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr.
William Whiston ... , 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London, 1753), 1:208. This fact will take on some significance in the light of the discussion in Section I.
22. Shapiro, "Latitudinarianism and Science," p. 315.
23. This list of shared features between Newton and the latitudinarians closely resembles Jacob's
characterization of the basic convictions shared between the latitudinarians of the post-Restoration
period. These tenets include: "rational argumentation and not faith is the final arbiter of Christian
dogma and belief; scientific knowledge and natural philosophy are the most reliable means of
explaining creation; and political and ecclesiastical moderation are the only realistic means by
which the Refonnation will be accomplished." Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution,
p.35.
24. Gilbert Burnet, History of His Own Time, 2 vols., ed. Thomas Burnet (London, 1734), 2:80.
25. S. P., A Brief Account of the New Sect of Latitude-Men: Together with some Reflections upon
the New Philosophy (London, 1662), p. 4.
26. S. P., New Sect, p. 4.
27. S. P., New Sect, p. 4. The case of Chillingworth is of some interest at this point. While residing
at Lord Falkland's residence between 1635 and 1637 and working on his great treatise, Chillingworth remarks that Arianism is, at least, "no damnable heresy" and refuses prefennent in the
Church of England because of his inability to accept those parts of the Creed which damn those
who dissent from the Athanasian, Nicene, and Apostles' Creed, even though the reasons for their
non-subscription "may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture." Pierre Desmaizeaux,
Historical and Critical Account of the Life and Writings of William Chillingworth (London, 1725),
pp. 49-56. Chillingworth, of course, eventually subscribed to the Thirty-Nine Articles and becomes
a bishop in due course.
28. S. P., New Sect, p. 5.
29. Edward Stillingfleet, Irenicum (London, 1659), Preface to the Reader.
30. See R. H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), passim; Henry G. Van Leeuwen, The Problem of
Certainty in English Thought 1630-1690 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963); Robert Todd
Carroll, The Common-Sense Philosophy of Religion of Bishop Edward Stillingfleet. 1635-1699

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JAMES E. FORCE

(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975); Barbara J. Shapiro, Probability and Certainty in
Seventeenth-Century England. A Study of the Relationships between Natural Science, Religion,
History, Law and Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.)
31. Stillingfleet, Irenicum, p. 39.
32. Stillingfleet's development on this point is clearly traced by John Marshall in ''The Ecclesiology of the Latitude-Men 1660-1689: Stillingfleet, Tillotson and 'Hobbism' ," Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 (1985), pp. 407-27.
33. Stillingfleet, Irenicum, pp. 11-2. Cited by Marshall, ''The Ecclesiology of the Latitude-Men,"

p.417.
34. John Tillotson, The Protestant Religion Vindicated from the Charge of Singularity and Novelty
(London, 1680), p. 9. Cited in Marshall, ''The Ecclesiology of the Latitude-Men," p. 422.
35. Stillingfleet, The Unreasonableness of Separation (London, 1681), pp. lxxxii-xciii. Cited in
Marshall, ''The Ecclesiology of the Latitude-Men," p. 419.
36. Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 77.
37. Ibid., pp. 312-3.
38. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton, pp. 64-5.
39. Quoted by Herbert McLachlan in Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1951), p. 335.
40. William Whiston, Historical Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Samuel Clarke. Being a Supplement to
Dr. Syke's and Bishop Hoadley's Accounts. Including Certain Memoirs of Several of Dr. Clarke's
Friends (London, 1730), p. 13. For the sense in which Newton may be characterized as the
"mentor" of Whiston, see James E. Force William Whiston, Introduction, and Chapter 1.
41. Whiston, An Historical Preface to Primitive Christianity Reviv'd. With an Appendix. Containing an Account of the Author's Prosecution at, and Banishment from the University at Cambridge
(London, 1711), p. 27.
42. Whiston claimed that he sent the same letter reprinted in his Historical Preface, pp. 15-8, to
both Archbishops. He sent a copy to Samuel Clarke and recommended a path whereby Clarke
might possibly retain his preferment by subscribing to the Thirty-Nine Articles. Whiston writes:
"Above all, act openly; advise with Sir Isaac Newton: and, if you can do it with a safe conscience
in that sense, declare at the time of subscription, that you sign them as Articles of Peace, which you
will never oppose by Preaching or Writing, and no farther." (p. 17)
43. Whiston records this reply from Archbishop Sharp in his Historical Preface, p. 19. In his
original letter to the Archbishops, Whiston writes:
I am well aware that several political or prudential Considerations may be alledg'd against
wither the doing this at all, or at least the doing it now. But then, if the sacred Truths of God must
be always suppress'd, and dangerous Corruptions never inquired into, till the Politicians of this
world should say it were a proper Time to examin and correct them, I doubt it would be long
enough e're such Examination and correction could be expected in any Case. I think my self plainly
oblig'd in point of Duty to communicate my Collections to the publick Consideration; and therefore
from this Resolution in general no worldly Motives whatever, by the blessing of God, shall
dissuade me. (Whiston, Historical Preface, p. 17.)
In his Memoirs, 1:242, Whiston asserts that Sharp shares his Arianism. Of Sharp, McAdoo
writes that he "was a Yorkshireman who had mathematical and scientific interests. He was also an
admirer of Newton and he had known both More and Cudworth at Cambridge." The Spirit of
Anglicanism, p. 287.
44. Again, Lloyd's letter is reprinted by Whiston in his Historical Preface, p. 21. In this case, I
have been able to discover a difference between Lloyd's manuscript copy of his reply to Whiston's
letter and the version of Lloyd's reply which Whiston prints. Whiston's printed version of Lloyd's
letter ends as follows: "God knows I desire nothing else but your good, and to keep you from doing
Hurt to the Church. I beseech God that these Notices I have given you may have the effect I design
by them." Lloyd's manuscript copy reads, "But knowing so much as I do of the things before
mentioned, I fear you. And therefore I hold it my duty to do a friend's part in waming you whither
you are going." British Library Manuscripts, Add. MS. 24197, f. 16.
45. William Whiston, Memoirs, 1:131.
46. Force, William Whiston, pp. 75-6.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON, "GENTLEMAN OF WIDE SWALLOW',?

139

47. McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism, p. 287.

48. Whiston, An Account of the Author's Prosecution at, and Banishment from the University of
Cambridge (London, 1711), p. 10.
49. See Eamon Duffy, "'Whiston's Affair': The Trials of a Primitive Christian, 1709-1714,"
Journal of Ecclesiastical History 27, No.2 (April, 1976), p. 140; and G. V. Bennett, "The
Convocation of 1710: An Anglican Attempt at Counter-Revolution," in Councils and Assemblies:
Papers Read at the Eighth Summer Meeting and Ninth Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical
Society, ed. G. J. Cuming and Derek Baker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp.
314-5.
50. Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, pp. 81, 151, 159. Just as one must be wary
in labeling Newton as a latitudinarian, one must also be wary in identifying Whiston, who is a
crusader for toleration and Whig political theory, as a latitudinarian theologian. See Jack
Fruchtman, Jr., The Apocalyptic Politics of Richard Price and Joseph Priestley: A Study in Late
Eighteenth-Century English Republican Millennialism (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical
Society, 1983), p. 15.
51. McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism, p. 395.
52. More to Sharp, 16 Aug., 1680, in Conway Letters, The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess
Conway, Henry More, and Their Friends, ed. Marjorie Hope Nicholson (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1930), pp. 478-9.
53. Richard Ward, The Life of the Learned and Pious Dr. Henry More (London: 1710), pp. 6-7.
54. Ralph Cudworth, "Sermon Preached Before the Honorable House of Commons," in The
Cambridge Platonists, ed. Gerald R. Cragg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 387-8.
On the strong reactions of the Cambridge Platonists against predestinarianism, see Anglicanism.
The Thought and Practice of the Church of England Illustrated from the Religious Literature of the
Seventeenth Century, ed. P. E. More and F. L. Cross (London, 1935), p. lix.
55. Margaret C. Jacob, "Christianity and the Newtonian Worldview," in God and Nature.
Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science, ed. David C. Lindberg and
Ronald L. Numbers (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), p. 239.
56. On Edwards, see S. I. Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1962), pp. 50-2, and R. Stromberg, Religious Liberalism in Eighteenth-Century England
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 11. The quotation of Bolingbroke is taken from his
Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope (London, 1894), pp. 178-9. Tillotson's sermons are
full of arguments against the harsh predestinarian doctrine. For example, in his sermon "Of the
Inward Peace and Pleasure which attends Religion," Tillotson argues that true religion does not
make one "disconsolate." Only "False and mistaken principles in Religion" lead to unhappiness and
anguish. His chief example of a false religious doctrine which naturally culminates in "a
melancholy temper and disposition" is the doctrine that:
God does not sincerely desire the Salvation of Men, but hath from all eternity effectually barr'd the
greatest part of mankind from all possibility of attaining that happiness which he offers to them;
and everyone hath cause to fear that he may be in that number. This were a melancholy consideration indeed, if it were true; but there is no ground either from Reason or Scripture to entertain any
such thought of God. Our destruction is of our Selves; and no man shall be ruin' d by any decree of
God who does not ruin himself by his own fault.
See The Works of the Most Reverend Dr. John Tillotson, Late Lord Archbishop of Canterbury:
Containing Fifty Four Sermons and Discourses, on Several Occasions. Together with "The Rule of
Faith." Being all that were published by his Grace Himself and now Collected into One Volume,
5th ed. (London, 1707), p. 138.
57. The original Latin manuscript is located in the Library of the Royal Society: David Gregory
MS 245, foi. 14a. This translation is from J. E. McGuire, "Force, Active Principles, and Newton's
Invisible Realm," Ambix 15 (1968), p. 190. I am much indebted in my exposition of this text to
McGuire's article.
58. Sir Isaac Newton, Opticks or A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Iriflections & Colours
of Light. Based on the Fourth ed., London, 1730 (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1952), p.
403.
59. Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the

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JAMES E. FORCE

World. Translated into English by Andrew Motte in 1729. Revised by Florian Cajori. 2 vols.
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1934), 2:544. Newton's scornful
reference to "those who fancy God to be the soul of the world" is aimed both at the pantheism of
Bruno and Spinoza, and, more immediately, at John Toland. In his Pantheisticon, or the form of
celebrating the Socratic Society (London, 1751), Toland writes that "God [is] ... the soul of the
universe" and the world his attributes. (p. 17.)
60. Newton, "History of the Church," a fragment. Yahuda MS 15.1, f. 154, Hebrew University,
Jerusalem. Westfall has argued that Newton's conception of God comes from his Arianism and is
an "incidental acquisition by Newton." Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 317.
61. Harro H/lpfl, The Christian Polity of John Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1982), pp. 236 and 289n.
62. Newton, "Commonplace Book," s.v. "Predestinatio," Keynes MS 2, King's College Library,
Cambridge. According to Westfall, eight books survive with Newton's signature and the inscription
"Trin: Coli: Cant: 1661." One of these books is John Calvin's Institutio christianae religion is ....
(Geneva, 1561.) Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 31On.
63. Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, pp. 141-2.
64. Ibid.
65. Newton, "A Short Scheme of True Religion," Keynes MS. 7, King's College Library,
Cambridge.
66. Shapiro, "Latitudinarianism and Science," pp. 302-3.
67. On the development of this theory of knowledge, see Van Leeuwen, The Problem of Certainty
in English Thought, passim. Van Leeuwen shows how the latitudinarians develop the concept of
"moral certainty" in the context of the Rule of Faith controversy.
68. Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, p. 400. This rule is not
added to the Principia until the second edition of 1713. Newton's view about the contingency of
our human ability to know nature in the light of God's power to change nature at any moment
parallels Robert Boyle who writes that
[I]f we consider God as the author of the universe, and the free establisher of the laws of motion,
whose general concourse is necessary to the conservation and efficacy of every particular physical
agent, we cannot but acknowledge, that, by with-holding his concourse, or by changing these laws
of motion, which depend perfectly upon his will, he may invalidate most, if not all the axioms and
theorems of natural philosophy: these supposing the course of nature, and especially the established
laws of motion among the parts of the universal matter, as those upon which all the phaenomena
depend. [Robert Boyle, Reconcileableness of Reason and Religion, in The Works of the Honourable
Robert Boyle, 6 vols., ed. Thomas Birch (London, 1772),4:161.]
This text is cited by Mitchell Salem Fisher in Robert Boyle: Devout Naturalist. A Study in Science
and Religion in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: Oshiver Studio Press, 1945), pp. 127-8.
Fisher goes on to note that Newton agrees with Boyle's view about God's power over creation:
"[Boyle's] God, like that of Newton's was an absolute, free, and omniscient being who governed
all the phenomena of nature not at all as any indwelling soul of the world, but as the mechanical
master and lord of the universe." (p. 160.)
69. Newton, Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (London,
1733), pp. 252-3.
70. Frank E. Manuel, Isaac Newton, Historian (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1963), pp. 146-7.
71. Force, William Whiston, p. 77.
72. Whiston, A Supplement to the Literal Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecies (London,
1725), p. 5.
73. Whiston, Memoirs, 1:191.
74. Christopher Hill, "Sin and Society," in The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill, 2 vols.
(Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1986),2:132-3.
75. McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism, p. 158.
76. McAdoo himself goes on to exonerate the latitudinarians for causing, in any sense, the deistic
movement and states that they "maintained that natural religion could only find its completeness in
revealed religion." The Spirit of Anglicanism, pp. 158-9.

SIR ISAAC NEWTON, "GENTLEMAN OF WIDE SWALLOW',?

141

77. David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Nonnan Kemp Smith (Edinburgh:
Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd., 1947), p. 227.
78. Voltaire, The Metaphysics of Sir Isaac Newton, trans. David Erskine Baker (London, 1747),

p.3.

79. This paper is being printed for the first time in this volume. An earlier version of it was
presented by the author at a conference on "Latitudinarianism, Science, and Society: A Revaluation
of Late Seventeenth-Century British Culture" sponsored by the V.C.L.A. Center for 17th- and 18thCentury Studies and the N.E.H. on April 9, 1987.

JAMES E. FORCE

8. THE BREAKDOWN OF THE NEWTONIAN SYNTHESIS

OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION:
HUME, NEWTON, AND THE ROYAL SOCIETY

I. Introduction
From the date of its second charter on April 22, 1663, one of the announced goals of the
Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge is to illustrate the providential glory of God manifested in the works of His creation. The Charter states the Society's
purposes: "studia ad rerum naturalium artiumque utilium scientias experimentorum fide
ulterius promovendas in Dei Creatoris gloriam & generis humani commodum applicanda
sunt."!
Despite this announced goal, recent scholarship has shown the impossibility of linking
members of the early Royal Society with any particular set of religious beliefs. The early
Society included adherents to a variety of sects including Puritans ejected from ecclesiastical office, converts to Catholicism, Anglican courtiers, country gentlemen, Presbyterian
Royalists, incipient latitudinarians, and even two deists. 2
Nevertheless, some of the most prominent natural philosophers of the early Society,
such as Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, Walter Charleton, and Isaac Newton, go to great
lengths to demonstrate the religious utility of the approach to natural philosophy institutionalized in the Royal Society. Scholars as diverse in approach as David Kubrin and
Michael Hunter have documented the providentialist basis of the natural philosophy of
many early Fellows} These early Fellows grapple with the relationship between the
world of mechanical nature and the providential deity of Christianity and, in fulfillment
of one of the explicitly charted goals of the Society, add a comprehensive scientific
theism to the original experimental framework of the Society.
Beginning about 1720, however, there arose within the Society a significant group of
radical deists clustered around Martin Folkes who, in 1741, succeeded Hans Sloane as
President of the Royal Society. According to the Newtonian cleric, William Stukeley,
F.R.S., in 1720 Folkes started an "infidel Club" and began "propagating the Infidel
System." Folkes was so successful in preaching the "infidel System" that he "made it
even fashionable in the royal Society, so that when any mention is made of Moses, of the
deluge, of religion, scriptures, &c., it generally is received with a loud laugh."4
If Stukeley is correct, the orientation to science in the service of religion on the part of
many Fellows of the Society undergoes a significant change around the period between
1720 and 1741. During the first era, which begins with its second Royal Charter in 1663,
many of the most active (though by no means all) of the religiously diverse early Fellows
pursue the goal of illustrating how the advancement of natural philosophy demonstrates
the providential glory of God the Creator. With the emergence of Folkes as a power
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within the Society in the 1720's a second era begins in which many (though, again, by no
means all) Fellows of prominence within the Society effusively scorn the expressly
apologetic goal of the second Charter and heap ridicule upon the Bible. According to
Stukeley, Folkes, the initiator of the fashionable new "infidel System" within the Society
from the 1720's and its President after 1741, "chuses the Councel & Officers out of his
junto of Sycophants that meet him every night at Rawthmills coffee house, or that dine
with him at the Miter, fleet street."5
Hume was not a member of the Royal Society. Nor is there any evidence that Hume
ever specifically aims at the destruction of the comprehensively articulated scientific
theism of the "first-era" apologists of the Royal Society. Nevertheless, that is precisely
what he achieves with his rebuttal of every aspect of the many-faceted apologetic
position concerning the relationship between general and special providence which is
developed during some eighty years of religious propagandizing by members of the
"first" Royal Society. In this essay, I examine in detail his religious scepticism within the
historical context of both sub-groups of the Royal Society.
To understand fully how Hume's own religious scepticism can profitably be read as a
critique of the "first" Royal Society's entire apologetic program, it is necessary first to
examine the theoretical legacy regarding the concepts of general and special providence
in the thought of the scientist-theologians of the "first" Society. Latent in the thought of
Wilkins, and more explicit in the thought of some of his colleagues such as Boyle, is a
conflict between a purely mechanistic conception of the cold, mathematically calculable
order of nature and natural law and a traditional Christian conception of a specially
provident deity active daily in the governance of His creation and powerful enough to set
aside the laws of nature through miracles. Accordingly, in Section I, I examine the roots
of this concept in the work of some of the most important founding members of the
"first" Society, and show how Newton (with the help of some of his disciples, most
notably Richard Bentley, William Whiston, and Samuel Clarke) finally attempts to solve
it by creating a distinctive synthesis between "special" and "general" divine providence.
In Section II, I examine Hume's sceptical critique of religious hypothesizing in the
light of the effort by some members of the "first" Royal Society to balance naturalism
and supernaturalism. By viewing Hume's essays "Of Miracles" and "Of a Particular
Providence and a Future State" against the context of the total apologetic perspective
which is established during the roughly eighty years of the "first" Society'S existence, I
show why the attempts by these apologists are doomed to fail, i.e., why Hume's critique
succeeds (and how his two essays are logically related as parts of a co-ordinated attack on
general and special providence as these concepts emerge from the apologetic anvil of the
scientist-theologians of the "first" Royal Society), and what Hume has in common with,
as well as where he differs from, the emergent free-thinkers of the "second" Society.

II. Balancing God's "General Providence" Against His "Special Providence"

in the Apologetics of the "First" Royal Society 1662-1741
A. The Christian Virtuosi - The Royal Society from 1662 to 1703
From the beginning of the Royal Society some of its most important founding members

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argue that natural philosophy leads man to God, not away from Him. Many of the
Christian virtuosi responsible for founding the Royal Society insist that in their scientific
inquiry into the operations of the laws of nature there is the strongest buttress for religion.
In a series of apologetic books and pamphlets these scientist-theologians maintain that a
scientific study of nature reveals two specific kinds of divine direction and control of
created nature, i.e., two types of divine providence. A study of nature illustrates both
divine "general providence" and divine "special providence.'>6
"General providence" refers to God's action in the original creation of nature. In the
beginning, God created the material frame of nature and He structured it to function in
obedience to the laws of nature which He also created. In contrast to this original creative
act of general providence is "special providence" which refers to a particular act of direct
divine intervention which cancels or contravenes the ordinary course of natural operations. The historical record of the Bible reveals in accomplished miracles and fulfilled
prophecies God's continued beneficent care and governance of the natural world through
direct acts of special providence.
The chief apologetic problem of the early Royal Society is to reconcile the notion of a
specially provident God who can miraculously intervene in His creation (or prophetically
advertise a specially provident act for completion at some later date) with the increasingly detailed elaboration of nature as an undeviating clockwork mechanism illustrative
only of God's general, creative providence. In striving to retain both a generally provident celestial watchmaker and the specially provident God of revelation fully capable of
miraculous intervention in the regular course of nature, the Christian virtuosi of the later
17th century, Newton, and many of his followers in the early 18th century articulate what
may be styled the unofficial apologetic position of the Royal Society during its first
eighty years of existence (1660 to, very roughly, 1741), the period of what I call the
"first" Royal Society.7
These early apologist-scientists in the Royal Society seek to institutionalize the design
argument as demonstrative of God's general providence while simultaneously maintaining that God is also capable of a direct interruption of the orderly operation of the
machine of nature in miraculous or prophetically advertised acts of special providence.
John Wilkins was chairman of the historic meeting on November 28, 1660, when the
decision was made to establish a Society of Experimental Philosophy. Wilkins maintains
a rigid model of the machine of nature which operates undeviatingly in accord with the
natural law designed by a generally provident creator. 8 Nevertheless, God has the
specially provident power to alter the regular course of (generally provident, divinely
created) natural law in specially provident, supernatural acts. There is no creature not
directly under His special, as well as His general, providence.9
Dr. Walter Charleton, another of the most active of the early fellows of the Society,
attempts, like Bishop Wilkins, to retain a notion of God who exercises both sorts of
providence. According to Charleton, just as God created the frame of nature and the order
of natural law in an act of general providence, "so He can alter her and tune all her strings
in accord with His will."IO
Robert Boyle, the most renowned of all the virtuosi, attempts to synthesize the idea of
a specially provident, miracle-working God with the model of a maintenance-free,
mechanical-atomistic, world machine created at a single stroke of general providence a
long time ago. Boyle actively espouses the design argument to emphasize the role of God

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as the generally provident creator of order and regularity as observed in the operations of
natural law. 11 But Boyle is a Christian virtuoso who believes in the special providence of
God to work miracles in spite of the case he makes for thinking of God solely as a
generally provident creator. In his Christian Virtuoso, Boyle tries to make room in the
clockwork universe, which is designed by a generally provident God, for the possibility
of God's continuing contraventions of the orderly operation of nature through specially
provident miracles. For Boyle, miracles are absolutely necessary to support Christianity.12 Furthermore, prophecies are specifically designated by Boyle as proof of God's
special providence because true prophetic predictions must themselves be miraculous.
Boyle states that
true prophecies of unlikely events, fulfilled by unlikely means, are supernatural things;
and as such, (especially their author and design considered) may properly enough be
reckoned among miracles. And I may add, that these have a peculiar advantage above
most other miracles, on the score of their duration: since the manifest proofs of the
prediction continue still. 13
Finally, in his History of the Royal Society, Bishop Sprat is quick to emphasize the
contributions of the Society's first members in demonstrating God's general providence
by means of the design argument. 14 But Sprat is just as quick to point out that in no way
does the new natural philosophy of the Society militate against belief in God's acts of
miraculous special providence. On the contrary, an "Experimental Philosopher" of the
Society who "familiarly beholds the inward workings of things" will strengthen belief in
God's true miracles by exposing fraudulent, enthusiastic, "Holy Cheats":
Let us then imagin our Philosopher to have all slowness of belief, and rigor of Trial,
which by some is miscall' d a blindness of mind, and hardness of heart. Let us suppose
that he i& most unwilling to grant that any thing exceeds the force of Nature, but where
a full evidence convinces him. Let it be allow'd, that he is always alarm'd, and ready
on his guard, at the noise of any Miraculous Event; lest his judgment should be
surprized by the disguises of Faith. But does he by this diminish the Authority of
Antient Miracles? or does he not rather confirm them the more, by confirming their
number, and taking care that every falsehood should not mingle with them?15
All this comes in a section entitled "Experiments will not destroy the Doctrine of
Prophecies, and Prodigies."16
These earliest Fellows of the "first" Royal Society bequeath to their successors,
including Sir Isaac Newton and some of his followers, the notion of both a mechanical
frame of nature obedient to the laws of nature, which is established by God's general
providence at the time of creation, and a still active, specially provident God whose
power is sufficient to alter that natural mechanism at will. But there is a tension between
the two sorts of divine providence and the idea of nature which each emphatically entails.
The more detailed and defined the picture of the natural and mechanical order of general
providence becomes, the less room there appears to be for specially provident divine
intervention. This dangerous tendency is echoed in the repeated warnings of Wilkins,
Boyle, and Sprat to be cautious when deciding whether to believe in reports of miracles,
especially recent ones. Miracles may have indeed happened once long ago; they may
possibly happen again. But they do not happen often. According to Wilkins, it is simply

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"not reasonable to think that the universal laws of nature, by which things are to be
guided in their natural course, should frequently or upon every little occasion be violated
or disordered." 17 Newton, the President of the Royal Society from 1703 until 1727, and
some of his followers continue to labor to preserve both kinds of divine providence in
synthesis.

B. The Newtonian Synthesis a/General and Special Providence

By 1703, when Newton was elected President of the Royal Society, the Society's
apologetic ideology generally reflected Newton's personal view that his own scientific
theories provided, through the design argument, a solid foundation for demonstrating a
generally provident deity. The first writer to utilize the Newtonian discovery of the law of
gravity to demonstrate God's general providence was Richard Bentley in the 1692 Boyle
Lectures. IS In the second edition of the Principia (1713), Newton himself sets out the
creator-architect deity of general providence in his famous General Scholium.
Newton also uses this statement of the design argument for his inferential leap to a
specially provident deity. After his eloquent description of the solar system and his
conclusion that "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only
proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and Powerful Being," Newton
emphasizes the specially provident nature of a God who sternly governs his generally
provident creation: "This Being governs all things ... as Lord over all; and on account of
his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God ... or Universal Ruler; for God has a
respect to servants; and Deity is a dominion of God ... over servants." 19
Newton always attempts to preserve both the mathematically astute, generally
provident mechanic of the design argument with the specially provident God who daily
exercises dominion over His created servants down to the last sparrow's last flight. For
Newton, God's dominion - exhibited in acts of both general and special providence - is
as unlimited as his power. In the system of theism worked out by some of Newton's
followers, God usually displays his specially provident power of dominion through
fulfilled Biblical prophecies and, only occasionally, through miracles.
II.B.l. Special Providence and Miracles in the "First" Royal Society

The historical creation of gravity demonstrates God's general providence but its continuous operation since that point reveals His special providence. God's sustained
preservation of the order of nature and natural laws since the creation demonstrates
divine special providence because of the very nature of gravitational attraction. Newton
claims that "a continual miracle is needed to prevent the sun and fixed stars from rushing
together through gravity."20 This point is echoed by such important Newtonian disciples
as Samuel Clarke and William Whiston.
Whiston is especially clear in his assertion that the very fact of nature's continuous
operations in accord with natural law proves specially provident divine dominion:
'Tis now evident, that Gravity, the most mechanical affection of Bodies, and which
seems most natural, depends entirely on the constant and efficacious, and, if you will,
the supernatural and miraculous Influence of Almighty God. 21

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When Newton and Whiston declare that the daily operation of gravity is a miraculous
effect of God they mean that in obeying natural laws physical objects continually exhibit
signs of God's special providence. But if all instances of obedience to the laws of nature
are miraculous, then the traditional sense of miracles as a special denial or negation of the
laws of nature is set aside. Obeying the laws of nature becomes, in this view, the
supernatural effect of God's specially provident universal rule. The commonest natural
event is itself a miracle. As Whiston says:
I do not know whether the falling of a Stone to Earth ought not more truly to be
esteem'd a supernatural Effect, or a Miracle, than what we with the greatest surprize
should so stile, its remaining pendulous in the Open Air; since the former requires an
active Influence in the first Cause, while the latter supposes non-Annihilation only.22
Newton and such Newtonian disciples as Whiston tend generally to discount the traditional conception of miracles held by Boyle, Wilkins, and the other leading founders of
the Royal Society. A miracle is not necessarily always a transgression of natural law.
Rather, the sustained operation of natural law is itself a miracle and illustrates God's
specially provident dominion. Newton observes, and Whiston echoes, that miracles in the
traditional sense are often simply misunderstandings on the part of the vulgar. Miracles,
writes Newton, "are not so called because they are the works of God, but because they
happen seldom and for that reason excite wonder."23
It is their general agreement about the slight possibility of a cessation or interdiction of
natural law that leads Newton and Whiston to their similar methodologies for interpreting
such scriptural accounts as, for example, the creation. Moses was popularizing, i.e., he
was "accomodating his words to the gross conceptions of the vulgar,"24 and not giving a
"philosophical" account in terms of mechanical causes.
In providing scientific explanations of such apparent breaks in the laws of nature as
the creation and the flood, Whiston goes so far that another would-be Newtonian disciple,
John Keill, Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, attacks him for excluding special
providence in Whiston's excessive reliance upon "mechanism." Keill isolates himself
from his more euhemeristic fellow Newtonians such as Whiston, Bentley, Clarke, and, I
believe, Newton himself, when he remarks that, with Boyle, he believes in miracles in the
traditional sense because, too frequently, the only possible explanation for a natural
phenomenon is a specially provident suspension of natural law by the Lord God of
supreme power and dominion:
altho' Mr. Whiston has been pleas' d to ridicule my fondness for Miracles, yet since all
the natural causes he has assign'd are so vastly disproportionate to the effects
produc'd, he may at last perhaps be convinc'd that the easiest, safest and indeed the
only way is to ascribe 'em to Miracles. 25
Finally, however, even Whiston wants to make room for real miracles in the traditional
sense, e.g., the miracles of Christ, and so accepts the possibility of specially provident
intercessions in naturallaw. 26 When a natural, i.e., a "nice and philosophical account" is
not possible, as in the case of reliably reported stories such as that of Whiston's contemporary, John Duncalf, or in properly interpreted scriptural accounts of the miracles of
Jesus, Whiston accepts these accounts as real instances of genuine transgressions of
natural law. 27 In his usual mode, Whiston seeks the middle ground between a too ready

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reliance upon special providence and a total exclusion of even the possibility of such acts.
Samuel Clarke (a close friend of Whiston and another Newtonian who engages in
controversies on behalf of Newton) makes it clear in his correspondence with Leibniz
that one of the chief issues between Leibniz and the Newtonians is their insistence upon
specially provident divine intervention in the universe. It is precisely because the
Newtonians insist that God can and does providentially direct and govern his creation as
the Lord God of total dominion, even to the point of direct intervention in the operation
of natural law , that Leibniz levels against them the charge of reducing God to an inferior
clock repairman. "According to this Newtonian doctrine," scoffs Leibniz, "God Almighty
wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had
not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion."28
Clarke replies that Leibniz misunderstands the nature of providence due to his doctrine
of pre-established harmony which leaves God without any sort of continuing dominion
following his initial act of generally provident creation. It corresponds more closely with
the true nature of God's dominion, and redounds to his greater glory, that God fabricates
the universe to be under his continuous, specially provident governance. Clarke argues
that, for the Newtonians,
the wisdome of God consists in framing originally the perfect and complete idea of a
work, which begun and continues, according to that original perfect idea, by the
continual uninterrupted exercise of his power and government. 29
Clarke is not so unequivocal as Whiston about the nature of the phenomenon of gravity
as a manifestation of God's continual uninterrupted exercise of his specially provident
dominion over nature. When Leibniz ridicules the Newtonian conception that the
everyday operation of gravity is itself an instance of a specially provident miracle,30
Clarke replies that a miracle is only what is unusual in nature and so, because the
operation of gravity is regular and constant, '''tis no miracle, whether it be effected
immediately by God Himself, or mediately by any created power."31 But, at other times,
Clarke echoes Whiston. In Clarke's Boyle Lectures, he states of gravity that it results
from a cause "superior to matter continually exerting on it a certain force or power" and
thus that the world depends "every moment on some superior being, for the preservation
of its frame. "32
Like Whiston, too, Clarke ultimately commits himself, however reluctantly, to the
possibility of miracles as transgressions of natural law by a specially provident God
whose dominion is complete in every respect. In his Boyle Lectures for 1705, Clarke
writes that a miracle
is a work effected in a manner unusual or different from the common and regular
method of Providence by the interposition either of God Himself, or some intelligent
agent superior to man, in the proof or evidence of some particular doctrine or in
attestation to the authority of some particular person. And if a miracle so worked be
not opposed by some plainly superior power nor be brought to attest to a doctrine
either contradictory in itself or vicious in its consequences - a doctrine of which kind
no miracles in the world can be sufficient to prove - then the doctrine so attested must
necessarily be looked upon as Divine, and the worker of the miracle entertained as
having infallibly a commission of God. 33

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These Newtonians thus use miracles in two senses to illustrate the totality of God's
dominion and to extend it beyond merely creative general providence to include
miraculous acts of special providence as well. First, God's continuous act of preserving
the natural world is itself an instance of special providence. Second, either when pressed
by Leibniz about their reduction of God to the status of an inferior clock repairman or
when considering scriptural reports of phenomena for which there is no apparent (or
conceivable) mechanical explanation, they accept standard miraculous accounts and view
them as proof of God's continuous special providence. Finally, God's dominion is not
limited to that of a purely creative deity active once long ago.

II.B.2. Special Providence and Prophecies in the "First" Royal Society

Ultimately, fulfilled prophecies become an even more important tool than miracles for
demonstrating God's special providence in the apologetics of the "first" Royal Society.
Fulfilled prophetic predictions tidily demonstrate the messiahship of Christ and also
reveal, once and for all, the hand of a specially provident deity continuously active in His
creation. At the same time, fulfilled prophecies seem to avoid the dilemma of how it is
possible for the generally provident order of natural law to be suspended in a specially
provident miraculous act while simultaneously avoiding the problem of spurious
miracles.
Locke,34 Newton,35 and Newton's successor at Cambridge, William Whiston, use the
many instances of apparently fulfilled prophetic predictions recorded in the Bible to
supplement the design argument of natural religion, to round it out, and to draw from the
total package the special, as well as the general, providence of God. Properly
"Newtonian" theology is always the design argument in conjunction with the argument
from prophecy. Together, both illustrate God's total dominion - both general and special.
Newton, for example, claims that "giving ear to the Prophets is a fundamental character
of the true Church. For God has so ordered the Prophecies, that in the latter days the wise
may understand, but the wicked shall do wickedly, and none of the wicked shall understand. Dan. xii. 8_10."36
Just as Newton (in all likelihood) utilizes the Boyle Lectures as a platform to publicize
how his "systeme" demonstrates God's generally provident dominion through Bentley's
1692 lectures, so, too, he apparently utilizes the same platform to demonstrate god's
specially provident dominion as revealed in lists of fulfilled prophecies, e.g., in Whiston's 1707 Boyle Lectures, The Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecy. In these lectures,
which were probably suggested by Newton 37 and which were dedicated to the
Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Tenison, Whiston argued, for example, that the war
with the French represented proof of God's special providence because it was an
"Accomplishment" of an event predicted in scripture.
During the first eighty years of the Royal Society, the chief apologetic aim of these
scientist-theologians is to balance general and special providence. The Newtonians
finally achieve a kind of uneasy synthesis between the two. The Newtonian version of the
design argument demonstrates a generally provident deity who first creates the universe
and the laws of nature and then, "miraculously," Le., continuously, preserves that
creation. The argument from fulfilled prophecy culminates, with its lists of prophetically
revealed predictions which have been fulfilled in history, in an inference to a specially

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provident deity who has remained continuously active in governing His creation directly.
Listings of fulfilled prophecies serve as clues for the wise concerning the future course of
human and natural history. This argument is particularly emphasized by the Newtonians
of the "first" Royal Society.38

ID. Hume's Critique of the Synthesis of General and Special Providence

A. After 1741: The "Second" Era o/the Royal Society in which
a Rival Faction Achieves Prominence within the Society
Some (though not all) of the members of the "first" Royal Society, to summarize, sought
to promote their conception of generally provident nature and regular natural law while
also retaining God's specially provident power to interfere in the natural order via
miracles and/or fulfilled prophecies. But with the retirement of Sir Hans Sloane from the
post of President and the subsequent election of Martin Folkes in 1741, the apologetic
stance of the first eighty years of the Society was, to some degree, apparently abandoned
by another rising/action within the Society. William Stukeley, a close friend of Newton
and Whiston and rector of St. George's, Bloomsbury, and Fellow of the Royal Society,
records the stunning nature of Folkes' palace revolt against the apologetic goals of
members of the "first" Society. President Folkes, according to Stukeley,
... chuses the Council & Officers [of the Royal Society] out of his junto of Sycophants
that meet him at the Miter, fleet street. He has a great deal of learning, philosophy,
astronomy: but knows nothing of a future state, of the Scriptures, of revelation. He
perverted [the] Duke of Montagu, Ld. Pembroke, & very many more of the nobility,
who had an opinion of his understanding; & this has done an infinite prejudice to
Religion in general, made the nobility throw off the mask & openly deride & discountenance even the appearances of religion, wh has brought us into that deplorable
situation we are now in, with thieves, & murderers, perjury, forgery, &c. He thinks
there is no difference between us & animals; but what is owing to the structure of our
brain, as between man & man. When I lived in Ormond in 1720, he set up an infidel
Club at his house on Sunday evenings where Will Jones the mathematician, & others
of the heathen stamp, assembled. He invited me earnestly to come thither but I always
refused. From that time he has been propagating the infidel System with great
assiduity, & made it even fashionable in the royal Society, so that when any mention
is made of Moses, of the deluge, of religion, scriptures, &c., it generally is received
with a loud laugh. 39
The new fashion of an "infidel System" within the ranks of the Royal Society was
possibly gratifying to the "great infidel," David Hume, who may have learned of the new
trend within the society from acquaintances such as Dr. Thomas Birch, an historian and
man of letters who served actively as Secretary from 1751 to 1765, or, from his close
friend Sir John Pringle (Hume's doctor during Hume's final illness) who was President
from 1772 until 1778. 40 The institutional shift in the "second" Society which apparently
consists largely of divorcing religion from science, as well as of ridiculing the scriptures
(i.e., "propagating the infidel System"), seems to have been accomplished within the

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Society itself more through idle ridicule and casual mockery than as the result of
explicitly arglled tracts and pamphlets. For such arguments against the attempt by
apologists of the "first" Society to balance God's general and special providence, we
must look to David Hume.

B. Hume's Critique of the "First" Royal Society

Mossner is correct when he writes that Hume's essays "Of a Particular Providence and a
Future State" and "Of Miracles" ought to be read together. 41 These two essays first
appeared in print in 1748. Together, they constitute a co-ordinated assault on the
synthesis of general and special providence as developed by the Newtonians and their
predecessors within the "first" Royal Society. In undermining the design argument in "Of
a Particular Providence and a Future State" (as well as in his more leisurely attack in the
Dialogues) Hume is attacking the idea of a generally provident God as a certain inference
in an argument which proceeds to infer the nature of the cause of the universe based on
observed effects. In the essay "Of Miracles" Hume attacks the idea of a specially
provident God who directly intervenes in the regular course of nature in miracles, which
he defines as violations of natural law. Hume explicitly widens his attack in his essay to
include prophecies, the chief argument utilized by the Newtonians of the "first" Royal
Society for demonstrating God's special providence. Hume's uniqueness is that he
understands how the arguments based on miracles and fulfilled prophecies function
together as a synthesis; this understanding leads him to attack them together.
III.B.I. Hume's Attack on General Providence

Hume's essay "Of a Particular Providence and a Future State" is designed to show that
the inference to a generally provident creator-designer from the "order" exhibited in the
phenomena of nature is only speculative and no more certain than any other hypothetical
account of natural order. Hume means by the "particular providence" of the title the
specific and unique act of the creator in designing the apparent order observed in nature.
He thus uses the phrase in the sense outlined above of "general providence" and not in
the sense reserved for specific (or particular) acts of nature-transcending special
providence.
Hume argues in the second part of the essay that the denial of the certainty of the
general providence of God as the cause of nature has no effect on the conduct of society.42 Whether the uneducated masses need an established religion to preserve the order of
society is a much disputed question in the Enlightenment and Hume is anxious to refute
the claim for the necessity of an established religion to serve as a social policeman of the
kind apparently envisioned by Stukeley who blames murder and thievery on the
"discountenancing" of the religion of the establishment. But Hume's essay goes further
and undermines the basic causal inference from the "order of work" to the "forethought
of the workman." In reasoning from effects to causes, Hume argues that the inferred
causes must be proportioned precisely to the observed effects.43 But the "religious
hypothesis" of a generally provident creator-designer is only one possible way among
many for explaining observed phenomena, both physical and moral. If we insist that the
cause of nature be suited precisely to the effects found in nature then the only possible

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rational result is confusion and doubt. 44 By all means, Hume counsels, draw whichever
of the possible inferences about the cause of nature you wish but recognize its dubious
nature and allow freedom to others to draw different inferences, especially because such
speculations have no effect on the morals of society. "But here," says Hume, "you ought
to rest."45
In casting doubt on the inference of the design argument to a generally provident
creator-designer, Hume attacks one of the fundamental arguments of the "first" Royal
Society. Even more important, however, is the relationship between this familiar Humean
argument and the essay "Of Miracles" in which Hume attacks the corollary concept of a
specially provident God who directly transgresses the regular course of nature through
miracles.
III.B.2. Hume's Attack on Special Providence

As in the a posteriori inference from effect to cause, so, too, in the case of miracles, "A
wise man proportions his belief to the evidence."46 The evidence for miracles is incompatible with the laws of nature as established by experience. 47
In the first section in his essay "Of Miracles," Hume concentrates on the conflict
between each individual's experience of the laws of nature and a miracle. Although
Hume considers causation rationally indemonstrable he does recognize a regularity of
succession in practical human experience. Laws of nature, for Hume, are established
because of universally firm and unalterable human experience of such a succession of
events. A miracle, however, is by definition "the violation of the laws of nature."48
Because a miracle is a violation of that for which we have "a firm and unalterable"
experience, the evidence for a miraculous event must be of a degree of strength which is
impossible to obtain. The more miraculous an event appears to be, the more contrary to
the normal sequential experience of universal natural law, and consequently, the less
believable it is.
Hume acknowledges the possibility of apparent exceptions to natural law but argues,
with the example ofthe subcontinental Indian's ignorance of the freezing of water in cold
climates, that such "exceptions" are due only to limited experience. They are not really
violations of the laws of nature but result from a lack of experience of the regularity with
which water freezes below a certain temperature.
To believe in a miracle requires evidence that is impossible to obtain because it runs
counter to our firm and unalterable experience to the contrary. And, when one considers
how open to deception and error are the historical testimonies of such prodigies, the
"plain consequence" is "That no testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be
more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish."49
In the second section of this essay, Hume examines the sorts of testimony upon which
the credibility of miracles is founded to see if there are any testimonies which satisfy the
criterion that their falsity would be a greater miracle than the miracle which the testimony
purports to establish in the first place. Hume finds no example where the falsity of such
testimony is more miraculous than the event it is used to confirm, especially because
none of the testimony originates with hardheaded, Enlightened Scotsmen. In the penultimate paragraph, Hume concludes with his famous direct reference to the miracle stories
of the Bible:

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I desire anyone to lay his hand upon his heart, and after a serious consideration
declare, whether he thinks that the falsehood of such a book, supported by such
testimony, would be more extraordinary and miraculous than all the miracles it relates;
which is, however, necessary to the measure of probability above established. 50
What has heretofore been largely neglected in the voluminous discussion of the essay "Of
Miracles" is the last paragraph. In this paragraph, Hume drops a bombshell which exposes the futility of the Newtonians who attempt to retain the Biblical God of special providence via the argument from fulfilled prophecies. Hume says, "What we have said of
miracles may be applied, without any variation, to prophecies: and indeed, all prophecies
are real miracles, and as such only, can be admitted as proofs of any revelation.,,51
Hume is here pointing to the fact that the only sense of prophecy which signifies a
specially provident deity is the ability of the prophet, empowered by God, to transcend
the limits of his human nature and to foretell future events. In this sense, prophetic insight
or ability transcends merely human predictions such as those made by scientists and
soothsayers. To be truly significant of God's special providence, a prophet must derive
his ability to see into the future from God. A prophecy, in this sense, must be, as Locke,
Wilkins, and Clarke all note, a miraculous event which transgresses the ordinary course
of natural law.
The prophetic predictions of Old Testament prophets may be divided into two subcategories: (1) those which interpreters claim already to have been fulfilled in history
(historical prophecies); and (2) those which interpreters claim have not yet come to pass
(future prophecies, e.g., the millennial prophecies of Daniel and the Revelation of St.
John the Divine).
William Whiston's primary contribution to a comprehensive, fully articulated
Newtonianism is his extension of the empirical method of Newton and the Royal Society
into the realm of interpreting prophetic predictions uttered by divinely inspired prophets.
A scientific exegete can examine the genuine documents containing the prophetic
prediction and the evidence from historical testimony for its completion or non-completion. Feigned hypotheses have no place in the science of Biblical interpretation where, as
in the physical sciences, the experimental method must reign supreme. Whiston claims
the interpretation of the historical evidence from the Bible is simply another application
of the method of Royal Society natural philosophers, of judges, and of physicians. As a
result of this common-sense approach from "Matters of Fact and Experiment," Whiston
believes that "genuine Christianity" is more firmly established. 52
Regarding those "future" prophecies which remain unfulfilled in history, the Newtonian exegete does not have nearly the degree of certainty he has in interpreting the
already completed "historical" prophetic predictions. Whiston states that the purpose of
his 1707 Boyle Lectures is "to discourse of the ancient Predictions and Prophecies
contain'd in Scripture ... to shew the completion and fulfilling of them whose periods are
already past." Whiston hints that this examination of the completed "historical"
prophecies in his Boyle Lectures, entitled The Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecies,
was first suggested to him by Isaac Newton. 53 Because Biblical interpreters are not
themselves divinely inspired prophets miraculously empowered by God to foreknow the
future, the completion of the as yet unfulfilled "future" prophecies exceeds the scope of
their powers of exegesis.

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Nevertheless, the scientific Biblical interpreter has justification, or as Whiston states,

"good reasons," to expect "the completion of those other prophecies whose periods are
not yet come. ,,54 Although Newton is extremely cautious, especially in his later years, in
trying to predict the actual times and means for the accomplishment of "future"
prophecies, with Whiston, he has "good reasons" to hope that they will be completed:
There is already so much of Prophecy fulfilled, that as many will take pains in this
study, may see sufficient instance of God's providence; but then the signal revolutions
predicted by all the holy Prophets, will at once both tum men's eyes upon considering
the predictions, and plainly interpret them. Till then we must content ourselves with
interpreting what hath already been fulfilled. 55
Viewed next to this aspect of the Newtonian context, it is now perhaps more evident why
Hume's claim that his argument against miracles also applies to prophecies is not an idle,
uncomplicated remark when it was first published in 1748 in his Philosophical Essays
concerning Human Understanding (retitled by Hume in 1758 as Enquiry Concerning
Human Understanding). The Newtonians are eager to promote the argument from
prophecy because it seemingly evades the tension between a strong conception of
generally provident natural order and law and the Lord God of dominion's specially
provident power to break that law. While emphasizing the empirical and repeatable
nature of the "science" of Biblical interpretation, most of the Newtonians (though not all)
tend to ignore the fact that the essence of any true prophecy is its miraculous nature. So
long as the necessarily miraculous nature of prophecy is ignored, the tension between
naturalism and supernaturalism, between Newton's God and Newton's physics, is
evaded.
But Hume permits no such ambiguity or evasion. He understands that for a completed
"historical" prophecy to be demonstrative of special divine providence, it must be
miraculous, which renders it automatically unbelievable. Completed "historical"
prophecies offer no resolution to the tension between the traditional, specially provident,
Christian God and the concept of the rigid, unbreakable laws of nature established by
general providence. If one understands them properly, then completed prophecies are like
other miracles which violate natural law as established in the course of human experience. As such, fulfilled "historical" prophecies are simply too implausible to be
believed.
Part 2 of the essay "Of Miracles" may profitably be read as the completion of Hume's
case against the Newtonian Biblical interpreters. There, Hume discredits the historical
evidence which exegetes utilize to establish either the occurrence of miracles or, what
amounts to the same thing, the completion (or "accomplishment") of prophetic predictions. Hume would not have believed a word of Whiston's carefully compiled catalogs of
fulfilled prophecies because the completions are invariably contained in the same
historical document as the prophecies themselves and are not, therefore, trustworthy and
because, precisely, these so-called fulfillments or completions do appeal to the vulgar,
un-Enlightened, non-Scottish ancients.
At a single stroke, Hume, as a philosophical historian, does away with the "science" of
Biblical interpretation. 56 As long as the Bible contains any miracle stories founded on
human testimony and as long as it contains any stories of historically completed
prophetic predictions beyond the capacity of scientific reason or of chance utterances to

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predict, it will be too implausible to be believed. For similar reasons, in the Dialogues
Concerning Natural Religion, Hume dismisses "future" prophecies as well as "historical"
prophecies as simply beyond our human experience and, hence, beyond our human
capacity to know:
When we carry our speculations into the two eternities, before and after the present
state of things; into the creation and formation of the universe; the existence and
properties of spirits; the powers and operations of one universal spirit; omnipotent,
omniscient, immutable, infinite, and incomprehensible: We must be far removed from
the smallest tendency to scepticism not to be apprehensive that we have here got quite
beyond the reach of our faculties. 57

IV. Conclusion
Hume is the only writer in the 18th century to mount careful critical attacks upon all the
separate elements of the "first" Royal Society's elaborate synthesis of general and special
providence. The deist Wollaston attacks miracles. 58 The deist Collins attacks prophecies
in a protracted controversy with Whiston. Wits and satirists such as Gay, Swift, and
Walpole savage the providentialist interpretation of such natural phenomena as comets,
eclipses, and especially, earthquakes59 (although none dare to challenge the design
argument directly). Hume, too, is capable of devastatingly witty ridicule of the willingness on the part of the general public to accept providentialist explanations for natural
events such as the London earthquakes of 1750. Hume satirizes such religious enthusiasm
in a letter about the minor 1750 earthquakes to his friend, Dr. John Clephane:
I think the parsons have lately used the physicians very ill, for, in all the common
terrors of mankind, you used commonly both to come in for a share of the profit: but
in this new fear of earthquakes, they have left you out entirely, and have pretended
alone to give prescriptions to the multitude ... I see only a Pastoral Letter of the
Bishop of London where, indeed, he recommends certain pills, such as fasting, prayer,
repentance, mortification, and other drugs, which are entirely to come from his own
shop. And I think this is very unfair in him and you have great reason to be offended;
for why might he not have added, that medicinal powders and potions would also have
done service? The worst is, that you dare not revenge yourself in kind, by advising
your patients to have nothing to do with the parson; for you are sure he has a faster
hold of them than you, and you may yourself be discharged on such an advice.
You'll scarcely believe what I am going to tell you; but it is literally true. Millar
had printed off some Months ago a new edition of certain philosophical Essays [i.e.,
the second edition of the Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding] but
he tells me very gravely, that he has delay'd publishing because of the Earthquakes. 60
Hume is the only writer of his era who combines such off-hand raillery with serious
attacks on miracles, prophecies, and the inference of the design argument to a generally
provident deity. Hume's familiar religious scepticism takes on a new dimension when
viewed in the context of the efforts by certain members of the "first" Royal Society,
especially by Newton and his followers, to balance general and special providence.

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ltume's attack on prophecies not only rules out specially provident divine intervention
in world history; it also secularizes history. Hume removes more than a specially
provident deity when he points out that it exceeds the capacity of human beings to predict
the future and that such miracles are, in principle, unbelievable. He also removes the
anticipations of the future course of history in which the Newtonians of the "first" era of
the Royal Society so ardently believe. Of Newton's own attempt to interpret "historical"
prophecies and to give us hope for the completion of those yet unfulfilled in his
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John, Hume, the
Newton of the mind, notes that we "never should pronounce the folly of an individual,
from his admitting popular errors, consecrated by the appearance of religion. "61
When seen in the context of the apologetic concerns of the members of the "first"
Royal Society, the sweeping nature of Hume' s rejection of their synthesis of general and
special providence is striking. Hume disconnects the frame of nature from a generally
provident creator-designer and then eliminates any continuous, specially provident divine
participation in the external world. Newton's Lord God of absolute power and dominion
becomes a superstitious belief of the vulgar. Simultaneously, Hume eliminates the
prophetic past and the prophetic future. In his coordinated attack on all the facets of the
apologetic position of the "first" Royal Society, Hume far exceeds the casual ridicule of
the scoffing dilettantes of Folkes' circle and the limited critical attacks of a few of the
deists.
When viewed in this context, we see Hume as a prophet of our own secular era. It is
his vision of our modem secular world, in which humanity is disconnected from God and
God is disconnected from human history, which constitutes Hume's unique religious
scepticism as well as our own. 62

Notes
1. Thomas Birch, The History of the Royal Society, 4 vols. (London 1756-57), 1:221-30. The fIrst
Royal Charter was granted in July, 1662, when the title of "Royal Society" was conferred. This
official sanctioning was preceded by a year and a half of Wednesday afternoon meetings at
Gresham College, London, attended by twelve people including John Wilkins, who was appointed
Chairman, and Robert Boyle.
2. L. Mulligan, "Anglicanism, Latitudinarianism and Science in Seventeenth Century England,"
Annals of Science 30, No.2 (June 1973), p. 218. See also Charles Webster, The Great Instauration:
Science, Medicine and Reform, 1626-1660 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1976), p. 496, and
Michael Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981), Ch. 7.
3. David Kubrin, "Newton and the Cyclical Cosmos: Providence and the Mechanical Philosophy,"
Journal of the History of Ideas 28, No.2 (April-June, 1967), pp. 326-46; cf. Michael Hunter,
Science and Society in Restoration England, Ch. 7. The classic work in this fIeld remains Richard
S. Westfall, Science and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1958; University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor Paperback, 1973.) See also Michael
Macklem, The Anatomy of the World (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1958.)
4. William Stukeley, Family Memoirs of the Rev. William Stukeley (London, 1880), Vol. I, 'The
Commonplace Book, 1720," p. 100.
5. Ibid.
6. This seminal distinction of two subspecies within the broad concept of divine providence
appears in the modem period in De Veritate (Paris, 1624), p. 213, by Lord Herbert of Cherbury. He

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is rightfully regarded as one of the founders of the deist movement because, after distinguishing
between the two types of providence, he eliminates special providence as revealed in scripture. At
least, he lays down such stringent rules for authenticating such reports that the Bible is virtually
excluded as a source of knowledge about God.
7. Of course, some writers in the Society tend to overemphasize one aspect of divine providence at
the expense of the other. Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-1665), for example, in the manner oflater deists,
limits God's role to that of a generally provident creator and has done with it. In the beginning, God
built and programmed the great machine of nature. For Digby, God's generally provident ordering
of nature is revealed by observation of the chain of necessary mechanical causes ''built in" to the
machine of nature by God at creation and left to run on its own ever since. In Digby's view, general
providence excludes special providence; his God is truly an absconding deity. See Sir Kenelm
Digby, Observations upon Religio Medici (Oxford, 1909), p. 10. Though continually involved with
the Royal Society from its first formal meetings in 1660, Digby did not attend meetings with very
great regularity. In contrast, some of the people most active in the early life of the society are
precisely those who attempt to synthesize a God who is both specially and generally provident,
e.g., Charleton, Wilkins, and Boyle. These men were part of what Charles Webster terms an "active
nucleus" which sustained the early Royal Society. See Webster, The Great Instauration: Science,
Medicine and Reform,1626-1660, pp. 90-2.
Despite my use of the terms "first" and "second," I do not wish to be construed as offering a
strictly chronological division of the membership of the Royal Society. At no time is the Royal
Society homogeneous in its composition. I call the group around Stukeley the "second" society, just
as I call the group around Newton the "first" society, but members of both groups coexisted within
the same society.
8. John Wilkins, Of the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion (London, 1683), p. 402. Henry
Lyons, The Royal Society, 1660-1940: A History of its Administration under its Charters (New
York: Greenwood Press, 1968), p. 10.
9. Wilkins, Of the Principles and Duties ofNatural Religion, p. 130.
10. Walter Charleton, Darkness of Atheism (London, 1652), p. 127. Charleton argues that if God's
providence is not special, as well as general, then it would be a maimed and feeble thing. Ibid., pp.
137-52,217,329.
11. It is Boyle, as Westfall has pointed out, who earnestly adapts Cicero's machine analogy to the
service of the demonstration of God's general providence. The Works of the Honourable Robert
Boyle, ed. Thomas Birch (London, 1744),5 vols. Some Considerations Touching the Usefulness of
Experimental Natural Philosophy, 1:446a. See also Richard S. Westfall, Science and Religion in
Seventeenth Century England (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor Paperback,
1973), p. 75 and Ch. 4 passim.
12. Robert Boyle, The Works, 5:526.
13. Ibid.
14. Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society (London, 1667), p. 349.
15. Ibid., p. 360.
16. Ibid., pp. 358-62.
17. John Wilkins, Of the Principles and Duties of Natural Religion, p. 130. Sprat, too, counsels
extreme caution regarding modem reports of specially provident divine intervention, although he
does not absolutely exclude the possibility that they may be true. See Sprat, A History of the Royal
Society, pp. 359-60. Boyle, too, worries about the enthusiasm to overemphasize the mechanism of
divine special providence. Though he insists that miracles do happen, we must not confuse our
ignorance of some mechanical operations established by God's general providence with such
prodigies. See Boyle, A Free Inquiry-into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature, in The Works,
4:339a.
18. Newton exchanged a series of letters with Bentley beginning five days after Bentley's final
lecture. Bentley's adaptation of Newton's discovery of the law of gravity to the illustration of a
generally provident creator-architect occurs in the last three published versions of these lectures
separately entitled "A confutation of Atheism from the Origin and Frame of the World" in A
Defence of Natural and Revealed Religion: Being a Collection of the Sermons Preached at the
Lecturefounded by the Honourable Robert Boyle. Esq; (From the Year 1691 to the Year 1732),3

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vols., ed. Sampson Letsome and John Nicholl (London, 1739), 1:1-11. In his letters to Bentley,
Newton indicates that he is delighted with Bentley's application of his "systeme" to the support of
belief in a generally provident deity skilled in geometry and physics. Newton himself equivocates
about whether the direct cause of gravity is material or immaterial but Bentley, along with most of
Newton's other disciples, reiterates that the cause of gravity is immaterial, divine power. There is
strong evidence that Newton participated in handpicking Bentley to be the frrst Boyle Lecturer
along with the actual executors of Boyle's will, especially Samuel Pepys (at one time a President of
the Royal Society) and John Evelyn. See H. Guerlac and M.C. Jacob, "Bentley, Newton, and
Providence," Journal of the History of Ideas 30, No.3 (JUly-Sept., 1969), p. 318.
19. Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Translated into English by
Andrew Motte in 1729. The translations revised, and supplied with an historical and explanatory
appendix, by Florian Cajori, 2 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1934),2:543.
20. The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, 7 vols., ed. H. W. Turnbull, J. F. Scott, A. R. Hall, and
L. Tilling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959-77),3:336.
21. William Whiston,A New Theory ajthe Earth, second ed. (London, 1708), p. 284.
22. Ibid.
23. Sir Isaac Newton: Theological Manuscripts, ed. H. McLachlan (Liverpool: University of
Liverpool Press, 1950), p. 17.
24. See Newton's correspondence on this point with Thomas Burnet in The Correspondence,
2:331. Whiston's entire New Theory of the Earth is prefaced with "A Large Introductory Discourse
Concerning the Nature, Stile, and Extent of the Mosaick History of Creation." Whiston elaborates
that "The Mosaick Creation is not a Nice and Philosophical account of the Origin of All Things;
but an Historical and True Representation of the formation of our single Earth out of a confus' d
Chaos, and of the successive and visible changes thereof each day, till it became the habitation of
mankind" (p. 3.) For Whiston, and, to judge from Newton's earlier correspondence with Burnet in
which the same interpretative position is adopted, for Newton, the account of the secondary
mechanisms of nature which lie behind Moses' adaptation of the creation story for the vulgar
Hebrew does not constitute an adequate "Philosophical account of the Origin of All Things."
Whiston's book is intended to provide such an account. The chief natural mechanism which
Whiston utilizes to explain "the formation of our single Earth out of a confus'd Chaos" is a comet.
Comets of course are created by God in an initial act of general providence. Since then, these
natural mechanisms have functioned naturally and in their continuous natural operation is reflected
one sort of Newton's idea about the continued providential care of God for his creation. See James
E. Force, William Whiston. Honest Newtonian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp.
32-62.
25. John Keill, An Examination of the Reflections on the Theory of the Earth (Oxford, 1699.) One
critic of my book, William Whiston. Honest Newtonian, is "unconvinced" that Whiston represents
Newton's own views regarding the proper synthesis of general and special providence. [See the
review of William Whiston in Eighteenth-Century Studies 21, no. I (Fall, 1987), pp. 141-2.] This
critic apparently prefers to reserve that role for John Keill. Keill, of course, thinks that Whiston has
gone much too far, in Whiston's New Theory of the Earth, in seeking for natural causes for the
events depicted by Moses about how the creation happened. The fact that Keill, for example,
believes that Whiston's natural explanation for how the waters of the flood are removed
(evaporation) and Keill's expressed preference for a miraculous interposition of divine will as the
means for explaining their removal, does not prevent Keill from admiring many of Whiston's other
naturalistic speculations including the mechanism of the close pass of a comet as the mechanical
cause of the deluge. Still, it is the case that Keill is much quicker to resort to direct interpositions of
special divine providence. Keill is thus very critical of Whiston's and of Burnet's tendency to see
mechanical causes behind the events depicted in the scripture. In Keill' s view, such naturalistic,
mechanical explanations subvert belief in the miracle stories in the Bible and so are inimical to the
cause of religion. See John Keill, An Examination of Dr. Burnet's Theology, second ed. (London,
1734), p. 108. Whether Keill more faithfully reflects Newton's views on this point or whether
Whiston does may be construed as an open question for some "unconvinced" critics. But on this
point, it seems to me that Newton's own words and actions must be taken into some account. To

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repeat, Newton writes, in his Portsmouth Paper note already quoted in Note 23, that miracles "are
so called not because they are the works of God, but because they happen seldom and for that
reason excite wonder." This is the burden of Newton's correspondence to Burnet referred to above
in Note 24. This is also the central thesis of Whiston's New Theory of the Earth. And it is an
incontrovertible historical fact that, after Whiston adopts the same initial starting point regarding
the proper way to read the Mosaic account of creation in his New Theory and proceeds to draw out
the possible mechanical implications of this method in elaborate detail, Newton actively promotes
Whiston's career and ultimately helps to secure for him Newton's own Chair in the university at
Cambridge when Newton finally vacates it. For a writer who agrees with me that it is Whiston who
is the "honest Newtonian" on this point, see Stephen Jay Gould, "The Godfather of Disaster,"
Natural History 96, No.9 (September, 1987), pp. 20-9.
26. While Whiston prefers mechanical explanations of, especially, the events depicted by Moses
concerning the creation of the earth, he also believes in some scripture reports of miracles,
especially in those described in relation to Jesus and to the Apostles. God continued to interpose his
will into the natural order on behalf of the members of the early Christian community, according to
Whiston, right up to the moment in the fourth century when the Church becomes actively antiChristian through the adoption of the idolatrous Athanasian creed. See Mr. Whiston's Account of
the Exact Time When Miraculous Gifts Ceas'd in the Church (London, 1728), p. 7. Whiston, like
John Wilkins, remains highly suspicious of reports of modern-day miracles. Even so, he recounts
the story of one John Duncalf who stole a Bible and lied about it swearing that if he were the culprit
let God "rot off' his hands. Unfortunately for Duncalf, this happened. Whiston urges that the exact
narrative of this event "ought, in this sceptical age, to be reprinted, and recommended to all, who
either deny, or doubt of the interposition of a particular divine providence ...." See Whiston,
Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Whiston, Containing Memories of Several of his
Friends, also. Written by Himself. 2 vols. (London, 1753), 1:6; 2:443.
27. Whiston, The Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecy, Being Eight Sermons Preach'd at the
Cathedral Church of St. Paul, In the Year MDCCVII. At the Lecture Founded by Robert Boyle Esq.
(London,1708),p.5.
28. "Mr. Leibnitz's First Paper," in The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, ed. H. G. Alexander
(New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), p. 11. See also Leibniz Selections, ed. Philip P. Wiener
(New York: Scribners, 195 I), p. 216. Henning Graf Reventlow has also described this attempt by
Newton and Clarke to synthesize general providence and special providence in order to retain a
"personal God" and to guard against a "consistent rationalism." For Reventlow, "This is probably
the most important issue in Clarke's correspondence against Leibniz." See Henning Graf
ReventIow, The Authority of the Bible and the Rise of the Modern World, trans. John Bowden
(philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985), p. 340.
29. "Dr. Clarke's Second Reply," in The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, p. 22.
30. "Mr. Leibnitz's Third Paper," in The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, pp. 29-30; "Mr.
Leibnitz's Fourth Paper," Ibid., pp. 42-3; "Mr. Leibnitz's Fifth Paper," Ibid., pp. 91-5. Cf. Leibniz
Selections, pp. 227-8, 235, and 275-8.
31. "Dr. Clarke's Third Reply," in The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, p. 35.
32. Clarke, Works, 2:601. Cited by H. G. Alexander in his Introduction to The Leibniz-Clarke
Correspondence.
33. Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the
Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation, Being Eight Sermons Preached at the Cathedral
Church of St. Paul in the Year 1705, in A Defence of Natural and Revealed Religion, ed. Letsome
and Nicholl, 2:165.
34. Locke writes that the miracles of Jesus are significant only because they are predicted in
Biblical prophecy. See his work The Reasonableness of Christianity as Delivered in the Scriptures
(London 1695), p. 55.
35. Newton agrees that "the events of things predicted many ages before will then be a convinCing
argument that the world is governed by providence." Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel
and the Apocalypse of St. John (London, 1733), p. 252.
36. Ibid., p. 14.
37. This point at least seems probable in the light of Guerlac's and Jacob's picture of Newton's

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influence upon the executors of Boyle's will in picking Bentley as the inaugural lecturer and given
Newton's evident interest in the selection of Whiston. There is, however, no direct evidence that
Newton intervened to help get Whiston appointed as Boyle Lecturer. Whiston does state that his
topic for his series of lectures was originally suggested by Newton himself. In the midst of a long
passage in his Memoirs concerning the "ludicrous" scepticism engendered by the allegorical or
figurative method of interpreting scripture (in contrast to Whiston's and Newton's "Literalistic"
hermeneutic method), Whiston complained that the allegorical method was so entrenched that even
such "learned men as bishop Chandler, and Dr. Clarke, made use (of it): till I, upon Sir Isaac
Newton's original suggestion, shewed them the contrary." (p. 98) The work in which Whiston
attacked Clarke and Chandler appeared in 1725. It was an appendix to the 1708 Boyle Lectures. It
seems at least probable that Whiston's Boyle Lecture series topic was first suggested by Newton. If
so, Guerlac's and Jacob's contention that Newton utilized the public platform to promulgate by
proxy his views on controversial religious questions is strengthened. See also Whiston, A Supplement to the Literal Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecies (London, 1725), pp. 4-5.
38. Whiston was not a Fellow of the Royal Society. Newton was a total dictator in the Royal
Society in his years as President from 1701 to 1727. He endorsed only those who agreed with his
views. Eventually, Newton even had a quarrel with Whiston, his hand-picked successor at
Cambridge. In 1720, Sir Hans Sloane and Edmund Halley proposed Whiston for membership in the
Royal Society, but Newton blocked Whiston's election by threatening to resign as President, an
action prompted by the conflict between two strong wills. Whiston writes that "if the reader desires
to know the reason of Sir Isaac Newton's unwillingness to have me a member, he must take notice,
that as his making me first his deputy, and giving me the full profits of the place brought me to the
heads of the colleges in Cambridge, made me his successor; so did I enjoy a large portion of his
favor for twenty years together. But he then perceiving that I could not do as his other darling
friends did, that is, learn of him, without contradicting him, he could not, in his old age, bear such
contradiction; and so he was afraid of me the last thirteen years of his life .... He was of the most
fearful, cautious, and suspicious temper, that I ever knew." Whiston, Memoirs, second ed., 2 vols.
(London, 1753), 1:250-1. Although allowed to present his papers before the Society whenever he
pleased, Whiston was never admitted as a Fellow due to Newton's personal enmity in later years.
Nevertheless, Whiston's views on the importance of prophecy for demonstrating divine special
providence were shared by Newton and repeated by so many Fellows of the Royal Society that I
feel justified in using his texts to illustrate the apologetic position of members who constituted the
"first" Royal Society. For accounts of Newton in his later years as President of the Royal Society,
see Christopher Hill, Change and Continuity in 17th Century England (London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1974), Ch. 12, "Sir Isaac Newton and His Society," and Frank E. Manuel, Freedomfrom
History and Other Essays (New York: New York University Press, 1972), Ch. 7, "Newton as
Autocrat of Science."
39. William Stukeley, Family Memoirs, p. 100. Folkes was Vice-President of the Royal Society
while Newton was President and chaired many meetings in Newton's absence. His influence within
the Society predates his own election to the Presidency by a considerable period.
40. Ernest C. Mossner, The Life of David Hurne, second ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1980), pp. 590-1.
41. Ibid., p. 286.
42. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section XI, "Of a Particular
Providence and a Future State," in Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning
the Principles of Morals, Reprinted from the Posthumous edition of 1777 and edited by L. A.
Selby-Bigge. Third ed. with Text Revised and Notes by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1975), pp. 135ff.
43. "If the cause be known only by the effect, we never ought to ascribe it to any qualities, beyond
what are precisely requisite to produce the effect." Ibid., p. 136.
44. In the face of such complicated subjects, Hume inquires, "Why torture your brain to justify the
course of nature upon suppositions, which for aught you know, may be entirely imaginary, and of
which there are to be found no traces in the course of nature?" Ibid., p. 139.
45. Ibid.
46. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, "Of Miracles," p. 110.

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JAMES E. FORCE

47. Ibid . p. 112.

48. Ibid. p. 114. Cf. Philip P. Wiener. "The Peirce-Langley Correspondence and Peirce's
Manuscript on Hume and the Laws of Nature." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
91 (1947). pp. 201-28.
49. Hume. "Of Miracles." An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. pp. 115--6.
50. Ibid. p. 130.
51. Ibid. Hume's contemporaries. most notably Dr. Johnson. fail to perceive the application of the
attack on miracles to prophecies. See James E. Force. "Hume and Johnson on Prophecy: The
Context of Hume's Essay 'Of Miracles ... Journal of the History of Ideas 43. No.3 (July-Sept..
1982). pp. 463-75.
52. Whiston. A Supplement to the Literal Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecies (London.
1725). pp. 5--6.
53. Whiston. The Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecies. p. 6. and Memoirs. 1:98.
54. Whiston. The Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecies. p. I. In addition to this work and the
work cited in Notes 52 and 53. Whiston has lists of completed "historical" prophecies. as well as a
sprinkling of unfulfilled "future" prophecies in his The Literal Accomplishment of Scripture
Prophecies (London. 1724). and the second volume of the second edition of his Memoirs of 1753
which bears the subtitle To which are added his Lectures on the late Remarkable Meteors and
Earthquakes. and on the Future Restoration of the Jews.
55. Newton. Observations Upon the Prophecies. pp. 252-3.
56. Antony Flew. in his "Parapsychology: Science or Pseudo-Science?". Pacific Philosophical
Quarterly (1980). pp.l00-14. states and illustrates why parapsychology oUght to be classified as a
pseudoscience and how Hume's argument against miracles applies to the data of parapsychological
experimentation. Parapsychology is defined as the study of psi-phenomena which includes psikappa phenomena (psycho-kinesis. movement by the mind) and psi-gamma phenomena
(clairvoyance. mind communicating to mind; telepathy. matter communicating to mind.) The most
important aspect of psi-gamma phenomena. in the context of the present essay. is precognitive. psigamma phenomena. The subject of an experiment involving pre-cognitive. psi-gamma phenomena
will receive or produce or derive information from outside (through clairvoyance or telepathy)
normally referring only to the future. For example. astrologers who claim to derive their advance
information "from the stars" claim to be pre-cognitive paranormals. Hume's argument applies to
pre-cognitive. psi-gamma phenomena because "any piece of work claiming to show that psiphenomena have occurred is in effect a miracle story." Flew concludes that ''This means that we
have to interpret and assess the available evidence in light of all we know. or think we know. about
what is probable or improbable. possible or impossible. But now ... psi-phenomena are implicitly
defined in terms of the violation of some of our most fundamental and best evidenced notions of
contingent impossibility. So. even before any Humian allowance is made for the special corruptions
afflicting this particular field. it would seem that our historical verdict will have to be. at best. an
appropriately Scottish. and damping: 'Not proven ... (p. 108.) The effect of Flew's analysis is to
show that all stories of paranormal precognition - from the predictive utterances of soothsayers and
astrologers to the predictions of the Old Testament Prophets - are undercut by Hume's argument. I
am indebted for this insight to Professor Flew who kindly sent me a copy of this article. My point is
that Hume understands that his argument applies at least to Biblical prophecies.
57. Hume. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. ed. Norman Kemp Smith (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill. 1947). Part I. pp. 134-5.
58. In this attack on miracles. Woolston actually does mention very briefly that prophecies are
miraculous. i.e . that they cannot "be given forth by human Foresight ...... See A Discourse on the
Miracles of Our Savior, In View of the Present Controversy between Infidels and Apostates
(London. 1727). pp. 15--6.
59. For a brief account of the furor caused by the very slight London earth tremors in 1750. see
Force. William Whiston. pp. 133-7. Recently Maxine Van de Wetering has traced the providentialist interpretation of earthquakes in the sermons of American Puritans in the first half of the
seventeenth century in her article. "Moralizing in Puritan Natural Science: Mysteriousness in
Earthquake Sermons." Journal of the History of Ideas 43. no. 3. (July-September, 1982), pp.
417-38.

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163

60. Hume to Dr. John Clephane, April, 1750, in The Letters of David Hume, ed. J. Y. T. Greig, 2
vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932), 1:141.
61. Hume, The History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, 8
vols., (London, 1782), 6: 196-7. Hume refers to Newton specifically in this text.
62. I have incurred many debts to individuals and to institutions in the course of preparing this
article. I wish to thank members of the Hume Society who sat through an earlier version of this
paper at the 1981 Dublin meeting, especially David Fate Norton and Richard H. Popkin. Material
support over the period when this article was written was provided by, in part, the NEH Summer
Stipend and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library Short-Term Fellowship. Professor
Simon Varey of the University of California, Los Angeles, provided many helpful suggestions as
did the referees for the Journal of the History of Ideas where a shorter version of this paper first
appeared in Vol. 45, No.4 (Oct.-Dec., 1984), pp. 517-36, under the title, "Hume and the Relation
of Science to Religion Among Certain Members of the Royal Society."

RICHARD H. POPKIN

9. NEWTON AND FUNDAMENTALISM, II

Although it is now fairly well known that the great Sir Isaac Newton wrote much about
religion, little attention has been devoted to assessing the merit of his theological views
or any influence which they may have had. Some have assumed that Newton's religious
writings, most of which have not yet been published, resulted either from madness or,
possibly, from the emotional trauma of a young child who realized that his father died
two months prior to the child's birth. Rumors of Newton's insanity had been circulating
since Newton's death and were so persistent that, in 1844, the Christian Observer
published a lengthy article on Newton's alleged insanity and its supposed connection
with his religious writings. More recently, Frank E. Manuel, in his Religion of Isaac
Newton, has argued that Newton's religious views are possibly best understood against
the psychological background of his posthumous birth which may have led him to seek
for a super-father all of his life.!
Since the sale of Newton's unpublished papers, which mostly concern religion and
alchemy, at Sotheby's in London in 1936,2 and the subsequent accessibility of the two
largest collections from the sale (particularly those of Lord John Maynard Keynes and of
Abraham Shalom Yahuda,3 as well as other smaller collections at the Babson Institute,
the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, the Pierpont Morgan Library, and others),
it has been evident that Newton did not develop his "strange" interest after his great
mathematical discoveries. The manuscripts show that Newton was interested in alchemy,
religion, and theology from his college days onward. 4 For over fifty years, Newton
worked on interpreting the prophetic books of Daniel and Revelation. He sought evidence
that the Bible was the oldest book in the world and that Biblical history was the oldest
human history. He also devoted a great deal of time and energy to defending a radical
anti-Trinitarian interpretation of Christianity and to exposing Trinitarianism as a 4thcentury, anti-Christian fraud perpetrated by Saint Athanasius.
Are these views of Newton of interest because they are Newton's or because they play
some significant role in religious history? Studies by Richard S. Westfall and B. J. T.
Dobbs have sought to show that Newton's concerns make sense in his 17th- century
context. 5 Such concerns were not unusual for European intellectuals who were grappling
with trying to understand God and nature after the Reformation and during the Scientific
Revolution. 6 Newton's teachers and associates such as Isaac Barrow, Ralph Cudworth,
Henry More, and Robert Boyle all wrote on science, religion, and various occult matters.
To assess the merits of Newton's contributions in these areas, three kinds of research
are needed: first, a clarification of what, exactly, Newton's religious views were; second,
an examination of the extent to which Newton's religious views were different from
those of his contemporary Millenarian and anti-Trinitarian thinkers (and the extent to
165

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RICHARD H. POPKIN

which Newton had better or worse evidence for his views and interpretations in comparison to his contemporaries); and, third, an analysis of the impact and influence of
Newton's religious views on subsequent religious history. In this essay, I shall deal
primarily with the third item.
Most of Newton's religious writings were not published and, until relatively recently,
were widely unknown except to a few specialists. In his own life time, only a very few
friends and disciples knew of his religious theories. His views were heretical and, if they
had been known during his lifetime, they would have barred him from the various posts
he held such as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Director of the Mint, and President
of the Royal Society. An unauthorized French translation of a summary of Newton's
chronological research, which Newton had prepared at the request of Princess Caroline in
1716, was published in Paris in 1725 under the title Abrege de la chronologie de M. Ie
chevalier Isaac Newton. (An English translation appeared in 1728.) In 1727, the last year
of his life, Newton prepared for publication his lengthy Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms
Amended, which appeared in 1728. A few years after his death, John Conduitt, who had
married Newton's niece, sought advice about what to do with Newton's final manuscript
work on the interpretation of Daniel and Revelation on which he apparently was also
working in 1727. In 1733, there appeared a cobbled-together volume entitled
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel. and the Apocalypse of St. John. In the next
decades, his essay on the sacred cubit of the Hebrews and on Solomon's temple appeared,S as did two of his letters (sent to John Locke) on whether the doctrine of the Trinity
appeared in the correct text of the New Testament. 9 With the exception of his essay on
the length of the ancient cubit, all of these works were reprinted by Samuel Horsley in his
1785 edition of Newton's Opera Omnia. \0
Frank E. Manuel, at the beginning of his Religion of Isaac Newton, says that a few
English apologists and German Enlightenment theologians, such as Albrecht von Haller
and J. G. Hammann, are influenced by Newton's religious views, but that "it must be
admitted from the outset that an interest in Newton's religion can hardly be justified by
its power as an instrument for the propagation of faith."11 In a previous paper on
"Newton and the Origins of Fundamentalism," I sought to show that Newton's texts,
especially the Chronology and the Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel. and the
Apocalypse of St. John, were cited by many of the theologians who developed the
Fundamentalist point of view and that Newton provided them with important interpretations, historical data, and a means of explaining the failure of prophetic predictions. 12
Since writing that paper in 1985, some associates (especially Sarah Kochav and David S.
Katz) and I have found many more cases of Newton's views being cited and used by
Millenarian and Fundamentalist Millenarian writers from the mid-18th century until well
into the 20th century. Newton was a chief authority, a favored interpreter, and a counterbalance to scientific atheism. He was used by leading 18th-century English theologians
such as David Hartley and Bishop Thomas Newton, by prophetic interpreters of the
American and French Revolutions, by a writer such as Philip Henry Gosse, who, in the
mid-18th century, offered yet another reconciliation of Genesis and geology in the face
of Darwin's evolutionary theory,13 and by those in the 20th century seeking to counter
what they perceived as damage to the Bible resulting from Higher Criticism. Newton has
also been presented in the mid-20th century as an important precursor of Seventh Day
Adventism.

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167

What I shall try to do here is to structure the kinds of influence Newton, as a religious
writer, has had and to indicate that he has been, and still is, a source of data, interpretation, and inspiration to fundamentalist thinkers (who usually ignore his antiTrinitarianism.) Just recently I was asked to evaluate a paper, based solely on material
from the Keynes manuscripts, which sought to present Newton as really a sincere
Trinitarian Christian. Some who have pored over the vast collection of the Yahuda
manuscripts in Jerusalem (over half of Newton's writings) have been looking for a still
meaningful religious message. And, perhaps, when the Jerusalem papers are published,
Newton will be seen as an active contributor to contemporary religious thought just as he
is seen to have contributed to the background of contemporary scientific thought. 14
To begin our story, in 1724 John Hutchison, Professor of Theology at Oxford,
produced Moses's Principia as a replacement for Newton's Principia Mathematica l5
Hutchison contended one only needed scripture, in the original Hebrew without the later
added vowels, to understand the origin and functioning of Nature. In contrast, some of
the leading scientific innovators in the 18th century in England continued to hold the
view that God's message and God's Providence could be understood through scientific
and scriptural studies. Direct disciples of Newton, such as William Whiston and Samuel
Clarke, kept working on scientific studies and prophetic interpretations. 16 Others
involved in developing new scientific ways of understanding the world saw their work as
a prelude to, or an accompaniment of, an understanding of the course of Divine History
and its imminent climax. Unlike the French and English deists, and unlike the scientific
atheists such as Diderot, d' Alembert, and d 'Holbach, such English scientists as David
Hartley and Joseph Priestley presented their scientific theories as evidence for their
scriptural views. 17
Hartley, the founder of associationist psychology, wrote Observations on Man, a
seminal work in the development of naturalistic principles of psychological behavior. IS
Hartley is still mainly remembered for the first book of his Observations. In the largely
ignored second book, which is supposedly connected with the first, Hartley presented a
thoroughgoing Millenarian interpretation of the course of human affairs. God existed and
providentially directed the natural and human world. One could attempt to understand
God's providence through the evidence of design in Nature and through the interpretations of prophecies already fulfilled in human history. The latter indicated that most of
the scriptural prophecies had been fulfilled and strongly suggested that the rest were
about to be fulfilled including the imminent destruction of the anti-Christ, the conversion
of the Jews, the re-establishment of the Jewish state in Palestine, the rebuilding of the
Temple, the Second Coming of Jesus, and the end of days - the apocalyptic end of this
world and the appearance of a new heaven and a new earth. 19
Hartley's view was the continuation of a tradition of Millenarian interpretation that
went back to the theories of John Napier, Thomas Brightman, Johann Alsted, and,
especially, Joseph Mede in the early 17th century.20 Mede, a fellow of Christ's College,
Cambridge, wrote Clavis Apocalyptica21 in which he tried to work out both a way of
interpreting the prophetic symbols in Daniel and Revelation and a way of using these
interpretations to predict when the Millennium would occur. Mede was the teacher of
John Milton, Henry More, Isaac Barrow, and Ralph Cudworth, among others.22 His
method, and his synchronism of the dating predictions in Daniel and Revelation, was
taken over by most subsequent interpreters of prophecy (and is still used.) Mede thought

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RICHARD H. POPKIN

that the Millennium would begin 1260 years after the fall of the Roman Empire and that
its imminent arrival could be discerned by wars and (natural and political) catastrophes
described in symbolic form in scripture. Four great empires would pass away and the
fifth would be the Kingdom of God on Earth. As stated in the prophetic books, our
knowledge and understanding would be increased as we approached the end. The scientific revolution was then seen as a sign of the coming of the climax. of world history. 23
Mede thought that the Roman Empire fell around 400 A.D. and thus expected these
great events around the middle of the 17th century. He died in 1638. His followers
gradually decided 1655 or 1656 would be the Great Year. 24 When nothing monumental
occurred, they reconsidered and predicted the climax in 1666.25 In that year, too, after the
Sabbatai Zevi phenomenon and the debacle of the Jewish Messianism, some interpreters,
perhaps including Newton, became more cautious. Newton publicly offered no date and
even denied the possibility of such knowledge prior to the event. 26 He also spent a great
deal of time doing detailed research on when the Roman Empire ended. 27
Hartley cited Newton as well as Mede and his followers in defense of Millenarian
expectations. 28 Similarly, Bishop Thomas Newton of Bristol, one of the most popular
Boyle Lecturers, in his Boyle Lectures entitled Dissertations on the Prophecies, used
Newton as a standard authority on various points of interpretation. 29 Newton's Opera
Omnia was edited by Bishop Samuel Horsley who was so anxious to get Newton's
religious views exactly right that he compared the anti-Trinitarian letters from Newton to
Locke with the holograph originals (which were in the papers of Jean Le Clerc, the editor
of the Bibliotheque universelle.)30
An additional element entered the story with the advent of the American and French
revolutions. These developments were quickly seen by some participants and by some
alarmed observers as the unfolding of the final scenario in the Book of Revelation. The
development of what is now called Fundamentalism began in this context. On the
American side, leading figures such as Elias Boudinot (president of the Continental
Congress, a Congressman from New Jersey, and later first Director of the Mint), Ezra
Stiles (President of Yale), and Charles Crawford (a radical Millenarian abolitionist)
believed that the dramatic events they were living through made sense only as fulfillments of Biblical prophecies. 31 The English scientist, Joseph Priestley, greatly influenced
by Hartley, saw the end as near and published a letter to the Jews urging their conversion.
When the French Revolution began, Priestley soon became its English champion and was
elected to the Revolutionary Assembly. He interpreted what was happening in terms of
the Book of Revelation. His excited pro-French views led to his house being burned and
to his fleeing to America where, from his new post at the University of Pennsylvania, he
kept up his prophetic interpretations of events. 32 Several English clergymen became very
excited as various events, first in French revolutionary history and then in Napoleonic
policy, seemed to be taken right out of the Bible: the Catholic Church was dethroned; the
Jews were emancipated and made citizens; the Religion of Reason was proclaimed; the
Terror reigned; slavery was abolished; the Pope was captured (by Napoleon); an attempt
to "liberate" the Holy Land was made (in Napoleon's Egyptian campaign); a proclamation to the Jews of Asia and Africa to join Napoleon in rebuilding the Temple was
published; the Sanhedrin of 1806 was called by Napoleon to institute new Jewish laws;
and many kings of the world were dethroned in the course of the Napoleonic campaigns.
All these events were seen as indications of divine intervention in history and as prepara-

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169

tions for the final events of the last days.3 3 People in Europe and America debated
whether Napoleon could be the Jewish Messiah or the anti-Christ. 34
In the outpouring of religious interpretations of the two revolutions and of the
Napoleonic after-effects of the French Revolution, writers sought ways of interpreting the
Signs of the Times and pored over Mede, More, Newton, and others for clues. Newton
provided a way of recalculating the time of the end by using a different number of days
for a month in the Jewish calender. 35
He also provided data about when the Roman Empire ended: after the exarchate of
Ravenna in the 6th and 7th centuries. This allowed for a new apocalyptic calculation the end of the Roman Empire plus 1260 - which put the likely date in the 1840's.36
Newton had also introduced an interpretation of the "little hom" in Daniel as a reference
to Macedonia. Because Macedonia became part of the Ottoman Empire at a much later
period, this made the prophecy involved apply to the impending collapse of the Ottoman
Empire which, in the 19th century (as opposed to the 17th century), appeared to be just a
few years off.37
Almost all of the leading English and American interpreters of scripture, from Hartley
and Bishop Newton to those writing in the 1840's, cited Isaac Newton as an important
authority on scripture prophecy and, hence, as an aid in understanding current and future
events. Some of Newton's innovations in interpretation were applied to the events of the
American and French revolutions and to Napoleonic and post-Napoleonic events. A
detailed study remains to be done on the use of Newton by these commentators.3 8
Many of these interpreters, now seen as the fathers of Fundamentalism, from their deciphering of the scriptural prophecies (especially, with Newton's help, those in Daniel
and Revelation), expected that the climax of human history would be in 1843 or 1844.
The Reverend Joseph Wolff, the missionary for the English society for converting the
Jews in the Middle East, came to Washington, D.C., in 1837 to tell the United States Congress that the Second Coming would occur in the 1840's. Wolff considered Newton a
great philosopher and prophet and used his work to help arrive at the above conclusion.3 9
The convinced predictions of so many concerning the expected Millenarian events in
1843-44 led to what has been called "The Great Disappointment" in 19th-century
religious history.40 It also led to renewed Millenarian activity in movements such as the
Seventh Day Adventists. It is interesting to note that, in 1844, the question of whether
Newton's prophetic religious views indicated that he had become insane was being
discussed. And, it is also interesting to note that the Seventh Day Adventists found in
Newton's text the way to overcome the Great Disappointment.
In a biographical account of Newton by the French astronomer, Jean-Baptiste Biot,
published in the 1830's in French and English, Biot utilized a still unpublished note by
Christian Huygens which, according to Biot, indicated that Huygens had thought that
Newton had become deranged some time during 1692-94 when Newton's dog tipped
over a candle and caused all his writings from the preceding twenty years to be burned
up.41 Biot claimed that Newton "never recovered his mental powers sufficiently to
produce any great work [sic!] thereafter." The Marquis de la Place believed that this story
accounted for what Laplace thought was Newton's sudden turning to theology and to his
writing on prophecy and Biblical matters. The Marquis had a Swiss professor make
inquiries in England "to show that Newton became a Christian and a theological writer,

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RICHARD H. POPKIN

only after the decay of his strength and the eclipse of his reason. ,,42
The first English biographer of Newton, Sir William Brewster, went through various
materials to show that Newton was in fact of basically sound mind between 1692 and
1695 and was agitated and disturbed only occasionally. Brewster's evidence became the
basis for an article in the Christian Observer of 1844 entitled, "Sir Isaac Newton's
Alleged Insanity." The authors of the piece were happy that Brewster's data showed that
"The study of prophecy neither found him mad, nor made him so."43 The subject of
prophetic interpretation is so important that to ignore it would be a form of insanity.
Because there is nothing
irrational in the supposition that the Creator may have disclosed his mind to his responsible creatures ... Newton only followed up the orderly inductions of his wonderful mind in believing that all that God reveals, man ought to investigate; not excluding
from the range of his researches those disclosures which relate to things to come.
Many preposterous opinions have been offered about prophecy by irrational lunatics such
as Jacob Boehme, Immanuel Swedenborg, and Joanna Southcutt: "But such follies, and
worse, do not derogate from the serious well-advised consideration of sacred prophecy,
whether fulfilled or unfulfilled. '>44
At the very moment when this was being written, a great many serious, well-advised
Bible commentators were predicting that the culmination of human history would occur
momentarily. It did not! They recalculated, waited, and again apparently nothing
happened. This tremendous expectation, followed by no discernible Millenarian event,
was the "Great Disappointment." In trying to understand if prophecy could fail, some
turned to Sir Isaac Newton's text.
Newton, unlike many prophetic writers, insisted, at least in public,45 that one could
not predict the dates when the prophecies were to be fulfilled. In fact, the nature of
prophecy was not to predict the future, but rather to understand it as divinely ordained
only after it happened. In the face of so many predictions by so many 17th-century
divines about when Jesus would return, when Anti-Christ would be overturned, or when
the Jews would convert Newton sternly writes, "The folly of interpreters has been, to
foretel times and things by this Prophecy, as if God designed to make them prophets. By
this rashness they have not only exposed themselves, but brought Prophecy also into
contempt."46 It was, however, God's purpose to make people realize what was happening
in the world through prophecies. After prophecies are fulfilled, then, and only then,
they might be interpreted by the event, and his [God's] own Providence, not the
Interpreters, be then manifested thereby to the world. For the event of things predicted
many ages before, will then be a convincing argument that the world is governed by
providence. 47
Many prophecies had already been fulfilled. Others will be fulfilled in the future. We are
only able to understand what is going on progressively, as God allows us to understand. It
is not yet time for us to understand all the unfulfilled prophecies perfectly. But so much
has happened that fits the prophetic predictions that we can expect that "the signal
revolutions predicted by all the holy Prophets, will at once both tum men's eyes upon
considering the predictions, and plainly interpret them. Till then we must content
ourselves with interpreting what hath already been fulfilled.,,48

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171

Newton thus offered a post facto theory of prophetic interpretation. Because we, as
mortal humans, are not prophets, we cannot tell what is going to happen. But, after it
happens, we can, as Biblical interpreters and historians, see that the event is predicted in
Biblical prophecies and, in seeing this, can come to understand that the event is part of
God's Providential scheme. Nostradamus, who is cited in Newton's unpublished papers,
had advanced a similar theory to explain his own cryptic prophecies. He said that God
had given him the ability to see the future. If he told people what was going to happen,
they would not be able to stand it. Hence, he set down what he knew about the future in
such a form that people could not tell what was going to happen. Then, after something
he had foreseen did occur, people, in re-reading his quatrains, would realize it was a
divinely ordained event and would appreciate the greatness of divine power. 49
One of the leading scholarly interpreters of prophecy, the Reverend Isaac T. Hinton, a
Baptist pastor from St. Louis, says in defense of the great expectation of 1843-44, and
against various opponents, that "We do not think it presumptious to prefer the scheme
adopted by Mede, Sir Isaac and Bishop Newton, and other learned investigators of
prophecy."50 In 1845, after the Great Disappointment, the leader of the expectants,
William Miller, said that what had happened was human error in doing the chronological
computations. There are discrepancies of four or five years in the calculations "which
cannot be satisfactorily settled .... Therefore we must patiently wait the time in dispute,
before we can honestly confess we are wrong in time."51
The Seventh Day Adventists, a religious group which emerged after the Great
Disappointment, saw Newton's explanation as a way of understanding how faith was left
after prophecy failed. The leading historian of the Seventh Day Adventists, Le Roy
Froom, devotes a chapter in his The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers to explaining Isaac
Newton's contribution. Newton is portrayed as the great scientific genius whose interests
extended to all things natural and divine. In his writings on prophecy, "Newton employed
the same exactness in finding the facts and applied the same strict logical method of
deduction that he used in the fields of mathematics and physics."52 Newton's way of
interpreting the symbols in Daniel and Revelation are presented most favorably and his
originality is emphasized. In a footnote, Froom proudly reveals that an unpublished
manuscript of Newton's on the "Prophecies concerning Christ's 2nd Coming" is in the
Advent Source Collection at the Seventh Day Adventist Seminary in Berrian Springs,
Michigan. 53 Newton is shown to hold many Adventist views. For example, a most
important one is that "The many and clear Prophecies concerning the things to be done at
Christ's second coming, are not only for predicting but also for effecting a recovery and
re-establishment of the long-lost truth, and setting up a kingdom wherein righteousness
dwells"54 (which is what the Seventh Day Adventists say they did after the Great
Disappointment. )
Froom then says, "In this connection Newton enunciates the sound principle, Let Time
Be The Interpreter," and cites Newton's text that the folly of Interpreters has been to
foretell the times for the fulfillment of as yet unfulfilled prophetic predictions, as if God
designs to make them Prophets. By far the best approach was to seek to recognize the
Divine Plan only after God had unfolded it. This Newtonian principle of post facto
interpretation removed the onus of having to be right in predicting. It also cautioned
against precise predicting and urged careful interpretation of the data as the course of
nature and history unfolded.

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Many Fundamentalists adopted Newton's attitude and the caution involved, especially
after the debacle of the predictions of 1843--44. In the Niagara Creed of 1878, a quite
important statement by many of the Fundamentalists of the time which was taken over by
most of the later Fundamentalist groups, the last article states that:
We believe that the world will not be converted during the present dispensation, but is
fast ripening for judgment, while there will be a fearful apostacy in the professing
Christian body; and hence that the Lord Jesus will come in person to introduce the
Millenial age, when Israel shall be restored to their own land and the earth shall be full
of the knowledge of the Lord, and this personal and premillenial advent is the blessed
hope set before us in the Gospel for which we should be constantly 100king.55
Nothing in this statement indicates any particular time when these great events will occur.
Instead, what is stressed is the need for "constantly looking." When expected events were
observed, then, and only then, could one interpret them as part of Providential history.
And so, for many 20th-century Fundamentalists, the collapse of the Turkish empire, the
expUlsion of the Turks from Jerusalem, the modem-day convergence of Jews on Palestine, the founding of a Jewish state, and the subsequent ceding of control of the holy sites
in Jerusalem from Moslem to Jewish control were all taken as observed signs of God
acting in history to fulfill the prophecies. 56 The observers did not know when the final
fulfillment would occur since they were not prophets. But, as each event unfolded in the
Middle East, they carefully watched and interpreted. Newton's post facto method helped
them avoid precise predictions that could lead to new Great Disappointments. (In a recent
issue of Plain Truth, the magazine of the World Church of God, there is an article about
whether there will soon be another Temple in Jerusalem on the site of the First and
Second Temples. The author of the article interprets various developments in the
activities of Orthodox Jewish zealots who are preparing garments, prayers, and ways of
sacrificing for when a new Temple is built. The author finally suggests that the new
Temple may be in place by around 2000 anno domini, but refuses to make an absolutely
firm prediction.)
If Newton's ideas played a role in avoiding predictive failure in prophetic interpretation in the 19th and 20th centuries, his views were also used to fight against the Higher
Criticism of the Bible which was sweeping across Europe and America in the early part
of the 20th century. Scholars were interpreting scripture as a man-made document that
could best be understood in terms of the historical human context. The various books of
the Bible were investigated for signs of multiple authors and later additions. It was even
being alleged by some of the Higher Critics that the central prophetic books such as
Daniel were written after the predicted events had taken place and, hence, were not
prophetic at all.
In response to this challenge, there appeared in 1922 a rather amazing document
entitled Sir Isaac Newton's Daniel and the Apocalypse with an Introductory Study of the
Nature and the Cause of Unbelief This work is primarily a reprint, the first since 1785,
of Newton's Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John
with a lengthy "Introductory Study" by Sir William Whitla in which Whitla used Newton
to attack Higher Criticism. Sir William Whitla was Professor Emeritus of Queen's
University, Belfast, and one time head of the British Medical Association. 57 Dr. Whitla
dedicates the work to William Bramwell Booth, General of the Salvation Army, "who

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with his illustrious father has accomplished so much among the nations of the world
towards the hastening of the coming of the kingdom predicted in the book of Daniel. "58
The book begins with a series of lectures on Daniel and Revelation which Dr. Whitla
had given to his church. Whitla defended Daniel and Revelation against the naturalistic
interpretations of the Higher Critics. In the Preface to these lectures, Whitla says that they
are not intended as commentary or explanation "on the work of the illustrious
philosopher [Newton]. Such a presumption never once entered into the author's mind,
and he hopes it will not seem an absurdity or folly that his more or less crude reflections
should be placed inside the same cover in proximity with the august and scholarly
researches in this two-hundred-year-old gem in Biblicalliterature.,,59 Whitla claims that
his lectures are an attempt both to show the weakness of Higher Criticism and "to leave
open the study of the book of Daniel as it was when Newton in strong and childlike faith
lent his mighty intellect to the study of this fascinating record. '060
And, even if Whitla's lectures fail to defeat the enemy, "there is left to the author the
solid consolation that he has been highly privileged in his Master's service by being
permitted to restore to the Biblical student Sir Isaac Newton's valuable contribution to
the study of the Babylonian prophet. "61 I do not know how successful Whitla was in this
last endeavor. His edition seems unknown to Newton scholars and I have never seen it
cited by Bible commentators. By chance I saw it on the open shelf at the Research
Library of the University of California at Los Angeles. Whitla's lectures were careful and
well thought out. They brought out some of the possible lines of defense for a modem
Fundamentalist believer against the Higher Critics.
In his discussion, Whitla adopted some of Newton's key views. In chapter IV,
"Prophecy and Unbelief," Whitla stresses that prophecy must not be confused with
"soothsaying, divination, and fortune-telling and the various methods of prying into the
future which are forbidden by the law of Moses, and which history proves were practised
by the heathen peoples from the earliest times. ,,62 Prophecy has become a matter of
ridicule and jest "because of the writings of the prophecy-mongers who constitute
themselves, not interpreters, but prophets who fix with confidence and certainty the exact
date to the day and hour when these predictions shall see their accomplishment:063
Although he adopts Newton's view of prophecy, Whitla is impressed that the prophecy
"foretelling the return of the Children of Israel to the land of promise"64 seems to be
about to be fulfilled given the recent occupation of the area by British troops. Nevertheless, he steadfastly hews to the post facto method and reiterates Newton's view that the
prophecies are
purposely couched in words of mystery so that we may not know the exact time or the
particular manner in which the fulfilment is to be accomplished. When the accomplishment is effected, every wise man and fool will be convinced that these final happenings were planned and predicted by the great Architect of the Universe many
thousands of years before. 65
The exact date of the Messiah's arrival was not in the prophecies. His arrival is foretold
by Daniel, but "Not to the year, month or week:'66 Daniel's prophecy is "veiled in
language so mysterious that the believing Jews and Gentiles could only be certain of the
truth of the tremendously important utterance after its actual occurrence. "67 This was a
careful spelling out of Newton's post facto approach to the interpretation of prophecy.

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In chapter IX, Whitla went over Daniel's prophecies and followed Newton's explanation fairly closely. Whitla pointed out Newton's original contribution to interpreting the
symbols. He approvingly cites Bishop Thomas Newton as saying that "Sir Isaac Newton,
with that sagacity which was peculiar to him, and with which he penetrated into Scripture
as well as into nature,'>68 could plainly see what was wrong with previous interpretations
of the symbols in Daniel. Whitla tries to keep to Newton's interpretive structure so as not
"to be swayed by present appearances in weighing the meaning of any cryptic prophetic
utterances." Such a temptation "is the rock upon which many an adventurous prophecymonger's bark has been wrecked."69 We must be careful not to make current political
events fit with a particular prophetic expectation. We should scrutinize current events
minutely and ponder the Biblical text to see how these events might possibly fit with our
expecations. 70
Having said this in several ways, Whitla kept slipping into interpreting the fall of the
Turkish Empire in World War I, General Allenby's entrance into Jerusalem (in the year
1335 in the Moslem calender), and the beginning of the return of the Jews as indications
that the central prophecies of Daniel were being fulfilled at the very time that Whitla was
writing. He insists that "We cannot do better in commencing our study, than to quote
from the earliest of the modern school of interpreters, Sir Isaac Newton, in the lost classic
on Daniel and Revelation."71 Citing Newton on the meaning of the "seventy weeks" in
Daniel and its import for his expectation of the Second Coming, Whitla says, "This
interpretation, worked out by the great astronomer two hundred years ago, has a deep
interest for us, for today when we realize the after-effects of the great world war, and it
has been entirely lost sight of by all recent controversialists."72 What is most centrally at
issue is the meaning of the scriptural passage, "to return and to build Jerusalem."
According to Whitla, "Sir Isaac believed [it] referred to the latter days." But consider the
Mandate accepted by Great Britain over Palestine and compare it with Newton's text,
"which sounds more like a prophecy than an interpretation.'>13 Newton is then quoted as
saying, "Since the Commandment [Mandate] to return and build Jerusalem precedes the
Messiah the Prince forty-nine years, it may perhaps come forth, not from the Jews
themselves, but from some other kingdom friendly to them, and precede their return from
captivity and give occasion to it.'>14 It is obvious that Whitla could not avoid seeing and
hoping that the events in Palestine after World War I were part of the fulfillment of the
prophecies. Newton's interpretation of Daniel gave Whitla evidence for his belief that his
own were the prophesied last days. And Whitla pressed the point that Newton, with his
"child-like" innocence of what the Higher Criticism had dredged up, was able to give a
most penetrating interpretation of Daniel, an interpretation which would convince a 20thcentury reader that it was a genuinely prophetic book and that God's mysteries could be
understood as Divine history took place. Newton's relevance to 20th-century interpretations of prophecy was only too clear for Whitla.
Two other indications that some aspects of Newton's reading of scripture influence
modern thinkers appear in the views of A. S. Yahuda and David Castillejo. The former, a
Palestinian Jew who was a very important Arabic scholar and a great collector of
manuscripts, argued in the early 1930's that there was evidence of the historical accuracy
of the Bible. He contended that the story of the Exodus was written by somebody who
knew Egyptian and, hence, who was an actual participant or eyewitness to the events.
Although his evidence was attacked by Egyptologists, Yahuda lectured and wrote on the

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175

accuracy of the Bible in pre-Hitler Germany and then in England. 75

Yahuda, a product of sophisticated German scholarly training, was in England in 1936
when Newton's alchemical and theological papers were auctioned off at Sotheby's. He
acquired most of the theological papers. (It is his huge collection that is now in the
National Library in Jerusalem.) He took his collection to the United States when he went
there as a refugee in 1940. Albert Einstein, an old friend, was his sponsor. Notes and
markings by Yahuda on his Newton manuscripts, plus an unfinished essay on Newton's
religious views, indicate that one of the interests Yahuda had in Newton's religious
writings was in understanding Newton's reasons for believing in the historical accuracy
of the Bible,76 To some extent they were kindred spirits. Newton held that St. John, the
author of the Book of Revelation, had to have been a Jew from Jerusalem before the
destruction of the Temple. St. John was an Aramaic speaker who later wrote in Greek.
Hence, he must have been a witness to some of the original events in Christian history,77
This argument, like Yahuda's argument about the author of Exodus, sought to establish
the historical accuracy of these texts. Against 17th- and 20th-century Bible critics,
Yahuda contended that the authors were eyewitnesses and not merely recounting
traditional stories at a much later time. Newton, to Yahuda's pleasure, went even further
and argued that one could date events in the Old Testament from the astronomical
descriptions and then show from this dating that Biblical events were the oldest known
human events and that the Bible was the oldest known book. Yahuda, trained in a 20thcentury European environment, did not, of course, accept such claims. Still, he saw
Newton as pointing to something significant about the uniqueness of the Bible and as at
least attempting to provide further evidence of the accuracy of scripture against modem
day sceptics. It was probably due to Yahuda's suspicion that Newton shared Yahuda's
own theological perspective that he acquired so much of Newton's unpublished work,
thus keeping it largely intact and preventing its dispersion bit by bit to collectors all over
the world. 78
When Yahuda was dying in 1951, he decided, though he was an ardent anti-Zionist
who refused to live in the state of Israel, that he would leave all of his manuscripts to the
library of the new state.79 His family contested the bequest and held up the shipment of
his vast collection until 1969. (The Newton papers are just one of fifteen hundred
different manuscript collections that Yahuda owned most of which are in Middle Eastern
languages.) When crates and crates containing Yahuda's Newton manuscripts arrived in
Jerusalem, it was fortunate that an English scholar, David Castillejo, was on the scene.
He was able to help the library put all the papers in order, to provide an inventory of what
was in each of the boxes of Newton's papers, and to identify these items with the listed
sale items in Sotheby's catalogue of 1936. 80 He also indicated the relationship of the
Jerusalem holdings to other collections in England and America. The list everyone
working on Newton's manuscripts in Jerusalem uses is Castillejo's report to the Hebrew
National and University Library. Castillejo's list has established the numbering system
for all the items in the Newton part of the Yahuda collection.
In 1981, Castillejo published an elegant book, The Expanding Force in Newton's
Cosmos as shown in his unpublished papers. 8 ! Newton scholars by and large have shied
away from the work, finding it full of strange, mystical ideas. In the second chapter on
"The Prophecies in 'Daniel' and the 'Apocalypse'," Castillejo gives perhaps the most
complete available exegesis of Newton's interpretation of the symbols in the two Biblical

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RICHARD H. POPKIN

books and of Newton's chronological calculations in them. Castillejo does not say that he
accepts Newton's view, but he does expound and explicate it. One portion of the
exposition indicates that Newton could be made into a great seer, if one accepted
Castillejo's rendition. Newton could be used by religious-nationalist Zionists, both
Jewish and Christian, to underwrite such developments. Nevertheless, writes Castillejo,
"Let us ... study in detail only those dates that fall between Newton's lifetime and our
own present, since they provide the best test of his system."82 In figuring out Newton's
chronological claims, Castillejo tells us that "the order to return and build Jerusalem
could occur in the year 1899 (609+1290=1899), and the end of the great tribulation of the
Jews would then occur in 1944 (609 + 1335 = 1944.),,83 Some alternative computations
are offered that would put these events off to the 21st or 22nd centuries. Then, in
consideration of Newton's interpretation of the text about the commandment to rebuild
Jerusalem (preceding the coming of the Messiah by 449 years), Castillejo puts the second
coming and the first little resurrection (or revival) of a dissolved dominion in 1948, or,
alternatively, in 2127/2180. 84
Castillejo does not explain the relevance of the dates he gives. His interest is more in a
theosophical interpretation of Newton. But a reader with fundamentalist tendencies might
be struck by how close these Newtonian calculations have been to crucial modem events
in Jewish history. Theodor Herzl's book, Judenstaat, with its order "to return and rebuild
Jerusalem," came out in 1898. The great tribulation of the Jews, the Holocaust, ended in
1945. The state of Israel begins in 1948, "the revival of a dissolved dominion." If Newton
can be understood to have been so close in dating what has actually happened, and, thus,
if Newton really understood God's plan, then what has occurred and is occurring in
Jewish history could be the unfolding scenario of the prophesied Divine Drama about the
last days. The support that most fundamentalist groups give to the state of Israel and to
the most nationalist and religious spokespersons there is based on their taking Israel as a
Divine, not a secular, entity. Adding Newton's authority to this view, especially given his
calculations, could only give more prestige to this reading of events. 85
These vignettes of how Newton's religious views have been used by Fundamentalists
trying to establish the accuracy of the Bible, and of how his views might still be used to
interpret contemporary events in the Middle East, indicate that Newton's contribution to
Bible interpretation is not just an antiquated curiosity. His efforts have been taken
seriously by Millenarian writers from the late 17th century down to the 20th century. He
provided some of the "new" interpretations of the symbols in the two most important
prophetic books, Daniel and Revelation. He provided ways of calculating future events
according to cryptic Biblical fonnulae and he provided a cautionary way of dealing with
the non-fulfillment of expectations. Further examination will, I think, reveal that
Newton's work provided some of the basis for the Great Expectation of 1843-44 and
then provided a basis for recovery from the Great Disappointment. Whitla's use of
Newton shows that his religious ideas could be used to rebut Higher Criticism and to
offer a new reading of historical events in Divine tenns after World War I. Castillejo's
exposition provides a way of doing this anew after World War II. This suggests that
Newton's religious writing have been seminal amongst literal-minded Fundamentalist
interpreters. To understand the import of this, we will have to take Newton's contribution
to Biblical exegesis more seriously.

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Notes
1. Frank E. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), chap. I, "His
Father in Heaven," pp. 17ff.
2. Catalogue of the Newton Papers Sold by Order of the Viscount Lymington to whom they have
descended from Catherine Conduit!, Viscountess Lymington, Great-niece of Sir Isaac Newton.
Which will be Sold by Auction by Messrs. Sotheby and Co . .... At their Large Galleries, 34 & 35
New Bond Street W.l. On Monday, July 13th, 1936, and Following Day, at One O'clock Precisely
(London, 1936.)
3. Keynes' collection is located in King's College Library, Cambridge. Yahuda's is in the Hebrew
National and University Library, Jerusalem.
4. Henry More to John Sharp, August 16, 1680, in Conway Letters. The Correspondence of Anne,
Viscountess Conway, Henry More, and their Friends, ed. Marjorie Hope Nicolson (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1930), pp. 478-9. In this letter, More describes an episode which occurred
during a visit by Newton to More's rooms in Cambridge to discuss one of More's interpretations of
some apocalyptic prophecies in the Book of Revelation. More writes that Newton's ordinarily
"melancholy and thoughtful" countenance was then "Mighty lightsome and chearfull" and that
Newton was "in a maner Transported." Cf. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton, p. 14.
5. See Richard S. Westfall, Never at Rest. A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1980.) See also B. J. T. Dobbs, The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy, or "The
Hunting of the Greene Lyon," (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.)
6. See Charles Webster, From Paracelsus to Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1982) and Webster, The Great Instauration. Science, Medicine and Reform 1626-1660 (New York:
Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1975.) See also Richard H. Popkin, ''The Third Force in
Seventeenth Century Philosophy: Scepticism, Science and Millenarianism," in E. Ullman-Margalit,
The Prism of Science. The Israel Colloquium: Studies in History, Philosophy and Sociology of
Science (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1986), Vol. 2, pp. 21-50.
7. Newton's manuscript of 1716, a hastily prepared summary which resulted from Princess
Caroline's request to see his work on chronology, is a summary abstract of his chronological
research in the form of an annotated list of dates and a very brief statement of his method. When
the Abbe Conti, a friend of Newton and Princess Caroline, departed London in 1716, he carried
with him a copy of this manuscript which he had prevailed upon Newton - through the intercession
of the Princess - to provide him. In Paris, this copy was shown to such leading French historians as
Etienne Souciet and Nicolas Freret. The printer, Guillaume Cavelier, twice wrote to Newton for
permission to publish it. Newton ignored the first letter but answered the second and unequivocally
refused permission. The manuscript was published anyway in Paris in 1725 in a translation by
Freret, who also appended a devastating series of critical comments, entitled Abrege de la
chronologie de M. Ie chevalier Isaac Newton,fait par lui-meme, et traduit sur Ie manuscrit Anglois.
An English translation, entitled A Short Chronicle from the Memory of Things in Europe to the
Conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great, was published in London in 1728. See Westfall, Never
at Rest, pp. 805-15.
8. Newton's essay on the length of the cubit was first published in Miscellaneous Works of John
Greaves, ed. Thomas Birch (London, 1737), Vol. 2, pp. 405-33. Greaves (1602-52) was a
mathematician and classicist. He is most remembered for his books on the measure of the Roman
foot and on the length of the Egyptian cubit, which he attempted to derive from the dimensions of
the Great Pyramid after a visit to Egypt in 1638. Newton owned copies of Greaves' works on these
subjects.
9. Newton first wrote to John Locke on 14 November 1690 on the subject of the "corruptions"
which Newton believed he had detected in 1 John 5.7 and 1 Timothy 3.16. He wrote again shortly
thereafter promising to go on and identify further textual corruptions most of which, he believed,
originated at the time of the Arian controversy. Newton confidently asked Locke to have these two
letters translated into French and published on the continent. Locke then sent the letters to his
friend, the Remonstrant theologian Jean Le Clerc, in Amsterdam. Le Clerc set about translating
them as Locke had requested. Newton had second thoughts and asked Locke to have all work on
the translation project suspended, which Locke instructed Le Clerc to do. Le Clerc did as Locke
instructed but he also placed the manuscripts of the letters in the Library of Amsterdam's

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RICHARD H. POPKIN

Remonstrant Seminary. These letters were eventually published in 1754 by an anonymous editor
under the title Two Letters of Sir Isaac Newton to Mr Le Clerc. See Westfall, Never at Rest, pp.
489-91.
10. Samuel Horsley (1733-1806), Bishop, first, of St. David's, then of Rochester, and, finally, of
St. Asaph' s edited a set of five volumes of the works of Newton entitled Isaaci Newton opera quae
existant omnia (London, 1779-85.) The last volume, which appeared in 1785, contained two
versions of Newton's Short Chronology, as well as The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms
Amended, the Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and, and the Apocalypse of St. John,
and another version of Newton's letters to Locke on An Historical Account of Two Notable
Corruptions of Scripture based on "a MS in the possession of the Rev Dr Ekins, Dean of Carlisle."
11. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton, pp. 1-2.
12. See Richard H. Popkin, "Newton and the Origins of Fundamentalism," in a forthcoming
volume of The Israel Colloquium: Studies in the History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science.
13. It seems possible that Philip Henry Gosse, the distinguished naturalist and stem Fundamentalist, utilized Newton's work on the interpretation of the Apocalypse in the education of his son.
See Edmund Gosse, Father and Son. Biographical Recollections (New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1907), pp. 62-3. In this remarkable narrative record "of a struggle between two temperaments, two consciences and almost two epochs," young Gosse tells of growing up in an atmosphere
of evangelical fervor. During his mother's fatal illness, Gosse records that as a seven-year old, he
"breathed the atmosphere of pain, saw no other other sight, heard no other sounds, thought no other
thoughts, than those which accompany physical suffering and weariness." Gosse recollects in this
memoir how he spent his time reading aloud: "I have now in my mind's cabinet a picture of my
chair turned towards the window, partly that I might see the book more distinctly, partly not to see
quite so distinctly that dear patient figure rocking on her sofa .... I read the Bible every day, and at
much length; also, - with I cannot but think some praiseworthy patience, - a book of incommunicable dreariness, called Newton's "Thoughts on the Apocalypse." It is possible that this is a
reference to Newton's Observations on the Prophecies, and the Apocalypse of St. John.
14. See Richard H. Popkin, "Newton's Theological Physics and Physical Theology," in Newton's
Scientific and Philosophical Legacy, ed. P. B. Scheurer and G. Debrock (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988),
pp.81-97.
15. John Hutchison, Moses's Principia. Of the Invisible Parts of Matter; of Motion; of Visible
Forms; and of their Dissolution, and Reformation (London, 1724.) On Hutchison, see David S.
Katz, Sabbath and Sectarianism in Seventeenth-Century England (Leiden: Brill, 1988), chap. VI.
16. See James E. Force, William Whiston. Honest Newtonian (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985.)
17. See Richard H. Popkin, "Divine Causality: Newton, the Newtonians and Hume," in Greene
Centennial Studies: Essays Presented to Donald Greene in the Centennial Year of the University of
Southern California, ed. Paul J. Korshin and Robert R. Allen (Charlottesville: University Press of
Virginia, 1984), pp. 40-56.
18. David Hartley, Observations on Man, His Frame, His Duty and his Expectations (London,
1749.)
19. Ibid., Book II, chaps. ii-iv.
20. For the background of modem Millenarianism, see Katherine R. Firth, The Apocalyptic
Tradition in Reformation Britain, 1530-1645 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979); Le Roy
Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, 4 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Review & Herald Pub.
Assn., 1950-54), vol. 2; Ernest Lee Tuveson, Millennium and Utopia. A Study in the Background
of the Idea of Progress (Gloucester, Peter Smith, 1972); and Richard H. Popkin, "The Third Force
in Seventeenth-Century Thought" and Richard H. Popkin, editor, Millenarianism and Messianism
in English Literature and Thought 1650-1800, Clark Library Lectures 1981-1982 (Leiden: Brill,
1988.)
21. First published in 1632, it was translated into English at the beginning of the English Revolution.
22. On Mede's career, see Katherine Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition, and Richard H. Popkin,
'The Third Force," pp. 23-4.
23. Cf. Popkin, "The Third Force" and Webster, The Great Instauration.
24. See Christopher Hill, "'Till the Conversion of the Jews' ," in Millenarianism and Messianism,

NEWTON AND FUNDAMENTALISM, II

179

pp. 12-36, and a later version of this essay in The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill, 2 vols.
(Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1985-6),2:269-300.
25. This was the expectation of such leading millenarians as John Dury and Peter Serrarius.
26. Newton, Observations, pp. 251-2.
27. Some of this material appears in the first book of the Observations. Much of it is in the still
unpublished papers in the Yahuda collection in Jerusalem.
28. Hartley, Observations, Book II.
29. Thomas Newton, Dissertations on the Prophecies which have remarkably beenfulfilled, and at
this time are fUlfilling in the World, 3rd ed. (London, 1766.) These lectures were originally given in
1754.
30. See Horsley's note in the Opera Omnia. On Le Clerc's role, see Westfall, Never at Rest, pp.
312-3.
31. Cf. Popkin, "Newton and the Rise of Fundamentalism," and Popkin, "The Age of Reason
versus The Age of Revelation. Two Critics of Tom Paine: David Levi and Elias Boudinot," in
Deism, Masonry, and the Enlightenment. Essays Honoring Alfred Owen Aldridge, ed. J. A. Leo
Lemay (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1988), pp. 158-70, and Ruth Bloch, Visionary
Republic: Millennial Themes in American Thought 1756-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1985.)
32. Cf. Popkin, "Divine Causality: Newton and the Newtonians," pp. 50-3.
33. Cf. Popkin, "La Peyrere, the Abbe Gregoire, and the Jewish Question in the Eighteenth
Century," Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1975),
Vol. 4, pp. 209-22, and Popkin, "Newton and the Rise of Fundamentalism."
34. See Popkin, "La Peyrere, the Abbe Gregoire, and the Jewish Question."
35. Froom, Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, 3:344. Sarah Kochav has found many examples of
19th-century Fundamentalists who accepted Newton's apocalyptic interpretations.
36. Ibid., 2:661-2.
37. Ibid., 2:662.
38. See Popkin, "Newton and the Rise of Fundamentalism." Since I wrote my original paper, Sarah
Kochav of Tel Aviv University, in the course of preparing her doctoral dissertation on English
conversionist groups in the nineteenth century, has gathered a great deal of additional material on
the utilization of Newton by nineteenth century Millennialists.
39. Sarah Kochav has informed me that, in Joseph Wolff's Missionary Journal (London, 1829),
Vol. III, Wolff uses Newton as an example of a great philosopher who is also a prophet. Wolff had
come to the United States in 1837 to tell the government that the Millennium would begin in 1846.
Of this date, John Quincy Adams said, in his diary, '''Tis rather too soon." See Memoirs of John
Quincy Adams, Comprising of Portions of his Diary from 1795 to 1848, 10 vols. (Philadelphia: J.
B. Lippincott, 1874-7),9:7, the diary entry for June 3, 1838.
40. See Froom, Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, Vol. IV, Part III.
41. This appears in an article entitled "Sir Isaac Newton's Alleged Insanity" in the Christian
Observer (I 844), p. 777.
42. Ibid., pp. 778-9.
43. Ibid., p. 785.
44. Ibid., pp. 785-6.
45. There are many attempts to calculate the time of the end in Newton's unpublished papers.
46. Newton, Observations Upon the Prophecies, p. 251.
47. Ibid., pp. 251-2.
48. Ibid., pp. 252-3.
49. See "Preface de M. Michel Nostradamus a ses Propheties," in Nostradamus: Life and
Literature. Including all the Prophecies in French and English with Complete Index and Notes
(New York: Exposition Press, 1961), pp. 120-31. See also Popkin, "Predicting, Prophecying,
Divining and Foretelling from Nostradamus to Hume," History of European Ideas 5, No.2 (1984),
pp. 117-35.
50. Isaac T. Hinton, The Prophecies of Daniel and John (St. Louis, 1843), p. 231. Quoted in
Froom, Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, 4:874.
51. Froom, Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, 4:875.
52. Ibid., 2:660.

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53. Ibid. This manuscript is from the 1936 Sotheby auction sale. The Seventh Day Adventists told
me that they have no record as to when they acquired it. It is listed in the National Union Catalog of
Manuscripts as having been sold in 1942 by the Library of Congress for $200. The Library of
Congress insisted that they do not sell manuscripts when I asked about it and so they could not
understand this item.
54. Froom, Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, 2:665.
55. The Creed of the Niagara Conference is cited by Ernest R. Sandeen, The Origins of Fundamentalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), p. 273.
56. See the vast fundamentalist literature on Zionism and Palestine written over the last ninety
years.
57. William Whitla, Sir Isaac Newton's Daniel and the Apocalypse with an Introductory Study of
the Nature and the Cause of Unbelief, of Miracles and Prophecy (London: John Murray, 1922.)
58. Ibid., p. v.
59. Ibid., p. x.
60. Ibid., p. xi.
61. Ibid.
62. Ibid., p. 45.
63. Ibid., p. 49.
64. Ibid., p. 47.
65. Ibid., pp. 50--1.
66. Ibid., p. 67.
67. Ibid., p. 68.
68. Ibid., p. 112.
69. Ibid., p. 113.
70. Ibid.
71. Ibid., p. 121.
72. Ibid., p. 122.
73. Ibid.
74. Ibid.
75. Abraham Shalom Yahuda published his theory in The Language of the Pentateuch in its
Relation to Egyptian ... with a Hieroglyphic Appendix (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933) and
in The Accuracy of the Bible. The Stories of Joseph, the Exodus and Genesis confirmed and
illustrated by Egyptian Monuments and Language (London: William Heinmann, 1934.) Yahuda's
theory was criticized by Wilhelm Spiegelberg, the Egyptologist.
76. Yahuda's unfmished paper is in a box among the many other boxes of the Yahuda Collection
in Jerusalem. His markings occur throughout Newton's manuscripts.
77. See Popkin, "Newton as a Bible Scholar," supra. One version of why Newton believes that the
Book of Revelation must have been written by someone whose native language was Aramaic
appears in his Observations Upon the Prophecies, p. 238.
78. Yahuda was not present at the 1936 auction. He bought his collection from book dealers who
had acquired the auctioned documents. He went on acquiring manuscripts to the end of his life.
79. A friend ofYahuda's, who took part in deathbed discussions, has told me this.
80. Castillejo' s typed catalog is with the collection in Jerusalem. I was told of his efforts by Dr.
Mordekhai Nadav, the retired keeper of manuscripts at the National Library of Israel.
81. This work was published in Madrid by Ediciones de Arte y Bibliofilia in 1981.
82. Castillejo, The Expanding Force in Newton's Cosmos, p. 52.
83. Ibid., p. 54.
84. Ibid., p. 55.
85. A fundamentalist writer in Jerusalem, who had read in an Israeli newspaper that I had said that
Newton believed that the Jews would return to Palestine, recently telephoned me. He wanted to
know where to find the text. For better or worse, I suggested that he read Castillejo's book. We will
see what happens next.

JAMES E. FORCE

10. HUME'S INTEREST IN NEWTON AND SCIENCE

Many writers have been forced to examine - in their treatments of Hume's knowledge of
and acquaintance with scientific theories of his day - the related questions of Hume's
knowledge of and acquaintance with Isaac Newton and of the nature and extent of
Newtonian influences upon Hume's thinking. Most have concluded that - in some sense
- Hume was acquainted with and influenced by Newton's thought in particular and
scientific thought in general. I
The genesis of this paper is the recent point of view put forward by Peter Jones who
challenges the many permutations of this almost ritualistic standard line by removing
Hume entirely from the Newtonian and the scientific scenes of thought. Jones argues that
Hume knew less about Newton and science, and needed to know less about Newton and
science,2 than Jones believes is required by the above interpretation. Indeed, Jones argues
that Hume's fundamental assumptions, which, according to Jones, derive ultimately from
a form of Ciceronian humanism, drive a "wedge" between Newton's thought and that of
Hume. 3 Even Hume's introductory remarks in the Treatise about his universal "science
of man" are, for Jones, a declaration of independence from the materialistic trend (as
Jones sees it) of Newtonian science4 and not, as so many commentators have maintained
- however tenuously or strongly - evidence for linkage of Hume's project with Newtonian or scientific thought. 5
Jones argues that Hume totally lacked interest in science in general and in Newton and
Newtonian science in particular. Following J. H. Burton's observation that Hume's work
is surprisingly free from the "opinions" of contemporary scientists, Jones states that there
is no evidence that Hume ever studied science at the University of Edinburgh or that he
"pursued" scientific studies of any formal sort. 6 Regarding Newtonian scientific thought,
he emphasizes the paucity of specifically Newtonian scientific textbooks in the early
eighteenth century which might have been available for Hume to study7 and argues that
nowhere in Hume's writings is there evidence of precise and detailed knowledge beyond
what is available in Chamber's Cyciopaedia. 8 Jones acknowledges that, in the Introduction to the Treatise, Hume utilizes a "general version" of Newton's "Regulae
Philosophandi" from the beginning of Book III of Newton's Principia. Nevertheless, in
Jones' view, Hume's fundamentally humanistic orientation separates him completely
from any Newtonian influence.9 Finally, according to Jones, Hume does not betray the
least bit of knowledge of Newton's mathematics and its role in Newton's experimental
methodology.lO On this evidence Jones grounds his central claim regarding Hume's
"total lack of interest in contemporary science."11
What references there are to Newton and to science in Hume's works Jones finds
"traceable to essentially literary predecessors such as Fontenelle or Montesquieu, or to
181

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JAMES E. FORCE

standard works of theologians or free-thinkers."12 The absence of clearly direct

references to what Jones feels are scientific works results both from Hume's "total lack of
interest in science" and from his commitment to a form of Ciceronian humanism which is
"inimical" to what Jones finds to be the obvious materialistic tendencies of science in the
early modem period. \3
Jones' account of the Ciceronian and French contexts of Hume's thought is excellent.
But his claim that Hume had no interest whatsoever in science is simply too strong and
finally forces us to view science in Hume's day as equivalent to science in our own time,
a manifestly anachronistic point of view. Throughout this paper, my argument will be
conditioned by my view that Hume's interest in science cannot be separated from his
epistemology or his religious scepticism. Hume's interest in science was precisely that of
a man of letters of the 18th century vitally engaged in determining the proper use of
scientific methodology in establishing the limits of the secular science of man once it has
been freed from the fetters oftheology.14 Hume's interest in theological and epistemological issues inevitably gave rise to a strong interest on his part in the science of his day and
in Newton's contributions to it. Hume came at the end of great 16th- and 17th-century
traditions of secular theologians such as Galileo, Descartes, and Newton, who believed
that the new science rendered traditional modes of theologizing obsolete. In Hume' s case,
it renders the entire theological enterprise of his day empty and vain. 15
My project is to show that Hume is indeed interested in science and that he does in
fact utilize precise, possibly even direct, knowledge of Newton and other contemporary
commentators on science in his attacks upon the characteristic synthesis of science and
religion which marked his era. Hume's use of these materials in his religious scepticism
and also in his "science of man" shows that his interest is as important in his intellectual
makeup as any other tradition, including the Ciceronian and French backgrounds to his
thinking. That Hume's sort of scientific interest (and his sort of science) bears no
relationship to what an employee at the Cavendish Laboratory would call scientific is no
reason to treat it as not truly scientific, not serious somehow, or as evidence for both a
"total lack of interest in science" on the one hand and for the absolute centrality of some
other tradition or traditions in the background of Hume's philosophical development on
the other.
I attempt to establish Hume's interest in science in the following three sections of this
paper. The first section is a straightforward marshalling of Hume's eleven known direct
references to Newton in his published works. Hume is his own best spokesman regarding
his interest in and knowledge of Newton and I have quoted these passages at length.
The second section is more speculative. In it, I attempt to show that one much
overlooked aspect of Hume's attack on the design argument in the Dialogues (in Part
Two) may possibly be a direct reference to Newton's Principia.
The third and last section is an extremely brief attempt to sketch the wider aspect of
the scientific scene of thought in the 1720's, 30's and 40's and to show, from this survey,
that the doing of science at this time is inextricably bound up with religious philosophizing. The establishment of this point does much to correct the anachronistic view that
science then is the same as science now and consequently to illustrate the nature of
Hume's interest in science.

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183

I. Burne and Newton

To ascertain what Hume knew of Newton and how he used this knowledge, it is first
necessary to array the eleven direct references to Newton in Hume's writings in a roughly
chronological order.
(1) From the Treatise, published in 1740: 16
As long as we confine our speculations to the appearances of objects to our senses,
without entering into disquisitions concerning their real nature and operations, we are
safe from all difficulties, and can never be embarrass' d by any question.
If we carry our enquiry beyond the appearances of objects to the senses, I am afraid,
that most of our conclusions will be full of scepticism and uncertainty. Thus if it be
ask'd, whether or not the invisible and intangible distance be always full of body, or of
something that by an improvement of our organs might become visible or tangible, I
must acknowledge, that I find no very decisive arguments on either side; tho' I am
inclin'd to the contrary opinion, as being more suitable to vulgar and popular notions.
If the Newtonian philosophy be rightly understood, it will be found to mean no more.
A vacuum is asserted: That is, bodies are said to be plac'd after such a manner, as to
receive bodies betwixt them, without impulsion or penetration. The real nature of this
position of bodies is unknown. We are only acquainted with its effects on the senses,
and its power of receiving body. Nothing is more suitable to that philosophy, than a
modest scepticism to a certain degree, and a fair confession of ignorance in subjects,
that exceed all human capacity.
(2) From "Of the Middle Station of Life,"I7 an essay which appeared in the 1742 edition
of the Essays and which was then withdrawn from publication:
Were we to distinguish the Ranks of Men by the Genius and Capacity more than by
their Virtue and Usefulness to the Public, great Philosophers wou'd certainly challenge the first Rank, and must be plac'd at the Top of human Kind. So rare is this
Character, that perhaps, there has not, as yet, been above two in the World, who can
lay a just Claim to it. At least, Galilaeo and Newton seem to me so far to excel all the
rest, that I cannot admit any other into the same class with them.
(3) From "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences,"18 an essay first published
in 1742:
What checked the progress of the CARTESIAN philosophy, to which the FRENCH
nation shewed such a strong propensity towards the end of the last century, but the
opposition made to it by the other nations of Europe, who soon discovered the weak
sides of that philosophy? The severest scrutiny, which NEWTON'S theory has
undergone, proceeded not from his own countrymen, but from foreigners; and if it can
overcome the obstacles, which it meets with at present in all parts of Europe, it will
probably go down triumphant to the latest posterity.
(4) From A Letter from a Gentleman to his friend in Edinburgh, published in 1745: 19

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JAMES E. FORCE

No one, till Des Cartes and Malebranche, ever entertained an Opinion that Matter had
no Force either primary or secondary, and independent or concurrent, and could not
so much as properly be called an Instrument in the Hands of the Deity, to serve any of
the Purposes of Providence. These Philosophers last-mentioned substituted the Notion
of occasional Causes, by which it was asserted that a Billiard Ball did not move
another by its Impulse, but was only the Occasion why the Deity, in pursuance of
general Laws, bestowed Motion on the second Ball. But tho' this Opinion be very
innocent, it never gained as too much contrary to received popular Opinions, and too
little supported by Philosophical Arguments, ever to be admitted as any thing but a
mere Hypothesis. Cudworth, Lock, and Clark make little or no mention of it. Sir Isaac
Newton (tho' some of his Followers have taken a different Tum of thinking) plainly
rejects it, but substituting the Hypothesis of an Aetheral Fluid, not the immediate
Volition of the Deity, as the Cause of Attraction. And, in short, this has been a Dispute
left entirely to the Arguments of Philosophers, and in which Religion has never been
supposed to be in the least concerned.
(5) From the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,20 published in 1748:
I need not examine the vis inertiae which is so much talked of in the new philosophy,
and which is ascribed to matter. We find by experience, that a body at rest or in
motion continues for ever in its present state, till put from it by some new cause; and
that a body impelled takes as much motion from the impelling body as it acquires
itself. These are facts. When we call this a vis inertiae, we only mark these facts,
without pretending to have any idea of the inert power; in the same manner as when
we talk of gravity, we mean certain effects, without comprehending that active power.
It was never the meaning of Sir ISAAC NEWTON to rob second causes of all force of
energy; though some of his followers have endeavoured to establish that theory upon
his authority. On the contrary, that great philosopher had recourse to an etherial active
fluid to explain his universal attraction; though he was so cautious as to allow, that it
was a mere hypothesis, not to be insisted on, without more experiments.
(6) From An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, published in 1751:
Thus we seem, upon the whole, to have attained a knowledge of the force of that
principle here insisted on, and can determine what degree of esteem or moral approbation may result from reflections on public interest and utility. The necessity of justice
to the support of society is the sole foundation of that virtue; and since no moral
excellence is more highly esteemed, we may conclude that this circumstance of
usefulness has, in general, the strongest energy, and most entire command over our
sentiments. It must, therefore, be the source of a considerable part of the merit
ascribed to humanity, benevolence, friendship, public spirit, and other social virtues of
that stamp; as it is the sole source of the moral approbation paid to fidelity, justice,
veracity, integrity, and those other estimable and useful qualities and principles. It is
entirely agreeable to the rules of philosophy, and even of common reason; where any
principle has been found to have a great force and energy in one instance, to ascribe to
it a like energy in all similar instances. This indeed is Newton's chief rule of
philosophizing.!
1 Principia, Lib. iii. (E 203-204)21

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185

(7) In the spring of 1751, Hume's brother, the 42-year-old bachelor, John Hume of
Ninewells, married Agnes Carre of Cavers, the daughter of another border laird. This
letter from Hume to his cousin, Mrs. Dysart, refers to that event: 22
Our Friend [John Hume] , at last, pluckt up a resolution, & has ventur'd on that
dangerous encounter. He went off on Monday morning; and this is the first action of
his life, wherein he has engag'd himself without being able to compute exactly the
consequences. But what Arithmetic will serve to fix the proportion betwixt good &
bad Wives, & rate the different classes of each? Sir Isaac Newton himself, who cou'd
measure the courses of the planets, and weigh the Earth as in a pair of scales, even he
had not Algebra enough to reduce that amiable Part of our species to a just equation:
and they are the only heavenly bodies, whose orbits are yet uncertain.
(8) From the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part 3. Though not published until
1779, both Norman Kemp Smith and M.A. Stewart have concluded that this section of
the Dialogues was finished by 1751:23
CLEANTHES: In reality, would not a man be ridiculous, who pretended to reject
NEWTON'S explication of the wonderful phenomenon of the rainbow, because that
explication gives a minute anatomy of the rays of light; a subject, forsooth, too refined
for human comprehension?
(9) From The History of England, published in 1754:24
That James was a middling writer may be allowed: that he was a contemptible one,
can by no means be admitted. Whoever will read his Basilicon Doron, particularly the
last two books, the true law of free monarchies, his answer to cardinal Perron, and
almost all his speeches and messages to parliament, will confess him to have possessed no mean genius. If he wrote concerning witches and apparitions; who in that
age, did not admit the reality of these fictitious beings? If he has composed a commentary on the Revelations, and proved the pope to be antichrist; may not a similar
reproach be extended to the famous writer Napier; and even to Newton, at a time when
leaming was much more advanced than during the reign of James? From the grossness
of its superstitions, we may infer the ignorance of an age; but never should pronounce
conceming the folly of an individual, from his admitting popular errors, consecrated
by the appearance of religion.
(10) From The History of England, published in 1756:25

In 1677, the old law for buming heretics was repealed; a prudent measure, while the
nation was in continual dread of the retum of popery.
Amidst the thick cloud of bigotry and ignorance, which overspread the nation,
during the commonwealth and protectorship, there were a few sedate philosophers,
who, in the retirment of Oxford, cultivated their reason, and established conferences
for the mutual communication of their discoveries in physics and geometry. Wilkins, a
clergyman, who had married CromweI's sister, and was afterwards bishop of Chester,
promoted these philosophical conversations. Immediately after the restoration, these
men procured a patent, and having enlarged their number, were denominated Royal
Society. But this patent was all they obtained from the king. Though Charles was a
lover of the sciences, particularly chymistry and mechanics; he animated them by his

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JAMES E. FORCE

example alone, not by his bounty. His craving courtiers and mistresses, by whom he
was perpetually surrounded, engrossed all his expence, and left him neither money nor
attention for literary merit. His contemporary, Lewis, who fell short of the king's
genius and knowledge in this particular, much exceeded him in liberality. Besides
pensions conferred on learned men throughout all Europe, his academies were directed
by rules and supported by salaries: A generosity which does great honour to his
memory; and, in the eyes of all the ingenious part of mankind, will be esteemed an
atonement for many of the errors of his reign. We may be surprized, that this example
should not be more followed by princes; since it is certain that that bounty, so
extensive, so beneficial, and so much celebrated, cost not this monarch so great a sum
as is often conferred on one useless overgrown favourite or courtier.
But though the French academy of sciences was directed, encouraged and supported by the sovereign, there arose in England some men of superior genius who
were more than sufficient to cast the balance, and who drew on themselves and on
their native country the regard and attention of Europe. Besides Wilkins, Wren,
Wallis, eminent mathematicians, Hooke, an accurate observer by microscopes, and
Sydenham, the restorer of true physic; there flourished during this period a Boyle and
a Newton; men who trod with cautious, and therefore the more secure steps, the only
road which leads to true philosophy.
Boyle improved the pneumatic engine invented by Otto Guericke, and was thereby
enabled to make several new and curious experiments on the air, as well as on other
bodies: His chemistry is much admired by those who are acquainted with that art: His
hydrostatics contain a greater measure of reasoning and invention with experiment
than any other of his works; but his reasoning is still remote from that boldness and
temerity which had led astray so many philosophers. Boyle was a great partizan of the
mechanical philosophy; a theory, which, by discovering some of the secrets of nature,
and allowing us to imagine the rest, is so agreeable to the natural vanity and curiosity
of men. He died in 1691, aged 65.
In Newton this island may boast of having produced the greatest and rarest genius
that ever arose for the ornament and instruction of the species. Cautious in admitting
no principles but such as were founded on experiment; but resolute to adopt every
such principle, however new or unusual: From modesty, ignorant of his superiority
above the rest of mankind; and thence, less careful to accommodate his reasonings to
common apprehensions: More anxious to merit than to acquire fame: He was, from
these causes, long unknown to the world; but his reputation at last broke out with a
lustre, which scarcely any writer, during his own life-time, had ever before attained.
While Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he
shewed at the same time the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy; and thereby
restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity in which they ever did and ever will
remain. He died in 1727, aged 85.
(11) From The Natural History of Religion, published in 1757: 26
It is for the same reason, I maintain, that Newton, Locke, Clarke, etc. being Arians or
Socinians, were very sincere in the creed they profest: And I always oppose this
argument to some libertines, who will needs have it, that it was impossible, but that
these philosophers must have been hypocrites.

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187

It is true that in none of these texts does Hume discuss any of the earth-shattering
mechanical propositions of the Principia, But whatever these texts mayor may not
indicate about Hume's knowledge of Newton's mathematics and mechanics, they reveal
emphatically that he is interested in Newton's contributions to the science of his day. His
interest is clearly to enlist Newton's methodological principles, the famous "Rules of
Reasoning," for his own philosophical enterprise of establishing the limits of human
understanding in his own new "science of man." Hume also makes clear that many of
Newton's followers go beyond the strictures of the "Rules" in their explanations regarding the vacuum, second causes, and God as a causal agent; Newton's "Rules" rightly
limit enquiry into the "hidden springs and principles," the "ultimate secrets" of nature,
and Hume unbashfully claims to understand Newton on this point better than Newton's
followers. Hume firmly emphasizes that Newton's religious heterodoxy is both sincere
and chiefly due to the defects and ignorance of Newton's historical era which influenced
his theological enthusiasm for such doctrines as millennialism. Hume also makes clear
that this particular aspect of Newton's thought is distasteful to him because it goes
beyond the boundaries of decent scepticism. Finally, Hume's understanding of and
appreciation for Newton's reputation, which Hume regards as the righteous consequence
of Newton's modest scientific methodology, is evident.
These texts speak eloquently to Hume's interest in Newton's thought. On the question
of Hume's interest in Newton it does not matter that Hume writes nothing of conic
sections or the lunar apogee and that he may possibly have learned what he does know
about Newton's ideas from other, even literary or theological, sources. Like Boyle, Hume
often speaks with the vulgar while he thinks with the learned. Hume is an eighteenthcentury man of letters attempting to understand the limits of knowledge and, in so far as
the problem of science is the problem of what one can know about unobservable
mechanisms, his interest is riveted upon Newton whom he sees as a great ally in the
cause of moderate scepticism.

II. Hume's Use of Newton's "Rules of Reasoning" in his

Criticism of the Design Argument
Hume's interest in what one can know about unobservable mechanisms in the physical
world of nature, and his intense admiration for Newton's "Rules" in this regard, carries
over into his religious scepticism which quite possibly may be, in part, a brilliant
application of Newton's own "Rules of Reasoning" to an aspect of Hume's criticism of
the design argument. It even seems possible that Hume may derive his understanding of
Newton's "Rules" from his own direct reading of Newton's text.
Hume's manner of referring to authors whom he has read and pillaged is not often a
direct footnote [such as in the footnote to Newton's "chief rule of philosophizing" in the
Principia cited above from the second Enquiry as text (6)]. It is virtually impossible to
catch all the echoes of other writers' words and phrasings as Hume assimilates, recasts,
and transforms them in the forge of his genius. Such echoes to other works abound in his
works, but loom especially in the Dialogues.

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JAMES E. FORCE

In the Dialogues, Hume, through his spokesman, Philo, repeats for the sake of clarity
that the underlying principle of the design argument is the proposition that "Like Effects
prove Like Causes." (D 165) The mainspring of the argument as stated by both Cleanthes
and Philo is in fact a close paraphrase, almost a direct quote, of Newton's second "Rule"
of reasoning concerning the principle of uniformity with respect to causes,21 The
Newtonian philosopher, William Whiston, who follows Bentley, Newton, and Hume
himself in grounding the design argument upon this "Rule," states that this "Rule" is so
"clear, natural, obvious, and sure," that it is grasped "without occasion for a tutor to
instruct us in it at first, or for a Logician to improve us in it afterward. "28
Hume does not attack this "Rule" of reasoning. His first move is to attack, beginning
in Part 2, the instantiation of this rule for the purposes of the design argument. Hume
argues that the works of man do not closely resemble the works of nature. The balance of
the Dialogues is largely devoted to offering possible alternative analogies or models
which may possibly, sometimes even plausibly, account for the observed order in our
every day experience.
His second move is more intriguing. He attacks the improper understanding of the
second "Rule" on the part of Newtonian design theists (including Newton) in a distinctive
and highly ironic fashion which suggests that Hume may have derived his own understanding of Newtonian methodology from a close and direct reading of this section of the
Principia.
Philo initiates this aspect of his attack when he states, in Part 2, that "A very small part
of this great system, during a very short time, is very imperfectly discovered to us: And
do we thence pronounce decisively concerning the origin of the whole?" (D 149) Hume
makes this second objection again and again: "But can a conclusion, with any propriety,
be transferred from parts to the whole?" (D 147); or, finally, "And will any man tell me
with a serious countenance, that an orderly universe must arise from some thought and
art, like the human; because we have experience of it? To ascertain this reasoning, it were
requisite, that we had experience of the origin of worlds .... " (D 149-50)
The first three of Newton's "Rules of Reasoning" must be read in the light of Newton's crucial fourth "Rule":

In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general

induction from phaenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any
contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phaenomena occur,
by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.
This rule we must follow that the argument of induction may not be evaded by
hypotheses. 29
This rule qualifies the first three. According to Rule 4 every inference from experience,
no matter how general or clearly derived from past experience, is fallible and corrigible
and must be continually subjected to experimental verification, i.e., to the test of
experience. Experience, especially in science, is the ultimate test. Without the limiting
Rule 4, Rule 1 (the principle of simplicity) and Rules 2 and 3 (variations of the principle
of uniformity) may be read as a priori or "imagined" hypotheses which "evade" the test
of experience.30
In the Dialogues, the point of Hume's seemingly innocent queries about the apparent

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189

inadequacy of reasoning from the part to the whole is that all design theorists - Newton
and Newton's followers alike - read the second "Rule," "Like Effects prove Like
Causes," as a hypothetical, a priori assumption or hypothesis about the nature of the
universe. Newton and other design theorists, in their assertions regarding the design
analogy and without any direct empirical experience, feign the metaphysical hypothesis
that nature will continue to be found to be uniform with respect to causes. Hume argues
simply that the part cannot be made the rule for the whole in advance of experience of the
whole.
In his discussion of the problem of induction in the first Enquiry, Hume makes clear
the logical basis for the difficulty encountered by this aspect of the design inference. He
writes:
When a man says, I have found, in all past instances, such sensible qualities conjoined
with secret powers: And when he says, Similar sensible qualities will always be
conjoined with similar secret powers, he is not guilty of a tautology, nor are these
propositions in any respect the same. You say that the one proposition is an inference
from the other. But you must confess that the inference is not intuitive; neither is it
demonstrative: Of what nature is it, then? To say it is experimental, is begging the
question. For all inferences from experience suppose, as their foundation, that the
future will resemble the past, and that similar powers will be conjoined with similar
sensible qualities. If there be any suspicion that the course of nature may change, and
that the past may be no rule for the future, all experience becomes useless, and can
give rise to no inference or conclusion. (E 37-38)
As Hume remarks slightly earlier in his discussion, "Where is the medium, the interposing ideas, which join propositions so very wide of each other?" (E 37) In the case of the
design inference, the demonstration of a causal deity of the whole of creation of a
particular sort relies on a "medium" which we must forever lack. We must have a
complete and perfect sample of experience to make such an inference, not, as with the
Newtonian design theorists, only the a priori assumption that, as in the past, so, too in the
future, "Like Effects will prove Like Causes." As Hume states in Part 2 of the Dialogues,
"To ascertain this reasoning, it were requisite, that we had experience of the origin of
worlds" as well as experience of the totality of creation. Hume argues that
when we look beyond human affairs and the properties of the surrounding bodies:
When we carry our speculations into the two eternities, before and after the present
state of things; into the creation and formation of the universe; the existence and
properties of spirits; the powers and operations of one universal spirit, existing without
beginning and without end; omnipotent, omniscient, immutable, infinite, and incomprehensible: We must be far removed from the smallest tendency to scepticism not to
be apprehensive that we have here got quite beyond the reach of our faculties. (D
134-35)
For Hume and for Newton it is perfectly acceptable to reason from the part to the whole
so long as the scientist or design theorist recognizes that such reasoning is fallible and
corrigible and has the ontological status of a regulative hypothesis adopted as a

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methodological assumption only and which is always subject to the checks and revisions
of future experience. Hume, in text (10) cited above, explains that Newton is a greater
natural philosopher than Boyle because he puts the "Imaginary" mechanical philosophy
back into the bottle by cautiously refusing to countenance any "principles but such as
were founded on experiments" thereby restoring Nature's "ultimate secrets to that
obscurity in which they ever did and ever will remain." For Hume, all design theorists,
including Newton, go wrong when they forget this crucial and cautious procedure and, in
their inferences concerning the nature of the deity, read Rule 2 without the governing,
regulative Rule 4. This is precisely what Hume says of Newton's followers in his direct
references to them quoted at length above [see, especially, text (5)] and, in his design
argument, Newton is himself guilty of the same thing.
Hume thus cautiously applauds Galileo's own proper limitation of inductive inferences in the Dialogues. Only after the observations of the telescope "enabled us to
extend the same arguments and phenomena from one to the other," (D 151) does Galileo
conclude that the substance of the earth is similar to or analogous with that of the earth.
For Hume, it really doesn't matter how much apparent evidence of design and order is
turned up by all the new sciences because that catalog can never be complete. But design
theorists read that catalog in a false light by assuming that the future course of experience
will continue to show that Like Effects prove Like Causes. But Rule 2 is not the rule for
the whole of creation in advance of empirical experiments. Instead, it is, as Rule 4
dictates, merely a regulative principle intended to guide future enquiry after the manner
of Newton's utilization of the "hypothesis" (in the non-pejorative sense of the term
because it is understood in the light of Rule 4) of an "Aetheral Fluid" to account,
possibly, should experiments confirm it, for action at a distance. 31 [See texts (3) and (4)
above.]
I do not argue that Hume necessarily derives his view concerning the limitations of the
argument from induction from his reading of Newton's fourth 'Rule' of reasoning. But, I
do believe that his criticism of this aspect of the design argument in Part 2 of the
Dialogues is a self-conscious and resounding echo to this part of the Principia. I now
want to try to show the plausibility for the view that Hume's understanding of the
regulative function of Rule 4 possibly derives from his own close reading of this part of
the Principia. This part of my argument is limited by my knowledge of the sources from
which Hume may possibly have read this interpretation of Rule 4 in the same way that
the design argument is limited by our finite human experience of creation: my experience
is not complete or perfect. Jones emphasizes the paucity of Newtonian textbooks and
commentaries when he argues that nowhere in Hume's writings is there evidence of a
precise and detailed knowledge of Newton beyond what is available in Chamber's
Cyclopaedia. The opposite is more nearly the case. I. B. Cohen and A. Koyre once
proposed a history of the commentaries on the Principia and abandoned the project when
they realized that it would necessitate a book of some "1,500-2,400 pages of small
type."32 I do not pretend to have the knowledge of all of the commentaries on the
Principia necessary to claim that Hume's understanding of the proper way of reading
Rule 4 stems from his direct reading of the Principia itself, but I think it quite likely that
this is the case.
First, in fairness to Jones, I think that Hume was familiar with Chambers' article on
"Newtonian Philosophy." This article is probably the source for Hume's remark in text

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191

(2) above concerning the slow progress abroad of Newton's thought as well as, perhaps,
for Hume's knowledge of gravitation which is what the bulk of the three folio columns of
the article addresses under the heading of "the new principles which Sir Isaac Newton has
brought into philosophy."33 But Chambers' article does not once mention Newton's
"Rules of Reasoning."
Are there any Newtonian textbooks or commentaries which do refer to Newton's
'Rules' and especially to the proper way to interpret the crucial Rule 4? At this point, it is
necessary to give an account of the development of the famous "Regulae Philosophandi"
with which Newton begins Book III of the Principia. 34 Newton writes the crucial fourth
Rule only for the third edition of the Principia published in 1726 under the editorship of
Henry Pemberton. Naturally enough, none of the commentaries on the first two editions
of the Principia, such as those by David Gregory,35 or John Keill,36 can therefore
mention this crucial 'Rule.'
Commentaries on the third edition after 1726 such as those by John Clarke,37 and the
editor of the third edition, Henry Pemberton,38 do give brief glosses of Rule 4, but do not
discuss it in connection with the problem of induction or, more importantly, in connection with the design argument. Even Colin Maclaurin, a famous Newtonian commentator
with whom Hume possibly studied while a student, makes no mention of the "Rules of
Reasoning" in his posthumously published Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical
Discoveries (1748.)39
None of the popularizers of the Newtonian design argument, even those such as
William Whiston or Wilhelm Jacob 'sGravesande40 who specifically mention the role of
the first three "Rules of Reasoning" (which had appeared in different form in the first two
editions) in connection with the design argument, seek to limit the design argument by
demanding either an experimental observation of the original creation or a complete and
perfect experience of the whole of the completed creation. Whiston and 'sGravesande
produce versions of the design argument exactly like that of Cleanthes in the Dialogues
or that of Newton in the General Scholium as a consequence.
It seems at least possible that by 1750 Hume sees that Rule 4, interpreted as a guide
for shaping our expectations regarding future experience (which the actual experience
may well prove unjustified), applies to Rules I, 2, and 3 and consequently limits the
design inference sufficiently to destroy it for the purposes of Christian apologetics. Not
only is Hume justified in his direct claim above to have understood Newton more
accurately than Newton's disciples, it seems clear that, regarding the design argument,
Hume understands Newton better than Newton understood himself.41
I would add only that Hume's interpretation of Newton's 'Rules' - and especially of
Rule 4 and his acute awareness of its possibilities when deployed in his new "science of
man" for illustrating the limits of human understanding regarding knowledge of propositions about things unobserved and unobservable - given my interpretation above,
probably derives from his own close reading of Newton's text. At least, I have been able
to find no other properly Newtonian source which utilizes Rule 4 in this fashion. 42
Finally, however, even if Hume's knowledge of the problem of induction and of the
application of Rule 4 to the design argument does derive from some contemporary
Newtonian source, or even some other source altogether, and not from his own reading
and internalizing of Rule 4, his interest in these 'Rules' is beyond doubt.

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Ill. Science in 18th.Century Society and Hurne

Just as Hume's interest in Newton's thought is a vital and serious one, it seems to me that
his interest in science in general is also quite serious given his goal of completely
destroying the unique synthesis of science and religion which existed in the first half of
the 18th century. Echoing J. H. Burton's view about the sutprising lack of "opinions"
from contemporary scientists in Hume's writings, Jones argues that such opinions could
have buttressed and illuminated Hume's arguments, especially in the Dialogues. Hume's
lack of interest in science and consequent ignorance of these works prevented him from
utilizing them. What scientific theorizing there is in Hume's rhetoric, argues Jones,
derives not from serious scientific works but is "traceable to essentially literary predecessors such as Fontenelle or Montesquieu or to the standard works of theologians or freethinkers. "43
As in the case of Hume's interest in Newton, Hume's interest in general science is
precisely what one ought to expect from an 18th-century man of letters curious about all
intellectual topics of contemporary importance but whose special project is to define the
limits of human enquiry and banish from it any sort of theology, natural or revealed. The
fact that so many of Hume's arguments rely on examples traceable to sources which we
today should characterize as literary, theological, or deistic, and not as "scientific," tells
us more about science in our day than it does about science in Hume's time when religion
was an integral part of the scientific entetprise.
For a rough gauge about how critically-minded men of letters viewed science as part
and parcel of theology in the first half of the 18th century, a cursory survey of the
Gentleman's Magazine is a useful starting point. 44 The most random sampling reveals a
dazzling range of scientific news and information in juxtaposition with theological and
doctrinal controversies.
In 1734, Hume describes the symptoms of his "Disease of the Leamed" and travels to
La Fleche to write the Treatise. In the Gentleman's Magazine for that year, amongst all
the travel reports, political opinions, literary satires, and general news of the happenings
in the republic of letters there are, in each monthly issue, a "Register of Books Publish' d"
including those on scientific topics such as chemistry,45 and "Philosophy and Physick."46 There is also an essay in which the writer replies to a previously published
essayist and advises him to study Edmund Law's book entitled An Enquiry into the Ideas
of Space, Time, Immensity, and Eternity and Joseph Clarke's book entitled A Further
Examination of Dr. Clarke's Notions of Space. The writer of this essay then explains why
these works on scientific metaphysics are important:
I would more especially advise him to study the Dissertation on the Argument a
priori; which may teach him the Meaning of the Terms, shew how they are misapplied
to the divine Existence, and of what Importance it is both to Religion and Science to
throw them off, and rest the Proof of a Deity upon a more solid and rational Foundation .... If the Argument a priori had no better Advocates than this Gentleman, as it
has been losing Ground daily, and sensibly decaying for some time, I apprehend it will
soon be quite out of Doors, and sent to seek its Fortune among the occult Qualities of
the old Philosophers. We may venture to foretel, without the Gift of Prophecy, that it

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193

will find no Admittance no where, but among the Castle-builders in Infinite Space, or
among Squarers of the Circle, and Searchers after the Philosopher's Stone. 47
In 1739, two years after writing to Henry Home of Kames about the excision of the essay
"Concerning Miracles" from the Treatise,48 the Treatise is published and Hume claims,
in another letter to Henry Home, that it may provoke a "total alteration in philosophy.'049
In that year there also appears in the Gentleman's Magazine a lengthy "Life of Dr.
Boerhaave." The author of this article describes Boerhaave's scientific empiricism and
concludes with a telling example of its application:

When he [Boerhaave] laid down his office of Govemor of the University in 1715, he
made an Oration upon the Subject of attaining of certainty in natural Philosophy; in
which he declares, in the strongest Terms, in favour of Experimental Knowledge, and
reflects with just Severity upon those arrogant Philosophers, who are too easily
disgusted with the slow Methods of obtaining true Notions by frequent Experiments
.... He never doubted of the spiritual and immaterial Nature of the Soul, but declared
that he had lately had a kind of experimental Certainty of the Distinction between
Corporeal and Thinking Substances, which mere Reason and Philosophy cannot
afford, and Opportunities of contemplating the wonderful and inexplicable Union of
soul and Body, which nothing but long Sickness can give. This he illustrated by a
Description of the Effects which the infirmities of his Body had upon his Faculties ....50
In 1751, the year in which Hume concludes at least the first three parts of the Dialogues
and is the first non-medical man elected Secretary (jointly) of the Philosophical Society
of Edinburgh, there are in the Gentleman's Magazine lengthy articles on the properties of
air,51 cosmology,52 Dr. Pringle's experiments on putrefaction and antisepsis,58 Newton's
definition of light as a means of confuting the author "of the dissertation of the trinity in
unity illustrated by the scripture type,"54 and the text of Maupertuis' speech to the Royal
Academy of Berlin which concludes:

I have thus enumerated all the sciences, which are now the objects of our labour and
attentions; but I have not mentioned one, which was the principal concern of this
society and its first establishment. The first article in the rules of the royal academy
imported, that one of its classes should be applied to the study of religion, and the
conversion of infidels an article, which is perhaps less remarkable for substance than
form. By our modern regulation no particular class is appropriated to this work, which
may be considered as common to all: For in the study of Nature are discovered
indubitable evidences of the existence of deity: His wisdom, and the laws by which he
regulates the universe, are learnt from geometrical truths .... 55
These few examples illustrate the synthesis of science and religion in the first half of the
18th century. One of Hume's most basic purposes in erecting his new "science of man" is
to attack this synthesis as it exists and wherever it exists. It is no wonder that it doesn't
sound "scientific" in any modern sense given the integration of science with religion in
Hume's day and Hume's intention to sever the connection.
But even within this context, I believe, in contrast to Jones, that there are distinct
echoes of scientific theories of which Hume was aware and which Hume used consciously as 'grist for the mill' of his religious scepticism. Once again these are brief and

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concealed references, reverberations only, but which have to count as evidence of

Hume's interest in the science of his day.
In the Dialogues, Hume shows awareness for recent scientific developments in
astronomy, optics, psychology, geology, microscopy, cosmogony, and electricity as well
as, most importantly, insight into how to adapt data from these scientific fields for his
religious scepticism.
In astronomy, Hume displays knowledge of the development of proof for the Copernican doctrine and argues that the only sort of proof Galileo has for this theory is founded
upon the same Newtonian Principle of Uniformity (Rule 2) as is Cleanthes' design
argument. The important difference is that Galileo's view that terrestrial matter is
uniformly analogous with lunar and supralunar matter is firmly based upon the telescopic
observations of the Jovian moons in contrast to Cleanthes' imagined, a priori hypothesis
of metaphysical uniformity throughout the whole of the universe in advance of our
experience. (D 136; and especially 151) Furthermore, Hume is explicit about the use of
astronomical discoveries by design theorists. Philo puts this point forcefully:
All the new discoveries in astronomy, which prove the immense grandeur and
magnificence of the works of nature, are so many additional arguments for a Deity,
according to the true system of theism: But, according to your hypothesis of experimental theism, they become so many objections, by removing the effect still
farther from all resemblance to the effects of human art and contrivance. (D 165)56
Specific resonances to Newton's Opticks exist in the Treatise and occur in the Dialogues
as well. 57 Cleanthes asserts that "Light is in reality anatomized" (D 136), thus accurately
repeating Newton's theory from the Opticks, Book One, Part II, Prop. IX, Prob. IV,
which is Newton's account of rainbows by the "Refraction of the Sun's Light in drops of
falling Rain."58 Cleanthes directly attributes this theory to Newton when he claims that
anybody "who pretended to reject NEWTON'S explication of the wonderful
phenomenon of the rainbow, because that explication gives a minute anatomy of the rays
oflight" would be simply "ridiculous." (D 136)
In addition to references to the discovery of the nature of light and "true system of the
heavenly bodies" (D 136), Hume, as befits a scientist of human nature, mentions the
mechanistic human psychology of Thomas Hobbes and David Hartley in his passing
reference to human thought as merely the "agitation of the brain." (D 148) If this
mechanistic theory is correct, argues Hume, how little reason there is to make human
thought the model for the apparent order in the whole of creation.
In geology, Hume seems at one point to build his case against the design theorists on
the basis of current speculation about the theory of mountain-building. He argues that the
design analogy can be utilized to support the ancient Greek theory that the earth is like
the body of an animal because "A continual circulation of matter in it produces no
disorder: A continual waste in every part is incessantly repaired: The closest sympathy is
perceived throughout the entire system: And each part or member, in performing its
proper offices, operates both to its own preservation and to that of the whole." (D 170-1)
Hume mayor may not be referring to the geological model of mountain-building by the
cyclical process of uplift and erosion, but it seems likely that this is what he has in mind
with this example, especially when Philo then goes on to refer to the existence of marine
fossils high in the Alps and other evidence that dry land was once covered by water. (D
174)59

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The welter of publicity surrounding the discoveries of microscopists and the immediate co-opting of these discoveries to buttress the synthesis of religion and science in
the early decades of the 18th century lie behind Cleanthes' argument about how the
revelation of this new universe in parvo provides the design theorist with more evidence
for the design analogy. Philo counters by pointing out that such discoveries actually
weaken the design analogy by illustrating yet again that the cause of such magnificently
designed effects must "be vastly different from mankind, or from any object of human
experience and observation." (D 166)60 The further our knowledge of anatomy,
chemistry, and botany increases, Hume argues, the more apparent this dissimilarity
becomes. (D 166)61
In cosmogony, Hume displays familiarity with the then widespread theory that the
earth had, at one time, been a comet. Hume states that a comet may be "the seed of a
world; and after it has been fully ripened, by passing from sun to sun, and star to star, it is
at last tossed into the unformed elements, which everywhere surround this universe, and
immediately sprouts up into a new system." (D 177) Hume may here be referring either
to Descartes or, what is as likely, to the widely known theory of William Whiston
espoused in Whiston's New Theory o/the Earth. 62
Finally, from the first decade of the 18th century, electrical phenomena had been the
focus of increasing scientific speculation. It was some electrical experiments which had
provoked Newton's late hypothesis about the existence of a subtle "Aetheral Fluid"
throughout the universe which caused gravity. Just as Hume repeats that there is no
ultimate explanation for why gravity exists, he argues that there is no such explanation
for electrical phenomena. (D 182)63 Hume's juxtaposing of the incomprehensibility of
aether with the incomprehensibility of both electricity and elasticity hints, at least, that
Hume knows of this late turn in Newton's thought. 64

IV. Conclusion
Hume's interest in Newton and science is beyond doubt. He knows what he needs to
know about both, which is quite a bit, given his purposes and the context of science in the
society of his time. To dismiss Hume's short, veiled allusions to scientific theories in the
Dialogues as "essentially literary" or the product of non-scientific sources is to ignore the
focus of an Enlightenment man of letters upon the synthesis of science and religion in his
day and to eliminate both the direct and veiled references to the scientific works which
Hume does make as simply impossible a priori. To argue that Hume exhibits a "total lack
of interest in science" anachronistically redefines the parameters of 18th-century science
while ignoring an important historical fact such as Hume's election to the post of Goint)
Secretary to the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh. As joint Secretary, Hume edited two
volumes of essays on medicine, astronomy, optics, meteorology, physiology, and
biology. Benjamin Franklin actually sent Hume, as Secretary to the Philosophical Society
of Edinburgh, an essay on lightning rods and it is interesting to speculate whether Hume
may possibly have discussed the opposing theories of Franklin and King George III with
Sir John Pringle, President of the Royal Society and one of Hume's physicians in his final
illness. 65

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Echoing one of his own very early statements (in his letter from 1734 to, in all
probability, John Arbuthnot) and following his election as joint Secretary of the
Philosophical Society, Hume prefaces the first volume of scientific essays published
under his supervision with an explanation about why the Philosophical Society of
Edinburgh chooses not to treat "the sciences of theology, morals, and politics":
However difficult the inferences in these sciences [i.e., theology, morals, and politics],
the facts on which they are founded, are extremely obvious; and we could not hope, by
our collections, to be in this respect of any service to the public. The great delicacy of
the subject, the imperfections of human understanding, the various attachments and
inclinations of mankind, will for ever propagate disputes with regard to these parts of
erudition. And it is the peculiar happiness of geometry and physics that as they interest
less the passions of men, they admit of more calm disquisition and inquiry.66
Hume "lived widely, read widely (in Greek, Latin, French, and Italian), and wrote
widely.'067 The attempt to choose one context as the primary background for Hume's
eclectic philosophy focuses Hume too narrOWly. He is a man of letters in the 18th century
and is indebted to Newton as well as to Cicero, to Hobbes as well as to contemporary
Scottish debates in science, natural religion, and metaphysics. In the final expression of
his thought, his transforming genius must also be acknowledged.68

Notes
1. I do not intend to examine in great detail all the varying interpretations of Hume's thought
which treat Hume's interests in science, Newton, and Newton's possible influences upon Hume's
philosophical development. By and large, these interpretations fall into four categories (although
parts of one interpretation may be integrated into another):
(1) The "Model" School of Interpretation. Many writers, such as James Collins, Barry Stroud,
John Laird, and Antony Flew, have argued that Hume's attempt to develop a secular basis for
the "science of man" (and to make all other disciplines subsidiary to it) is "Newtonian" in
inspiration. Just as Newton's one, unifying, general principle of gravitation covers the movements of falling sparrows and orbiting moons, Hume's principles of mental association provide
a completely general explanation of human behavior.
(2) The "Methodological Influence" School of Interpretation. Some writers, such as Duncan
Forbes, Norman Kemp Smith, and James Noxon, have discerned and emphasized Newton's
influence on Hume's philosophy chiefly in Hume's experimental methodology which, as with
Newton's, is grounded in experiments and empirical observations. Occasionally, as in the work
of James Noxon (see Note 41 below), this school of interpretation is accompanied by a
developmental corollary according to which Newton's methodological influence on Hume holds
only during Hume's youth and that, with age and philosophical maturity, Hume outgrows this
early influence.
(3) The "Strong" School of Interpretation. Proponents of this view, such as Nicholas Capaldi
and David Miller, hold aspects of both the preceding Schools of Interpretation and so view the
influence of Newton on Hume to be very strong.
(4) The "Contextualist" School. Writers in this category are distinguished by their approach
to the study of Hume's philosophy. Refusing to reduce Hume to a text, they have insisted on
reading Hume as a man in a specific period. Many of the writers who have already been
mentioned have a degree of the contextualist approach in their work, but the recent work of
David Fate Norton, M. A. Stewart, and John Wright have followed this fruitful line of inquiry
with such a great degree of skill and hard work that they constitute a separate category.

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Newtonian influence often remains a factor in their interpretations but often is attenuated as they
examine how Hume's works respond to specific challenges from his more immediate historical
and social contexts and to his more immediate intellectual contemporaries. Norton, for example,
has shown the profit to be derived from reading Book 3 of the Treatise (I74O) in the light of the
Newtonian moralist George Turnbull's Principles of Moral Philosophy (1740). [David Fate
Norton, David Hume. Common-Sense Moralist, Sceptical Metaphysician (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1982), pp. 152-63.] John Wright, for another example, has shown the effect of
the Kames-Stewart debate upon Hume's own claim that Newton had ascribed activity to matter
itself. [John Wright, The Sceptical Realism of David Hume (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1983), pp. 162-4.] Finally, M. A. Stewart has reconstructed Hume's targets in
the ninth part of the Dialogues in a way which interposes Lord Kames and George Anderson
between Newton and Clarke. [M. A. Stewart, "Hume and the 'Metaphysical Argument A
Priori'," in Philosophy, Its History and Historiography, ed. A. J. Holland (Dordrecht: D.
Reidel, 1985), pp. 243-70.]
A highly significant new "Contextualist" approach to the entire topic of Hume's interest in
and knowledge of science has recently been advanced by Michael Barfoot. On the 4th of June,
1986, Barfoot announced, in a paper read to the 'IPSE 86' project and entitled "Hume's Early
Scientific Education at the University of Edinburgh," his momentous discovery of a new source
which casts light on the entire "culture of science" in Hume's day. Retitled "Hume and the
Culture of Science in the Early Eighteenth Century," this paper has been extensively recast. It is
published in Studies in the Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. M. A. Stewart, Oxford
Studies in the History of Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 151-90. A
"Contextualist" to the core, Barfoot offers startling new evidence regarding Hume' s actual
course work in natural philosophy during the mid-1720's which includes the discovery of
Hume's membership in the Physiological Library founded by Robert Steuart for Steuart's
students and those interested in natural philosophy. Barfoot suggests, rightly, that the catalog of
this library, together with an understanding of the nature and content of the courses in the
sciences which Steuart offered to subscribing members of the library, and the fact that Hume
attended Steuart's class in 1724-5 provides crucial new information about Hume's early
education in various particular sciences as well as in what Barfoot calls the culture of science.
Barfoot goes on to show that "Understanding the palimpsest of natural knowledge beneath
Hume's text enriches the interpretation of many otherwise puzzling features of Treatise I. ii."
(p.189)
2. Peter Jones, Hume's Sentiments. Their Ciceronian and French Context (Edinburgh: The
University Press, 1982), p. II. As his title indicates, Jones is very much in the school of the
"Contextualists." But he seeks to reject the standard view, held in varying degrees as delineated in
Note 1, that there is in fact any scientific and Newtonian context to Hume' s thought.
3. Ibid., pp. 13-4.
4. Ibid., p. 15.
5. In addition to the general approaches to the whole of Hume's work depicted in Note 1 above,
there is one work literally in a category by itself when any discussion is undertaken concerning the
linkage of Hume's religious scepticism in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and
Newton's design argument. Since its first publication in 1963, Robert H. Hurlbutt's Hume, Newton,
and the Design Argument (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1963) has remained the single
most illuminating source on the subject. Its publication as a revised edition in 1985 is to be
applauded.
6. Jones, Hume's Sentiments, p. 12.

7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., pp. 13-4.
10. Ibid., pp. 12-3.
11. Ibid., p. 17.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Paul Russell has succeeded in placing Hume's intellectual project in his "science of man" into

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an important but much overlooked context - that of Thomas Hobbes' own similar project. See his
"Hume's Treatise and Hobbes' The Elements of Law," Journal of the History of Ideas 46, No.1
(Jan.-March, 1985), pp. 51-63, and his "Skepticism and Natural Religion in Hume's Treatise,"
Journal of the History of Ideas 49, No.2 (April-June, 1988), pp. 247-65.
15. See Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the
Seventeenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 201.
16. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, second edition with test
revised and notes by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1979), "Appendix," pp. 638-9.
My tactic of simply laying out the texts in which Hume directly quotes or refers to Newton derives
from the presentation given by Christine Battersby at the Hume Society Conference held at Trinity
College, Dublin, in 1981. See Note 41.
17. David Hume, "Of the Middle Station of Life," in The Philosophical Works, ed. Thomas Hill
Green and Thomas Hodge Grose, 4 vols. (London, 1882), 4:379. Donald W. Livingston kindly
pointed this text out to me.
18. David Hume, "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences," in Works, 3:183.
19. David Hume, A Letter from a Gentleman to his Friend in Edinburgh, ed. Ernest C. Mossner
and John V. Price (Edinburgh: The University Press, 1967), pp. 28-9.
20. David Hume, An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, in Enquiries concerning the
Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, Reprinted from the Posthumous
edition of 1777 and edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge. Third edition with Text Revised and Notes by P.
H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 73n. Further references will be cited as 'E'
followed by the relevant page number(s).
21. Hume's reference here to Newton's "chief rule of philosophizing" is intriguing. The "chief
rule" seems, at first sight, to be Newton's second Rule: "Therefore to the same natural effects we
must, as far as possible, assign the same causes." [Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of
Natural Philosophy and His system of the World, Translated in English by Andrew Motte in 1729.
The translations revised, and supplied with an historical and explanatory appendix, by Florian
Cajori, 2 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1934),2: 398.] Hume is
intimately familiar with the second Rule. As I argue in the second section of my paper, Philo
clearly states that this Rule underlies the design argument. But in the text quoted just above it
seems to me that Hume may possibly be referring to the fourth Rule as Newton's "chief rule of
philosophizing." In the text from the second Enquiry, Hume states that the "chief rule" of ascribing
similar causes for similar effects must be applied only in instances where they have empirically
been found to be the same. If this reading of Hume's statement here is correct, then the "chief rule"
is actually the fourth Rule which likewise limits application of the second Rule to experienced
phenomena: "In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general
induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary
hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may
either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions .... " (Newton, Mathematical Principles,
2:400.) If Hume believes that the fourth of Newton's Rules is in fact the "chief rule of philosophizing," then my case in the second part of my paper concerning Hume's detailed knowledge of
Newton's Rules in his criticism of the design argument is somewhat strengthened.
22. Hume to his cousin, Mrs. Dysart of Eccles, 19 Mar., 1751, in The Letters of David Hume, 2
vols., ed. J. Y. T. Greig (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1932), 1:158-9.
23. David Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, ed. Norman Kemp Smith (Edinburgh:
Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd., 1947), p. 136. For the dating of this section of the Dialogues, see
Kemp Smith's "Introduction" to this edition, pp. 87-96, and M. A. Stewart, "Hume and the
'Metaphysical Argument A Priori' ," p. 266. Further references to the Dialogues will be cited in the
text as 'D' followed by the relevant page number(s).
24. David Hume, The History of England. From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in
1688,8 vols. (London, 1782),6:196-7.
25. Hume, The History of England, 8:332-4.
26. David Hume, The Natural History of Religion, in The Natural History of Religion, ed. A.
Wayne Colver, and Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, ed. John Valdimir Price (Oxford: The
Clarendon Press, 1976), p. 79.

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27. Jones allows that Hume "was familiar, at most, with the Prefaces, Definitions and Axioms of
Principia, together with the General Scholium, the Rules of Reasoning in Book III and Cotes's
famous Preface in the second edition." (Hume's Sentiments, p. 12.) Later he acknowledges Hume's
view of the "value" of a general version of these "rules" "in his own endeavour"; nevertheless
Jones concludes that, "although there is some overlap, Hume's fundamental assumptions about man
and his nature are already driving him apart from Newton .... " (Hume's Sentiments, pp. 12-13.)
From this he concludes that Hume totally lacks any interest in science, including Newtonian
science, by which Jones means, apparently, some "serious" kind of science that does not include
scientific metaphysics. Jones's refusal to acknowledge the permeability between the boundaries of
modem-day disciplines for a man of letters in the eighteenth century is extremely misleading. On
his view, the following quote in which a Newtonian scientist-theologian makes explicit the
connection between the second Newtonian Rule and the design argument, has nothing whatsoever
to do with real science. William Whiston writes:
... every unbyassed Mind would easily allow, that like Effects had like Causes; and that Bodies
of the same general Nature, uses, and Motions, were to be deriv'd from the same Originals; and
consequently, that the Sun and the fixed Stars had one, as the Earth, and the other Planets
another sort of Formation. If therefore any free Considerer found that one of the latter sort, that
Planet which we Inhabit, was deriv'd from a Chaos; by a parity of Reason he would suppose,
every one of the other to be so deriv'd also. [A New Theory of the Earth (London, 1696),
"Introductory Discourse concerning the Genuine Nature, Stile, and Extent of the Mosaick
History of Creation," p. 40.]
28. Whiston, Astronomical Principles of Religion, Natural and Reveal'd (London, 1717), p. 255.
29. Newton, Mathematical Principles, 2:398.
30. Most of my analysis in this paper is directed to Hume's understanding of the properly
Newtonian way to interpret Newton's second Rule (regarding the principle of uniformity with
respect to causes) in the light of the fourth Rule. But Hume also is familiar with the first of
Newton's Rules, the principle of simplicity which Hume quotes at the beginning of Part XII of the
Dialogues. As Hume makes plain, the principle of simplicity is a maxim which is "a great
foundation of the COPERNICAN system." He then adds that "astronomers often, without thinking
of it, lay this strong foundation of piety and religion." Earlier he mentions that this "is a maxim
established in all the schools, merely from the contemplation of the works of nature, without any
religious purpose." (D 214) So, other sources may well be the source of Hume's knowledge of
Newton's first Rule. But, again, my focus is on the second and, especially, the fourth Rules.
In my interpretation of the regulative use of the fourth Rule, I am following closely the
interpretation of E. A. Burtt who argues that if Rule 4 is not a "regulative" principle which governs
how we read the other three Rules, then Newton would be guilty of asserting, in his first three
Rules, certain and a priori principles in the fashion of Descartes. Possibly it is to make clear that it
is not his intention to be a latter-day Cartesian that Newton adds the fourth Rule in the third edition
of 1726. (See Note 34.) Burtt cites a supporting text for this interpretation from the Opticks and
concludes that" ... in his strictly scientific paragraphs the emphasis is overwhelmingly in favour of
their tentative, positivistic character, hence the fourth rule of reasoning in philosophy ... must be
regarded as imposing definite limits on all of the other three." E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical
Foundations of Modern Science (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1954), p. 219.
I am convinced that the origin of Newton's tentative empiricism, in which human knowledge of
nature remains forever contingent, lies in his voluntaristic notion of God's dominion. This view of
Newton's is shared by Robert Boyle who puts this point of view very clearly when he states that
in this very phenomenal world of partial regularity, at any moment all our science may be upset
by the elimination, or change of regularity through the operation of Him who is the guider of its
concourse. For the most optimistic investigator must acknowledge that if God be the author of
the universe, and the free establisher of the laws of motion, whose general concourse is
necessary to the conservation and efficacy of every particular physical agent, God can certainly
invalidate all experimentalism by withholding His concourse, or changing these laws of motion,
which depend perfectly upon His will, and could thus vitiate the value of most, if not all the

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axioms and theorems of natural philosophy. Therefore reason operating in the mechanical world
is constantly limited by the possibility that there is not final regularity in that world, and that
existential regularity may readily be destroyed at any moment by the God upon whom it
depends. [Mitchell Salem Fisher, Robert Boyle: Devout Naturalist. A Study in Science and
Religion in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: Oshiver Studio Press, 1945), pp.127-a,
citing Reconcileableness of Reason, in The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, 6 vols., ed.
Thomas Birch (London, 1772),4:161.]
31. Philo emphasizes the difficulties in applying the "experimental" principle, "Like effects prove
like causes," to "theological argument." He says:
Now it is certain, that the liker the effects are, which are seen, and the liker the causes, which
are inferred, the stronger is the argument. Every departure on either side diminishes the
probability, and renders the experiment less conclusive. You cannot doubt of this principle:
Neither oUght you to reject its consequences. All the new discoveries in astronomy, which prove
the immense grandeur and magnificence of the works of nature, are so many additional
arguments for a Deity, according to the true system of theism: But according to your hypothesis
of experimental theism, they become so many objections, by removing the effect still farther
from all resemblance to the effects of human art and contrivance." (D 165)
As far as Hume is concerned experimental theists such as Cleanthes (or Newton) misunderstand
their own principle and its limitations. The more observational and experimental data which comes
in - and which according to the fourth Rule must be actively sought - the weaker the design
analogy.
32. I. Bernhard Cohen, Introduction to Newton's Principia (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1971), p. xi. For a more complete analysis of the variety of scientific, especially Newtonian,
texts to which Hume had access, see Barfoot, "Hume and the Culture of Science in the Early
Eighteenth Century." Barfoot is correct in pointing out "how arbitrary and historiographically
questionable the selection of texts has been" in the various discussions of Hume's "Newtonianism."
The works of Pemberton and Maclaurin are always mentioned, but the various Newtonian works of
Desaguliers, Whiston, and 'sGravesande "are usually ignored." (pp. 161-2n.)
33. Jones states that the '''Newtonian Philosophy' could be understood in very different ways,
depending on the presumed knowledge of the audience and the required precision of the speaker"
and cites Chambers' article on "Newtonian Philosophy" as evidence for a hierarchy of Newtonians.
Some do understand the difficult mathematical sections of the Principia but the majority do not.
(Hume's Sentiments, p.yy 12.) Jones regards the latter category of Newtonians as not serious
enough for consideration and as not really interested in Newtonianism.
It is necessary, then, to examine just what Chambers does say about "Newtonian Philosophy" in
his famous Cyclopaedia article from 1728, the year following Newton's death. He first defmes
"Newtonian Philosophy" generally as "the doctrine of the universe, and particularly of the heavenly
bodies; their laws, affections, &c. as delivered by Isaac Newton." Chambers next, as Jones points
out, distinguishes five other usages of the term. It is used variously to refer to the "new philosophy"
of "corpuscularianism"; to the "method or order which Sir Isaac Newton observes in philosophizing"; to "that wherein physical bodies are considered mathematically"; "that part of physical
knowledge, which Sir Isaac Newton has handled, improved, and demonstrated in his Principia";
and, finally, to ''new principles which Sir Isaac Newton has brought into philosophy."
Jones certifies only the third usage, "that wherein physical bodies are considered mathematically," as signifying genuine "Newtonian Philosophy." Then he argues that, because "There is no
evidence that Hume was competent to follow the mathematical core of the Principia" and "because
we may infer that he understood the 'Newtonian method' in one or more of the non-technical
senses that became popular in the frrst half of the eighteenth century," Hume cannot be interested in
serious Newtonianism.
If our wish is to understand the context of the people of an era, we must permit them to speak for
themselves. If Chambers records that these various senses are all part of "Newtonian Philosophy,"
we must acknowledge that "Newtonian Philosophy" then had a wider, more latitudinarian, meaning
than it does today when it has been reduced to just what Jones says it is, i.e., the mathematical

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sections of the Principia. Chambers, to continue with his article, goes on to spend three folio
columns elucidating the chief points of Book III (save for the "Rules" which he does not once
mention), especially gravity "which some condemn as an occult quality, and others as miraculous,
and praeter-natural causes." He notes, after observing the slow progress of the "Newtonian
Philosophy" abroad, the "general acceptance" of it, apparently in all its senses, at home. [Ephraim
Chambers, Cyclopaedia: Or, An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences ... , 2 vols. (London,
1728), s.v. "Newtonian Philosophy."]
34. Alexandre Koyre, "Newton's 'Regulae Philosophandi'," in his Newtonian Studies (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 261-72.
35. David Gregory, Astromiae, physicae et geometriae elementa (Oxoniae, 1702.)
36. John Keill, An Introduction to Natural Philosophy (London, 1720.) This work is an English
translation of a Latin work which first appeared in 1720. Also of importance in this regard is Keill' s
An Introduction to the True Astronomy (London, 1721), the English translation of a work published
in 1718.
37. John Clarke, A Demonstration of Some of the Principal Sections of Sir Isaac Newton's
Principles of Natural Philosophy (London, 1730), pp. 98-104. Clarke directly quotes all four Rules
and emphasizes the necessity of empirical observations in order to evade "hypotheses," but he does
not refer at all to the application of these Rules to the design argument.
38. Henry Pemberton, A View of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy (London, 1728), pp. 23-6. The
fourth Rule is simply paraphrased in four lines.
39. Colin Maclaurin, An Account of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophical Discoveries, 2nd ed.
(London, 1750), pp. 396-412. On p. 400, Maclaurin states, ''The plain argument for the existence
of the Deity, obvious to all and carrying irresistable conviction with it, is from the evident
contrivance and fitness of things for one another, which we meet with throughout all parts of the
universe. There is no need of nice or subtle reasonings in this matter .... It strikes us like a
sensation." Compare this with Cleanthes' remark in Part 3 of the Dialogues (0 154): "Consider,
anatomize the eye: Survey its structure and contrivance; and tell me, from your own feeling, if the
idea of a contriver does not immediately flow in upon you with a force like that of sensation." (I
have added emphasis to both quotes to show the points of resonance.)
Now it is the case that the Newtonians do not possess the exclusive concession on the eyeball as
the perfect example of design. But the above text by Maclaurin (with its startling Humean echo)
suggests the wide dissemination of this idea in a Newtonian setting which held the design inference
arising from its contemplation to be as forceful as sensation and which was recognizable then as
Newtonian in inspiration. In Newton's theological manuscripts, and so unknown to Maclaurin
(unless he discussed it with Newton or someone who knew Newton's views on this point), is the
following highly suggestive text. Newton writes:
Whence is it that the eyes of all sorts of living creatures are transparent members of ye body,
having on ye outside an ... transparent skin, & within ... a crystalline lens in the middle & a
pupil before the lens all of them so truly shaped & filled for vision, that no Artist can mend
them? Did blind chance know that there was light & what was its refraction & fiI the eyes of all
creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it? These & such like considerations
always have & ever will prevail with mankind to believe that there is a being who made all
things & has all things in his power & who is therefore to be feared." (Newton, "A Short
Scheme of the True Religion," Keynes MS 7, King's College Library, King's College,
Cambridge.)
40. The most interesting interpretation of the application and importance of Newton's Rules which
I have been able to fmd is that of the Newtonian experimentalist, Wilhelm Jacob 'sGravesande. In
the Preface of his Mathematical elements of Physicks, Prov'd by Experiments: Being an Introduction to Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy, Made English ... by Dr. John Keill, F.R.S. (London, 1720.)
Naturally, as this book precedes the publication of the third edition of the Principia by some six
years, there is no mention in it of the fourth Rule. None of its subsequent editions or translations,
including the translation of the sixth edition by J. T. Desaguliers, contains any discussion of the
fourth Rule. Still, his discussion of the f!fst three Rules is interesting for its resonance with Hume's
views that when making probable inductions, we assume, from habit, that the future will resemble

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the past. 'sGravesande writes:

But to return to Physicks. Here we must judge of the Agreement of Things with our sensible
Ideas. For Example, the Extension and Solidity of Matter, which we affirm upon this Foundation, are certain beyond Controversy: We do not here enquire whether the Senses may not on
some Occasions deceive us, and how that Error may be remedied, but only consider the thing in
general.
In Physics we cannot make a Judgement immediately, or directly concerning all our Senses.
But there is another proper way of Reasoning, tho' not Mathematical, founded on this Axiom:
That is to be accounted true, which if it be not allowed, Humane Society could not subsist, or
the Method of Mens Living would be destroyed. From which Proposition, which no one can
make any doubt of, the second and third Newtonian Rules of Philosophizing are most evidently
deduced.
For unless we account those things as generally true, which every where appear such, where
we can make any Experiments; and that like Effects be supposed to arise from a like Cause, who
can be able to live one Moment of Time in Ease?
Indeed, without attending to it, every one doth daily admit the following Reasonings to be
indubitable; and sees evidently that the Conclusions from them cannot be called into Question,
without supposing the Destruction of the present Frame and Constitution of Things.
A Building, to-day perfectly firm in all its Parts, will fall down to-morrow of its own accord;
that is, the Cohesion of the Parts of Bodies, and their Gravity, which I never saw, nor heard of,
chang'd without the Intervention of some external Cause, will not be changed this Night; for
there will be the same Cause of Cohaesion and Gravity to-morrow as to-day. The Certainty of
which Reasoning can only be deduc'd from the above mentioned Principles ....
I have used such and such Food for several Years, I will also take it to-day without any Fear.
When I see Hemlock I conclude there is Poison in it, tho' I have made myself no Experiment
All these Reasonings are founded upon Analogy: And it is not to be doubted but we are put
under the Necessity of Reasoning by Analogy, by the Creator of all Things. This therefore is the
proper Foundation of Reasoning.
It's interesting to note here how, without benefit of the fourth Rule and its insistence upon
experimental verification, the [lfSt three Rules can be the basis for dogmatically making certain
claims about the future. It's extremely speculative, of course, but it seems at least possible that the
fourth of Newton's "Rules of Reasoning" (which Hume may possibly refer to as the "chief rule of
philosophizing" - see Note 21), may be the basis for Hume's whole criticism of induction.
41. This point is made by James Noxon in his Hume's Philosophical Development. A Study of his
Methods, Corrected edition (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 76. The early influence of
Newtonian scientific methodology, argues Noxon, wanes as Hume matures philosophically and
comes to realize the inherent tensions between his early, Newtonian-inspired psychology and his
own philosophy and when he also develops a growing hostility to what he comes to recognize as
the enthusiastic excesses of the Newtonian theologians. I was privileged to hear Christine
Battersby's excellent critique of this position in a paper entitled "Hume, Noxon and Newton"
which she delivered to the Hume Society Conference held at Trinity College, Dublin, in 19S1.
Battersby examined the course of Hume's long involvement with Newton and the sciences and
argued conclusively against such a developmental thesis. There is a strong affinity between
Noxon's developmental thesis and Jones' position when he talks of how "Hume's fundamental
assumptions about man and his nature are already driving him apart from Newton .... " (Hume's
Sentiments, pp. 13-4.) Or, again, "In fact, Hume's own philosophical reflections led away from
Newton .... " (Hume's Sentiments, p. IS.) The difference between them is that, for Noxon, the
acknowledged early methodological interest of Hume in Newton is a serious scientific one whereas,
for Jones, as a result of his refusal to acknowledge the permeability of the disciplines in Hume's
day, this sort of interest, not being mathematical, is simply not serious.
42. If our criterion for a serious interest in "Newtonian Philosophy" is to be a clear understanding
of the mathematical sections of the Principia, which take up most of the book, then, as now, few
people could be classified as having been directly influenced by Newton's work. As Jones points

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out (Hume's Sentiments, p. 12), Voltaire observes that "In London, very few people read Descartes,
whose works have become quite useless ... neither do many read Newton, because one must be
very learned to understand him." [Voltaire to Abbe Bignon, late 1713, in Voltaire, Oeuveres
completes de Voltaire, ed. Beuchot, 72 vols. (paris, 1834-40),37:191.] Jones takes this statement
as evidence that Hume lacks any serious interest in Newton. I take it as evidence for the need to
rethink how we conceive of what counts as serious interest in Newton and in science in the age of
Newton. In Jones's view, of course, Voltaire must himself lack any serious interest in Newton and
science.
43. Jones, Hume's Sentiments, p. 17.
44. Hume reveals the importance of the Gentleman's Magazine in the dissemination of news
within the republic of letters in his letter to William Mure of Nov. 14, 1742. In January, 1742, in
the second volume of Essays Moral and Political, Hume had published his character sketch of Sir
Robert Walpole. In his letter to Mure, Hume claims that only with the reprinting of his piece on
Walpole in the Gentleman's Magazine are his Sentiments "publish'd to all Britain." See The Letters
of David Hume, 1:44. I would argue, judging from the tremendous number of references to Newton
and Newtonian Philosophy in the pages of the Gentleman's Magazine, that it is a most important
source for expanding our understanding of the extent and spread of Newton's ideas (and of ideas
whose proponents claimed a linkage with Newton) within the society in which Hume lived. In
general, I fully agree with Jonathan Rees's criticism of historians of philosophy in which he chides
many of the practitioners of that gentle art for their general tendency to ignore any sort of archival
work and their sad indifference "to the use of sources other than the publications (or at most the
manuscripts), of the canonized Great Dead Philosophers." Rees's views are voiced in a "Letter"
published in the British Society for the History of Philosophy Newsletter, No.1 (Autumn, 1986),
p.3.
45. Gentleman's Magazine, May, 1734, p. 335.
46. Ibid., June, 1734, p. 335.
47. Ibid., September, 1734, pp. 483-4.
48. The Letters of David Hume, 1:24.
49. Ibid., 1:26.
50. Gentleman's Magazine, March, 1739, p. 115; and April, 1739, p. 174.
51. Ibid., July, 1751, pp. 314-5.
52. Ibid., pp. 315-7.
53. Ibid., December, 1751, pp. 556--8.
54. Ibid., May, 1751, p. 203. This reply is directed at an essay published in the Gentleman's
Magazine in September, 1750, pp. 398-9. According to the author of this reply (in May, 1751), the
original essayist had confused light with air. By way of correction, this author (from May, 1751)
introduces Newton's definition to show that light is distinguished from air "which is a gross,
ponderous, elastic fluid, and is only the medium or vehicle, but by no means the substance, of
light."
55. Gentleman's Magazine, May, 1751, pp. 218-22.
56. Compare this quote from a committed Newtonian design theorist who, in the following
passage, does exactly what Philo complains about in the above text. William Whiston writes:
But then as to the nature of the fix'd stars, 'tis in all probability the same with the sun's; and so
each of them may have their respective systems of planets and comets as well as he has. Which
things, considering that the number of them is continually found to be greater, according as the
telescopes we use are longer and more perfect, do vastly aggrandize the idea of the visible
universe; and ought proportionally to raise our admiration of the Great Author of the Whole to
the highest degree imaginable. (A New Theory of the Earth, p. 33.)
57. In her 1981 paper entitled "Hume, Noxon and Newton," Christine Battersby cited the
following resonance between Hume's writing and the Opticks of Newton. In the Treatise, where
Hume is discussing absolute time and arguing that our idea of time is built up by the mental
succession of experienced events, Hume refers to John Locke and gives an apparently Lockean
example to prove his point. Hume writes, "If you wheel about a burning coal with rapidity, it will
present to the senses an image of a circle of fire; nor will there seem to be any interval of time

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betwixt its revolutions .... " (Treatise, p. 35.) Battersby cited the actual passage from Locke which
presents a very different image with a metaphor to the "Images in the inside of a Lanthorn, turned
round by the Heat of a Candle." [John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. P.
H. Nidditch (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1975], p. 184.] The specific image to which Hume
appeals in the Treatise, our perception when wheeling a burning coal about us with rapidity, is used
twice by Newton in the Opticks. [Sir Isaac Newton, Opticks or a Treatise of the Reflections,
Inflections & Colours of Light. Based on the Fourth London Edition, 1730. (New York: Dover
Publications, Inc., 1952), pp. 141 and 347.]
58. Newton, Opticks, p. 169.
59. The idea of a geological catastrophe had been popularized by Thomas Burnet in his Theory of
the Earth (1681-90) which, by 1700, had been the subject of thirty-two rebuttals including that of
William Whiston in his A New Theory of the Earth (1696.) There are many other discussions in
which the authors, like Philo in Part 6 of the Dialogues, argue that ..... it may rationally be
supposed, that there were then great Mutations and Alterations made in the superficial part of the
Earth .... " [This quotation is from John Ray, Three Physico-Theological Discourses (London,
1721), p. 121.] Jones flatly ignores this mention by Hume of fossils and geological upheavals and
instead states that "there is no reference to Buffon's exciting speculations on the origins of universe
or of man, no apparent interest in Hutton's revolutionary geological theory which had developed
over thirty years from the 1750s ...." (Hume's Sentiments, p. 17.) As I mention in the text, Hume
may not be referring to the strictly geological notion of cyclical mountain building and erosion. The
perpetual circulation of matter may possibly be a reference to Newton's distinctly alchemical
theory of the operation of aether. Here is a quote from Newton's Correspondence which is
hauntingly similar to the idea briefly sketched by Hume in the Dialogues. Newton writes:
For nature is a perpetuall circulatory worker, generating Fluids out of solids, & solids out of
Fluids, Fixed things out of volatile & volatile out of fixed, Subtile out of gross and gross out of
subtile. Some things to ascend & make the upper terrestrial juices, Rivers and the Atmosphere;
& by consequence others to descend for a Requitall of the former. And as the Earth, so perhaps
may the Sun imbibe this Spirit copiously to conserve his shineing, & keep the Planet, from
receding further from him. [The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, 7 vols., ed. H. W. Turnbull,
J. F. Scott, A. R. Hall, and L. Tilling (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1959--77), 1:366. On
the alchemical nature of this theory, see J. E. McGuire, "Newton's Doctrine of Physical
Qualities," Ambix 14, No.2 (June, 1967), p. 85.]
60. The Newtonian, J. T. Desaguliers, to take one example, had utilized Newtonian cosmogony as
a model for understanding the microscopic world. [See Arthur Quinn, The Corifidence of British
Philosophers. An Essay in Historical Understanding (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977), p. 76.] Whiston, to
take another example, writes that the microscope reveals "entire Bodies themselves in parvo."
(Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth, pp. 299--300.) Nearer to Hume's day, Henry Baker had
published his very popular (though undoubtedly not serious) The Microscope Made Easy in 1743
which is supplemented in 1753 with his two-part Employment for the Microscope. In the former
work, Baker writes about how Malphigi, Leeuwenhoek, Hooke, Grew, and others all "bear
Witness, that the Microscope has discovered not only in the larger Seed, such as the Walnuts,
Chestnut, ... & Co., but also in the smaller .... " [Baker, The Microscope Made Easy (London,
1743), Part ii, Chapter xlvi.]
61. If a similarity must be insisted upon, the problem is that the inference reveals "a mind like the
human," thus making Hume's transition from arguing about the analogy between human products
and natural things to, instead, arguing about what possibly may be inferred about the nature of the
creator if one takes the analogy as a given.
62. First espoused by Descartes in the Principia Philosophiae [Oeuvres de Descartes, 12 vols., ed.
C. Adam and P. Tannery (Paris, 1897-1910),8:156-7], the theory of the cometary origins of the
earth gained wide recognition in the first half of the 18th century as the result of William Whiston's
A New Theory of the Earth which went through six editions during the frrst half of the eighteenth
century. In his remark about a comet possibly being the "seed" of the world, Hume may be
referring to Descartes or Whiston. Hume may have known Whiston's New Theory directly (as
Berkeley did) or through the lengthy summary of Whiston's New Theory in Buffon's Histoire et

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theorie de la terre, vol. I, Histoire naturelle (Paris, 1749), Premier discours, Article II. Jones points
out (Hume's Sentiments, p. 17) that Hume owned "some volumes" of Buffon's great work in 1766
and is surprised that Hume does not refer to him. It may be (though it need not necessarily be) the
case that Hume's reference to a cometary seed is to Whiston via Buffon.
63. It is Hume's view that the only job for a scientist (or a man of letters speculating about the
limits of such inquiries) is to describe particular sequences of events and, thus, to build up a picture
of the structure and behavior of natural processes and mechanisms. Seeking for the "ultimate
cause" of the whole is beyond, as far as the moderate sceptic Hume is concerned, what a scientist or
any other human being can hope to attain. For a clear and accurate account of Hume's views on
causal explanation in science and the vanity of pursuing "ultimate causes" after the manner of
Newton, see Donald W. Livingston, Hume's Philosophy of Common Life (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1984), Chapter 6, especially pp. 160-7. The effect of this searching analysis is once
again to place Hume within the sphere of Newtonian influence. Livingston shows how Hume is a
sceptical critic of Newton's search for ultimate causes but points out that Hume's standpoint is not
from outside of the tradition of belief in ultimate causal connection - "it is rather the result of a
searching examination of one who is still within the tradition" (p. 166.) For corroborative texts
from the Dialogues, see pp. 174 and, especially, p. 191.
64. Hauksbee's electrical experiments before the Royal Society in 1705-6 provoked Newton's
theorizing on electricity, a subject which he had not touched upon for thirty years. In his theorizing
concerning the binding effect of electrical forces upon the particles of bodies, Newton emphasizes
their extreme elasticity. According to Westfall, "when he reintroduced an aether of similar qualities
into his philosophy a few years later, he argued from its properties that it was composed of particles
that repelled each other powerfully." [Richard S. Westfall, Never at Rest. A Biography of Isaac
Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 747.] J. L. Heilbron has argued
recently that Newton finds support for his later view concerning the connection between electricity
and gravity in the experiments of such disciples as Hauksbee and Desaguliers. In an unpublished
draft addition for the Opticks edition of 1717/8, Heilbron states that Newton "discusses a microscopic correlate of the gravitational aether ...... [J. L. Heilbron, Physics at the Royal Society during
Newton's Presidency (Los Angeles: The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, U.C.L.A.,
1983), p. 64.]
65. On Hume's scientific credentials to be one of the Secretaries of the Edinburgh Philosophical
Society, see Barfoot, "Hume and the Culture of Science in the Early Eighteenth Century," p. 165.
During Hume's last years, Pringle became embroiled, as President of the Royal Society, in a
controversy with King George III concerning the most effective design for lightning rods. The chief
advocate of the pointed conductor was Benjamin Franklin, prize-winning Fellow of the Royal
Society and, from 1775, an active rebel against crown rule in the American colonies. On political
grounds, the King rejected the pointed conductor advocated by the rebel leader and the Royal
Society and installed at the royal palaces the rounded, blunt lightning rod. In 1777, King George
met with Pringle and urged him to use his influence within the Royal Society to reverse the
Society's official stand favoring the pointed conductor. Pringle, in a reply worthy of his departed
friend and patient, David Hume, replied, "Sire, I cannot reverse the laws and operations of nature."
Because of his own age (71) and because he had openly rebuffed the Society's royal patron, Pringle
did not stand for re-election to the Presidency of the Royal Society in 1778. [Sir HeDfY Lyons, The
Royal Society, 1660-1940; A History of its Administration and its Charters (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1944), pp. 193-4.] In 1762, at Hume's request (in his capacity as Joint
SecretarY of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh), Franklin had sent Hume and the Philosophical Society a paper on the use of the lightning rod. [Ernest C. Mossner, The Life of David Hume,
second edition (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 394.]
66. David Hume and Alexander Munro, Editors, Essays and Observations, Physical and Literary,
Read before a Society in Edinburgh and Published by them, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1754), pp. vi-vii.
This text is reprinted in Scots Magazine 16 (1754), pp. 185-6.
67. T. E. Jessop, "The Misunderstood Hume," in Hume and the Enlightenment. Essays Presented
to Ernest Campbell Mossner, ed. William B. Todd (Edinburgh: The University Press; Austin:
University of Texas Humanities Research Center, 1974), p. 12.
68. A much shorter version of this paper was presented by the author at the International Hume

206

JAMES E. FORCE

Conference sponsored by the Hume Society and the Institute for Advanced Studies in the
Humanities at the University of Edinburgh on August 25, 1986. A slightly different version was
printed in Hume Studies 13, No.2 (Nov., 1987), pp. 166-216. Since it was written a new document
has been auctioned comprising Hume's lecture notes on a course he apparently took on "fluxions"
from George Campbell in Edinburgh in 1726. See Sotheby's sale catalogue for an auction held at
Sotheby's Grosvenor Gallery on New Bond Street on "Thursday 21st July 1988 at 11.00 am" and
"Friday 22nd July 1988 at 11.00 am" concerning works in "English Literature and History,
comprising Printed books, Autograph Letter and Manuscripts ... ", Item 473, p. 241.

APPENDIX

NEWTON'S OUT OF CUDWORTH

The holograph manuscript, "Out of Cudworth," is in the collection of the William

Andrews Clark Memorial Library of U.C.L.A and is printed here with their kind permission. The manuscript consists of four leaves, partially stained and damaged. It consists
mostly of notations taken directly from Ralph Cudworth's True Intellectual System of the
Universe (1678). Because Newton usually gave the page references, the manuscript has
been checked against Cudworth's text. Occasional lacunae in Newton's text have been
filled in from Cudworth's text, and are indicated with square brackets, e.g., [ ......... ].
Newton's own insertions between the lines are indicated with square brackets and
asterisks, e.g., [* ......... *]. Newton's Greek words are printed exactly as they appear in
his manuscript even though he does not always quote Cudworth's Greek (or quote
Cudworth's quotations of Greek, e.g., from the Orphic Hymns) exactly. Newton's
fractured Greek was transcribed with the able assistance of Professor Robert J. Rabel of
the Department of Classics, University of Kentucky.
On the last page, the notes from Cudworth end and are followed by some Latin quotations from an edition of Aristotle's Metaphysics, from an edition of Plotinus, and from
Caius Julius Hyginus's Liber fabulae. The latter was in Newton's library. These quotations have been omitted since they are not part of Newton's jottings from Cudworth. For
a discussion of "Out of Cudworth", see Danton B. Sailor, "Newton's Debt to Cudworth",
Journal of the History of Ideas 49, No.3 (July-Sept., 1988), pp. 511-8.

Out of Cudworth
Democritus, as Laertius relates, was a great emulator of Pythagoreans & seemed to have
taken all his Philosophy from them, & held w th Leucippus that ye earth was carried about
yt sun in a Vortex. p. 13.
The Pythagorick monads were atoms. ib.
Posidonius, an ancient & learned Philosopher, did (as Strabo & Empiricus tell us) avouch
it for an old tradition, that ye first inventor of atomical Philosophy was one Moschus, a
Phoenician, who as Strabo notes lived before the [Trojan] war. Perhaps this Moschus was
yt that Mochus a Phoenician Physiologer [in Jamblichus with] whose successors, Priests
& Prophets he affirms yt Pythagoras sometimes sojourning at Sidon (his native City) had
converst. p. 12.
207

208

APPENDIX

Echphantus, Empedocles Pythagoreans & atomists p. 14. Zenocrates Heraclides

Asclepiades Diodorus & Metrodorus Chius atomists p. 16, 17. The generality of
Physiologers before - atomists holding all sense to be touch, resolving all sensible
qualities into figures & that there was no black, or white wthout sight, nor bitter & sweet
wthout taste p. 9, 17.
Thales [* a Phoenician by extraction *] affirms yt God made all things out of water. He
was a Phoenician by ex [traction] & seems to have had [* thence *] his two principles of
water & divine spirit moving upon it. [Sanchu]niathon puts a turbid dark chaos & a spirit
[was affected] wth love towards its own princ[iples]. [Zeno] (also a Phoenician originally)
tells us yt Hesiod's Chaos was water & yt it [was] material as well as earth, was made out
of water [ ...... ] so yt new made heaven & earth or [...... probably "what"] Moses calls
water. The spt or gd saith he moved upon the face of the waters. [po 23]
Preexistence & transmigration of soules p. 23, 38.
Aristotle (Met. l.1.c.3) tells us yt the oldest Philosophers of all, they who first
[theologized] made ye Ocean and Tethys to have been the original of generatiom & for
this cause the oath of ye Gods is said to be by water (called by ye Poets Styx) as being
that from weh they all derived their original. So Homer makes ye Ocean to be ye father &
Tethys ye mother of all ye Gods. This Theology Aristophenes thus describes as if at first
there [was] nothing but Chaos. Then on this vast Abyss night spreading on her black
wings laid ye first egg: whence sprang love (ye worlds prolifick source) w th golden
wings: weh fluttering on dark Chaos gendered all ye numerous store of Animals & Gods.
p. 120, 121. By night understand ye invisible deity whom the Egyptians call [space in
text] & paint wth an egg in his mouth & by Love ye spirit weh moved on ye face of Ye
waters. Dr. Cudworth therefore is much mistaken when he represents this Philosophy as
Atheistical.
Thales said that all things were full of Gods (as Arist. de An. 1.1, c.8 writes p. 124.
{Newton gives this reference. The correct reference is to c.2} Perhaps by Gods he
meanes worlds.
Anaximander [* his scholar *] held infinite worlds coexisting & successively generated
& corrupted [* (Euseb Praep 1.1 p. 15 Plutarch) *] p. 128. Anaximandri opinio est
Nativos esse Deo longis intervallis Orientes Occidentesq, eosq innumerabiles esse
Mundos (Cic. de Nat. Deorum 1.1) p. 129.
Anaxagoras decryed for an Atheist merely because he held ye sun to be a globe of fire &
ye moon to be an earth, that is denyed them to be animated Gods p. 129.
Putabit Herodotus Hesiodum et Homerum annis ante se 400 circiter Theogonian in
Graecia primos praedicasse p. 211.
The love weh formed ye world out of Chaos, the first principle in ye universe, ye active
cause of things, the chiefest of Gods p. 212.

APPENDIX

209

The world made out ofpraeexistent material & immaterial substances p. 215, 216.
A good & an evil Principle (ye son God & Satan) called by ye Persians Oromasdes &
Arimanius, by ye AEgptians Osiris & Typhon. Theodosius in Photius called ye Persian
Arimanius, Sathanas p. 222.
The millenium known to ye Persian Magi p. 223.
Both Laertius & Diodorus represent it as ye opinion of ye ancient Egyptians yt ye world
was generated or had a beginning, as also yt ye sun moon & other parts of ye world were
Gods p.238.
Nu1C'ta tJerov )'EVE'tlpav, 'aeicsoJ,L<Xl, '11M lCat'avoprov p.248.
Noctem concelebro Genetricem Hominimque Deiimque. Orpheus in his Hymn of night.
The Mus Araneus being blind, is said to be deified by ye AEgyptians because they
thought yt darkness was older than light. (Plutarch. Sympos. 1.4, Qu. 5) p. 248.
Orpheus saith he will sing concerning Chaos how all things were [* made *] out of it &
concerning ye much wise Love ye oldest of all & self perfect wch actually produced them
all separating one thing from another p.249.
The AEgptians represented all their Gods not standing on land but in ships upon the
water p.249.
Aristotle affirms that all before him did lCOCSJ,LOltOlelV, that is all but a very few not worth
naming. p. 250. The later Platonists & Chaldeans as well as Aristotelians held ye world
eternal. p. 251, 252. The former Chaldeans that it was made p.3[ ... ].
The Pythagorick principles are ye Orphick traditions. For what things Orpheus delivered
Mystically those Pythagoras learned when he was initiated by Aglaophemus in the
Orphick mysteries. [The text is not clear here, but Cudworth, p. 297, is noted.]
p. 2 of original manuscript

Pythagoras himself affirming as much in his book called ye Holy oration (wch yet perhaps
not not {sic) Pythagoras's but writ by one of his scholars. p. 296. Proclus upon ye
Timaeus. [p.297]
Pythagoras as we are informed by Porphyrius & lamblichus, learned something from all
these four, from ye AEgptians, ye Persian Magi, ye Chaldeans & Orpheus or his followers. And accordingly Syrianus (MS. ColI. Caj. Camb. p. 14) makes ye Orphick &
Pythagorick principles to be one & the same. [po 299]
It is Pythagorical to follow ye Orphick genealogies. For from ye Orphick tradition

210

APPENDIX

downward by Pythagoras was ye knowledge of ye Gods derived to the Greeks (Proclus in

Timaeum p. 289) Cudw. p. 299.
Orpheus [made] ye body a prison wherein ye soul is kept till its debts or faults be
[expatiated] (Plato) p. 299.
Orpheus his Cosmogonia p. 300. Suidas in Orpheo. Timotheus apud Cedrenum et in
Eusebii Chron.
Orpheus his Trinity ib. & p. 547.
Pythagoras his Trinity p. 547.
Simplicius a zealous contender for ye worlds eternity makes Moses description of
creation a tradition from ye Egyptian fables. p. 313. Simpl in Aristot. Phys fo1268. col. 1.
Egyptians excelled all other mortals in wisdome p. 311 Herodot. 1 Reg. 4.30.
The Chaldeans [Cosmo]gonia 312.
The Indian Brachmans saith Strabo agree w!h ye Greeks in this yt ye world was made &
should be destroyed p. 312.
The AEgyptians were ye first asserters of ye souls immortality & of its Transmigration
after death. (Herod. Euterp.) p. 313. In what sense they & ye Pythagoreans asserted it. p.
313, 314. Viz! that ye soule was for offences banished & desended {sic} by way of
punishment into these earthly bodies & some by way of further punishm! sank lower into
the bodies of Brutes, but vertuous and pious soules should after this life enjoy a state of
happiness in celestial bodies. [po 313]
That under ye religious rites & theology of ye AEgyptians, Persians, Syrians, Indians &
other nations was hidden a real learning & doctrine p. 314,315.
The Egyptians besides their Sphinges {sic} had also Harpocrates & Sigalions in their
Temples wch were statues of young men pressing their lips wth their finger. p. 315, [316]
viz! to signify yt ye young schollars of ye wise should first learn silence, as Pythagoras
taught his schollars.
Chaeremon & others acknowledge nothing before this visible & corporeal world
alledging for the countenance of their opinion such of ye Egyptians as talk of no other
Gods but ye Planets & those stars y! fill up ye Zodiack or rise together w!h them, their
Decanes & Horoscopes & robust Princes as they call them; whose names are also inserted
into their Almanacks or Ephemerides, together wth the times of their risings & settings &
ye Prognosticks or significations of future events from them. For he observed that those
Egyptians who made ye Sun ye Demiurgus or Architect of ye world, interpreted ye stories
of Isis & Osiris & all those other religious fables into nothings but stars & Planets & ye

APPENDIX

211

River Nile, & referred all things universally into natural or inanimate, nothing into
corporeal & living substances. Haec Prophrius in epistola ad Anebo sacredotum AEgyptium apud Euseb. Pr. Ev.l.2, c4. To wch Jamblicus answers that these stars were ye least
part of yt Hermetical institutions &c, that is ye least part of those things he understood
beca[me] &c p. 317, 319.
A dispute between Theuth & Thamus King of Egypt concerning ye convenience &
inconvenience ofletters mentioned by Plato in his Phaedrus Cudw. p. 321. This Thamus
Plato saith reigned in Thebes. p. 340.
The destruction of ye world by fire & restauration thereof an Egyptian doctrine. p 328.
Hermes acknowledged a Orll.lto'\)pyo~ A.oyo~ to'\) 1t(lV'tCilV Oe01tOt01J. [po 330] set over this
world as governour, ye son of ye first being. p. 330. Cyril cont. Jul.l.l, p. 33.
The Egyptian Trinity p 413, 414. or rather p. 353, 354.
8attlffi +JUl"et namedwgethcf by Plat& &.:< yl: hoot of :),eGods: 'l":

The worship of ye Gods being presented in ye [* Pythagorean *] golden verses. Laertius

saith ye Gods of Pythagoras were ye Sun moon & stars ... p. 371.
Against Anaxagoras for holding ye sun to be fire & ye Moon an earth Plato in his book of
laws thus [* lib. 10, p. 886 *] complains. When you and I, saith he, endeaving (sic) by
arguments to prove that there are Gods, speak of ye Sun & Moon, stars & earth as Gods
& divine things, our young men presently being principled by these new Philosophers,
will reply; that these are nothing but earth & stones wch therefore cannot mind nor take
notice of any humane affairs. p. 381.

p. 3 of original manuscript
The harmony of ye stars in moving according to number & measure p. 396, 397. The
supreme (signified by Sol wth his harp) being ye Coryphaeus or praecentor.
Socrates in his [* own *] Apology, [* as *] written by Plato acknowledges ye sun moon
& stars for Gods. p. 401.
Plato's Gods were most of them fiery. yet he affirmed the earth to be ye oldest of ye
Gods. In his book ye Legibus he insists much upon ye Godships of ye Sun, Moon & Stars.
The prostrations, saith he, & adorations that are used both by the Greeks & all Barbarians
towards ye rising & setting Sun & Moon (as well in their prosperities as adversities)
declare them to be unquestionably esteemed Gods. De Leg. 10 p. (Cudw. p. 403.
Plato's trinity. His third person Psyche ye soule ofye world. p. 406, 407, 551.

212

APPENDIX

It hath been delivered down to us (saith Aristotel) from very ancient times that ye[stars]
are Gods also, besides ye supreme Deity wch contains ye whole nature. But all ye other
[things] were [* fabulously *] added hereunto for ye better persuasion of ye multi[tude].
As for example that these Gods are of humane fonn, or like to other Animals; [with] such
other things as are consequent hereupon. (Arist. Met. 1.14, c.8) Cudw. p. 417. So Aristotel
took all ye heathen Theology couched in fables, Allegories & Hieroglyphicks devised
only for promoting ye worship of ye Stars.
The Stoicks held that all ye Gods [* (except Jove) *] were generated & that they shall all
be [destroy]ed by fire they supposing them to be meltable as if they were waxen & leaden
things. 425, 426.
The heathens [* ye Platonists *] made ye [* animated *] world or soule thereof (called by
them Psyche), so[metimes] ye second God, omitting ye voue; or i..o~e; & sometimes ye
third in their trinity of Gods. pag 462, 463, 464, 465. For they conceived every Star &
Planet to be animated & there [fore] to be Gods & their divinity they placed in their
anima's. And by Plato's Pysche they understood the anima of ye earth extending far &
wide.
Plato in his Cratylus writes of ye first & most ancient inhabitants of Greece, That they
seemed to him, like as other Barbarians at that time to have acknowledged no other Gods
then such as were visible & sensible, as ye Sun & ye Moon & ye Earth & ye Stars & ye
heaven, wch they perceiving to run round perpetually called the ~,)e; from &cD that
signifies to run: but that [* ever *] afterward, they to took (sic) notice [of] invisible Gods
also, they bestowed the same name of upon them likewise. [po 455]
Some thought ye soul of ye sun ye highest God, some ye soul of ye world or earth, some
acknowledged an higher deity p. 456.
The ancient Gennans as Caesar affinns, Deorum numero eos solus ducunt quos cernunt
et quorum opibus aperte juvantur, Solem, Lunam et Vulcanum. Yet he is contradicted by
Tacitus & others have have recorded that they acknowledged a supreme God under ye
name of Thau first & then of Thautes & Theutates. See Sched. de Diys Gennanis. Cudw.
p.459. [actually 458]
When Pythagoras makes number ye [* cause *] essences of things, by numbers he means
substantial Ideas. p. 388. The Ideas of [* Pythagoras *] Parmenides & Plato were Gods:
vizl ye souls ofye stars &c. p. 553.
All ye heathen Philosophers except Democritus Leucippus & Epicurus & those who make
attoms & vacuum ye sole principle of all things supposed ye whole world to be an animal
& governed by providence. And ye soule of ye world was by ye Stoicks & some others
taken for ye highest Numen. p. 461. 462. [* See pg. 499. *] Some made ye world or its
soul ye second God, some the third p. 462, 463, 464, 465.
Pan ye universal Numen plays upon ye world as upon an instrument according to yl of

APPENDIX

213

Orpheus, Ap).1oviav KO(J).10tO KpeK(t)v q>tAOltatWOvt ).10A~.

, p. 483.
All ye Heathen Gods but one God in several appearances & respects. p. 479 to p. 483.
It was ye opinion of ye Jews that Idolatry began wth worshipping ye stars. p. 465. 466,
467,468.
Love ye second God [* framer of ye world *] called by Orpheus Phanes, by Pherecydes
Syrus Jupiter. p. 529.
The Persians worshipped the elements but condemned all statues & Images & were
against Gods in Temples p. 538.
The Egyptian Philosophers said that ye Poets feigned Saturn Jupiter Juno Mars &c to be
so many persons existing to ye deception of their Auditors. p. 531.
One God displaied & worshipped in ye several parts of ye world p 530, 538, 539.
All the Theology of ye Greeks from Orpheus. p. 547.
The Trinity of Orpheus Pythagoras & other Heathens p. 547, 8, 9, 550.
Platos Psyche or third principle [* or God *] (by Aristotel's testimony) the soul of ye
world supposed [* by Plato *] to be generated or created wth ye world. p. 552.
This whole corporeal world is made a god by the soule thereof. And ye sun is also a God
because animated; as likewise are all ye stars thereof Gods. (And a little after.)
p. 4 of original manuscript

That wch is to these Gods & Goddess the cause of their being Gods must needs it self to
be the elder God or Goddess [vizt ye soul of ye world] Plotinus p 483 apud Cudworth p.
593. So yO ye third had ye soule of ye world or Earth wch they yt supposed ye earth in ye
centre supposed to be ye cause of all ye other soules &c.
Plotinus made ye souls of men of ye same species wth ye soule of ye world & therefore in
like manner venerable. p. 593. Which doctrine was doubtless ye ground of ye heathen
daemonology, as ye doctrine of ye soule of ye Earth or world was of their trinity. For I do
not find that they assigned any other soule to ye earth yO yt of ye world.

[The rest of the last page of the manuscript contains some quotations from Aristotle in
Latin, the names of some gods from Bochart, some quotations in Latin from Plotinus and
several quotations in Latin from Gaius Julius Hyginus, Fabularum Liber. Newton had the
Leiden, 1670, edition of this work in his library.]

INDEX

Abarbenel (Commentator on Judaism), 4, 6n12

Abrege de la chronologie de M. Ie chevalier
Isaac Newton, 166, 177n7
The Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecy
(Whiston),82, 126, 133, 150, 154
Action at a distance, 190
Aether, 190, 195, 204n59
Ahasuerus (the Wandering Jew), 34
Alembert, Jean Le Rond d', 167
Alsted, Johann, 167
American Bible Society, 37
American Constitution:
and Newtonian
metaphysics, 101n47
The Ancient Religion of the Gentiles. See De
Religione Gentilium
Ancient theology. See Prisca theologia
Anderson, George, 196nl
Anglican Church. See Church of England
Anima Mundi (Blount), 32
Annet, Peter, 43
Anti-Arianism. See Arianism
Antidote to Atheism (More), 11
Antinomianism, 123
Antiochus Epiphanes, 106
Anti-Semitism, 35, 36, 42n82
Anti-Trinitarianism, I, 21; of early church,
Whiston on, 126; link with deism, 53. See
also Arianism; Socinianism
Apocalypse of St. John. See Revelation, Book
of
Arbuthnot, John, 196
Archer, Abraham (G. Burnet's publisher),
117n72
Arianism: and Blount, 33; and G. Burnet,
I17n73; and Chillingworth, 137n27; and S.
Clarke, 125; and Cudworth, 15, 31; history
of, 31, 78-79, 97n14; of Newton, 1,20,30,
31,57,60,76,107,122-128; of Newton and
God's omnipotence, 79-80, 130-131; and
Stillingfleet, 123; and G. Vossius, 31; of
Whiston, 20, 21, 63, 64, 65, 125-128 passim
Aristotle, 15
Arius, 31, 78-80. See also Arianism
Arminianism, 10,30, 39n19
Astronomical Principles of Religion (Whiston),
48,49,92
Astronomy: and Hume, 194; and Newton, III
Athanasian Creed, 160n26; and S. Clarke, 125;

and latitudinarians, 123; and Newton, 124;

and Tillotson, 125, 127
Athanasius, Saint, 15, 20, 30, 31, 60, 87,
117n73; Newton on, 107, 165
Atheists: on creating new ideas, 17
Austin, Saint, 117n73
Barfoot, Michael, 196nl, 200n32
Barrow, Isaac, I, 125, 165; and Mede, 167; and
Newton, 113, 136n5; and Spinoza, 104
Barton, Catherine, 77,119,166
Battersby, Christine, I98nI6, 202n4I, 203n57
Bayle, Pierre, 2, 36, 4In80; Critical and
Historical Dictionary, 35-36; and fideism,
16; and Spinoza, 35; and toleration, 35
Bechler, Zev, 96nl
Bentley, Richard, 121, 144, 148; A Confutation
of Atheism, 99n30; and Newton, 81, 158n18;
and Whiston, 126. See also Boyle Lectures;
Design Argument; General Providence;
Gravity
Berossus (the Babylonian), 30, 55, 56
Bible: accuracy of, and G. Burnet, ll6n46,
117n72; accuracy of, and Newton, lll, 112;
interpretation of, and Hobbes, 155;
interpretation of, and Newton, 103, 16In37;
interpretation of, and Spinoza, 109;
interpretation of, and Whiston, 133, 161 n37.
See also New Testament; Old Testament;
Names of individual books
Biblical criticism, beginnings of modem,
105-106. See also Higher Criticism
Biblical events, chronology and dating of: and
Newton, Ill, 175
Bibliotheque universelle (Le Clerc), 110, 168
Bill of Rights, 37
Biot, Jean-Baptiste, 169
Birch, Thomas, 151
Blaeu (G. Vossius' publisher), 32
Blake, William, 53, 69n36
Bloom, Allan, 75
Blount, Charles, 27, 47, 66n4; Anima Mundi,
32; and English deism, 32-35; Great is
Diana of the Ephesians [etc.}, 32; and
Herbert of Cherbury, 21, 32; and Hobbes,
32-33; A Just Vindication of Learning
[etc.}, 34; The Last Sayings [of Thomas
Hobbes}, 33; The Oracles of Reason, 133;

215

216
Reasons humbly offered for the Liberty of
Unlicensed Printing, 34; and Spinoza, 32,
33; A Summary Account of the Deists
Religion, 66nl. See also Arianism; Natural
Religion; Trinitarianism
Bochart, Samuel, 23n23, 52, 55, 71n48; and
Newton, 11; and pagan theology, 28, 30;
Sacred Origins of Gentile Theology, 51
Boehme, Jacob, 170
Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, 129
Booth, William Bramwell, 172-173
Boreel, Adam: Jesus Christ, Legislator of the
Human Race, 16
Bossuet, Jacques Benigne, Bishop, 3
Boudinot, Elias, 37, 168
Boulanger, Nicolas-Antoine, 35
Boyle, Robert, 16, 119, 143, 144, 146, 157nl,
158n7, 158nll, 165; The Christian
Virtuoso, 146; and de Veil, 3; and Hume,
189-190; and More, 115nI6. See also
Design Argument; General Providence;
God, omnipotence of; Miracles; Prophecy;
Special Providence
Boyle Lectures, 121; of Bentley, 46, 56, 92,
119, 120, 147, 150; of S. Clarke, 44, 50-51,
120, 149; of Gastrell, 43-44; of Hancock,
120; and Kennet, 120; Isaac Newton and,
93, 150, l6On37; of Thomas Newton, 168;
of Whiston, 82,126,133,150,154
Brerewood, Edward, 9
Brewster, Sir William, 170
A Brief Account of the New Sect of LatitudeMen (Patrick), 123
Brightman, Thomas, 167
Brucker, Jacob, 21
Bruno, Giordano, 139n59
Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Compte de,
Histoire et tMorie, 204n62
Burnet, Gilbert (Bishop of Salisbury), 122, 126,
135; and doctrine of Church of England,
123; Dr. Burnet's Vindication of Himself
[etc.}, 117n73; An Exposition of the ThirtyNine Articles, 116n46, 117n73; History of
His Own Time, 120; and Newton, 110; and
Westminster Confession, 116n46; and
Whiston, 134. See also Arianism; Bible;
Jesus Christ; Trinitarianism
Burnet, Thomas, 4On50, 159n25; Sacred Theory
of the Earth, 47, 204n59. See also Creation;
Moses
Burton, J. H., 181, 192
Burtt, E. A., 199n30
Cabbala, 15,21
Calculus: and Hume, 205n68; of Leibniz, 88; of

INDEX

Newton, 88; priority dispute, 88, 93,

lOOn37; priority dispute and Newtonian
politics, 101n52
Calvin, John: Newton on, 131
Calvinists: Cudworth on, 129
Calvinists, Dutch, 28, 31; and G. Vossius,
39n24
Cambridge Platonists, 10, 25n88, 121;
latitudinarians influenced by, 122-123. See
also individual names.
Capaldi, Nicholas, 196nl
Caroline, Princess, 166, 177n7
Carre, Agnes, 185
Cartesianism, Cudworth's critique of, 11-13
passim, 19,21, 71n67
Castillejo, David, 174; The Expanding Force in
Newton's Cosmos, 175-176
Causation, 205n63
Cavelier, Guillaume, 177n7
Caverly, Lady, 65
Censorship, 34, 35, 37
Chalcedon, Council of, 31
Chambers, Ephraim, 52; Cyclopaedia, 62, 181,
190-191,20On33
Chandler, Edward (Bishop of Litchfield and
Coventry), 71n63, 16On37
Chandler, Samuel, 62, 72n72
Chandrasekhar, Subrahrnanyan, 96n2
Charles II, King of England, 3, 39n25
Charleton, Walter, 143, 158n7. See also
General Providence; Special Providence
Chillingworth, William, 137n27
Christianity as Old as the Creation (Tindal),
34,69n40,7In63
Christianity Not Mysterious (Toland), 34
Christian Observer, 165, 170
Christianson, Gale E., 91, 98n24
The Christian Virtuoso (Boyle), 146
Christina, Queen, 16
The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended
(Newton), 20, 21, 31, 33, 103, 111, 166,
178nlO
Church and State, separation of, 4On47
Church Fathers, 15
Church of England, 93; factionalism of, 127,
136n 10; and latitudinarians, 123, 124; and
Newton, 119; Stillingfleet on sacraments of,
124
Cicero, 18, 67n31, 158n11, 196
Circumcellians, 123
Ciarke,John,191,201n37
Clarke, Joseph: A Further Examination of Dr.
Clarke's [etc.}, 192, 201n7
Clarke, Samuel, IOOn38, l00n39, 144, 148,
161n37, 167, 196nl; and Athanasian Creed,

INDEX

125; and Cudworth, 52; A Discourse of the

Unchangeable Obligations of Natural
Religion, 67n3l; and the Fall, 67n3l; and
Leibniz, 66n5, 86, 93, 96n12, 149, 16On28;
and Newton, 127, 149; and Tindal, 67n3l;
and Whiston, 45, 46, 52, 67n3l, 138n42. See
also Arianism; Boyle Lectures; Deists,
Clarke's four categories of; General
Providence; God, attributes of; God,
omnipotence of; Gravity; Jesus Christ;
Miracles; Natural Religion; Rational
Religion; Reason, weakness of human;
Revealed Religion; Rules of Reasoning;
Special Providence; Trinitarianism
Clavis Apocalyptica (Mede), 167
Clephane, John, 156
Cohen, I. B., 190
Collins, Anthony, 36; and S. Chandler, 62,
72n72; and Whiston, 65, 134, 156
Collins, James, 196n 1
Common Notions (of Herbert of Cherbury), 32
"Concerning Miracles" (Hume): excision of
from Treatise, 193
Condorcet, Marquis de, 37
Conduitt, John, 69n42, 119, 166
Conduitt, Madame. See Barton, Catherine
A Confutation of Atheism (Bentley), 99n30
Considerations politiques (Naude), 22n6
Constantinople, Council of, 81
Constitutional Convention, American, 4On47
Conti, Abbe Antonio, 177n7
Cosmogony: and Desaguliers, 204n60; and
Hume,195
Costa, Uriel da, 27
Coste, Pierre, 94
Cotes, Roger, 89, 92, IOOn39
Court of Delegates, 127
Cragg, Gerald R., 53
Crawford, Charles, 168
Creation, 61; T. Burnet on, 58; and Hume, 190;
Newton on, 56, 58, 94, 104, 148, 159n24;
and Ussher, Ill; and Whiston, 47, 58, 148,
159n24, 160n26
Criterion, problem of: for deists, 62
Cromwell, Oliver, 39n25
Cudworth, Ralph, 9-25 passim, 34, 35, 39n26,
51,57,60, 71n48, 165; and Cabbala, 15,21;
and Calvinists, 129; and S. Clarke, 52; and
Hobbes, 15, 129; and Hume, 21, 23n35,
24n67, 25n90, 25n91; and Mede, 167; and
More, 19; and Newton, 31, 57; orthodoxy
of, 31; and polytheism, 30; 128-129;
sermon before Parliament, 129; and
Spinoza, 12, 15, 18, 20, 21, 24n58, 104,
115n 16; The True Intellectual System of the

217
Universe, 13, 16,20, 24n58, 29, 31, 51; and
G. Vossius, 28-29; and Whiston, 20, 21, 52;
See also Arianism; Cartesianism; God,
attributes of; God, existence of; God,
knowledge of; God, omnipotence of;
Millenarianism; Miracles; Moses; Natural
Religion; Predestinarianism; Prophecy;
Revealed Religion; Revelation, Book of;
Scepticism; Trinitarianism
Cyclopaedia (Chambers), 62, 81, 190-191,
20On33
Daniel, Book of, 1, 18, 48, 56, 81, 114, 166;
and Higher Criticism, 172; and Mede, 167;
andNewton,I09, Ill, 112,172
Daniel, Stephen H., 119
Darwin, Charles, 76,166
David, King: Bayle on, 35-36
De Cive (Hobbes), 16
Declaration ofIndependence, American, 91
De Culto Divino (Maimonides), 3
De Diis Syriis (Selden), 32
Defoe, Daniel: Letters of a Turkish Spy,
Continuation of [etc.}, 41n60
De Idolatria (Maimonides; D. Vossius'
commentary on), 3, 4, 6nll, 14,28,29,51
Deism, 27-42 passim, 43-73, passim; in
America, 27, 36-38; and atheism, 66nl; and
criterion, problem of, 62; defmition of,
43-44, 62, 73n73; in England, 27, 34, 35,
36; in England, beginnings of, 21, 27, 32,
157n6, 167; in France, 27, 33, 37, 167; and
Folkes, 143; and Gastrell, 43-44; in
Germany, 36;
and latitudinarianism,
134-135; and Leland, 46; in The
Netherlands, 27; and Newton, 134, 135; and
the Royal Society, 143; and toleration, 27,
35, 36- 38; and G. Vossius, 21, 31-32, 35;
and Whiston, 44, 46, 62
Deists, Clarke's four categories of, 44-45,
50-51,52,59,66n5,67n6,67n7
The Deists Manual (Gildon), 66n4
Deluge, Noachian. See Flood
Democritus,14
De Religione Gentilium (Herbert of Cherbury),
32,39n34
De Sacrificis liber (Maimonides), 3
Desaguliers, J. T., 92, 200n32, 201n40, 204n60;
The Newtonian System of the World, 92. See
also Rules of Reasoning
Descartes, Rene, 83, 182; and Hume, 195,
204n62; More's cnhque of, 23n25;
Newton's critique of, 92; and G. Vossius,
11. See also Cartesianism
Design Argument: and Bentley, 81, 119, 188;

218

INDEX

and Boyle, 145-146; and J. Clarke, 201n37;

(Hume), 21, 155, 184, 189
and God, attributes of, 121; and God, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of
Morals (Hume), 21,184,187
existence of, 121; and Hume, 182, 187-191,
194, 195; and latitudinarians, 121; and An Enquiry into the Ideas of Space, [etc.} (E.
Law),192
Maclaurin, 201n39; and Newton, 4-5,
57-59, 121, 132, 191; and prophecy, 150; "Enthusiasm": and More, 121; and Newton,
120-121
and Rules of Reasoning, 187-191; and
'sGravesande, 191; and Whiston, 45, 48, Epicurus, 14, 17
188, 191, 199n27, 203n56. See also General Erasmus, 117n72; 121
Eratosthenes (Biblical chronologist), 111
Providence
De Theologia Gentili (G. Vossius), 6nl1, 10, L' Esprit du Judilfsme (d'Holbach), 36
28-29
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(Locke),94
de Veil, Charles Marie, 3, 4, 6n12
Essay sur les Moeurs (Voltaire), 36
De Veritate (Herbert of Cherbury), 157n6
Essays Moral and Political (Hume), 183,
de Vieira, Antonio, 3
Diagoras, 35
203n44
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Ettinger, Shmuel, 35
(Hume), 21, 182, 185, 187-190, 192, 193, Euhemerus of Messene, 70n43
Evelyn, John, 119, 121, 158n18
194, 195
The Expanding Force in Newton's Cosmos
Diderot, Denis, 42n82, 167; Encyclopedia, 36
(Castillejo), 175-176
Dienstag, Jacob I., 6n6, 22n7
An Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles (G.
Digby, Sir Kenelm, 158n7
Burnet), 116n46; 117n73
Discorsi sopra la prima (Machiavelli), 22n6
A Discourse of the Unchangeable Obligations Ezra, Aben, 105
ofNatural Religion (S. Clarke), 67n31
Fideism, 16, 22; and latitudinarians 123
Dissenters, 65, 123
"A Dissertation upon the Sacred Cubit" Finch, Daniel (2nd Earl of Nottingham), 127
Fisher, Mitchell Salem, loon4O, 140068
(Newton), 6n8, 103, 112, 166
Dissertations on the Prophecies (T. Newton), Fisher, Samuel, 39n23
Flew, Antony, 162n56, 196n1
168
Flood: and Boulanger, 35; and KeiII, 148,
Dobbs, B. J. T., 165
159n25; and Newton, 55, 56, 58, 94; and
Donatists, 123
"2nd" Royal Society, 151; and Whiston, 47,
Dordrecht, Synod of, 10,28,30, 39n19
58, 148, 159n25
Dort, Synod of, 123
Dr. Burnet's Vindication of Himself [etc.} (G. Fluxions. See Calculus
Folkes, Martin. See Royal Society
Burnet), 117n73
Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier de, 181, 192
Duffy, Eamon, 127
Forbes, Duncan, 196nl
Duncalf, John, 148, 160026
Fowler, Edward, 120
Dury,John, 39n30, 179n25
"Fragments from a Treatise of Revelation"
Dutch Collegiants, 16
Dysart, Mrs. (Hume's cousin): Hume's letter to,
(Newton), 98n23
Franklin, Benjamin, 40047, 195, 205n65
185
Froom, Le Roy, 171
Fr6ret, Nicolas, 177n7
Edwards, John, 63,129
Fundamentalism, Newton's influence on, 113,
Einstein, Albert, 75, 76,175,112, 115n8
114, 165-180 passim
Ekins, Reverend Jeffrey (Dean of Carlisle),
A Further Examination of Dr. Clarke's [etc.} (1.
178nlO
Clarke), 192
Electricity: and Hume, 195; and Newton,
205n64
Empiricism: Newton's, 88-89; Newton's and Galileo Galilei, 133, 182, 190, 194
Hume, 181; Newton's, origin of, 199n30; Gassendi, Pierre, 10
and Whiston, 90, 134, 154. See also Gastrell, Francis, 43-44. See also Boyle
Lectures
Scientific method
Gay, John, 156
Encyclopedie (Diderot), 36
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding General Providence, 85, 86; balancing of with

INDEX

special providence, and Royal Society,

144-157; and Bentley, 147; and Boyle, 145;
and Char1eton, 145; and S. Clarke, 90;
definition of, 145; and Digby, 158n7; and
Hartley, 167; and Herbert of Cherbury,
I 57n6; and Hume, 144, 151-157; and
Newton, 135; Sprat, 146; and Wilkins, 145.
See also Laws of Nature.
General Scholium, 93, 94; and design argument, 191; draft version of, 130; and God,
79, 85, 135-136; and Maimonides, 4; and
order of nature, 49; and Westfall, 76-78;
and Whiston, 92-93
Genesis, Book of, 9,46; and Newton, 104
Gentleman's Magazine, 192, 193, 203n44
Geology: and Hume, 194-195, 204n59
George III, King of England, 195, 205n65
Gibbon, Edward, 10, 28, 68n36
Gildon, Charles, 33, 4On50; The Deists Manual,
66n4; The Oracles of Reason, 33
Gjertsen, Derek,62
Glanvill, Joseph, 135
Glorious Revolution, 27, 93, 95
God: attributes of, and S. Clarke, 44, 67n7;
attributes of, and Cudworth, 12-13, 18- 19;
attributes of, and design argument, 121 ;
attributes of, and Newton, 4-5, 83, 135-136;
attributes of, and Whiston, 49, 86; existence
of, and Cudworth, 18; existence of, and
design argument, 121; existence of, and
Epicurus, 17; existence of, and Newton, 4,
81; knowledge of, and Cudworth, 12;
knowledge of, and Hume, 135; man's
universal knowledge of, 17; omnipotence
(dominion) of, 75-102, passim; omnipotence of, and Boyle, lOOn40, 140068,
199n30; omnipotence of, and S. Clarke, 86;
omnipotence of, and Cudworth, 72n67;
omnipotence of, and Newton, 56, 61, 59,
72n67, 85, 113, 122, 128-134, 147, 150;
omnipotence of, and Newton's Arianism,
79-80; 130-131; omnipotence of, and
Newton's
millennialism,
130,
131;
omnipotence of, and Newton's predestinarianism, 129-130, 131; omnipotence of,
and Newton's scientific method 100n4O,
130,
132,
135,
140n68,
I 99n30;
omnipotence of, and Solomon's Temple,
112; omnipotence of, and Whiston, 72n67,
86,89
Golden Square Triangle, I 19
Gosse, Edmund, I 78n I 3
Gosse, Philip Henry, 166, I 78n 13
Gravity: and Bentley, 147, 158n18; and S.
Clarke, 147, 149; and Newton, 85, 91,

219
147-148, 158n18, and Whiston, 85-86,
147-148
"Great Disappointment," 169-172 passim
Great is Diana of the Ephesians [etc.} (Blount),
32
Greaves,John,6n8,177n8
Gregory, David, 191
Grotius, Hugo, 31, 51, 52; Arminian views of,
39n19; and Newton, 110; Of the Truth of the
Christian Religion, 51; and toleration, 29;
and G. Vossius, 10, I 1,28,29
Gueriac, Henry, 119, 161n37
The Guidefor the Perplexed (Maimonides), 2
Halhed, Nathaniel Brassey, 33
Halifax, Baron. See Montague, Charles
Hall, A. Rupert, 88, 100038
Halley, Edmund, 161n38
Hammann, J. G., 166
Hancock,John, 120
Hartley, David, 166, 167, 168, 169, 194;
Observations on Man, 167
Hartlib Papers, 39n30
Hauksbee, Francis, 205n64
Heilbron, J. L., 205n64
Herbert, Nick, 91, 93
Herbert of Cherbury: and Blount, 21, 32; and
Common Notions, 32; De Religione
Gentilium, 32, 39n34; De Veritate, 157n6;
and English Deism, 21, 27, 157n6; and
Newton, 31; and G. Vossius, 10, 11, 32,
39n34. See also General Providence; Natural
Religion; Revealed Religion; Special
Providence
Hertzberg, Arthur, 35
Herzl, Theodor: Judenstaat, 176
Hickes, George, 53
High Church men. See Tories
High Flyers, 127
Higher Criticism, 166, 172
Hill, Christopher, 134
Hinton, Isaac T., 171
Histoire et tMorie (Buffon), 204n62
An Historical Account of Two Notable
Corruptions [etc.} (Newton), 178nlO
Historical Preface to Primitive Christianity
(Whiston), 127
Historiography, 196nl, 203n44
History, human, course of: Newton's dating of
end, 113; and prophecy, 112, 113
The History of England (Hume), 185
History of His Own Time (G. Burnet), 120
History of the Jews (Josephus), 106
History of the Royal Society (Sprat), 146
Hobbes, Thomas, 12, 15, 20; and Blount,

220
32-33; and Cudworth, 15, 129; De Cive, 16;
and Hume, 194, 196, 197n14; Leviathan, 16,
22n6; and political interpretation of religion,
16,21, 22n6. See also Bible; Old Testament;
Revealed Religion
"Hobbists": Gildon on, 66n4
Holbach, Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d', 167;
L' Esprit du Judaisme, 36
Home, Henry, 193, 196nl
Horsley, Samuel, 110, 166, 168, 178nlO
House of Commons. See Parliament
Hubern, Sir John, 65
Hume, David, 36; and Blake, 69n36; and Boyle,
189-190; and Ciceronian humanism, 181,
182; and Cudworth, 21, 23n35, 24n67,
25n90, 25n91; and Descartes, 195, 204n62;
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 21,
182, 185, 187-190, 192, 193, 194, 195; and
the "Disease of the Learned," 192; An
Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,
21, 155, 184, 189; An Enquiry Concerning
the Principles of Morals, 21, 184, 187;
Essays Moral and Political, 183, 203n44;
and Galileo, 194; The History of England,
185; and Hobbes, 194, 196, 197n14;
interpretations of, 196n 1; A Letter from a
Gentleman, 183; and Locke, 203n57; The
Natural History of Religion, 21, 25n90, 185;
and Newton, 83-84, 90, 133, 157, 181; and
Newton, direct references to, 183- 187; "Of
a Particular Providence and a Future State,"
144, 152; "Of Miracles," 144, 152, 153, 154,
155; "Of the Middle Station of Life," 183;
"Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and
Sciences," 183; on society and religion, 152;
A Treatise of Human Nature, 21, 23n35,
24n67, 133, 181, 183, 192, 194,203n57;and
Whiston, 195, 204n62. See also Astronomy;
Calculus; Cosmogony; Creation; Design
argument;
Electricity;
Empiricism,
Newton's; General Providence; Geology;
God, knowledge of; Hypotheses; Induction;
Laws of Nature; Microscopy; Miracles;
Natural Religion; Optics; Philosophical
of
Edinburgh;
Prophecy;
Society
Psychology; Religion; Revealed Religion;
Royal Society; Rules of Reasoning;
Scepticism; Special Providence; University
of Edinburgh
Hume, John, 185
Hunter, Michael, 143
Hurlbutt, Robert H., 197n5
Hutchison, John: Moses's Principia, 167
Huygens, Christian, 169
Hypotheses: and J. Clarke, 201n37; and Hume,

INDEX

189, 190; and Newton, 60, 89, 133, 188; and

Whiston, 48, 49
Immortality of the Soul (More), II
Induction: Hume's problem of, 189; Newton
and God's power to alter the future, 89-90,
135; Newton's Rule IV and, 201n40
Inductivism, millennial: of Newton, 133; of
Whiston, 133-134
Insanity (alleged), Newton's, 165, 169-170
Irenicum (Stillingfleet), 123
"Isaac Newton's Theologiae Gentilis Origines
Philosophicae" (Westfall), 54
Isaiah, Book of, 65

Jacob, James R., 101n55

Jacob, Margaret C., 77, 92, IOln52, IOln55,
119, 121, 127, 131-132, 136nlO, 137nI7,
137n23,16In37
James II, King of England, 77
Jefferson, Thomas, 37
Jerusalem (Mendelssohn), 39n23
Jesus Christ, 18, 150; and Arius, 78-80; and
Boudinot, 37; and G. Burnet, 117n73; and S.
Clarke, 72n71; and Dury, 39n30; and
Newton, 31, 56, 60-62, 72n69, 80, 87,
97n14, 108, 111, 124, 131; and Seventh Day
Adventists, 171; and Whiston, 49, 65,
97n14, 125, 126, 148. See also
Millenarianism; Prophecy
Jesus Christ, Legislator of the Human Race
(Boreel), 16
John, Saint, 175
Johnson, Samuel, 73n73
Jones, Peter, 181, 192, 193, 197n2, 199n27,
200n33,202n41,202n42,204n59
Jones, Sir William, 33
Josephus: History of the Jews, 106
Judenstaat (Herzl), 176
A Just Vindication of Learning [etc.] (Blount),
34
Kames, Lord. See Home, Henry
Katz, David S., 166
Kazantzakis, Nikos: The Last Temptation of
Christ, 36
Kearney, H. F., 121
Keill, John, 148, 159n25, 191
Kennet, White, 120
Keynes, Lord John Maynard, 1, 6
Kimchi (Commentator on Judaism), 4
Kochav, Sarah, 166, 179n35, 179n38, 179n39
Korshin, Paul J., 68n36
Koyre, Alexandre, 98n27, 190
Kubrin, David, 143

INDEX

Laird, John, 196nl

La Mothe Ie Vayer, Franl(oise de, 16
La Peyrere, Isaac, 9, II. See also Old Testament
Laplace, Pierre Simon de, 83,169
The Last Sayings [of Thomas Hobbes] (Blount),
33
The Last Temptation of Christ (Kazantzakis),
36
Latitudinarianism, 77, 93, 120, 121, 123-128
passim, 134-135, 139n50, 14On67, 141n76
Laud, Archbishop William, 10, 28
Laughton, Dr. Richard, 126
Law, Edmund: An Enquiry into the Ideas of
Space, [etc.], 192
Law, William, 46
Laws of Nature, 84-86; and Hume, 153, 154;
and Newton, 88-89, 130, 148; and Whiston,
86, 147. See also General Providence;
Miracles
Laws of Society: Newton on, 130
Le Clerc, Jean, 11 0, 168, 177n8; Bibliotheque
universelle, 110, 168
Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 2, 88, 150; and S.
Clarke, 66n5, 86, 93, 96n12, 149, 16On28.
See also Calculus; Special Providence
Leland, John, 46, 53
A Letter from a Gentleman (Hume), 183
Letters of a Turkish Spy, Continuation of [etc.]
(Defoe),41n60
Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy, 33
Letter to a Deist (Stillingfleet), 34
Leviathan (Hobbes), 16, 22n6
Licensing Act, 35
"Life of Dr. Boerhaave," 193
Light, Newton's definition of, 203n54
Livingston, Donald W., 205n63
Lloyd, William (Bishop of Worcester), 126,
135,138n44
Locke, John, 34, 35, 63, 94; An Essay
Concerning Human Understanding, 94; and
Hume, 203n57; Newton's letters to,
103-104, 110, 117n72, 120, 166, 168,
177n9, 178nlO; The Reasonableness of
Christianity, 63; Two Treatises of Civil
Government, 94. See also Prophecy; Special
Providence
Luther, Martin, 121, 137n21
McAdoo, Henry, 106, 127, 134-135, 138n43,
141n76
Maccabeans, Revolt of, 106
McGuire, J. E., 85, 86, 98n27
Machiavelli, 16; Discorsi sopra fa prima, 22n6
Maclaurin, Colin, 191, 200n32, 201n39

221
Maimonides, Moses, 1-7; passim, 10, 22n7,
39n23; De Sacri/icis liber, 3; The Guide for
the Perplexed, 2; Mishneh Torah, 2, 3; On
Idolatry (D. Vossius' commentary on), 3, 4,
6nll, 14, 28, 29, 51; Porta Mosis, 3;
Tractatus de juribus, 3
Majus, J. H., 6n13
Malebranche, 2
Manetho (Biblical chronologist), 111
Manicheanism, 14
Manuel, Frank E., 55, 76, 96n12, lOOn37, 119,
125, 133, 136n2; The Religion of Isaac
Newton, 103, 165, 166
Manuscripts, Collections (of Newton's), I, 2,
29,30, 103, 110, 115n8, 165, 167, 175
Marana, G. P., 33
Marsham, John, II, 23n23, 30, 55, 71n48
Maupertuis, Pierre-Louis Moreau de, 193
Meadows, A. J., 1OIn47
Mede, Joseph, I, 113, 169, 171; and Barrow,
167; and Cudworth, 167; and Hartley, 168;
and More, 167. See also Millenarianism;
Prophecy; Revelation, Book of
Memoirs (Whiston), 64
Menasseh ben Israel, 10, 29
Mendelssohn, Moses: Jerusalem, 39n23
Mersenne, Marin, 10
Messiah. See Jesus Christ
Microscopy: and Hume, 195; and Whiston,
204n60
Millenarianism, 9; American government and,
36; and Boudinot, 37; and Cudworth, 29;
and Hartley, 167; and Mede, 168; and
Newton, 3, 81, 87, 108, 130, 131, 160, 166,
169; and Whiston, 49,64
Miller, David, 196nl
Miller, William, 171
Milton, John, 34, 167
Miracles, 144, 145, 150; and Boyle, 146, 148,
158n17; and S. Clarke, 86, 99n33; and
Cudworth, 18; and Hume, 152, 153-154;
and Keill, 148; and Newton, 84- 85, 87, 90,
lOOn34, 147, 148; and Royal Society, 150;
and Spinoza, 18, 33; and Whiston, 86, 90,
99n33, lOOn34, 148, 149, 16On26; and
Wilkins, 146-147, 148. See also Special
Providence
Mishneh Torah (Maimonides), 2, 3
Missionary Journal (Wolff), 179n39
Montague, Charles, 77, 94, 119
Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de, 16
Montesquieu, Baron de, 181, 192
Moore, John (Bishop of Norwich), 136n 12
"Moral certainty," 123, 140n67
More, Henry, I, 12, 16, 165, 169; Antidote to

222
Atheism, 11; and Boyle, 115nI6; and
Cudworth, 19; and Descartes, 23n25;
Immortality of the Soul, 11; and Mede, 167;
and Newton, 113, 128, 177n4; and Sharp,
128; and Spinoza, 104, 115n 16. See also
"Enthusiasm";
Predestinarianism;
Revelation, Book of; Scepticism
Morelli, Henri, 34
Moses, 28; and T. Burnet, 58; and Cudworth,
14; and Newton, 55-56, 57-58, 61, 104; and
G. Vossius, 10; and Whiston, 47
Moses's Principia (Hutchison), 167
Mossner, Ernest Campbell, 152
Mure, William, 203n44
The Mystery of the Grand Iniquity (Newton),
25n85

INDEX

Oakley, Francis, 98027

Observations on Man (Hartley), 167
Observations upon the Prophecies [etc.}
(Newton), 103, 104, 113, 157, 166, 178nl0,
178n13
Occasionalism, 2
Ockham, William of, 98n27
"Of a Particular Providence and a Future State"
(Hume), 144, 152
Of Idolatry. See De Idolatria
"Of Miracles" (Hume), 144, 152, 153, 154, 155
"Of the Middle Station of Life" (Hume), 183
"Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and
Sciences" (Hume), 183
Of the Truth of the Christian Religion (Grotius),
51
Oldenburg, Henry, 16
Old Testament: and A. Ezra, 105; and Hobbes,
105-106; and La Peyrere, 105-106; and
Newton, 104-107 passim; and Simon, lOS,
109; and Spinoza, 105-109 passim
"On Maimonides" (Newton), 2, 4
"On the Origins of Gentile Theology"
(Newton). See Theologiae Genti/is Origines
Philosophicae
OperaOmnia(Newton),110, 166,168,178n1O
Optics: and Hume, 194
Opticks (Newton), 130, 194, 203n57
Oracles, Chaldaic, 15
The Oracles of Reason (Blount, Gildon), 33
Ordination, Newton's dispensation from, 13605
Origines Sacrae, Or a Rational Account [etc.]
(Stillingfleet), 51
"Out of Cudworth." See "Notes on Cudworth"

Napier, John, 167

Napoleon Bonaparte, 169
The Natural History of Religion (Hume), 21,
25n90, 185
Natural Religion, 35; and Blount, 32; and S.
Clarke, 52, 59; and Cudworth, 18, 39n22;
and Herbert of Cherbury, II, 21, 32; and
Hume, 192; and Lost Tribes, 34; and
Newton, 30, 31, 57, 58, 81; and Spinoza, 32;
and Tindal, 56; and G. Vossius, II, 29, 35;
and Whiston, 48, 51, 92
Naude, Gabriel: Considerations politiques,
22n6
Never at Rest (Westfall), 76
New Testament: and Newton, 80, 107, 108,
109-110; and Simon, 109; and Spinoza,
109; and Whiston, 72n72
A New Theory of the Earth (Whiston), 46, 47,
48,58,63,92,195,204n62
Paine, Thomas, 37
Newton, Humphrey, 69n42
Pantheism: and Newton, 139n59
Newton, Thomas, 166, 168, 169, 171; Paradoxical Questions [etc.} (Newton), 25n85,
110, 117n73, 127
Dissertations on the Prophecies, 168. See
also Boyle Lectures
Parker, Samuel, 63, 65
Newtonian philosophy, as understood in the Parliament: Cudworth's Sermon before, 129;
18th century, 200n33
Newton's candidacy for, 120
The Newtonian System of the World [etc.} Parmenides,15
(Desaguliers), 92
Pascal, Blaise, 16; Pensees, 103. See also
Niagara Creed, 172
Scepticism
Nicaea, Council of, 78, 117n73
Patrick, Simon (Bishop of Ely), 119-120, 122,
Nicene Creed: and latitudinarians, 123
126, 129, 135; A Brief Account of the New
Noah, precepts of, 30
Sect of Latitude-Men, 123
Nonconformists, 123, 124
Paul, Saint, 57
North, Roger, 53
Pelling, John, 127
Norton, David Fate, 171, 196nl
Pemberton, Henry, 191, 20On32
Nostradamus, 171
Pensees (Pascal), 103
"Notes on Cudworth" (Newton), 20, 30, 71n48
Pepys, Samuel, 158n18
Noxon, James, 196nl, 202n41
Philosophical Essays concerning Human
Understanding. See Enquiry Concerning

INDEX

Human Understanding
Philosophical Society of Edinburgh: and Hume,
193,195,196
Picart, Bernard, 9
Plain Truth, 172
Plato: and form of Trinity, 15
Plotinus: and form of Trinity, 15
Pococke, Edward, 6nl4, 97n13
Political appointments: of Newton, 94
Popkin, Richard H., 61
Porta Mosis (Maimonides), 3
Portsmouth Paper (Newton), 159n25
Potentia absoluta. See Special Providence
Potentia ordinata. See General Providence
Predestinarianism: and Bolingbroke, 129; and
Cudworth, 128-129; and Edwards, 129; and
latitudinarians, 128; and More, 128-129;
and Newton, 122, 129-130, 131; and
Patrick, 129; and Tillotson, 129, 139n56
Press, freedom of, 34-35
Priest, Mr. (Friend of Whiston), 126
Priestley, Joseph, 167, 168
Principia Mathematica (Newton), 4, 69n42, 75,
77, 79, 81, 83, 84, 87, 88, 89, 91, 92, 93,
167,181,182,187,188,190
Principles of Moral Philosophy (Turnbull),
196nl
Pringle, Sir John, 151, 195, 205n65
Prisca theologia, 10, 24n48
Proc1us: on the Trinity, 15
Prophecy, 145, 150; and American and French
Revolutions, 168; and Boyle, 146; and
Cudworth, 18, 24n73; and Design
Argument, 150; and Hume, 152, 154, 155;
and Locke, 150; and Mede, 167; and
Newton, 30, 48, 56, 57-58, 59-61, 72n67,
80- 81, 84, 85, 87, 89, 92, 93, 106, 107,
112-113, 117n66, 132, 133, 147, 155,
170-172,173; and "1st" Royal Society, 150,
151; and Spinoza, 112; and Whiston, 48, 49,
64, 65, 134, 154-155, 162n54; and Whitla,
172-174; and Wilkins, 154. See also Special
Providence
Providence, General and Special. See General
Providence; Special Providence
Psychology: and Hume, 194
Ptolemy, astronomical records of, III
Puritans: and Newton, 132
Pythagoras, 15

Quantum mechanics, 91
Rashi (Commentator on Judaism), 4
Rational Religion: and S. Clarke, 72n69;
Cudworth's rejection of Descartes', II, 12;

223
and Newton, 53, 69n42; and Whiston, 45-46
Reason, weakness of human: and S. Clarke, 51;
and Whiston, 51
The Reasonableness of Christianity (Locke), 63
Reasons humbly offered for the Liberty of
Unlicensed Printing (Blount), 34
Redwood, John, 53
Rees, Jonathan, 203n44
Reflexions on Dr. Gilbert Burnet's Travels
(Varillas), 117n73
Regulae Philosophandi. See Rules of Reasoning
"Religion" (Newton), 94
Religion: comparative, 9, 21, 51, 53; pagan, 50;
pagan, and Newton, 54; polytheistic, 27-42
passim; polytheistic and Newton, 54-55;
and science in the 18th century, 192-193,
195-196, 199n27; social and political
interpretation of, 15, 16-18, 21, 22n6, 30,
32,33,35, 121-122; and society, Hume on,
152. See also Natural Religion; Rational
Religion; Revealed Religion
The Religion of Isaac Newton (Manuel), 103,
165, 166
Revealed Religion: and S. Clarke, 44, 45, 46,
50-51, 52; and Cudworth, 18, 20; and deists,
34, 46; and Herbert of Cherbury, 21; and
Hobbes, 105; and Hume, 192; and S.
Johnson, 73n73; and W. Law, 46; and
Newton, 31,53,55,56,57,59,65, 106; and
Simon, 106; and Spinoza, 106, 109, 110;
and Tindal, 56; and G. Vossius, 29; and
Whiston, 48, 49-50, 52, 58, 67n31
Revelation. See Revealed Religion
Revelation, Book of: and Cudworth, 18; and
Mede, I, 167; and More, 128; and Newton,
I, 31, 61, 76, 82-83, 107-108, 109, 111,
112, 114, 166, 18On77; Puritan interpretation of, 81; and Spinoza, 109; and Whiston,
82
Reventlow, Henning Graf, 32, 160n28
Revolutions, American and French, 36, 166;
and prophecy, 168, 169
Roman Catholic Church, 37, 80, 82, 93
Ross, Alexander, 9
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 69n36
Royal Academy of Berlin, 193
Royal Society, 48, 143, 157nl, 205n64,
205n65; and deism, 143; and flood, 151; and
Folkes, 143, 144, 151, 161n39; "1st era" of,
143; and Hume, 144; and Jesus Christ, 150;
and Miracles, 150; and Newton, 121; and
prophecy, 150, 151; religious beliefs of
members of, 143; and ridicule of scripture,
151- 152; "2nd era" of, 144; and Whiston,
161n38

224
Rule of Faith Controversy, 140n67
Rules of Reasoning, 60, 72n68, 89, 90, 92,133,
14On68, 194, 200n33; and S. Clarke,
201n37; and Desaguliers, 20In40; and
Hume, 187-191, 198n21, I 99n27, I 99n30,
20On31; and 'sGravesande, 191, 20 I n40;
and Whiston, 90,191, 199n27
Russell, Paul, 197n14

INDEX

Smith, Norman Kemp, 185, 196nl

Socinianism, I, 30, 48, 97n14. See also
Arianism
Solomon's Temple, 2, 3, 4, 58, 112, 166, 167,
172
Souciet, Etienne, 177n7
Southcutt, Joanna, 170
Special Providence, 85, 86; balancing of with
general providence and Royal Society,
Sabbatai Zevi phenomenon, 168
144-157; and Boyle, 145, 146, 158n17; and
Sabeans,2
Charleton, 145; and S. Clarke, 147, 149,
Sacred Origins of Gentile Theology (Bochart),
154; definition of, 145; and Hartley, 167;
and Herbert of Cherbury, 157n6; and Hume,
51
144, 151-157; and Leibniz; 149; and Locke,
Sacred Theory of the Earth (T. Burnet), 47,
204n59
150, 154, 16On34; and Newton, 135, 148;
Sailor, Danton B., 71n48
and Sprat, 146, 158n17; and Whiston, 86,
Saint-Evremond, Charles (Earl of Rochester),
147-148; and Wilkins, 145. See also
Miracles; Prophecy
34
Speech, freedom of: and latitudinarians, 124
Sanchuniathon (the Phoenician), 30, 55
Spinoza, Baruch de, 9, 34; and Barrow, 104;
Saumaise, Claude, 9
Scepticism, 9, 16, 27; and Cudworth, 19, 20;
and Bayle, 35; and Blount, 32, 33; and
and Hume, 144, 156, 157, 182, 187, 191,
Cudworth, 12, 15, 18, 20, 21, 24n58, 104,
193,
194,
197n5,
205n63;
and
115n16; and More, 104, 115n16; and
Newton, 6, 103, 104, 107, 110, 111, 114,
latitudinarians, 123, 132; and More, II, 19;
and Newton, 132; and Pascal, 18
139n59; Tractatus-Theologico- Politicus,
Scholasticism, 11, 12, 21
24n58, 33, 104, 112. See also Bible;
Scientific method: Newton's and God's
Miracles; Natural Religion; New Testament;
omnipotence, lOOn40, 130, 132, 135,
Old Testament; Prophecy; Revealed
Religion; Revelation, Book of
14On68, 199n30. See also Empiricism;
Induction
Spinozism: and The Turkish Spy, 34
Sprat, Thomas, 135, 146, 158n17; History of
Scriblerians, 64
the Royal Society, 146
Second Coming. See Jesus Christ
Stephens, William, 97
Secondary causes. See Laws of nature
Selden, John, 28, 32, 52
Steuart, Robert, 196nl
Sermons and Essays upon Several Subjects Stewart, M. A., 185, 196nl
(Whiston), 63
Stillingfleet, Edward, 2, 52, 122, 123-124, 135;
Serrarius, Peter, 179n25
Irenicum, 123; Letter to a Deist, 34;
Origines Sacrae, 51. See also Arianism
Seventh Day Adventists, 166, 169, 171, 180n53
Sextus Empiricus, 14, 15, 16, 17
Strato,14
s'Gravesande, Wilhelm Jacob, 191, 20On32, Strong, Edward W., l00n38; l00n39
Stroud, Barry, 196nl
201n40
Stukeley, William, 143, 144, 151
Shapin, Steven, IOOn38, IOIn52
Shapiro, Barbara, 121
Suarez, 98n27
Sharp, John (Archbishop of York), 126, 127, Summa Contra Gentiles (Aquinas), 10
128,138n43
A Summary Account of the Deists Religion
A Short Chronicle from the Memory of Things.
[etc.] (Blount), 66n 1
See Abrege de la chronologie de M. Ie Swedenborg, Immanuel, 170
Swift, Jonathan, 63, 64, 156
chevalier Isaac Newton
Short Chronology (Newton), 178nlO
Synge, Edward, 71
Simon, Father Richard, 3, 103-107 passim, "The System of the World" (Newton), 69n42
109, 110, 114, 117n72. See also Old
Testament; Revealed Religion
Templo, Rabbi Judah Leon, 2
Sir Isaac Newton's Daniel and the Apocalypse Tenison, Thomas (Archbishop of Canterbury),
(Whitla's reprint of Observations), 172
121, 127, 135, 150; and Newton, 119, 122,
Sloane, Sir Hans, 143, 151, 161n38
125; and Whiston, 126

INDEX

225

Theologiae Gentilis Origines Philosophicae Van de Wetering, Maxine, 162n59

~ewton), 11, 14,30,31,55,57,58,59,60,
Varillas, Antoine: Reflexions on Dr. Gilbert
Burnet's Travels [etc.}, 117n73
69n42
Theology, "Newtonian," 150
Virtuosi, Christian. See names of individuals
Voltaire, Fran~ois-Marie Arouet de, 69n36, 77,
Theory of knowledge: of latitudinarians, 132
Thirty-Nine Articles, 80, 123, 124, 125, 126,
119,135, 202n52; Essay sur les Moeurs, 36
Voluntarism. See God, omnipotence of
137n27
Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 2; Summa Contra von Haller, Albrecht, 166
Vossius, Dionysius, 10, 28, 29; De Idolatria
Gentiles, 10
(his commentary on Maimonides'), 3, 4,
Thought, freedom of, 4On47
6nll, 51; and Newton, 51
Thucydides, III
Tillotson, John, 124, 135; and Cambridge Vossius, Gerard Johannes, 9-24 passim, 29;
Platonists, 122; and Whiston, 136n12. See
and ancient theology, 10; and Arminianism,
10, 30, 39n24; and Cudworth, 28-29; and
also Athanasian Creed; Predestinarianism
Tindal, Matthew, 21, 36, 71n63; Christianity as
Descartes, 11; De Theologia Gentili [etc.},
6n11, 10, 28-29; and Grotius, 10, 11, 28,
Old as the Creation, 34, 69n40, 71n63; and
S. Clarke, 67n31; and Newton, 20, 30, 34,
29; and Herbert of Cherbury, 10, 11, 32,
53, 55, 57, 69n40, 72n67, 72n69; and
39n34; and Newton, 4, 20-21, 23n23, 2930, 39n22, 55, 57, 60, 71n48; and Sextus
Whiston, 64, 65. See also Natural Religion;
Revealed Religion
Empiricus, 17; and Turkish Spy, 34; and
Whiston, 21. See also Arianism; Calvinists,
Toland, John, 21, 36; Christianity Not
Dutch; Deism; Moses; Natural Religion;
Mysterious, 34; and latitudinarians, 134; and
Newton, 20, 30,34, 53,55, 139n59
Revealed Religion; Trinitarianism
Tories: and Newton, 92, 93, 95; and Whiston, Vossius, Isaac, 10, 32
64,65,126
Tractatus de juribus [etc.} (Maimonides), 3
Wake, William (Archbishop of Canterbury),
Tractatus-Theologico-Politicus
(Spinoza),
120, 127
24n58,33, 104, 112
Walpole, Robert, 156, 203n44
Trapp, Joseph, 43, 66nl
Waterland, Daniel, 43
A Treatise of Human Nature (Hume), 21, Webster, Charles, 158n7
23n35, 24n67, 133, 181, 183, 192, 194, Westfall, Richard S., 20, 23n23, 28, 30, 31,
39n19; 53-55; 57, 59, 69n40, 69n42, 76-77,
203n57
78, 81,85, 90, 98n24, 115n7; 124, 14On60,
Trent, Council of, 123
Trevor-Roper, Hugh, 28, 29
165; "Isaac Newton's Theologiae Gentilis
Origines Philosophicae," 54; Never at Rest,
Trinitarianism: and Blount, 33; and G. Burnet,
117n72; and S. Clarke, 52; and Cudworth,
76
14-15, 29, 31; of monad, mind, and soul, Westminster Confession: and G. Burnet,
15; and Newton, 31, 78, 80, 82, 87, 93, 94,
116n46; and Newton, 106-107
103, 108, 110, 111, 117n72, 165, 166, 167; Whigs, 76, 77,92,93,94,95
and G. Vossius, 21, 29, 31, 32; and Whiston, Whiston, William, 53, 120, 144, 149, 167,
95; See also Arianism, of Newton;
20On32; The Accomplishment of Scripture
Arianism, of Whiston
Prophecy, 82, 126, 133, 150, 154;
Les Trois lmposteurs, 16, 22n6, 35
Astronomical Principles of Religion, 48, 49,
The True Intellectual System of the Universe
92; Athanasius Convicted of Forgery,
(Cudworth), 13, 16, 20, 24n58,29, 31,51
127-128; and Bentley, 126; and G. Burnet,
Turkish Spy, 21, 27, 34
134; and S. Clarke, 45, 46, 52, 67n31,
Turnbull, George: Principles of Moral
138n42; and Collins, 65, 134, 156; and
Philosophy, 196nl
Court of Delegates, 127; and Cudworth, 20,
Two Treatises of Civil Government (Locke), 94
21, 52; and early church documents, 125;
Unitarians, New England, 25n88
and Finch, 127; Historical Preface to
University of Edinburgh: Hume's education at,
Primitive Christianity, 127; and Hume, 195,
181
204n62; and Keill, 148, 159n25; and
Urban III, Pope, 133
latitudinarianism, 139n50; and Lloyd, 126,
Ur-religion, 20, 21, 31, 32, 34
I 38n44; and Luther, 137n21; Memoirs, 64;
Ussher, James (Archbishop of Armagh), 10, 28,
and J. Moore, 136nI2; A New Theory of the
III
Earth, 46, 47, 48, 58, 63, 92, 195, 204n62;

226

and Newton, 20, 55, 56, 87, 133, 154,

159n25, 161n38; and politics, 92-93, 95;
Preface to Primitive Christianity, 127; and
Sermons and Essays upon Several Subjects,
63; and Sharp, 127; Tenison, 126; Third
Way of, 47-49, 51, 52, 58, 59, 62-66,
70n44; Three Postulates of, 58-59; and
Tillotson, 136nI2; and Tindal, 64, 65; and
G. Vossius, 21; and Wake, 127. See also
Anti-Trinitarianism; Arianism; Bible; Boyle
Deism;
Design
Lectures;
Creation;
Argument; Empiricism; Rood; General
Scholium; God, attributes of; God,
omnipotence of; Gravity; Hypotheses;
Inductivism, millennial; Jesus Christ; Laws
of nature; Microscopy; Millenarianism;
Miracles; Moses; Natural Religion; New
Testament; Prophecy; Rational Religion;
Reason, weakness of human; Revealed

INDEX

Religion; Revelation, Book of; Royal

Society; Rules of Reasoning; Special
Providence; Tories; Trinitarianism
Whitla, Sir William, 172-174; Sir Isaac
Newton's Daniel and the Apocalypse, 172
Wilkins, John, 143, 144, 157nl, I 58n7. See
General
Providence;
Miracles;
also
Prophecy; Special Providence
Wolff, Joseph, 169; Missionary Journal,
179n39
Wollaston, William, 64,156
Woolston, Thomas, 162n58
World Church of God, 172
Wright, John, 196nl
Yahuda, Abraham Shalom, 1,2,6, 112, 115n8,
174-175
Zoroastrianism, 15