Frank E. Manuel - The Religion of Isaac Newton - The Fremantle Lectures - 1973 PDF

THE RELIGION OF
ISAAC NEWTON
Thc Frcr1Ialitle LallI/I'I /(1,/';
FRANK 1:. 1\1.\1\l'l.l.
OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1974
Oxford Unil'ersity Pre.rs, Ely liOllse, Londolt W. I
TOWN "'AllAN NAIROR) liAR 1\/01 .... 11."" UTSAKA ADTJIS AOi\IIA
All dgh/s reservuJ. JVO part oj this /wbliratilJlI hf' repl0dllCl'd,
stored ill a felrieml or IUlJIsmiltfd. ill form or arUJ
mea,/.j", rla/Touic, Tl'cordiflg, or othuwiJe,
u'ithmtt the prior pff11li.HirJII (IF (hJrlrd r Pre.rs
Prilllid in Greal Britflin
at lhe Ullil1ersity Press, O:iford
by Vivian RidleY
Printer 10 the University
PREFACE
THE Fremantle Lectures were deliyered at Halliol College 011
successive .l\Iondays in February of 197:3. The)' arc hne
reproduced substantially as they were gi Vt:ll , except ii)r the
amplification of quotatiollS li'om Newton's papers .. -\s it
happened, I had been in JCfusalem during the previous two
springs and there examined the extensive collection of
Newton manuscripts in the Jewish National and Uniwrsil),
Library which had only recently become available. The
present work-my third, and I hope tinal, attempt to grapple
with the personality and non-scientific thought of Isaac
Newton-is in large measure based upon those manuscripts.
Two earlier books, Isaac Newton Historian (1963) and A
Portrait qf Isaac Newton (1968), were equipped with an exten-
sive bibliographical and scholarly apparatus. It has not
seemed necessary in publishing these lectures to repeat
documentation already in print, and I have tended to limit
the footnotes to manuscript signatures. Those athirst {Cll'
references to works about Newton will find them regularly
duplicated in the writings of I. B. Cohen, A. Rupert and
Marie Boas Hall, John Herivel, Richard S. Westfall, and
D. T. \Vhiteside. Whatever the shortcomings of contemporary
scholarship on Newton, it does not sufrer li'om bibliographical
insufficiency.
A working inventory of Newton's manuscripts in Jerusalem
was prepared for the Library's Department of;\-Ianusrripts
by David Castillejo, and any student of these papers is
indebted to him. I should also like to express my warm
thanks to the Director of the Department, Dr. 1\1. Nadav,
and members of his stair fi)r the mallY kindnesses they
extended to me.
Two appendixes have been added to the lectures. They
are fragments from the Newton papers in Jerusalem that are
intended to provide the reader with some sense of how
Newton proceeded in his 'methodising' of scriptural
vi PREFACE
prophecy, and in framing conjectures about the world to
rome. l\Iy commentary on Newton's commentAry on the
Apocalypse follows an old exegetical tradition, and I trust
that the catena will yet be prolongcd.
In the body of the text Newton's obvious mis-spellings and
inadequacies of punctuation have been silently correrted.
The appendixes are faithful renderings of the manuscripts
with all their idiosyncrasil's. \\' ords and phrases crossed ou t
by Newton have been placed in angle brackets.
Finally, I should like to dedicate this libellus to the I\Iaster
and Fellows of Balliol College, among whom I lived as
Eastman Visiting Professor to Oxford University in 1972-3.
Lecturing in the great hall of Balliol, with the portraits or
austere past l\lasters peering over my shoulder, to an
audience stiffly rangcd on backless wooden benches was an
unforgettable l'xpl'rience. But the presence of John \Vyclifin
a far corner gave me comfort.
FRANK E. MANUEL
Washington Square, }-lew York
CONTENTS
I. HIS FATHER IN HEAVEN
II. GOO'S WORD AND GOn'S WORKS
III. CORRUPTERS ANCIENT AND MODERN
IV. PROPHECY AND HISTORY ill
APPENDIXES
A. Fragments i'om a Treatise all Revelatioll 1"7
B. 'or the Day of Judgment and \Vorld to CUI1\l" lC!ti
INDEX 137
I
HIS FATHER IN HEAVEN
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I
T HAT the task of searching into the religion of Isaac Newton
should fall to a historian rather than a theologian may
require an apology. Fortunately I discovered one among
Newton's manuscripts. In a treatise on the language of
Scripture he remarked on the similarity between the
historian's method of periodization and the system of chaplt'rs
in the books of prophecy. 'For if Historians', he wrote,
'divide their histories into Sections, Chapters, and Books at
such periods of time where the less, greater, and greatest
revolutions begin or cnd; and to do otherwise would be
improper: much more ought we to suppose that the holy
Ghost observes this rule accurately in his prophetick dictates
since they are no other then histories o/" things to come." In
an area where the Holy Ghost operates according to the
prescribed historical canon, we historia lIS are on familiar
ground and need not fear to tread. Since it will be one of the
contentions of these lectures that Newton's was a historical
and a scriptural religion, that the metaphysical disputations
in which he was sometimes enmeshed ranked quite low in
his esteem, a historian migh t be as good an expositor as a
philosopher or a theologian. Newton's scriptural religion was
of course not a dry one; it was charged with emotion as
intense as the effusions of mystics who seek direct commu-
nion with God through spiritual exercises and illumination-
a path to religious knowledge that for Newton was far too
facile and subjective to be true.
Newton's printed religious views havc exerted no profound
influence on mankind, and I doubt whether the witness of his
manuscripts, upon which I hope to draw, will contribute
1 Jerusalem,Jewish National and UniversilY Library, i'ahuda rvlS. r. II fol.
.6'. See Appendix A below, p. '22.
4
HIS FATHt:R IN HEAVEN
anything to a religious revival. In the eighteenth and nine-
teenth centuries Newton was occasionally cited by English
apologists to illustrate the compatibility of science and faith.
If the greatest of all scientists was a believer, ran the argument,
how could any ordinary mortal have the impudence to
doubt? German theologians of the Enlightenment leaned
heavily upon Newton's confession of belief in a personal God
in the General Scholium to the Principia, and Albrecht von
Haller, the paragon of science in the Germanic world of his
day, reverently quoted Newton as authority to support his
own reconciliation of science and religion.> There are even
a few recordt'd instances of conversion inspired by Newton's
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of
St. John. Johann Georg Hamann, the great Magus of the
North, who chanced upon the book in London in the 1750s,
testified to his sudden enlightenment upon reading it.3 lYfore
recently, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, in spiritual combat with
his government, resurrected Newton as an ally: one of the
characters in the Pirst Circle defends the sincerity of Newton's
beliefin God and refutes Marx's allegation that Newton was
a covert materialist. But 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.
His scientific discoveries and what Newtonians made of them,
not his own religious utterances, helped to transform the
religious outlook of the West-and in a way that would have
mortified him. My dedication to the man himself and to his
reputedly esoteric religious writings rests on the assumption
that everything about him is worthy of study in its own
right, for he remains one of those baffling prodigies of nature
that arouse our curiosity and continue to intrigue us by
virtue of their very existence.
Isaac the son of Isaac, a yeoman, was born prematurely on
Christmas Day of 1642, and was baptized in the small
ancient church of Colsterworth, Lincolnshire, on 1 January.
2 Albrecht von Haller, Briife uher die wichtigstm J Vahrhcilen der Ojfcllharurlg
(Bern. J 772), p. 6.
J Johann Georg Hamann, 'Betrachtungen tiber Newtons Abhandlung von
den \Veissagungen', Samtliche lVerke, ed. Jusef Nadlt'r, i (Vienna, 1949),315-19,
and 'Tagebuch eines op. cit. g.
5
Some eighty-five years later Sir Isaac Newton, 1I1aster of the
l\1int and President of the Royal Society, was burn. to his
grave in Westminster Abbey by great lords of lhe realm and
eminent prelates who were his friends. The country boy\
strict Church of England religion of rGGI, when he first
went up to Cambridge, as centred round the Bible as any
Dissenter's, as repeJled by Papists and enthusiasts as allY
young Englishman's of the Restoration, is still discernihle in
the latitudinarian religion of the aged autocrat of science who
received French Catholic abbes, a notorious Socinian, High-
Churchmen, and, thanks to his last illness, just nlissed a
confrontation with Beelzebub himself in the person flf
an importunate visiting Frenchman nallled Voltaire. HlIt
between. the womb and the tomb Newton underwent a
great variety of religious experiences. As he stron, mighlily
to acquire a knowledge of his God and to ward off evil,
different kinds of religious concerns were successively in the
forefront of his consciousness. Nul' was he immune to shifting
winds of theological doctrine. Over the decades the Church
to which he belonged suffered many vicissituclt:s. In the
course of a series of dynastic changes it was bereft of its head,
restored, imperilled, established, and more firml y established;
its prevailing temper (if not the articles ofl;lith) was modified.
In Augustan Anglicanism, undergoing a subtle movement
towards a moralist and rationalistic religion, the sacrificial
and redemptive quality of Christ was sometimes left by the
wayside. Open theological controversies and l'eports of
private conversations among clergymen of all ranks in the
hierarchy of the Church of England cunvey the impression
that by the early eighteenth century this Church was
suffering what present day popularizers would call an
identity crisis: the labclsArminian, Arian, Sorinian, Unit arian
were bandied about and all manner of serret heterodoxies
were tolerated behind a stolid verbal fa.;-ade, which olien
betokened indifference.
In examining the religion of the man Isaac Nnlton, one
could investigate the measure of outward conformity of this
member of the Anglican Church to those rituals minimally
required by his communion. When and how often did he go
6 HIS FATHER IN HEAVEN
to church and take the sacrament? Did he genuflect? The
record holds no great surprises. He occasionally skipped
chapel as an undergraduate in Cambridge; and during the
height of his feverish creativity, his amanuensis Humphrey
Newton (no relation) tells us that Newton was so absorbed
with his 'indefatigable studies' that he 'scarcely knew the
house ofprayer'.4 There exists an attestation of his receiving
the sacrament of the Last Supper before he went up to
London to become Warden of the ]'dint in 1696.5 He paid for
the distribution of Bibles among the poor,6 and sharply
censured any expressions of levity in matters of religion
voiced in his pr('sence. Late in life he was a member of a
commission to build fifty new churches in the London area.
John Conduitt, who married Newton's niece, was somewhat
dismayed that Newton on his death-bed had failed to ask for
the final rites, but he consoled himself with the reflection that
Newton's whole life had been a preparation for another
state.'
In one critical incident relating to the fortunes of the
Anglican Communion under the Restoration, Newton took
an uncompromising-one might almost say defiant-public
stand. In the Father Alban Francis case, he pushed his more
reluctant Cambridge colleagues to ignore an order l.mder
James II's sign-manual instructing them to admit a Bene-
dictine monk to the degree of :Master of Arts without taking
the oath of loyalty to the Established Church. Newton and
other members of the University ended up before the Court
of High Commission for Inspecting Ecclesiastical Affairs
under the redoubtable George, Lord Jeffreys, who fired the
Vice-Chancellor and intimidated the rest of them with a
menacing 'Go your way and sin no more lest a worse thing
befall yoU'.8
"" David Brewster, A1ernoirs f!(lhc Lift, It'ritillgs and Di.JlOl'eries of Sir Isaac
Newlon (Edinburgh, 1855), ii. 94.
5 Royal Commission on Historic-al .Manuscripts, j ~ h t h Report, Pt. I (London,
1881),61, official certificate of the vicar and churchwarden of St. Botolph's
Church, (,.ambridge, 18 Aug. 1695.
Oxford, Bodleian Library, New College MSS. 361,11, foJ. 39'.
7 Cambridge, King'. College Library, Keyne. MS. 130.
T. B. Howell, compil", A Complele Coll"t;o" <if State Trials (London, 1816),
xi. 13'5-40.
HIS I'ATHEI{ IN HEA V EN
To be sure, when Newton lived in London, Illany of his
chosen disciples and most intimate friends were suspect in
matters of religion. Edmond Halley and David Gregory wcre
reputed to be unbelievers; John Locke's views on Christianity
were severely censured by the orthodox; the heloved Nicolas
Fatio dc Duillicr was condemned to sland in the pillory lelf
acting as secretary to the Huguenot prophets I.om the
Cevennes who were proclaiming the imminellt destruction
of London in a bloody holocaust; \Villiam \Vhistoll, whum
Newton had chosen as his succt'ssor to the Lucasian Chair,
was ejected from Cambridge University lor flagrant heresy
and he continued to raise tumults in London churches;
Hopton Haynes, Newton's dose aid at the .rvlillt I'll" thirty
years, was, his writings indicatc, a theological humanitarian;
Dr. Samuel Clarke, Newton's mouthpiece in the conTS-
pondence with Leibniz, was formally rhargTCI with spreading
antitrinitarian doctrine by thc lower house of the Anglican
clergy, though the case was quashed by the bishops after a
humiliating retraction on Clarke's part. Newton's latter-day
irenics even extended far enough to embrace a wildly
heterodox Balliol man: James Stirling, a Snell Exhibitioner,
a brilliant mathematician and a J awbile, who had got into
trouble for refusing to take an oath to George J, was one of
the last of his proteges.
Although the list of deviationists of every kind Ji-om lhe
recognized Establishment who were NeWlUn's sometime
favourites is rather long, guilt by association was not invoked,
and during Newton's lifetime nobody cast aspersions on his
Anglican orthodoxy. Never did he join lois friends in any
public manifesto on matters of donrine, and when Fatio
became entangled in the thickets of activist millenarianisIll,
Whiston of outright Arianism, he pushed them away. In the
privacy of his chamber Newton seems to have thought that
the Anglican clergymen among whom he dwelt and pros-
pered were not a bad lot alter all. \Vhile compiling notes on
the gross immorality of churchmen ill the age of Constantine,
he digressed into a comparative study of the clergy in various
ages: 'And whilst I compare these times with Ollr own it
makes me like our own the better and honour Ollr Clergy the
more, accounting them not only men of better morals but
also far more judicious and knowing. Tis the nature of man
to admire least what he is most acquainted with: and this
makes us always think our own times the worst. lv1en are not
sainted till their vices be forgotten.'9
Overt actions and private testimonials of this kind will not
preoccupy us overmuch. In public Newton was a reasonable
conformist and, so far as I know, it did not occur to him to
break with his communion. As for the motives and feelings
that underlay his conduct-that, as David Hume would say,
is 'exposed to some more difficulty'.
How can one recapture the religious experience of a man
who died almost 250 years ago? \Vhat can I really know about
my neighbour's God?
If for the moment we narrow the horizon and play the
positivist, we have two kinds of evidence about Newton's
inward religion: those sentiments that he actually published'
during his lifetime or voiced to reliable witnesses orally and
in correspondence; and those manuscripts on religion-more
than a million words-that were never printed, nor even
intended for publication, but that allow a historian to make
inferences about Newton's religious sensibility. Direct
expressions of religious emotion are sparse-he was not
effusive with intimate revelations. He wrote no autobio-
graphy, no Pensles; he left no map of Christian experience
with technical terms and categories such as seventeenth-
century English Puritans and German Pietists drew. But there
are occasional documents both public and private that
record outbursts of religious passion whose authenticity is
compelling. And he had a plan of salvation uniquely his own.
Despite the refractory nature of the materials, with the aid
of these papers one may he able to catch a reflection of his
actual religious emotion.
Customarily, Newton's religion has been examined in
rationalistic terms, framed propositions setting forth what he
did and did not believe in matters of theological doctrine or
what he thought about God's relation to the physical universe,
about time and about space. In an atmosphere heavy with
Yahuda MS, 18. I, fol. 3'.
verbose disputation and pretensions to learning, self-aware
men like Isaac Newton lelt called upon to make rxplicit their
religious position, if only lor themselves, to difl'Tentiate their
beliefs about Christ and the creed from thuse or uther s('cts
and persuasions in the Christian community of We,teru
Europe and from dominant tendencies within their own
Anglican Church. Such propusitions arc largely ('mbc:dded
in polemical writings that Newtun directed against opiniollS
he held to be dangerous to the true faith, and they s('}'ve as a
form of self-definition by negation. But while these dog-
matic assertions concern us, they hardly exhaust the content
of his religion. And perhaps enough has already b e ~ 1 l said on
the puerile question uf whether ur nut NcwtOJl adually
implied that space was the scnsorium of God.
Finally, if Newton's faith be turned on e\'cry side, the
relationship of his religion to his work as a scientist may be
uncovercd. What religious implications did hc himself draw
from his scientific discoveries? And then a question that ji> lcss
frequently posed: \Vhat eHect did his scientilic method have
on his mode of inquiry into mattns of religion? Wllile it is
self-evident that Newton was born into a scientilic world
at a given stagc of its development, it may sometimes be
forgotten that he was also born into a European religious
world which for more than half a century had been grappling
with the problem of how to assimilate the growing body oj'
scientific knowledge and that, in England at !l'asl, a bid),
stablc rhetoric governing the relatiollSilips betwecn Ihe lIew
science and religion had been evolved. Newtoll could alter
the rhetoric, amend it in fact while adhering to it ill principle,
but he could never completely escape it.
Were we confined in our considerations of Newton's
religion within the boundaries of the widely knowlI printed
documents that have been chewed and re-chewed ad I/aUJeam
-queries 20 and 23 in the 1706 Latin edition of the Optics,
the prefaces and scholia to the later eclitions of the Principia,
and the Clarke-Leibniz correspondence-Newton's religion
might appear rather stereotyped. In 1729, shortly after his
death, the rejected disciple \ViIIiam Whiston asselllbled in
a little pamphlet everything that Newton had in fact
826tH05 II
published all religion under his o\\n name, and it ran to a
paltry thirty-one small pages.
IO
Fortunately, there is that
vast manuscript legacy that may now allow us to breathe new
life: illto tl!csc bones.
:lviost of Newton's manuscripts on religion were long con-
cealed from the world's notice. Of the major non-scicntific
works now in print, only one, the Chronology of Ancient
Kingdoms Amended, was prepared for the press by Newtoll
himself. The Obsel'M/iollS upon tlte Prophecies of DaJliel, amI tI,e
Apocalypse f!f St. John was put together after Newton's death
by his nephew Benjamin Smith, a cleric not renowned for his
piety, a dilettante who had hobnobbed with artists ill Paris
and Rome and was nOl very sympathetic to this kind of
literature, a man intercsted ill making some mOlley out or his
late uncle's papers. In the plan worked out li'orn a heap of
manuscripts, the Reverend 1'vlr. Smith lilVoured the blandest,
most conventional, and most commoJlsensical materials,
ignoring the more imaginative excursions. What he sent to
the press in 1733 is only an insignificant selectioll from the
vast archive at his disposal. And for two hundred years
thereafter most of the manuscripts were suppressed, bowd-
lerized, neglected, or sequestered, lest what were believed to
be shady lucubrations tarnish the image of the perfect
scientific genius.
In the Sotheby sale oC the Portsmouth Collection in 1930,
Newton's non-scientiilc manuscripts were strewn about
rather haphazardly. But since that date, the bulk or them
ha\'e been reassembled and arc now iIl safe keeping, thanks
to the zeal of three ingenious collectors, a most improbable
trio, a renowned British ecoIlomist, an American stock-
market analyst, and an orientalist born in the l\1iddle East
who ended up at Yale: special collections in Cambridge,
England, \Vellesky, .Massachusetts, and Jerusalem now bear
the names of Keynes, Babson, and Yahuda respectively.
Isolated papers still turn up occasionally in American
universities and private collections, and there are documents
from the Royall",lint (in the Public Record Office) in which
10 ,,'illialll Sir lltla(.' Coro/lllricJ fnJm !tis Plti/VJO/I/}' (lud
Chronology ill hi.1 (H1.'1I Jfurdl I I,IIJldOll,
HIS FATHER IN HEAVEN 11
accounts of the coinage are intersperseu with rd1ections on
the Gnostics and the Cabbala, but they do nut materially
alter conclusions based on the major repositories. For the
first time since the great dispersion, virtually everything tllat
Newton wrote on religion is fredy available.
There are extant four separate comll1entari,"s on Daniel
and the Apocalypse, a church history cumplete in Illultiple
versions, rules for reading the language of the prophets,
many drafts of an Irenicum, a treatise 'Dc Annis Praedictiunis
Christi', and extensive notes on Christian heresies through
the ages-all this in addition tu hundreds of pages of excerpts
from contemporary works of scholarly divinity, from Latin
translations of the Talmud, and from the writings of the
Church Fathers, to say nothing uf a coIllIllonplace houk
devoted mainly to theological subjects and papers in the
Cambridge University Library that appear to be related to
Samuel Clarke's replies to Leibniz. If Nl'wtun was Puritan ill
his devotion to the text of the Bible he was Anglican in his
acceptance of the witness of those Fathers of tlte Church who
were closest to the apostolic tradition, and he spent years scru-
tinizing their testimony. Ivanuscripts that are !lOW labelled
'chronology' and even some of those called 'philosuphical
alchemy' were detached from the theological manuscripts
proper by nineteenth-century cataloguers. There were no such
rubrics and compartmentalizations in Newton's mind, and
wherever possible I shall try to reknit connections among them.
The Keynes collection in King's Cullq:(e includes sewn
autograph drafts of Newton's 'Irenicum, ur Ecclesiastical
Polyty tending to Peace', a draft of 'A Short Scheme of True
Religion', a reasonably complete version of a commentary
on the Apocalypse in nine chapters, and an attack on Atha-
nasius entitled 'Paradoxical Questions Concerning the
l\-forals and Actiuns of Athallasius and his Followers' -most
of these published with varying degrees of accuracy hy David
Brewster in 1855 and by Herbert McLachlan ill [950."1 The
II Herbert McLachlan, ed., Sir i.1aac }{ewtou: Thr:'%gical i.\!allu,crip/j (Liver-
pool, 1950). See also A. N. L. l\..lunuy, 'The Kcyucs COIlt'Cliou of the \\'ork:s
of Sir haac Newton in King's College, Cambridge', wd N".'CIJIJ-J
Uo..V/ll SOCifU' of London, x (1952), 4-0-5u.
Babson Institute Library in Wellesley, Massachusetts, has
a text of a treatise on the Temple of Solomon complete with
an architectural sketch, collections or stray notes, and sundry
pieces on church history. By far the greatest part, however,
of the historical-theological manuscripts, the church histories,
the works on pagan religion, commentaries on prophecy, and
long discussions of thc nature of Christ, is in thc Jewish
National and University Library in Jerusalem. The manu-
scripts on chronology and differcnt versions ofthc 'Historical
Account of Two Notablc Corruptions of Scripture' are
largely divided between the New College manuscripts in the
Bodleian Library and thc Yahuda manuscripts in Jerusalem.
After Newton's death, his friend John Craig, preb!'ndary
of Salisbury, author 0[" the indigestible Theologiae Cftristial1ae
Principia Mathematica (1699), maintaincd in a letter to John
Conduitt that Newton 'was much more sollicitous in his
inquirys into Religion than into Natural Philosophy'. And
in what appears to be the record of a confIdence, Craig went
on to give Newton's official explanation for not publishing
these writings during his lifetime: 'They showed that his
thoughts wen' some times different from those which are
commonly received, which would ingage him in disputes,
and this was a thing which he avoided as much as possible."2
The historian cannot of course completely silence the pro-
testing shades of f'rancis Hall, Hooke, Flamsteed, Leibniz,
the Bcrnoullis, Freret, Conti, and other victims of Newton's
thunderbolts. But Craig may have had a point. For Newton,
religious controversy was a source of great anxiety, and
remained in a separate category.
'Vhether or not to put any of his theological papers into
print was a subject about which Newton vacillated through-
out his lik In one lillllOUS instance in 1690, letters exposing
as false the Trinitarian inJohn and Timothy had
been transmitted through Locke to Le Clerc for anonymous
publication in Holland, but then had been withdrawn in
panic. And yet, though Nc\\ton in his old age committed
u Keynes letter of7 :\pril 17'27; published in part in SOlheby and
Co., qf tlte .'\'t'W/UIl Pallerj Jold order '!f tIle ViJCOWII Lymiugloll (London,
1936), pp. 56-7.
numerous documents to the flames, he spared these letters
and scores of other theological manuscripts. Many are
finished pieces that had Iwcn revised time and again; some
had been recopied as if they were being readied J'}f. the press.
Introductions addressed 'to the reader' in a manner that for
Newton is extraordinarily ingratiating have bt't'll attached.
At times these manuscripts are distinguished by a lieshness
and case of expression that are rare in Newton's published
works; he even lapses into colloquialisms. Many reflections
scattered throughout these papers are transparently auto-
biographical and arc among the most revealing sources lor
an understanding of his religion. In a history of the growth
of the great apostasy within the Church, he derided the
Eastern monks in terms that reveal his p:;ychological acunwn
in analy:;ing religious experience:
I find it was general complaint alllollg thelll that UpOIl their
('ntring into the profession of a lVlonastick life fiHmd them-
selves more tempted in the flesh tI",n befe)re and those who
became strickter professors thereof and on that account went by
dc-grccs further intu the wilderness then others did, complained
most of all uf temptations. The reasun tloey of it was that tbe
devil tempted them most who were most enemies aud
most against him: but the truc reason was partly that the desire
was inflamed by prohibition of lawful marriage, and partly that
the profession of chastity and daily Llsting on that account put
them perpetually in mind of what they strove agaillSt, and their
idle lives gave liberty to tlocir thoughts to ti.llow their illdillatiolls.
The way to chastity is not to struggle with incoutincnt thoughts
but to avert the thoughts by some imploymcllt, or lIy reading,
or by meditating on other things, or by converso By imllloderate
fasting the body is also put out of its due temper and f'JI' want of
sleep the fansy is invigorated about what evcr it :;ct> it self upon
and by degrees inclines towards a deliriulll in so llluch that those
1vlonks who fasted most arrived to a state of seeing apparition:;
of women and other shapes and of hearing their voices in such
a lively manner as made them often think the visions true
apparitions of the Devil tempting them to lust. Thlls while we
pray that God would not lead us iuto tellLptation tltese Illell ran
themsdvcs headlong into il.
l
.
l
'4
In writing about the lives of the monks, Newton did not
merely copy mechanically from ecclesiastical histories or
from descriptions in the Church Fathers; he relived their
experience, disclosing his own personal psychotherapeutic
techniques for combating temptation. The remedy he pro-
posed for such onslaughts of the devil as they suffered was a
potion he had often mixed for himself. It was the idle, self-
indulgent, day-dreaming of the monks, their neglect of the
study of God's actions in the world, tllat led them into vice
and the fabrication of superstitions. This is not a 'Veberian
exposition of the work ethic, nor a Voltairean attack on the
emptiness of contemplation, but Newton freely conkssing to
his own regimen lilr kel'ping the demons of lust at bay.
Fighting off the threat of evil thoughts with constant labour
in search of the specific knowledge of God's word and God's
works was the panacea.
Even a cursury study of Newton's manuscripts excludes
any bifurcation of his litC into a robust youth and manhood,
when he performed experiments, adhered to rigorous scien-
tific method, and wrote the Principia, and a dotage during
which he wove mystical fantasies and occupied himself with
the Book of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John-a
legend first propagated by the French astronomer Jean-
Baptiste Biot in the early nineteenth century. Some of the
livelier versions of Newton's commentaries on prophecy
should be dated to the 1670S and 16805, when he was in his
prime. His studies of world chronology and philosophkal
alchemy, both linked to his theology, began early in his
Cambridge University years and continued until his death.
A critical edition of the whole manuscript hoard that his
executor Thomas Pellet dismissed as 'loose and foul papers'
must await a future generation of scholars prepared to
wrestle with ten or more variations of the same text and to
establish their filiation with authoritative precision; but a
rough and tentative chronological order is even now possible,
and what I have to say is based on that sequence.
The first intimate religious text of Newton's that has
survived, written in 1662 in Shelton shorthand when he was
almost twenty and at the University, is perplexing in many
respects. It is a confession of his sins, forty-nine Whit
Sunday and nine afterwards. To wrile out one's sins in
private prior to partaking of the Eucharist was commOll
enough. But if one categorizes the sins that Newton listed,
most of them turn out to be trivial acts of Sal.Jl.Jath-Lreakillg,
or worldly thoughts, or minor disobedience to his mother
and grandlIlother, apparently insignificant aggressiollS
ag,linst his schoolfellows and one against his sister, a few
instances of lying and petty cheating. This profmion of
peccadilloes can be likened to the snowing under of lhe
priest in auricular confessioll with a barrage of venial sillS
in order to cover the really grievous one, or to the manner in
which the associations ofa psychoanalytic patient can become
a veritable flood in which tht: most painful and crucial (JJlts
are druwned.
And there are in [act a few serious in the
mouud of petty inliactiolls that Newton asseml.Jled: a wish
to lmrn his mother and stt:plalhcr and their house uver them; ,
a desire for and unclean thuughts and dreams.
But the anguish of the suicidal despair is masked l.Jy a laconic
statement that takes up less room than a confessioll of
Lathing on the Sabbath or surreptitiously using his mom-
mate's towel. As I read and re-read this document, I cannot
sLlstain any presumption of a convulsive religious crisis at the
age of twenty-nothing like Robnt Boyle's lision in a
Genevan thunderstorm. There are, hm"('ITr, a snit's of eight
or nine sins describing Newton's lear of' alienation limn God
in terse but moving phrases that define his religious state:
'Not turning nearer to Thee for my allections. Not living
according to my Not loving Thee for Thy self: Not
loving Thee for Thy goodness to us. Not desiring Thy
ordinances. Not longling] lor Thee ... N()t ji,aring Thee so
as not to ofT end Thee. Fearing man abo\'(, Thee.'H
Nt:wton's copy-books, which were not IlIcant to serve as
direct a religious purpose as the shorthand confession, are
pervaded by a sense of guilt and by doubt and
tion. The scrupulosity, punitivcness, austerity, discipline,
14 Richard S. \\Testfall, Short\Yririug and the Sial{' of Ni."\\ ton's COIIS( II:'IlCC'.
6ti2 (1)', JVotes and Recotdj ltflhe Ru.}lal Sucit'f}' ofLulidwl. xviii q. .
and industriousness of a morality that may be called puri-
tanical for want of a better word were early stamped upon
his character. He had a built-in ccnsor and lived ever under
the Taskmaster's eye. The Decalogue he had learned in
childhood became an unrelenting conscience that made
deadly sins of lying, coveting, Sabbath-breaking, egotistic
ambition, and prohibited any expressions of hostility or any
breach of control. Newton took the Biblical injunctions in
deadly earnest. His God was a dominus deus, 1TavTOKpdTWP,
Imperator ultivtrsalis, a :Master who had issued command-
ments, and it was his duty as a servant to obey them. From
the beginning to the end of his life, Newton's was a religion
of obedience to commandments, in which the mercies of
Christ the Redeemer played a recessive role., By the turn of
the century, the prevailing spirit in the Anglican Church
was far less austere and demanding than Newton's personal
religion. Scrmons soothed self-satisfied parishioners with
rationalist reassurances that their faith did not require too
much of them, that its burdens were not oppressive. By
contrast, the commandments that lie at the heart of the
pu blic confession of bith of the seventy-one-year-old Newton
in the General Scholium to the Principia, composed more than
half a century after his youthful confession of 1662, were
exacting and had been borne with pain throughout his life.
'Yhen Berkeley, Hartsoeker, and Leibniz were advertising
the irreligious implications of Newton's system with an
array of fancy metaphysical arguments, Newton proclaimed
his belief in a personal God of commandments with plain
words that harked back to the primitive sources of Judaic
and Christian religion. William 'Yhiston's translation from the
third edition of the Principia, incorporating phrases from the
second edition, preserves the stark quality of the original far
better than the more commonly quoted English versions:
This Being governs all Things, not as a Soul of the World, but as
Lord of the Universe; and upon Account of his Dominion, he is
stiled Lord God, supreme over all. For the \Yord God is a relative
Term, and has Reference to Servants, and Deity is the Dominion
of God not (such as a Soul has) over a Body of his own, which is the
Notion of those, who make God the Soul of the World; but (slIch
'7
as a Governor has) over Servants. The supreme God is aI. eternal,
infinite, absolutely perlect Being: But a Beillg, how perfect
soever wilhout Dominion is not Lord Gud. For we .ay, 111)' Uud,
your God, the God qf Israel, the God 'if Gods, and Lord of Lords. But
we do not say, liD' Hlernal, yuur Htallal, the Flernal of Israel, the
Etemal of Ihe Gods: VVe do not say, liD' III/illite, (your bifillite, the
bifinit" qf Israel:) We do llot say, "cY P,rj;'ct, (yuur hrFct, th" Perfect
qf l<rael:) For these Terms have 110 Relatioll 10 Sl'I'vants. The
Term God very frequently signifies Lord; bLlt every LUld is not
God. The Dominioll of a spiritual Being constitult's him (,,,d.
True Dominion, /lue God: Supreme Dominion, jupreme (:od:
Imaginary Dominion, imagillar:y (;ud. And from his having true
Dominion it follows, that the true God is !illing, il/lelligent, and
powerjid; from his otha Perf"cliollS it (jlllo",s that he is ,upwlle (JI'
1IIost perje",. IS
This is the testament of a belie\'er who ft'e1s deeply the pOll t'I'
of a personal, not a metaphysical, god. A dam iI/lis has been
bearing upon him.
In patriarchal religions like] udaism and Christianity, there
is a ritual identification of God and Father. Newton was a
posthumous child; when he was born his lather had been
two months dead. The f:mtasy world of the posthumus has
been explored in twentieth-century literature and in
clinical practice. 'While this proves nothing about Isaac
Newton in particular, it does cast light un the imagination
and emotional experience of some childrcll bum aller a
death and on their search [or "im throughout their
lives. In the folklore of many peoples there is a helief that
a posthumus is endowed with curative powers. A number of
years ago the minister of the little church in Colsterworth
where Newton was baptized told me that country folk in
the area still clung to the notion that a posthumus was
destined to outstanding good iiJrlllne. A similar prognostic
attaches to those born on Christmas Day, ami Newton's first
biographer, Dr. William Stukeley, commented on this
traditional omen of his hero's future greatness.
Though all children are curiolls about their origins, the
emotions that surround their questioning have different
15 \Vhi:iton, Guullaries, pp. 13 -15.
,8 HIS FATHER IN HEAVEN
degrees of intensity. Leafing through the New College
manuscripts in the Bodleian that trace the genealogies of
pagan gods euhemcristically interpreted and of royal
dynasties through the ages, and the ancestries of heroes-
all of which were duly intt'gratcd into Newton's historical
and chronological studies-one is overwhelmed by his pre-
occupation with origins. It has been suggested in recent
studies that a passionate quest for the historical genesis of
families' and kingdoms and civilizations Illay be related to an
anguished desire to recover lost parents; hut such analogi('s
will not convince the mockers, and are Hut meant to.
'When Newton was being knighted, he had to present a
genealogy to the College of Heralds. The number of extant
copies in his own hand-in Jerusalem, in Wellesley, Mas-
sachusetts, in Cambridge, in Austin, Texas, and who knows
where else-testifies to the anxiety that accompanied the
preparation of this document. In the Jerusalem genealogy,
he fixed his parents' marriage in 1639, when it is a matter
of record that it took place in 1642, seven months before he
was born. Perhaps he worried about his legitimacy. He knew
neither father nor father's father, except by report; they were
dead before he entered the world. Like other abandoned
children-and that is the proper definition of his psychic
state-he concocted strange ancestors for himself, even a
remote lordly one. The mystery of the father and his origins
was not dispelled by the submission oj' an official document
to the College of Heralds, and the sl."arch continued on
different psychic levels throughout his life. Newton had an
especially poignant feeling about the Father who was in
heaven, a longing to know Him, to be looked upon with
grace by Him, to obey and to serve Him. The sense of owing
to progenitors is deep-rooted in mankind, and a child has
various ways of attempting to requite the debt; but the
demands of a father whose face has never been seen are
indefinable, insatiable. Since Newton's father was unknown
to him and the child Isaac had not received the slightest
sign of his affection, he could never be certain that he had
pleased or appeased the Almighty Lord with whom this
lather was assimilated.
'9
For Isaac Newton, theological questions were invested with
personal feelings that had their roots in the earliest experiences
of childhood. There was a true father and a false father, as
there were true and talse gods. The Revt"rend Barnabas
Smith, whom Newton was obliged to call hltllt:r and who
was not his real father but his stepfather, who had carried of!
his mother when he was about three to live with her in a
nearby parish and to sire a and two
was the prototype of the false father and of all religious
deceivers and idolaters and metaphysical bbifins, against
whom Newton inveighed with great violence. NelVton would
show himself to be a master of the traditional tools or
scriptural exegesis as developed by the rahbis of the Talmud,
Church Fathers, medieval commentators, and Protestant
is the learned side of his religious studies, and
I hope that I shall neither neglect llor underestimate tht:lll;
but he also left behind imprints of the search ".r the tnle
father who had never set eyes upon him.
That Newton was conscious of his special bOl1l1 to God
and that he conceived of himself as the iIlaIl destined to
unveil the ultimate truth about God's creation does not
appear in so many words in anything he wrote. But peculiar
traces of this inner conviction nup up in unexpected ways.
J\ilore than once Newton used]eova srmcias III/US as an anagram
for Isaacus Neuutonus.
16
In a manuscript illterleaf in
N<>wton's own cupy of the second edition Clf the Principia
a parallel bdwcCll hilllsdfand God is st'l j,xth in cOllSeclltive
lines: 'One and the same am I throughout lik in all the orgallS
of the senses; one and the same is God always and e\ery-
whert:.'17 (In the third edition, the Ego gives place to an
omnis homo.) The downgrading of Christ in N ewtoll '5 theology,
which 1 shall discuss in a later lecture, makes roOlll for him-
self as a substitute. Another Isaac had once been saved by
direct divine intervention, and in patristic literature Isaac
16 See Keynes 1\:1S. 13; Sotheby Caia/llgue, p. 2, lot Q; H. R. Luard &1 al.,
Catalogue of the Portsmouth Collectio'l oj Books and by Uf bdlJflging Iv Sil lliliJl
Newloll (CamLriuge, 1888), p. 17.
17 N"ewtoll, Philosuphiae lI11tura/i.l principjlJ matlwnatic(l, srd edll. iu facsimile
with variant readings, cd. A. alld 1. 13. Coht'n (C.uuoridgc,
ii762.
was a prefiguration of Christ. Alexander Pope may not have
been aware how pithily his fluent couplet expressed Newton's
own sense of his intimate relationship to God. The revelation
of ' nature and nature's laws' to mankind required Providence
to perform a new act of creation: 'God said: let Newton be!'
Since the fullness of knowledge had been revealed through
him, his election hy God had been empirically demonstrated.
It is true that Newton Icft queries lor a future scientist in
the Optics, and in one manuscript he concedes that even his
reading of prophecy is subject to some further perfection of
dctail.
I8
But essentially there was not much left to be dis-
closed after Newton, either in science or in the interpretation
of Scripture or in the fixing of the definitive chronological
pattern of world history or in prophecy.
Perhaps for sceptics Newton's passionate yearning to know
God's actions is Hot better understood whcn we translate it
into a longing to know the father whom he had never seen.
But that he belongs to the tribe of God-seekers who, feeling
they have been appointed through a divine act for a unique
mission, live ever in the presence of an exigent God to whom
they owe personal service in gratdid obedience is borne out
not only by the public confession in the second edition of the
Principia in 17 I 3, but iJy numerous digressions in manuscripts
dealing with church history ancl dogma, which anticipate
almost verbatim this more famous epilogue, especially in their
attack on excessive emphasis on the abstract attriiJutes or
God, in their rejection ormetapilysics, and in their exaltation
of God as Master.
In defending his system of the world against Leibniz and
his followers, who charged him with belittling the omni-
science and omnipotence of God, I doubt whether Newton
simply scurried to his pile of theological manuscripts and
lifted from them religious rhetoric appropriate for the
occasion. While I do not wholly exclude this possibility, I am
more inclined to believe that these were formulas he had
repeated to himself over and over again as all great obsessives
do, and that they came to mind spontaneously when he felt
obliged to write a religious apologia. And it is precisely their
18 Yahuda ~ f S l. 1,101. 15'. See Appendix A bdow, p. 121.
'I
reiteration in so many other contexts in the manuscripts that
elevates the final affirmations orthe Ceneral ScllOlillIll above
the level of a piece de circollslallce merely incident to his tragi-
comic battle with Leibniz. In a fragment entitled 'or the
faith which was once delivered to the Saints', Newton wrote:
If God be called'; 1ravToKpaTwp the olllnipotent, Ihey lake it in
a metaphysical sense for Gods power of cr'><lling all thiugs olll "I'
nothing whereas it is mealll principally of his universal inesislil>le
monarchical power to teach LIS obedience. For ill the Creed alier
the words I believe in one (;od the f'lther almighty are added the
words creator of heaven and earth as not iucluded in the f')rmer.
If the father or son be called God, they take the Ilallle in a
met'lphysical sense as if it signilied Gods llletaphysical perfectiollS
of infinite eternal omniscient omnipotclIt whereas it rdates only
to Gods dominion to teach us obedience. The word Gud is
relative and signifies the sallle thing with Lord and King, hut in
a higher degree. As we say Illy Lord, ollr Lord, your Lord, tlte
King of Kings, and Lord of Lonls, the suprelJle Lord, the Lord
of the earth, the servants of the Lord, serve other Lords, so we
say my God, our God, your God, the God of Gods, Ihe supreme
God, the God of the earth, the servants of Cod, serve other (;ocl>:
but we do not say my infinite, our infinite, your infinite, the
infinite of infinites, the infinite of the earth, the sCIyanls of the
infinite, serve other infinites. When the Apostle lold the (,entiles
that the Gods which they worshipped were nOl (;0(1" he did not
meane that they were not infinites, (f,n' Ihe (' .. llIiles did Hot take
them to he such:) but he meant they Ihey had no POWCl' and
dominion over maH. They were Eds Cods; lIot Etls illlilli tes, but
vanities falsIy supposed to have power and dOllliuion uvcr mall.'O
A moving presentation of Newton's feeling for his God,
in a totally different setting, a manuscript commentary OIl
2 Kings '7: '5, 16, might serve as a pendant [0 [he emphasis
in the General Scholiulll on God's dominion and will and on
His actions, not His attributes or essence.
To celebrate God for his eternity, immensity, omnisciency, and
omnipotence is indeed very pious and the duty of every creature
to do it according to capacity, but yet this part of God's glory as
it almost transcends the comprehension of lllan so it springs uot
II;! Yahuda ~ 1 S 15. S. [ols. gfiv. 97
r
, ~ 8 r
22
from the freedom of God's will but th" llCCI'ssity of his nature ...
the wisest of beings required of us to be celebrated not so much
for his essence as for his actions, the creating, preserving, and
governing of all things according to his good will and pleasure.
The wisdom, power, goodne"" and justice wiIich he always exerts
in his actions arc his glory which he stands so much upon, and
is so jealous of ... even to the least tittle.'O
In another passage of the manuscript church history he
continued the attack on any metaphysical uefinitions of God:
for thewQn:l not to nature of God
but to his dominion. It is a relative word and lias reIationtous
'as the servants orCod. It is a word orthe same signification with
Lord and King, but ill a higher degree, For as we say my Lord,
our Lord, your Lord. other Lords, the King of Kings, the Lord of
Lords, other Lords, the servants of the Lord, serve othel' Lords,
so we say my God, our God, your God, other Gods, the God of
Gods, the servants of Cod, serve other Gods."
To be constantly engaged in studying and probing into
God's actions was true worship and the fulfilment of the
commandments of a Master. No mystical contemplation, llO
laying himself open to the assaults of devilish fantasies. The
literature on the psychopathology of religious fanaticism was
extensive in the seventeenth century and Newton accepted its
basic tenets without knowing its name. W'orking in God's
vineyard staved ofT evil, and work meant investigating real
things in nature and in Scripture, not fabricating meta-
physical systems and abstractions, not indulging in the 'vainc
babblings and oppositions of science falsly so called'.zz If God
is our 1faster He wants servants who work and obey.
Newton could not establish relations with his God through
a feeling of His love, either directly or through an inter-
mediary. Neither love, nor grace, nor mercy plays an
important role in Newton's religious writings. Only two
paths are open to him in his search for knowledge of the will
of God as Master: the study of His actions in the physical
world, His creations, and the study of the verbal record of
20 Yahuda 21, fol. }r,
21 Yahuda 15. 7, fol. 154
f

;u Yahuda l\lS. 15.5, fol. 79
r
.
illS FATHER lN HEAVEN
His commandmt>nts in Scripture, both of which have an
objective historical exi,tt-nce. We do not know the reason why
God's will manili.-sled itself in the physical world ill olle way
rather than in another, why He issued one cOlllmandment
rather than another; all we can know is the lact that He did,
and we can marvel at the consequences and study them.
The more Newton's theological and alchemical, chrono-
logical and mythological work is examined as a whole
corpus, set by the side of his science, the more apparent it
becomes that in his moments of grandeur he saw himself as
the last of the interpreters of God's will in actions, living on
the eve of the fulfilment of the times. In his generation he
was the vehicle of God's eternal truth, lor by using new
mathematical notations and au experimental method he
combined the knowledge of the priest-scientists of the
earliest nations, of Israel's prophets, of the Greek mathe-
maticians, and of the m('dieval alchcmists. From him
nothing had been withheld. Newton's linjlu'llt illsisteIll:e
that he was part or an ancient tradition, a n:discovcrer
rather than an innovator, is sllsc,"!ltible to a variety of inter-
pretations.
23
In manuscript scholia to the Principia that date
from the end of the scwntcenth century he expouuded his
belief that a whole line of ancient philosophers had held to
the atomic theory of matter, a conception of the void, th"
universality of gravitational loree, and evell the illverse
square law. In part this was euhcnwristic interpretation uf
myth-- many of the Greek gods alld demiguds \ltTe really
scientists; in historical terms, it was a survi\'al fJr a major
topos of the Renaissance tradition of knowledge and its
veneration for the wisdom of antiquity. But the doctrine may
also take us back to the aetiology of Newton's most profound
religious emotions, with which we began. He was so terrified
by the hubris of discovery of whieh he was possessed that, as
if to placate God the Father, he assured his intimates and
himself that he had broken no prohibitions against revealing
what was hidden in nature, that he had merely uttered ill
another language what the ancients had known bel/xe him.
23 See]. E. McGuire and P. 1\.1. Rattallsi, 'Newlon :lIld the "Pipt::, of Pall"',
and Rr1cord} ofl/If Rqyal IJ/Ll..mdulI, x.,j (19tiid, ltiH 4J.
To believe that one had penetrated the ultimate secrets of
God's universe and to doubt it, to be the Messiah and to
wonder about one's anointed ness, is the fate of prophets.
Newton's conviction that he was a chosen one of God,
miraculously preserved, was accompanied by the terror that
he would be found unworthy and would provoke the wrath
of God his Father. This made one of the great geniuses of the
world also one of its great sufferers.
II
GOD'S WORD AND GOD'S ,,,'ORKS
1

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II
GOD'S WORD AND GOD'S WORKS
NEWTON'S theological manuscripts that arc now hOllsed ill
Jerusalem were once shown to Albert Eill:;tcin. Despite the
fact that it was September '940 and he was already involved
himself with an apocalyptic enterprise,[ he took the trouble
to compose a letter praising the papers filr the insight they
afforded into Newton's geistige Werkstatt, his 'spiritual work-
shop'.' On the other hand, George Sarton, that prodigious
innovator in the history of science, expressed cool indifference.
He declared that as a scientist he personally was no more
conrerned with Newton's non-mathematical works than a
medical man would be with the rabbinical books ofll[aimoni-
des.
l
Such polar responses to Newton's theological writings
may have more than passing historical for they
raise again in a naive, anecdotal form awesome qucstions
that began to emerge in the halcyon years of the scientific
revolution: Can there be an autonomous realm of human
knowledge that lives by its own law? Is it possible to encap-
sulate activities known as science in the mind of the scientist
and to keep them free and independent, unshackled by deep
passions and transcendent longings?
In the seventeenth century men who were rationalist and
articulate about the relations of science and religion, either
what they were or what they should be, tended to move in
one of two directions. Those who inclined towards developing
the idea of the neutrality, or separateness, or autonomy, of
science took a position that came to be epitomized in the
I In the summer of 1939 Einstein had signed a letter on the 'military danger
from fission of uranium' that led to President Roose\"{,lt's setting up an Advisory
Committee on Uranium; see l\1argan;t Gowing, nritaill alld Atomic Energy, 1939-
1945 (London, [964), p.
Yahuda A1S. Var., Albert Einsleill to A. S. Yahurla.
3 Yahuda 1vlS. Var., A. S. Yahuda to Nathan Isaacs, 23 19.P, quotinb'
a conversation with George 8artol1.
28 GOD'S WORD AND GOD'S WORKS
metaphor of the two books, the Book of Scripture and the
Book of Nature, both created by God as manifestations of
His omnipotence and omniscience, but hooks different in
character that had better be kept apart. There was scriptural
sanction for reading nature like a book, for the PsaLmist sang
of unfolding the scroll of the heavens. The metaphor of the
two books was common to the trumpeters of the new phiLo-
sophy Bacon and Campanella and to the embattLed geniuses
KepLer and GaliLeo. At the end of the century it was still
implicit in Newton's admonition that 'religion and PhiLo-
sophy are to be preserved distinct. VV c are not to intro-
duce divine revelations into Philosophy, nor philosophical
opinions into religion'.4 Separate but equal, hy the side of
the word of God Kepler saw the finger of God, GaLileo the
hand, and Newton the arm, an anthropomorphic progres-
sion whose significance I have not yet
There were others who headed in a different dircction-
towards the achievement of a new, organic, Christian
synthesis of science and religion that would replace the oLd
scholastic union of Christian belief and pagan Aristotelian
philosophy. To describe this movement of thought, in which
the two books were to be interleaved with one another, or
amalgamated into one world-outlook, a term popularized by
Comenius in the I 640s, Pansophia, might be applied, though
this lost cause of the age antedated Comcnius and did not
receive its ultimate embodiment until Leibniz .. Flirtation
with the language of Rosicrucian theosophy was not infre-
quent among the Pansophists.
Nominally Newton belonged to the former company, the
separatists, and he rejected the Pansophists. His actual
practice, however, is a far more complex matter.
Traditional societies require a rhetoric for the assimilation
of novelties, and seventeenth-century science had inherited
many of the arguments us cd in the defence of pagan philo-
sophy in its relation to faith. But the new experimental
science by its very nature was more pretentious and more
aggressive. Harmonizing Scriptures with a frozen Greek or
.. Keynes l\IS. 6, fol. If, printed in !\1cLa{-hlan, .VI'll'iOl,'s Theological Alaliu-
scripts, p. 58.
WORD AND GOD'S WORKS
Latin text was one thing; it was something else entirely to
accommodate Scriptures with the discoveries of scientists
alive and kicking, often rumbustious like Kt'plcr and Ualiku,
men who had a keen sense of their unique missiun. On til("
Continent the problem was not only the harmon), of scicwc
and theology on an abstract level, fill which a nL:1V guide to
the perplexed might conceivably have heen composed, but
the coexistence of scientists and theologians, the entrenched
old corps looking with a jaundiced eye upon the ne\\" corps
coming into being under a variety of titles IIslro/ugll.l,
philosoph us, mathemllticus-and slowly but surely aflirrning its
identity, even before it had acquired a collective name.
The reception of science was rendered more problematical
not only by incessant controversy among the major denomina-
tions of post-Reformation Christianity, which temkd to
harden and solidify orthodoxies and )lilt thelll on guard
against the slightest breach in their ramparts, but also by all
anxious vigilance among the various religious establishments
that was bred by disquieting innovations in the interpreta-
tion of the Bible. The scientific revolution of the seventeenth
century is for us so decisive that it tends to overshadow the
simultaneous upheaval in Christian and Jewish scriptural
studies. Along with the new reading of the Book of Nature,
audacious ventures were taking place in the interpretation
of Scripture at the hands of learned Christian Hebraists like
John Selden, Vossius father and son, Johannes Buxtorf, John
Lightfoot, Edward Po{"()ck, Jnllll Spell,.{'r, who might lie
considered relatively orthodox in their historical researches,
and more suspecl scholars like Thomas Hobbes, Baruch
Spinoza, Richard Simon, Jean Le Clerc. And to them I
would sometimes join the unrcvcalcd Newton. \Vhilc hetero-
dox Biblical interpretations did not suffer the same kind of
notoriety as the new science because they wefe often pu b-
Iished anonymously, they were perhaps no less unsettling
in their effects. Since the meanings of both Book
of Nature and the Book of Scripture -were open to question,
a stable relationship between them became even more
elusive.
Among all the formulations of the metaphor of the two
3
books in the seventeenth century, a passage in Francis
Bacon's Advancement oj Learning was the locus classicus for the
image in the English-speaking world, official doctrine for
British scientists and their Royal Society when his works
reached the height of their popularity:
Let no man upon a weak conceit of sobriety or an ill-applied
moderation think or maintain, that a man call search too lar, or
be too well studied in the hook of (;od's word, or in the book of
God's works, divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavour
an endless progress or proficience in both; only let men beware
that they apply both to charity, and not to swelling; to use, and
not to ostentation; and again, that they do not unwisely mingle
or confound these learnings together.'
His key warning was against confollnding the learnings
together, and in a formal way the Royal Society heeded the
counsel: no one ever presented a public case for a scientific
fact with a theological argument. John Wallis recollected the
early decision of one group, before the corporate body was
established, to be absorbed exclusively with the 'New
Philosophy ... precluding matters of Theology and State
Affairs'.6 'Whcn Newton was President of the Society, the
journal-books record, he banned anything remotely touching
on religion, even apologetics. Since many of the English
mathematicians, physicists, astronomers, and naturalists
earned their keep as divines with lil'ings or as university
scholars in orders, they were able to follow the Baconian
advice in all its parts; they studied both hooks diligently
while making a show of keeping their inquiries separate, and
seemed to don different caps for each of their occupations.
One has only to mention John 'Vilkins, Seth Ward, Isaac
Barrow, John Wallis, John Ray, John Flamsteed, who had
taken orders, and Boyle and Newton who had not but who
led the same kind of double li\es. English scientists qua
scientists kept out of the sacristy, English theologians qua
theologians kept out of the rooms where experiments were
s Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning alrd .New Alial/tis (London, 1951),
p. II (The First Book, J, 3).
6 Thomas Hf'arne, Jitorks (London, 1810), iii. dxi--c1xiv. John \Vallis to
Thomas Smith, '9 Jan. ,697.
GOD'S WORD AND GOD'S WORKS :.p
performed. In England, the official adoption of the metaphor
of the two books had allayed earlier spiritual qualms about
the of science as a deflection Ii-om divinity.
By Newton's day the fear of actual persecution lor
scientific activities had passed in England, though the history
of harassment on the Continent was very much ali\'e in the
consciousness of the scientists. Newton had read the ]>ia-
logues of Galileo in the Salusbury translatiun of di61 in a
volume of collected papers that also contained the heroic
apologies for science hy Kepler and Galileo as welt as
justifications by a number of theologians who had defended
the Copernican hypothesis earlier in the century. John
Wilkins's pre-Civil War popularizations of science, hlmiliar
to Newton when he was still a youth, had similarly defended
the new science as not contradictory to Scripture. Reviewing
his long life, the aged Newton was grateful for his good
fortune in having been born an Englishman 'in a land of
liberty where he could speak his mind-not afraid of In-
quisition as Galileo', he told John Conduitt (who reverently
jotted down each phrase in a notebook), 'not obliged as DC's
Cartes was to go into a strange {'()untry and to say he proved
transubstantiation by his philosophy'.7 English scientists were
still punished occasionally for heterodox religious opinions-
they might be denied professorships-but not fur their
scientific doctrines. Under Newton's hegemony science took
to policing itself. in matters of religion in order to avoid
scandals, as William \Vhiston insinuated when Newton kept
him out of the Royal Society for proclaiming his anti-
trinitarianism in public. In general, the metaphor of the two
books served a reasonable political purpose for the advance-
ment of science-'-it was a modus vivendi.
In the first edition of the Principia in 1687, Newton
mentioned the name of God only once, in a passing phrase, as
if by chance-'Thus God arranged the planets at different
distances from the sun'8-for he did not remotely think it
necessary or relevant to the prools, nor did he imagine that
anyone would raise a question about his orthodoxy. In
England there was no serious attack on science from any
7 Koyncs MS. 130. II Newton, Principia (London, 1687), p. 415.
3
religious or secular authority, llnl!'ss YOll inflate the impor-
tance of men like Henry Stubbs and a few silly attempts with
politico-religious overtones on the part of crackpot and
perhaps venal antagonists of the Royal Society to implicate
that august body in a supposed Spanish plot to turn England
over to the Pope.
Galileo and Kepler had always stressed how different were
the languages of God in which the two books were written:
one, the Book of Nature, was mathematical and veiled, its
meaning hard to come by, open only to the learned; the
other, the Book of Scripture, was plain everyday speech.
And they dropped more than occasional hints that in the
eyes of God the inquirer into the arcana of nature was
manifestly superior to the mere Scripture interpreter.
Galileo's quip, which he attributes to an 'eminent ecclesiastic',
that the Holy Ghost teaches how to go to heaven, not how
the heavens go;9 Kepler's advice to the benighted Bible
expositor who knew no astronomy: 'Him I advise to go home
and manure his ficlds'lO-these were characteristic of their
defiant conception of the relations of the two books. Neither
Galileo nor Kepler had been willing to keep out of the
sacristy, as they had been cautioned by friendly theologians
of their respective persuasions. If theologians needed help
with understanding planetary references in the Bible, Galileo
counselled them to turn to specialists in astronomy. Since
Galileo had been a novice at the monastery of Vallomhrosa
near Florence and Kepler a student of theology at Tiibingen,
they considered themselves more knowing than the run or
theologians even in interpreting Scripture, a presump-
tuousness for which they paid dearly, In the England of the
Restoration, however, thirty years after Galileo's trial, the
spiritual atmosphere in which scientists conducted their
operations was quite different; where so many divines
doubled as scientists, the coexistence in one head of expert
knowledge in both books came to be respected, and the
9 Galileo, 'Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina'. in Discol'rries and Opiuions,
Ir. Stillman Drake (i'\cw York, 1957), p, 186,
10 Johannes Krp1erl }./om AsJrollomia. in Crsml/mel,,' H'crke, ed. !\fax Caspar
(Munich, 1937), iii, :n
GOD'S WORD AND G O ~ S WOI<KS 33
capacity of a man to reveal the glory of God in both spheres
was taken for granted. Frenchmen like Father Marin
IVfersenne are Continental counterparts, hut nowhere is tht-rc
anything resembling the English concentration of impressive
scientist-theologians.
On socio-economic grounds, the acceptance of science in
England was overdetermined. Rhetorically--alld the chang-
ing patterns of the vindication of science over the centuries
are not yet sufficiently explored-science was integrated into
the life of the literate English upper classes through a baroque
elaboration of a theology of glory, arguments backed up by
profuse illustrations of the marvellous design, beauty,
harmony, and order of nature as revealed by scientific
inquiry. Once again Bacon was a canonical source: 'For as
the Psalms and other scriptures do often invite US to consider
and magnify the great and wonderful works of God, so if we
should rest only in the contemplation of the exterior of them
as they first offer themselves to our senses, we should do a
like injury unto the majesty of Cod, as if we should judge or
construe of the store of some excellent jeweller, hy that ollly
which is set out toward the street in his shop.' 11 The true
gloria required a search lor hidden causes.
Bacon's formulation of the scientific gloria had been
renewed at regular intervals throughout the century, perhaps
most eloquently by Thomas Browne:
The World was made to be illhabited by Beasts but studied and
contemplated by Man; 'tis the Debt of our Reasorl we owe unto
God, and the homage we pay for not being Beasts. . . . The
Wisdom of God receives small honour from those vulgar Heads
that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity admire His
works: those highly magnifie Him, whose judicious inquiry into
His Acts, and deliberate research into His Creatures, return the
duty of a devout and learned admiration.'
The traditional use of science as a form of praise to the
Father assumed new dimensions under the tutelage of Robert
Boyle and his fellow-members of the Royal Society, and
among the immediate disciples of Isaac Newton. In the
II Bacon, AdvllIlcemml ofLeamillg, pp. 49-50 (The First Book, VI. 16).
Il Thomas Browne, Rdigiu J/t'JiL'i(Londoll
J
1643), p. :.zU.
34
GOD'S WORD AND (;OIl'S WORKS
Christian Virtuoso, demonstrating that experimental philosophy
assisted a man to be a good Christian, Boyle assured his
readers that God required not a slight survey, but a diligent
and skilful scrutiny of His works. Only one practised in
anatomy and optics, who 'takes asunder the several coats,
humours, and muscles, of which that exquisite dioptrical
instrument [ the eye] consists ... shall discover, by the help
of the laws of optics, how admirably this little organ is
fitted to receive the incident beams oflight, and dispose them
in the best manner possible for completing the lively repre-
sentation of the almost infinitely various objects of sight'.13
For Galileo, the study of astronomy had been by far the
most appropriate glorification of God because of the grandezza
and nobilita of the subject; Englishmen extended the argu-
ments from design and the wonderment [rom the astro-
physical world to the zoological, the botanical, and the
chemical. They even turned to the microscopic world as one
of equal dignity. John Ray and Francis Willughby saw God
in flora and fauna, Rohert Hooke in the hair of a cheese-mite,
Boyle in the arrangement of corpuscles. Henry More's works
were a veritable catalogue of teleologies, with all aspects of
creation-animal, vegetable, and mineral-showing a plan
and refuting Epicurean atheism. In 1692 Richard Bentky
made a compendium of these arguments and crowned them
with the Newtonian system; in 1704 and 1705 Samuel Clarke
repeated the litany in a more philosophical mode. During
the first decades of the eighteenth cmtury the glorias of the
Boyle Lectures reached unprecedented levels of banality. In
a Physico- Theologv, or a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes
of God from his Works of Creation (delivered in 1711-12 and
published the next year) Newton's friend William Derham
confessed that he may have slighted the creatures of the
waters, and he apologized for the perfunctoriness of the
evidence of true religion he had marshalled from vegetables,
but otherwise he was satisfied with the completeness of
his coverage. By the terms of the endowment, all these
lecture-sermons were fighting Epicurean atheism, Hobbism,
13 Robert Royle, The Christian Virtuoso, in rrorkf) n(:'\vly ed. T. Birch (London
1772), v. 517.
35
Spinozism. These were bogies that in fact hardly existed;
but the parade of examples served to entrench science
in the establishment as a handmaiden of religion.
Works by Craig, \Vhiston, George Cheyne, Derham, the
lectures of Bentley and Clarke, advertised the superiority of
Newton's system of the world as a religious apology above
all other forms of gloria. Newton's attitude towards their
demonstrations has been treated as unambiguously favour-
able, and surely the political and human Newton was not
indifferent to their implicit flattery. But in particulars he was
often very critical of these performances. Bentley's exposition
of the Newtonian system was in many respects far from his
liking; Cheyne's Philosophical Principles oj Religion: Natural and
Revealed (1715), which established a new-found principle of
'Reunion with God', analogous in the system of intelligent
beings to the principle of attraction in the material universe,
was too saturated with religious Neoplatonism lor his taste;
Newton prepared what he called 'castigations' of Derham's
Physico-Theology; and lhtTe was no room in Newton's inter-
pretation of prophecy for Craig's mathcmaticized Christian
theology, his computation of tLte time of the Second Coming
of Christ bascd on a statistical theory of the slow attenuation
of the witness of the apostles. Samuel Clarke in his own
Boyle lectures bestowed a modern mt'taphysical cachet on
arguments from design as hoary as Galen and Cicero; but,
warm though their personal relations were, Newton was not
always completely happy with Clarke's philosophical formu-
lations-witness the caveats Newton instructed Pierre Des
?vfaizeaux to introduce when the Clarke-Leilmiz corres-
pondence was reprinted.
14
The argument from design
14 See Cambridge, University Library, Add. 3965, 14.)1. 289t, Draft D,
for an 'l\vcrtissement au Itxlt:ur' by I\'e\-..... ton to Pierre Deb l\l,dizeaux to
a('('ompany his publication of the Clarke letters: "Nor is exi:stcncr. the quality of
any thing but the existence of the thing with its Qualities. But the Hebrews
called God place and the Apostle tells us that he is not far 'i'olll allY of Uti
for in him we live and move and have OUf Being, putting place by a tigure for
him that is in all place; and as the scriptures generally spake orCnd by allusions
and figures for want of proper language: so in these Letters the \\ords QuuJiry
and Proptrty were used only hy a figure Lo siguify the t'xtc:ut of Gods
existence with respect to his ubiquity and eternity, and that to exist in this
manner is proper to him alone {printed in A. Koyre and 1. ll. Cohen, "Ne" ton
COD'S \\'ORO AI\j) COD'S WORKS
demonstrated in the concatenation of planetary movements,
in the paths of comets, (Ten in the symmetry of animal parts,
was rcpeated by Newton in general terms, but the olltpour-
ing of detail and the multiplication of conjectures among his
disciples often made him uneasy, They bordered too closely
an presumptions of a knowledge of God's intent in minutiae,
where the evidence was flimsy. In the end, the only evidence
of design that was overpowering and unassailable came fi'om
the mathematical principles of natural philosophy them-
selves-and he told Derham as much. As far back as Decem ber
I 6g I, in a conwrsation with David Gregory, Newton had
expressed a similar opinion that 'a good design of a publick
speech ... may be to shew that the most simple laws of
nature are observed in the structure of a great part of the
Universe, that the philosophy ought ther to begin, and that
Cosmical Qualities are as much easier as they are more
Universall than particular ones, and the general contrivance
simpler than that or Animals plants etc'.15
Towards the close of the seventeenth ccntury in England,
scientific apologetics sometimes ran amuck, virtually oblitera-
ting the distinction between the two books. Continental
scientists had been on the defensive, fighting ofr the intru-
sions of theologians into their private preserve. Galileo and
Kepler had based their fundamental arguments on an
ancient dictum of scriptural interpretation by the Talmudic
rabbis, passed down through the Church Fathers: 'The
Bible speaks in the language of cveryman.' This, it was
hoped, freed science from the fetters of any literal exegesis of
Genesis and othcr Biblical texIs thaI vaguely alluded to
planetary mO\'emcnts, since the mathematical language of
astronomy patently could not be read into the plain words
of Scripture. Kepler had had the psychological insight to
surmise that even after the universal triumph of the helio-
centric principle, we as ordinary persons would continuc in
and the Leibniz-Clarkc Correspondence, with on N"evdon, Conti and
Des Archiz,tJ illiemati01wles d'his/oire Jcieuces, xv (1962), 99 and
facsimile). Newton mis-spells a word commonly used by religious Jews to
avoid taking the name of God in \ain.
15 Kewton, Correspolldtllce, iii IgGl), 191) 1\lemoranda by David
Gregory, 28 Dec. 1691.
GOll'S WORD AND Gall'S W01{KS
cveryday speech to talk, in accordance with 0111' scnsc of
sight, of the rising and setting of the slln.
16
But scholars ill
Newlon's circle, in their eagerness to demonstrate the con-
sonance of the two books, embarked upon mammoth
adventures in conciliation that eroded the wall between
science and Scripture. They evolved what came to be known
as a physica sacra, a study ofthe history of creation as presented
in Genesis and in the works of Newton, showing liue by liue
the perfect harmony between them. The Book of Nature and
the Book of Scripture were made congruent in every last
detail. There was a scientific explanation of the flood, and
the whole future history of the earth was outlined with
scientific precision. In Thomas Burnet's 'j"lluris Tlteuria
Sacra the final end in a great conflagration entailed the
solution of such tricky technical problems as IlOw a sulid mass
of rock could be burned. Commcnting on Burnet's book in
January 1681, Newton offered 'by way of conjecture' a view
of how the planets might have b('en arranged by God in an
initial act of creation and their motion steadily accelerated
until the desired tempo for their co-ordinatcd movements
had been reached.
17
Soon William \<Vhiston, with Newton's
seeming consent, outdid Burnet and wrote A jliezv Theory f!!'
the Earth proving that 'The Mosaick Creation is not a Nice
and Philosophical acount of the Origin of All Things, bllt
an Historical and True Reprt'sentation of the formation of
our single Earth out of a confused Chaos, and of the succes-
sive and visible changes thereof eadi day, till it iJ('camc the
habitation of 1'vIankind.'18 The 'postulata' that set
down would have been completely acceptable to his patron,
to the Sllmmo viTO Isaaco Newton to whom it was ,t.-clil"atcd:
J. The obvious or Literal Sense of Scriptures is the Trill' alld Real
one, where no evident Reason can be 10 the cIIlltrar),. II.
That which is clearly accountable in a lIatural way, is Ill.1
16 Kepler, Nova AJtroliomia, pp. 28-9.
17 Newton, Correspolldeltl:e, ii (1960), :{29 34-.
18 \VilIiam \VhisLon, A }lltJw Theory of the Emlh (I.lIndon, 16Uh): p. :1' In .1
Collettjml of Autheulick Records Belonging tv tIle Old aNd j'v"':w 1e5!allu;lIt (L(JUU011,
1727-8), Pt. 2, Appendix IX, p. 1071, \\'hi::itou lcpOl'teU Ih..tt Ne\\toll had
influenced him in his opposition to the "Allegorical nr Double Intl"rprelMion
of the Prophecies of the Old Testament'.
without reason to be ascribed to a :Miraculous Power. III. What
ancient Tradition asserts of the constitution of Nature, or of the
Origin and Primitive States of the World, is to be allowed for
True, where 'tis fully agreeable to Scripture, Reason, and
Philosophy. 19
Whiston's exposition employed mathematical terminology
-postulata, corollaries, lemmata, hypotheses-as befitted
Newton's successor to the Lucasian Chair. Newtonian
astronomy sustained the proposition that precisely 1,700
years after the Creation, 011 Thursday 27 November, a comet
had passed by the earth, its atmosphere and tail causing the
Deluge. Newton's acceptance of Whiston's flowery dedica-
tion mayor may not have signified total approval of evety-
thing he wrote: in many scriptural matters Newton was not
content with \Vhiston's over-zealous interpretations. But
there was no repudiation of the book. John Woodward's An
Essay toward a Natural History of tile Earth (1695) was compiled
in the same spirit: fossil remains uncovered in mines were
conclusive evidence of the accuracy of the Biblical descrip-
tion of the flood; and gravity explained the distribution of
heavier fossils in lower strata. The Bible and the new science
were being locked in deadly embrace.
The common objective of the Newtonians did not preclude
bitter argument and counter-argument within the group
over details of the great conciliation of scriptural texts and
the findings of science. The acrimony between John Keill
and Whiston debating the facts of a holy physics was as
sharp and personal as any secular scientific quarrrl of that
contentious age. But their books appcared in scores of
editions, flooded the English market, spilled over into
foreign translations, adaptations, and imitations, and did as
much as Newtonism fOT the Ladies to make the Newtonian
system respectable. By 1774 Herder claimed that he could
enumerate fifty systems of Physik/IIeologie?o They showed with
scriptural proofs that God Himself preferred to follow
mathematical laws and when it was convenient always
" Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth, p. 95.
%0 Johann Gottfried Ae/teste Urktmde des J,fenschengeschll!clits, in
Siimmlliclte IVokr, ed. n. Suphan (Berlin, vi. 202.
employed natural mechanisms like cornets to effect moral
ends.
Viewed in retrospect, the extravagance of some glorias and
the cock-sureness of the physica sacra as Newtonians practised
it during Newton's lifetime violated the separation of the
two books in a flagrant manner; and, though the I.lUilders of
the physica sacra never allowed a scriptural passage to iuter-
fere with the logic of experimental evidence or a scientilic
demonstration, their enthusiasm lor harmolli.:ing Scripture
and science led to the proJileration of bi.:arre literary
fantasies bearing the trappings of science and created a
blurred zone in which the two books were confounded.
Neither Descartes, who had mocked the preslllllptuousness of
a theology of glory-as though God were looking I()r the
plaudits of puny man when he created the world -nor
Spinoza, who saw the Scripturl's as a political and moral, not
a philosophical or scientific, document, would have allowed
any such random crossing of the frontier.
Newton's way of tolerating his disciples' philosophy Illay
be likened to his explanation of the conduct of J\Ioses in pre-
paring the account of the Creation in GeIl(sis. lVIoses knew the
whole of the scientific truth--of this Newton was certain--
but he was speaking to ordinary Israelites, not delivering
a paper to the Royal Society, and he popularized the narra-
tive without falsifying it. The standards Newton permitted
for the edification of lay audiences at the 130yle Lt"dures (he
may have played a role in the selection of the first lecturer,
Richard Bcntlcy21) and in exercises of the p'!vsica saCTa were
rather relaxed. He let his children play, and he pulled in
the leading-strings sharply only when they creakd a public
incident.
Though Newton may have been put oJl" by the more
extravagant fusions of science aud Scripture produced by
some of his disciples, he was after all himself a major source
of the confounding of the two books. In adopting the
Baeonian metaphor, he repeated the strictures against con-
fusing the two kinds of researches; but in personal practice
~ H. Guerlac and M. C. Jacob, 'Uenlley, Newton, and Providence', ]Ol1.Tl1411
qf /h, Ili,/ntv of Idea!, xxx (1969), 316.
he failed to maintain the compartmentalization of religious
and scientific studies and the two were allowed to overlap
and interpenetrate. V\'hat was a convincing rhetorical formula
for political purposes could not be internalized in the psyche.
Let me illustrate with a few examples the continued inter-
twining of science and rdigion throughout Newton's liJe,
well bctare he was driven to assert publicly and forthrightly
in Query 20 of the 1706 Latin edition of the Oplics: 'And
though every true Step made in the Philosophy brings us not
immediately to the knowledge of the first Cause, yet it
brings us nearer to it, and on that account is to be highly
valued', and in the second edition of the Principia that to
discourse of a Deity from the phenomena was a concern of
'experimental philosophy', a phrase changed to 'natural
philosophy' in the third edition, though not necessarily for
the reason proposed by some scholars.23 The commonplace
u Nc\'..rttm, 2nd edn. in Eng. (London, I7I7), Query 28 (the English
version of Query '.W in the 17u6 Latin etlition).
2J Newton, Principia, ("d. Koyre and Cohen, ii. 76+ That the challge o('('urrcd
is patent, but is then.: c\ idence for the observation: 'Later on, after mature
reflection, Newton decided that he had bl'l"1l careless and so ... he toned down
his statement about God to read "ad Philnsophiam naluralclll pcrtinet"
rather than "ad Philm;ophiam l'xpcrinwlltalclll pertinct"'? Sec 1. Bernard
Cohen, Introduction to JVewlon's 'Pn'llcipia' (CamhridH"c, 1\lass., 1971), p. 244.
There are alternative versions, hitherto unnoticed I believe, of this part of
the General Scholium in the Public Record Office. 1\tint Papers, and one of
them prescn,'cs the 'ad philosophiam cxpcrimentalem pcrtinet'. The follo .. ving
(V, fol. 45\1) appears on the back of some not(";o; 011 assaying and refining and on
the coining of a peace medal:
'Pro {varictate} di\"ersitatc locorum Ole temporum diversa ('st rerum
et illa non ex necessitate I1lt'taphysica, quae utique cadun
est semper ct ubique, (non} sed <aliunde quam) ex voluntate sola entis
necessaria ('xistcntis ariri potuit. Sola yoluntas principium fans et origo cst
mutationi..; ac di\'crsitatis rerum, idcoquc Dculll \'cu'res d.U1'OKtJl1]TOJl dixcrunt.
'}jUTOK{V'J]TOV es.t <Deus> Agens <PrillcipiulIl) primum, quod de fato et
Natura diei non potest. (et ex \'oluntatc sola cntis nect"Ssario cxist("nlis) Pro
diversitatc locorum ac tempo rum di\'crsa est rerum finitarum natura, et
diversitas illa non ex necessitate-metaphysica. quae utique eadem est semper
et ubique, sed ex voluntatc sola Entis intelligentis et necessario existentis
oriri potuit. Et haec de Dca, de quo ctc.
'Agens primum ut sit primum, aUToKtvt}TOJ) esse debet, ct propterea
potestatc volcndi cst! quod de fa to ct did non potest. Pro
divcrsitatc locorum ac tempol'um din'rS3 est r('rum omnium finitarum
natura, et di\ersitas. ilIa non ex necessitate (quae utique eadem
est semper et ubiquc) sed ex \'olulate [sir] sola intclligentis et neeessario
4'
book of his early years in Cambridge is the record to which
historians of his scientific ideas have turned lor the tirst
inklings of his major discoveries. But interspersed with the
subjects Francis Bacon had listed as appropriate lor investi-
gation are other headings like 'Of God' and 'Of Creation'.
'Of God' is a stereotyped excerpt showing divine design in
the fashioning of the human body and attacking the dOelriucs
of Epicurean atomism and chance-it comes straight limn
Henry :l\1ore. Under other rubrics philo>ophical argument
and citations from Scripture are intermingled, as Newton
endeavours to define extension and time for himself and as
he tries his hand at cosmological speculation. A verse in
Hebrews is interpreted to mean that God created time, and
in one passage Newton is beginning to inquire into the
meaning of the phrase 'Son of God'.
Analysis of a few lines in an entry entitled 'Of Earth' in
this same commonplace book may demonstrate as well as
any text I know how interwoven were Newton's inquiries
into the Book of Scripture and lhe Book of Nature liom tbe
very outset of his career. Into a few terse phrases from the
Apocalypse he compressed a wealth of suiptural evidenre
for his belief that the world was moving inexorauly toward a
cataclysm, a great conflagration, to be lollowed by a yet
undefined form of renewal. His explication is in one of the
normative exegetical traditions of the Talmudic rabbis and
Puritan divines, whose underlying assumption was that
Scriptures do not contain a single superlluous phrase, or
even a letter that does not have significant sort
of law of parsimony. Since the verses of the to
which Newton refers in the folio 'Of Earth' may not be as
familiar to all of us as they were to him, I quote the whole
passage: 'And the devil that deceived them was cast into a
lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and lalse prophet
cxistentis oril'i potuit. Et haec de Dea de quo utique ex Ilhae[Jlo]lllCllis dispulale,
ad Philosophiam experimcntalem pertinet.'
Another page of the !vlint Papel's (I, fell. 62
C
), \vith olltlie 'h't'ight of
gold and silver in coins and on the beginnings of geoUletry ill Egypt, iw:ludt:oS
these sentences: 'A necessitate metaphysica nulla OrilU[ rerUlll varialiu. 'rula
illa quam in mundo conspicimus, divcrsitas rerullI a sola enti:s Ilcles;:...trio
existentis voluntate libera oriri potuit.'
8266iOfi
D
are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.'
In the notebook folio where Newton proved the renewal of
the world, he merely jotted down the p h r ~ e 'Days and
nights after the Judgment Rev 20C, IOV'.H The full meaning
of the elliptical phrase would be obvious to one who had
been subjected to years of exegetical sermons and had
absorbed their manner of thinking. Tormcnting the wicked
for ever and ever is quite comprehensible and sufficicnt unto
itself, and the prophet could have been expected to stop at
that. But when John inserted the words 'day and night',
which are scemingly superfluous and in excess, he surely
meant to inform us of something--in this instance that thc
succession of days and nights would still be marked after
Judgement Day. And that presupposed a new heaven and
a new earth without which such a succession would bc
meaningless. Thus John in Revelation was communicating
an important fact about the futurc history of the physical
universe which later became part of one version of Newton's
cycloid cosmological theory.
Newton has also left us a fragmentary and oftcn timtastical
history of science contained in pieces scattered throughout
his chronological and alchemical papers that further exem-
plifies the interpenetration of science and religion in his
world-view. Papers headed 'The original of religions' are
especially pertinent. A single principle underlies them all.
Knowledge of God's works thrived in those epochs in which
there was a true conccption of the Deity; and conversely,
when false ideas of God dominated society-such as pagan
idolatry, Greek philosophical conceptions of a meta-
physical God, or papist Trinitarianism and idolatrous saint
worship-there was no real knowledge of God's works. The
preferred times for scientific discovery were those of primitive
monotheism, of pre-Socratic thought, and of the moderns.
Newton's sketch of the period of Plato and Aristotle and
that of the medieval schoolmen makes of them two com-
parable dark ages, when false religion was bound up with
false science. However committed English science was
to keeping religious opinion away from its door, Newton
.. Cambridge, Univorsity Library, Add. 1\IS. 3996, fo!' 10".
GOD'S WORD AND GOD'S WORKS 43
found that in the history of the world they had been inter-
dependent.
His description of primitive monotheism and the rituals of
worship after the flood as practised in ~ g y p t and llabylonia
and India and Chaldea closely identified early science with
theology. Achievement of a knowledge of God, Of the rudi-
ments of such a knowledge, had always been within the
grasp of men; and in ages when a monotheistic belief;
relatively unpolluted, held sway, the search lor God in His
works was fi'uitlul, because it had a basic sense of unity to
sustain it. The priests and religious leaders of these ancient
civilizations were also their scientists and philosophers. They
had shunned subjective approaches to a knowledge of God,
the trance-like states in which direct communion with
divinity was supposed to be attained or the mystical worship
of abstract forces of nature as though they were a multiplicity
of deities. These venerable sages had studied all the varied
phenomena as parts or aspects of one creation. Their fervent
belief in one God had led them to scrutinize lb" operation of
things on earth and the movement of the stars in the heavens,
and to record their observations in precious documents
which, though marred by time, still held secreted within
them some of the fundamental truths discoverable about
God's creation. The old priest-scientists had been moved
by the same conviction Newton held, that there was a Jirst
and only cause, and they had reasoned from the pheno-
mena to that cause. Polytheism was inimical to science be-
cause it accepted the idea of contrary and contradictory
causes in nature which it associated with false gods. This
is the real sense of the seemingly irrelevant addendum
about ancient idolatry that appears in later editions of
the Optics. 25
The primitive monotheists had practised two basic Jonns
of science, astronomy and chemistry. Astronomy had started
as a gloria among Egyptian and Chalclean priests, who in
decorating their temples had made them exac.t replicas of the
universe; in turn their knowledge of the macrocosm was
2! See manuscript addendum to p. 382 in the Babson ]nstiLuk l.ibrary eopy
(no. ':13) of the '7'7 London ,dition of .he Optics.
44
GOD'S \\'ORD AND GOD'S WORKS
transmitted to the Greeks, who initiated record-keeping of
the movements of the planets,
So then [it] was one designc of the first institution of the true
religion in Egypt to propose to mankind by the frame of the
ancient Temples, the study of the Irame of the world as the true
Temple of the great God they worshipped .... And therefore that
a Prytanaeum might deserve the name of his Temple they
framed it so as in the fittest manner [to] represent the whole
systeme of the heavens. A point of religion then which nothing
can be more rational. ... And thence it was that the Priests
anciently were above other men well skilled in the knowledge of
the true frame of Nature and accounted it a great part of their
Theology.
The learning of the Indians lay in the Brachmans who were
their Priests, that of the Babylonians in the Chaldeans who
were their Prie,ts. And when the Greeks travelled into
Egypt to learn astronomy and philosophy they went to the
Priests.
26
Along with their macrocosmic studies, the ancients had
also been preoccupied with fire and the secret qualities of
in Egypt, where at the head of the list of
inquirers into the properties of fire stood Hermes Trismegis-
tus, the priest-king-scientist of Egypt, father of alchemical
studies, on whose discoveries Newton left commentaries. He
was unruffled by Isaac Casaubon's revelation that the
Hermelica itself was a post-Christian work. The original
discoveries of Hermes had been handed down through the
ages and incorporated in a variety of tropes, images, and
emblems. Those alchemists who had preserved what re-
mained of the authentic tradition of Hermes-men like Count
Michael Maier, whose compendia of philosophical alchemy
Newton had abstracted, along with the works in similar
collections published by Lazarus Zetzner and Elias Ashmole
on the right moral path in their investigations; they
were searching for a first cause, for a simple unifying
principle And just as Newton could profitably study the
textual fragments of ancient Greek astronomers and mathe-
.6 Yahuda MS. 41, fol. 8', 'The original of religions'. See also Keynes MS.
3, fol. 35
f
, for the history and \'icissitudes of early religions.
GOD'S WORD AND GOD'S WORKS -15
maticians and pre-Socratic philosophers who had observed
the universe, so he could read, copy, and meditate over
alchemical writings as conceivably genuine, if incomplete,
revelations of God's creation. The alchemists were describing
phenomena of nature, in contradistinction to the modern
metaphysicians-he meant Descartes and Leibniz--who
were only dreaming up systems that falsely represented God's
world. Essential truths about the operations of God in
nature might be extracted from the alchemical traditions if
their imagery could be unravelled. (The problem was
identical with the interpretation ofvisions in the Apocalypse.)
I am here distinguishing Newton's philosophical-alchemical
studies, which are pertinent to his religion, from his own
experiments on the borderline between chemistry and al-
chemy, for which he stoked the fires in a little Trinity
College laboratory. In spirit, Newton felt himself closer to
the hermetic philosopher who wrote about the properties of
metals and experiments with fire than to the philosopher
who conjured up a system of vortices or hypothesized a pre-
established harmony. From Thoth, who was really Hermes
Trismegistus, down to the contemporary practitioners of the
art with whom Newton had occasional secret converse, the
alchemists, he told Conduit!, were moral and God-seeking
men worthy of respect even when they had erred."' Newton
was clearly affected by the European flowering of alchemy
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and was at
various times touched by both metal-ennobling and theo-
sophical alchemy.
Yet Newton's I;fdong reading of books of philosophical
alchemy hardly aligns him with the Rosicrucian mystifiers,
though many seventeenth-century adepts of alchemy were
Rosicrucians. '\Then he studied a Rosicrucian tract, he
condemned it as an 'imposture' -a strongly pejorative
word in his religious vocabulary, akin to false prophecy.
Newton is not to be identified with every book he perused.
He often analysed works in a spirit of refutation and denial,
and it would be as far-fetched to make a Rosicrucian out
of him because he read Thomas Vaughan's translation of the
27 Keynes l\'IS. 130.
Fama and Conjessio
28
of the Brotherhoou as it would be to turn
him into a Cabbalist because he paraphrased passages from
Christian Knorr von Rosenroth's Kabbala DClludata. Newton
tried to de-mystify alchemical ideas, which were uifficult
to comprehend because they were enshrouued in mythic
and symbolic language. In immersing himself in lengthy
treatises on philosophical alchemy, he was looking for keys to
the world of nature, preserved in cryptic religio-scientific
formulas and allegories. But he did not find the ultimate
truth there; and though he appreciated the moral purpose
of the alchemists, whose writings are full of pious dedications
of their work to the service of God, only the hieroglyphs of
the Biblical prophecies themselves contained God's direct
word. Newton discerned rationalist elements in all emblem-
ata; but the Rosicrucian mystical combination of magic,
Cabbala, and alchemy was alien to his Scripture-bound
religion-it savoured of enthusiasm and was too remote from
God's historically revealed word in the Bible.
Newton often speculated about why the ancient wise men
had resorted to mythic language. His answers were invariably
commonsensical and historical: the priest-scientists were
dealing with an ignorant rabble, even as Moses was con-
fronted by a rough mass of rebellious Israelites. These priest-
scientists were truth-sayers in their way; but how explain
the truth, the need for direct worship of one God, to a mob
that could not understand real things, facts, phenomena?
To treat them like children and to record scientific data in
myths and fables was perhaps disguising God's creation, but
not falsifying it.
18 Ian Macphail, in Alehe,,!}' and Ihe Occult. A Catalogue of Books and Manuscripts
from the Col/ectioTI of Paul aud !lleilcJIl git"ClJ to rale University Library (New
Haven, 1968), ii. 347-8, reproduces Nl'wlon's 1I0tl'5 011 a copy of The FlI1l1e ulid
Confession of the .FralerlliJy of R:C: Commoldy, 4 the Rusie Cross. With a Praej"ace
mmexed therelo, and a short declaration of their P1!lsiwll J 1 'ork by Eugenius Phi/aletllts
red. Thomas Vaughan] (l.ondon, 1652): 'R.C. the founder of ye supposed
Rosy Crucian society (as the story goes) was born 1378 dyed anna 1484, his
body was found J604 and within a year or two (when Lhe new stars in Cygnus
& Serpentariusshone) did SO<'ietyputout theirH'ame, Or rather anno 16)3 as
Michael Maierus affirms in his book de legibus Fratcrnitatis R.C. cap. 17,
printed anno .618 & in his Symbola aurea. mensae dated in December 1616
where (pag 2go) he notes that ye book of Fame & confession were printed a.
Frankford in autumn .616. This was the history ofyt imposture.'
GOD'S WORD AND GOU'S WORKS -17
Alas, the early history of science did not progress smoothly.
Error, corruption, the devil, power-grasping monarchs, and
ignorance intrudcd--therc is a confusion of causes here
drawn from a variety of contemporary sources-and the
common people reified the images in the fables, worshipping
them as gods, forsaking the purity of primitive monotheism.""
The Egyptians li::ll into beast-worship by adoring animal
hieroglyphs, which had once represented factual know-
ledge about nature. Thenceforward neither religious nor
scientific truth, which were always dependent on each other,
could flourish. If the papist intrigues of James II were upper-
most in Newton's mind, he imputed the bll from true religiun
into idolatry to kings and coul'ts. If he was t!.inking uf the
fanatical tinkers of the Civil War, he was likely to blame the
fall on the superstition of the ancient masses. In either event
there is an assumption that only with the resurgence of pure
monotheism could science thrive once again, a jlosition that
indissolubly links the destinies of the two books.
On the moral level Newton never insulated science from
the surrounding world, any more than llacOIl had. The
activities of the scientist were subject to moral and religious
commandments. Applications of science were to be controlled
by the two fundamentals of religion, love of neighbour and
love of God as set forth in Scripture. For most of his life
Newton displayed sovereign indifference to the practical
usages of science, though in his later years he served on all
manner of government boards. But when there was danger
that scientific knowledge might be adapted to destructive
purposes, he intervened. In 1676 he wrote a strange letter to
Henry Oldenburg raising the spectre of unnamed perils to
mankind if the practical alchemical processes that lloyle was
said to possess should ever fall into the hands of the un-
initiated.
3
" Toward participation by scientists in the develop-
ment of military machines Newton seems to have been
somewhat ambivalent. David Gregory reports Newton's pro-
posal to 'Cure the llucking and wideness of touch-hole of
" On the origins of idolatry see New College MS". 361, III, fuls. 32', 3-1'
and ", 65", 66
v
-
30 Newton, Correspondenu, ii. 1-2, Newton to Oldenburg, 26 Apr. 1076.
great Gunns' by means of a new metallurgical mixture; but
there is a contrasting story that he was hostile to the applica-
tion of science to warfare, and told young David Gregory to
do away with the model of his father's new cannon because
lethal devices did not serve the legitimate purposes of
science.JI One does not find in Newton's writings anything
resembling John Wilkins's or Joseph Glanvill's enthusiasm
for the proliferation of utilitarian inventions. Newton's
scrutiny of nature was directed almost exclusively to the
knowledge of God and not to the increase of sensate pleasure
or comfort. Science was pursued for what it could teach men
about God, not for easement or commodiousness.
In review, Newton's separation of the two books appears
to signify little more than the idea that science had nothing
to say about the dogmatic content of religion, and that
Scripture was not to be quoted in a Royal Society com-
munication. Otherwise they were bound in many ways.
Newton did not conceive of one book as sacred and the othcr
as secular or profane. The worth of the two books was equal,
and there could be no invidious comparisons between them.
And whatever knowledge of God was revealed in the one
was harmonious with what was unfolded in the other. At a
later point I shall have occasion to show how sound scientific
method was embodied in his principles of prophecy inter-
pretation. But let me anticipate myself with one of his
reflections in a manuscript on rulcs for interpreting prophecy,
a rare instance in which hc dwells on the similarity betwecn
the goals of the scientist and of the prophecy expositor, and
discloses in plain language that an identical quest for
simplicity and unity underlay his researches into both books.
In Newton's 'spiritual workshop', as Einstein called it, there
was a dominant passion.
Truth [Newton wrote] is ever to be found in simplicity, and not
in the multiplicity and confusion of things. As the world, which
to the naked eye exhibits tbe greatest variety of objects, appears
31 "V. G. Hiscock, ed., David Gregory, Isaac ]'lewton and tlieiT Circle: Extracts
from David Gregory's Memoranda, 1677-1709 (Oxford, 1937), p. 25; Agnes
Grainger Stewart, The Academic Gregories (New York, 1901), p. 23; Charles
Hutton, Mathematical and Philosophical Dictiollary, 2nd edn. (London. IBI5). i.
605.
GOD'S WORD AND COD'S WORKS 49
very simple in its intcrnall constitution when surveyed by a
philosophic understanding, and so much the simpler by how
much the better it is understood, so it is in these [prophetic]
visions. It is the perfection of God's works that they are all done
with the greatest simplicity. Ill' is the God of order and not of
confusion. And therefore as they that would understand the frame
of the world must indeavour to reduce their knowledg to all
possible simplicity, so it must be ill seeking to IImlt-.stand tl"!>,,
visions, 12
Instead of highlighting the differences between the two books
in the manner of scientific warriors of the earlier seventeenth
century, Newton was discovering a spirit common to both of
them, a divine simplicity in Nature and in Scripture, as
befits the works of one l\hster Creator.
In virtually abolishing the distinction between tbe two
books, which he revered as separate expressions of the same
divine meaning, Newton was making a last great attempt at
one and the same time to keep science sacred and to re\"leal
scientific rationality in what was once the purely sacral. The
coupling of the two realms-the religious and the scielltilic-
is the syncretistic fantasy of a scientilic genius and a God-
seeker. But even Newton was uneasy abollt the amalgam. If
in the 1670s and 1680s his belief in the sacral llature of
science-though not always clearly articulated -lwars the
stamp of authenticity, toward the end of his days he was
aware that science and its uses were becoming independellt
of the divine, despite the proliferation of books of pl!ysim
sacra and the depth and pervasiveness of his own religiolls
feelings. Secular Newtonianism was in Jact destroying the
religious-scientific world-view that Newton had created.
Historically, it was the Book of Nature and its rult's that were
destined, as in an apocalyptic vision, to devour the Book of
Scripture, and he who would be the Hew Christ became
Antichrist.
3Z Yahuda l\fS. I. I, it)!. I4
f
. Sec Appel10ix A bdO\\', p. I ~ O
III
CORRUPTERS ANCIENT AND f.,[ODERN
III
CORRUPTERS ANCIENT AND MODERN
IN 1802 Henri de Saint-Simon, a de classed French nobk,
summoned his contemporaries to lound a new church under
the hegemony of scientist-priests, and he called it the
Religion of Newton.
1
Similar fimtasies had cropped up before,
toward the end of the eighteenth ccntury. Another French
aristocrat, with the unlikely name of Champlain de la
Blancherie, issued a manifesto roundly denouncing the
English nation for its failure to honour Newton's divine
person, redated the calendar from the year of Newton's birth,
and proposed the establishment of a sanctuary at ''Yools-
thorpe." The architect Etienne-Louis Boullee designed a
cenotaph of gigantic proportions in the shape of a perfect
hollow sphere, representing the primitive earth IX'lore it had
become flattened by rotation, as an appropriate shrine in
which to adore Newton the genius of pUfe reason. (A
maquette of this project was on display in London in the
autumn of 1972, during the great exhibition 'The Age of
Neo-Classicism' at the Royal Academy.l) This was the
culmination of Newtonian mythomania in the eighteenth
century.
The religion of the historical, not the mythic, Isaac
Newton, as it takes shape from his manuscripts, is bound up
with the sanctification of words, not abstract reason, with
theological controversies, revealed prophecies, and mcticu-
lous scriptural exegesis, all of which the Enlightenment so
J Claude.Henri de LeUTes d'ull habitatlt dtJ a :jtJs cOlllemporaim
(Paris, 1803).
:IF. C. C. Pahin.Champlain de la B1ancherie, De pa.r toutes les Natiotls.
L'Agent general de Correspomwnce pour les Sciences et les Arts (AI. de La BlaIJchf!lit;),
a 10. Nation AngJoise: Prociamationdan.s l'espTit des jetmes ordonnis par Ie Toj) pour les
annees 1794, 1795, e/ la presente (London, 1796).
, The Age of Neo-Cla.rsicism, catalogue of lhe exhibition (The Arts Council uf
Great Britain, J972), nos. 1019-21.
54 CORRUPTERS ANCIENT AND MODERN
contemptuously repudiated. The Nullius ill verba of the Royal
Society applied only to the humall, nut to the divine, \Vard.
For Isaac Newton, the whole structure of the Christian
religion rested on a foundation of scriptural truths, and the
different capacities of men to comprehend them. There was
milk for babes, the simple belief necessary for admission into
the communion of Christians, summarized in what he called
the primitive apostolic creed; and then there was meat for
strong men, to which only a select body of Christians could
aspire, those who devoted themselves assiduously to scholarly
divinity, the study of the writings of Moses, the Prophets, and
the Apostles as oracks of truth inspired by a holy prophetic
spirit.
For besides the first principles and fundamentals of religion
conteined in the doctrine of baptism and laying on of hands and
in the Creed which all arc to learn be/ore baptism, and which the
Apostle therefore compares to milk lor babes, there are many
truths of great importance but more difJiclllt to be understood
and not absolutely necessary to salvation. And these the Apostle
compares to strong meats for men of li,ll age who by use have
their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. With these
truths the mind is to he led continually as the body is with
meats.'
Those who turned to this higher calling would grow in
grace and in knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ to the end of
their lives.
In the early Church, as interpreted by Newton in his
histories, the original formula of Christian belief, the milk
for babes, had been contained in a few phrases about God
the Creator, Christ, and the Resurrection taken directly out
of Scripture. Any later deviations were corruptions. Newton's
position was forthright and unequivocal:
We are commanded by the Apostle ([ Tim 1.[3) to llOldfast the
form of sound words. Contending for a language which was not
handed down from the Prophets and Apostles is a breach of the
command and they that break it are also guilty of the disturbances
and schisms occasioned thereby. It is not enough to say that an
+ Yahuda MS. 15. 3} fol. 40r; see also 'Irenicum', in McLachlan, Newtot/'s
Theological Manuscripts, p. 32.
CORRUPTERS ANCIENT AND MODERN 55
article of faith may be deduced from scripture. It must be exprest
in the very form of sound words in which it was deliven;d by the
Apostles. Otherwise there can be no lasting fixity nUl" peace of
the Church catholick. For men are apt to vary, dispute, and run
into partings about deductions. All the old I1eresies lay in
deductions; the true faith was in the text.'
In an ideal Christian polity anyone who subscribed tll the
primitive apostolic creed-'short and free li'om repetitions
as a symbol of religion ought to be ... easy to be understood
and remembered by the common people', Newton said"
was not to be excluded from the communion or in any way
persecuted, no matter what other religious opinions he
might hold. 'I may add', he wrote, 'that it [the Creed I
conteins not mere theories like some of those Articles which
we have omitted but all its Articles are practical truths on
which the whole practise of religion depends.'] Newton's
attitude toward temporal and ecclesiastical authorities whu
had added a rout of ceremonials and extraneous verbal
formulas varied with his mood, his temper, and political
exigencies. There were times when he branded such demands
lor conformity as criminal, the impositions of self-seeking
secular powers. Contemporary civil governors who instituted
by force particular religious practices were equated with the
evil emperors of the late Roman world; Churches that had
recourse to the civil arm were violators of the law of Christ.
We arc not to measure Persecution by tbe rule of Persecutors.
The Magistrate may punish or cut ofl' any Jor their vices or evil
actions but not professors of Christianity for erroneous opiniolls,
least they pluck up the Wheat with the Tares. The Church may
reprove or excommunicate but she has as little authority to
guide the arm of the Magistrate as to handle his sword: for this
is to make her self the judge and him but the executioner. She
may excommunicate but not force into communion. Christ never
instituted that a means of her propagation and preservation. If
we would have them one with us we must use the proper means to
beget faith in them, and not urge them by violence to do what is
contrary to their perswasion, seing whatsoever is not of faith is
sin. By violence a Church may increase her numbers but ever
5 Yahuda MS. 15. I, li)l. 11'. 6 Yahuda MS. 15.5, rol. (J8
v
, Ibid.
56 CORRUPTERS Al'\CIENT AND MODERN
allays and debases her self with impure mixtures, force prevailing
with none but Hypocrites. And this I take to be the chief rcason
of the great wickedness of the Romans which ensued Theodosius's
reign, his persecution squeezing out the eonsciencious and filling
the persecuting church only with the Hypocrytical part of the
Empire. Every Persecutor is a Wolf Mauh 10. 16,17, and every
Christian that preaches it is one of the fals Prophets called Wolfs
in sheeps cioathing 1\fath 7.
M
The Roman emperors who imposed religious
and by implication the same held for the monarchs of Newton's
serving their own interests, not those of the
Church, and Church Councils were mere slavish tools:
For the Emperors hence forward by their Councils made several
new articles of faith in forms of words not received from the
Apostles by tradition, and modelled the Christian religion so as
suited best with the interest of their Empire and with the inclina-
tions of the people that all of them (heathens hereticks and
Christians) might unite and become of one mind and one
religion. For its notoriously evident that the Councils always
established the opinions of the Emperors who convened them.'
On occasion Newton adopted a milder tone and pleaded
that as long as non-apostolic words and ceremonials, alien
though they might be, were allowed to be interpreted
symbolically or 'innocently', they should be tolerated by all
concerned for the sake of peace. The two fundamental
commandments of religion, love of God and love of neigh-
bour, were the same for both Christians and Jews despite
their ritual variations, and had once been the basis of unity
in the Church. In one fragment Newton called these
principles 'the laws of nature, the essential part of religion
which ever was and ever will be binding to all nations, being
of an immutable eternal nature because grounded upon
immutable language that comes as close as
Newton ever ventured to the rhetoric of eighteenth-century
Deism. His outlook, however, had nothing in common with
the teachings of Blount and Collins and Toland, because of
the centrality in his religion of historically ordained divine
Yahuda MS. 39, fol. " and Y.
,. Yahuda MS. '5 5, fol. 9'"
Yahuda 1\1S. '5. 7, fol. Igo'.
commandments and the absolute truth of prophetic revela-
tions.
The primitive apostolic formula had once served as a
bulwark against unbelievers. Originally transmitted by
word of mouth, it had been a sort of password among
Christians that differentiated them from heretics and heathens.
But before the end of the second celltury corruplion had
slowly crept into the Latin churches, first by the addition of
new articles couched in the language of Scripture, thus
setting a precedent for a 'creed-making authority','! and then
by the introduction of metaphysical terminology nowhere
to be found in Scripture. All was brought into confusion, and
the drama of apostasy in the Church had begun.
Were Newton the restorer of religion, he would have ordin-
ary Christians merely repeat the primitive apostolic formula
and obey the commandments. As for the precise significance
orthe words, men might differ without falling out with one
another.
12
But since Newton the scholar of divinity could not
himself remain content with such milk for babes, he had to
search in Scripture and in the history of the Ch ure h for the
more profound meaning of the creeds, above all of the person
of jesus Christ, what He was in the bcginning and what He
would be in the end of the days, and what were His relations
to God the Pantocrator.
Newton's manuscript fragments on jesus and the Trinity
have been doled out to posterity in driblets, from the mid-
eighteenth-century printing of his two learned lettcrs against
the proof-texts in john and Timothy to David Brewster's
rather bewildered publication of a few irenic manuscripts
and 1vfcLachlan's excerpts from the Keynes papers. And the
manuscripts on the nature of Christ, written over a period of
nearly haifa century, remain largely unpublished to this day.
There are many theological questions on which Newton
never settled into a fixed position. Did Christ exist before all
worlds and did He create this one at God's command? Was
Christ a higher or a lower being than the angels? The con-
troversial problems of the nature of Christ were summarized
rather succinctly in papers based on what Scripture-his sole
II Ibid., fol. 92v.
" Ibid., fol. 95'.
51! CORRUPTERS :\:\"CJU,T AND l\\OnERJ'\
guide-had taught him. He was weighing alternativcs, as
Locke did in his 'Ad\'("fsaria Theologica'. Parallels to many
of Newton's antitrinitarian arguments can be found in the
voluminolls writings of Samuel Clarke and William \Vhiston,
and in those of the avowed Unitarian Thomas Emlyn, the
humanitarian Hopton Haynes, the Socinian Samuel Crell.
These men had a common antitrinitarian treasurywellstocked
with Biblical fJ uotations, despite their difrerences over points of
doctrine that thmlogians might consider of great moment.
Newton ploughed through their works and the ll'Cql1cnt epis-
copal refutations they pro\'(lked; hut he ill\'ariably tried to
find his own way. It is an error to seize upon his antitrini-
tarianism in order to pigeonhole him in one of the recognized
categories of hercsy-Arian, Socinian, Unitarian, or Deist.
While Newton's chief villain in the history of the Church
was Athanasius rather than Arius, he censured both for
having introduced metaphysical subtleties into their disputes
and corrupted the plain language of Scripture:
Both of them perplexed the Church with metaphysical opinions
and expressed their opinions in novel language not warranted by
scripture. The Greeks to preserve the Church from these innova-
tions and metaphysical perplexitys and put an end to the troubles
occasioned by them anathematized the novel language of Arius
in several of their Councils, and so soon as they were able
repealed the novel language of the hOlllousians, and contended
that the language of the scriptures was to be adhered unto. The
Homousians made the father and son one God by a metaphysical
unity the unity of substance: thc Greek Churches rejected all
metaphysical divinity as well that of Arius as that of the Homou-
sians and made the father and son one God by a ?vIonarchical
unity, an 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 his viceroy are but one king .... And there-
fore as a father and his son cannot be called one King upon
account of their being consubstantial but may be called one
King by unity of dominion if the Son be Viceroy under the
father: so God and his son cannot be called onc God upon account
of their being consubstantiaL"
13 Yahuda MS. '5.7, fol. '54',
CORRUPTERS ,\NCIENT AND
In the light of modern scholarship, Nnvtlln's ,\thanasius
is an imaginary figurc, having long since been denied author-
ship of the creed to which his name is alladwd. In addition
to exposing what he believed tu be Jerome's blsilicatiollS in
New Testament texts and the wicked manipulations of
Athanasius,I4 Newton went to great pains to distinguish his
private beliefs about the nature of Christ from the Iwli<'is (If
both orthodox Trinitarians and those wh" conni\,cd "f Him
as a mere man, And the arguments he ust:'d ha\'f: a personal
fla\'our, even though they are hardly IT\'olutionary iIlIlO\a-
tiuns in heterodox Christology. The naill" God was never
used in Scripture to denote more tlwn one .. I' the three
persons of the Trinity at the same timt', Nt:'wtoll contended,
and when it appeared without particular n'strictioll to the
Son or the Holy (;host it always signified tllC Father. The
distinction of the Son froIll the Father was furtht'r c\'idt'nc"d
by the Son's confession of His dcpmclence upon tht' will orthe
Father, by His acknowlrdgement that the Father was greater,
that prescience of all future things was in the Father alone.
But Christ was not a mere man. He was the Son of God, not
just a human soul who was sent into the world. Had it been
otherwise, the Apostles would most assuredly have mt'ntioned
a fact of such great consequence. God was called Almighty,
the appropriate epithet. Though this did not limit the power
of the Son, it meant that Christ's power was derived from
the Father and that of Himself He could do nothing. In all
things the Son submitted His will to the Father, which would
be altogether unreasonable if Hc were His eq nal. The union
of Father and Son was like that of the saints, an agreement
of wills. The same attributes could bc applied to the Father
and to the Son, but they were different in nature since the
Son's attributes wefe a grant from the Father. 'Thc heathens
made all their Gods of one substance and sometimes called
them one God, and yet were polytheists. Nothing can make
two persons one God but unity of dominion. And if the
Father and Son he united in dominion, the son being sub-
ordinate to the father and sitting in his throne, they can no
1+ 'Paradoxical Questions Concerning tht! .Morals alld Actions of Athanasius
and his Followers', in McLachlan, .!\'(u:I(JI/'s Theological pp. 60-118.
more be called two Gods then a King and his viceroy can be
called two kings.'ls In another manuscript, Newton refuted
the doctrine of consubstantiality with the ncgativc argu-
ment that it did not cstablish Christ's di\'inity or His right
to be adored. 'The heathens and Gnosticks supposed not only
their Gods but even the souls of men and the starrs to be of
one substance with the supreme God and yet were Idolaters
for worshipping them. And he that is of this opinion may
beleive Christ to be of onc su bstance with the father without
making him more thm a nwer man. Tis not consubstan-
tiality but power and dominion which gives a right to be
worshipped.' 10
Newton constantly adverted to the hodily limn oeJesus;
He was no spirit, as some of the Gnostics claimed. There was
textual evidence of His many corporeal appearances on
earth. 'His wrestling with J <leob is as lilll a proof that he had
a body before his incarnation', Newton wrote, 'as his being
handled by Thomas is a proof that he had a body after his
resurrection. Not the body of an Angel which hath not
flesh and bones but a body which by the power of his will he
could form into the consistency and solidity of flesh and
bones as well before his incarnation as after his resurrection'."
In the course of time Christ had assumed and would assume
many shapes and forms both spiritual and physical as a
Saviour, a messenger, an agent, a vice-ruler under God, a
judge. He was carrying out the will of God. But it was the
greatest of blasphemics to identify His substance with God.
In a rejection of idolatrous practices associated with
Catholicism Newton uttered the troublesome words: 'Nor
may we invoke Angels or the souls of dead men as NIediators
between God and Man. For as there is but one God so there
is but one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ
Jesus.'18 But the phrase 'the man Christ Jesus' (out of I
Timothy), which appears in Newton's manuscripts many
times, should not be pulled out of context to impute to him
an eighteenth-century Deistic view that identified Christ as
merely another prophet or an inspired human being; nor
" Yahuda !'>IS. 1.').7, fol. 1 5 ~ .
17 Yahuda !\IS. 15. 7, 101. '54'.
" Yahuda ;"IS. '5. 5,101. g8
Y

I8 Yahuda MS. 15.4,101. 67
Y

CORRUPTERS ANCIENT AND MODERN fl,
should Newton be transfilrmed into a nineteenth-century
New England Unitarian, though many have tried. Newton
and his spokesmen Richard Bentley and Samuel Clarke
were explicit in distinguishing their views on Christ and
revealed religion from the growing fashion of Deism. Christ
was the l'vIessiah and the Son of God; and alief the resLlrn:c-
tion, it was Christ who would prepare heavenly mansiuns l'lr
the elect in a remote part of the universe.
Anything that appeared to derogate from Ihe absolute
dominion and supreme monarchy of God the Father was
repugnant to Newton. The Holy Ghost was simply the
spirit of prophecy. And though Christ was the Lamb ofGud,
prayers were to be directed tu 'God in the nallle of the Lamb,
but not to the Lamb in the name orGod'.'<) Unlike Samuel
Clarke, Newton left behind no revised Anglican prayer-bouk
and service with every Trinitarian passage slashed through
with violent penstrokcs-the book is preserved in Ihe Britisll
Museum
2
-but he would have agreed in principle with
most of the deletions and substitutions, which ill each instance
stressed obedience to one God owed by men as His servanls
and diminished the other two persons of the Trinity.
Whatever the refinements of Newton's Christological
doctrines-and their detail is beyond the scope of these
lectures-the impression is inescapable that the omniscient
and omnipotent God, God the Lord and Master, was sup-
planting the image of a God of love and mercy. Among the
major seventeenth-century scientists, both Catholics and
Protestants, there was a perceptible movement away frolll
the Christological centre of religion. Galileo and Descartes
avoided mention of Jesus in their writings. Kepler and New-
ton composed treatises on tht; life of Christ, but the focns of
their interest was dramatically indicali\T of a shift ill
emphasis. On the basis of astronomic data, Kepler revised
the year of Christ's birth to 5 B.C. Newton quoted Kepler
with approval, and the intent of his own essay was to prove
that the Crucifixion took place in A.D. 'H, not 33; at one
19 Ibid.
20 The Book of Common Prayer (London, 1724), \ .... ith addition:;
and alterations by Samuel Clarke (Ilritish Museum: C. 24. b.21).
point he even surmised, through a meticulous historical re-
construction of the timl's, that Christ was born in the spring
and not on Christmas Day, a pagan fl'stival.
21
The birth of
Christ thc Saviour had become a debatable chronological
subject. As the omniscience and omnipotence of God were
slowly driving away His all-lovingness, the Christ who was
the symbol of eternal love ceased to hold a place of primacy.
Of course there arc passages on divine mercy in SamU('1
Clarke's sermons and in Newton's manuscripts; but thcy are
minimal if compared with glorificatiuns of God's omniscience
and omnipotence. W'ithout bl'ing flllly aware of it, Newton
may have been prl'paring the way Jilr that new religion fit
for thc scientific age--a nJigion of great powcr and knuwledge
and prccious little love, upon which late-l'ightl'enth-ccntury
Frenchmen were so eager to bestow his name.
But if the role of Christ in Newton's theology was far from
orthodox, and if in his history of the churches he continually
reiterated his anti trinitarian beliefs, why did he not stand up
and fight alongside William Whiston against every alien
phrase insinuated into the primitive apostolic creed? Why
did he not join thc 'Society for the Restoration of Primitive
Christianity' that Whiston had founded? After Newton's
death, the humanitarian Hopton Haynes, who had worked
under him at the Mint for decades, criticized him in private
for not having heeded the call to lead a reformation in the
Church equal to that of Luther and Calvin;" and Whiston,
who was ousted from the Lucasian Chair as a heretic, in his
memoirs accused Newton of religious duplicity.23
Was Newton hypocritical? Was he afraid? Had he suc-
cumbed to the fleshpots when he became 1faster of the lVlint
and President of the Royal Society? There are those for whom
the revelation of the Tartuffe in a great man is a singular
pleasure-it lowers him to our ranks, if only for a moment.
The divine Newton, it would seem, was all too human. But
there were wgent reasons for Newton's refusal to throw in
21 Yahuda MS. 5. I, f41l. 7
r
; Yahuda l\fS. 25, fols. 20
T
, 21
r
,
U Hopton Haynes, Causa Dei contra 110m/ores (London, 1747), pp. :iJ, 58.
n \Villiam \\fhiston fir:<.t indicated !';('wton's heterodoxy in Historical
jlfemoirs if the Lije if Dr. Samuel Clark, (London. 1730) and then advertised it in
Memoirs if /he Life and II'riti"gs oj IV. W. (London, 1749)
CORRUPTERS ANCIENT AND l\IODEI{N 1)3
his lot with Whiston. Newton faced the elt>rnal probkm (If
all dissenters within a religious or political cOl1lmunion: to
submit, gloss over differences, remain silent Ji)r the sake of
unity, Of to listen to the voice of conseit"nee and proclaim a
particular truth come what may.l\fen's helids were changing.
There would come a time, he told John Conduitt, when
Trinitarian doctrines hallowed by the Churdl wonld UC COll-
sidered as outlandish as Catholic transuustantiation. Why
raise tumults against an evil whose day was passing? The
punishments that could be meted out to a man who puulishcd
antitrinitarian views were harsh. And apart ii-om simple
motives of preserving comfort and status and tranquillity,
Newton's manuscripts prove that he had authentic, deeply
felt irenical convictions, which had first been nourished by
the Cambridge Platonists and were reinforced during the
years of his friendship with John Locke.
If the nature of Newton's Christ remains problematic
despite the multiplicity of texts, Newton's devil is even more
perplexing. The youthful Newton was not free ii-om the
belief in magical evil spirits common in the countryside where
he was born. One of his notebooks records in shorthand a
purported quotation from Jesus to be worn as an amulet fur
preventing ague and fever.
24
His manuscripts of the Cam-
bridge years in the 1670S and 16805, especially his com-
mentaries on parts of Genesis and the alT full of
direct references to the devil as a being who operates in the
historical world.
The Devil who came down amongst the inhahitants of the earth
and sea is the Dragon that old Serpent called the Devil and
Satan. He was cast out of heaven by I\fichael and came down
from thence among those inhabitants when he was cast ant, that
is presently after the victory of Constantinc over Licinius. And
since this Devil was not amongst those inhabitants beli>re and
came down amongst them with great wrath it implies that he
was their enemy and that they were God's people, and began now
to be attackt by that Devil which had hitherto reigned among the
heathens. He came down from the upper court of the Temple,
among the Christians who worshipped in the outward Court.
2" \Veslfall, 'Short-\Vriting and Newton's Conscience', pp. l:.!, 13.
He came down with great wralh knowing that he hath but a
short time that is a short time to reign and therefore prevailed to
set up a new reign amongst them. For he immediately persecuted
the Woman and made her fly inlo the \V-ilderness and made
war upon the remnant of her seed who keep the commandments
of God and havc the testimony of Jesus. The \V-oman therefore
and her seed were those against whom the Devil came down wilh
great wrath, that is, the inhabitants of the earth and sea or at
least the Clergy of those inhabitants. And his wrath was great,
that is, he made hast to prevail, because he had but a short time
to reign, being quickly to bc cast into the bottomless pit.
2S
In drafts of an Irenicum writtcn in Newton's London
period, howevcr, thc dC\'il seems to have bccn metamorphosed
into a symbol for lusts of the flesh and his rt'ality becomes far
more questionable. And yet, one day at the Royal !\fint, a
devil popped out at mc from the back of an eightcenth-
century manuscript-page on coinage who was not quite as
abstract as the symbolic devil to whom I had grown accus-
tomed in Newton's late-seventcenth-ccntury papers.
26
New-
ton warns against the wiles of the 'devil who is opposed to
God', and is 'the father of the wickcd' and is 'worshipped by
his children'. Thc passage, which is crossed out in part, ends
with the solemn injunction: 'Resist the Devil and he will fly
from you.' lIfanifcstly, both Newton's Christ and Newton's
devil underwent transformation over the years. Though the
chronology of such changes must remain flexible, to make
allowance for the recrudescence of beliefs of childhood and
youth, the general tendcncy is c1car, and very much in thc
spirit of the age: Christ and the devil were forces whose
psychic potency waned during thc course of Newton's life.
Scienre was taking its toll in a subtle, almost imperceptible
manner, leaving God alone in His majesty, with Newton as
His interpreter.
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 thc ani-
mosity that pervades his histories of corruption in the Church.
" Yahuda MS. i. 3, fol. 32'. ,6 Mint Papers, V, fol. 33.
GORRU1'TERS ANC1ENT AND MODERN 65
These are profuse, vituperative, and in their attacks on
persons, relentless. Commitment to a latitudinarian spirit
was onc thing; silence in the facc of deliberate distortion of
plain scriptural truth and the introduction of metaphysical
concepts in the guise of religion was another matter. I\fost of
Newton's theological writings arc devoted to exposing
falsifiers of New Testament texts, prevaricators ill Church
Councils, corrupters of primitive natural religion, meta-
physical befuddlers of the true relations between God and
man. I have dwelt elsewhere upon the psychic needs that
wcre in part appeased by these aggressive polemics; but in
the course of hunting down the enemies of true religion and
unveiling their hypocrisies, Newton developed a conceptual
fi'amework that represented more than his personal require-
ments. There was a fairly substantial body of educated
Englishmen who entertained similar h e l i e f ~ and would at
least have been familiar with his configuration of ideas-a
far greater number than were able to understand the
Principia.
The corrupters of religion ancient and modern were
legion: the contemporary Papists and their antect'dents the
pagan idolaters; the English sectarian enthusiasts -the new
prophets-and their equivalents the hallucinating monks of
early Christianity; the Pharisaical Jews who rejected Christ;
contemporary Deists and atheists, like Hobbes, and their
ancient counterparts the theological Epicureans, (Jr whom
all was chance; and finally, the philosophers who mixed lip
metaphysics and religion, particularly the modern rationalist
system-makers Descartes and Leibniz, and their predecessors
the Gnostics, Cabbalists, and Platonists. These were the
enemies of Newton's God. Some, like tbeJews, were redeem-
able, and perhaps the atheists were too. Tbe enthusiasts, as
well, might be undeceived, though their immediate effect
was to spread pernicious superstition. Newton accepted
Henry 1\'10re's view of enthusiasm and atheism as two sides
of the same coin. (Samuel Butler's lludibras, with its satirical
jingles about millenarian prophets, was one of the rafe con-
temporary works of light literature in Newton's library.) But
Papists were the very embodiment of the mystery of iniquity
66 CORRUPTERS A!\lCIENT AND MODERN
and their extermination was ordained. And the meta-
physicians of all ages ranked closely behind them in sowing
false conceptions of God.
Enthusiasts, mystics, speakers with tongues, what Newton
called the 'hot and superstitious part of mankind', were false
prophets, pretenders to a revelation they did not possess.
Newton had assimilated the seventeenth-century literature
from Burton to ~ o r e that equated contemporary religious
enthusiasm and supposed prophetic visions with plain lunacy.
In his history of the churches he added his own psychological
explanations of monkish religious hallucinations: they had
their genesis in excesses of asceticism and were therefore not
authentic messages of God, hut manifestations either of
disease or of the devil's wiles, alternatives between which he
oscillated.
True prophecy-like miracles-had definitely ceased and
for all time, because the whole of prophecy necessary for the
conversion of men to religion and for their attaining a know-
ledge of God was already contained in Daniel and the
Revelation of John. God did not indulge in supererogation.
Newton and Locke had discussed such questions, and had
agreed that theirs was not the day of the prophet, but of the
rational prophecy-interpreter, no mean function in itself:
Along with the enthusiasts and monkish visionaries, the
Jews were also beyond the religions pale. In their best mono-
theistic period after ~ f o s e s had restored the law, they came
as close as any people to Newton's idea of trlle religion, and
there is a temptation to judaize him, especially if one con-
stricts the definition of historical Judaism to its rationalist
formulation in the works of I\10srs !\Iaimonides. Both in the
methods of Scripture interpretation and in the analysis of
prophecy, two crucial aspects of Newton's religion, he was in
the mainstream of medieval Jewish commentators, hostile to
the unchecked allegorizing of the Cabbalists. His conception
of the prophet could have come directly out of Uaimonides
as he was taught to the Anglican "'orld by John Spencer, a
colleague of Newton's at Cambridge, and by 'our Pocock',
as Newton familiarly referred to the great Arabist and
Hebraist of Christ Church in the General Scholium of the
CORRUPTERS ANCIENT AND t.IO[)ERN li7
Prillcipia. The Jews had to be excluded because of their dmial
of the plain evidence of scriptural prophecy and their
n:iection of Christ; but their ultimate conversion alld return
toJerusalem was foretold in language common to one branch
of millenarianism.
Hence I observe these things, first lhat tile rcslauralioll of the
Jewish nation so much spoken of by the old Prophets respecl> not
the few Jews who were converted in the Apostles days, but the rlis-
plTsed nation of the unbelieving Jews to he convrrted in the
end when the fulness of tile Gentiles shal enter, that is when the
Gospel (upon the fall of Babylon) shall begin to be preached 10
all nations. Secondly that the prophecie, of Isaiah described
above by being here cited by the Apostle is limited to respect the
time of the future conversion and restitution of the Jewish Nation,
and thirdly that the humour which has long reigned among the
Christians of boasting our selves against the Jews, and insulting
over them for their not beleiving, is reprehended by the A p o t l ~
for high-mindedness and sclf-conccipt, and much lIIore is our
using them despightfully, Pharisaicall and impious.",
Of all the corrupters of Christianity throughout the ages,
two groups obsessed Newton, Papists and metaphysicians,
and paradoxically they were intimately related to each other.
In the standard style of the epoch, Papists were condemned
because they were essentially idolatrous, had departed from
the Unity, were worshippers of persons as gods, adorers of
things, such as relics, to which they imputed powers they did
not have. They had accepted the governance of a usurping
Roman authority and were guilty of the murder of innocents.
In his diatribes against Papists, Newton's indignation
rivalled the rage of dissenting preachers: 'This is that sort of
persecution by which the Beast made war with the saints and
overcame them, that sort of persecution by which the whore
of Babylon became drunken with the blood of Saints and of
the martyrs of J esus.',8 The rule of the Papacy was identified
with the reign of Antichrist; how this rule came into being
and when it would be over was Olle of Newton's perennial
preoccupations. During his psychic crisis of 1693, his inner
turmoil broke forth in a groundless insinuation that Samuel
z8 Keynes !\.lS. 5, 1'01. I09
r

68 CORRUPTERS ANCIENT ANIl MODERN
Pepys was trying to involve him with Papists-a nightmare of
utter abomination.
2
"
The emotional outbnrsts against Catholicism that punctu-
ated Newton's ecclesiastical history do not obscure, however,
its basically rationalist framework. In the proemium of a
Latin version of the history, Newton laid down the thesis that
'the true understanding of things Christian depends upon
church history'.3o Only through a circumstantial account of
the degradation of the Church in a series of stages and its
doctrinal deviation from the primitive creed could Chris-
tianity be stripped of its spurious accretions. The original
Christian religion was plain, but 'men skilled in the learning
of heathens, Cabbalists, and Schoolmen corrupted it with
metaphysicks, straining the scriptures from a moral to a
metaphysical sense and thereby making it unintelligible.'''
As the historian of apostasy in the first centuries of the
Church, Newton distinguished three principal agents in the
propagation of the metaphysical evil: the Jewish Cabbalists,
the philosophers, among whom Plato and the Platonists were
the worst offenders, and the Gnostics, of whom Simon Magus
was the arch-culprit. Newton's knowledge of the Cabbala
was probably confined to Christian Knorr von Rosenroth's
Kabbala Denudata, which included disquisitions by Henry
More and Francis Mercurius Van Helmont.32 As his notes
show, Newton studied the work with great care in order to
refute its teachings. This book, which has been more talked
about than looked at, was not a translation of the Zohar
(though excerpts are included) but the first broad view in a
language other than Hebrew of all the major Cabbalist
trends, both those incorporated in the Zohar and those
represented by the new sixteenth-century Cabbala of Luria
Ashkenazi (the 'Ari'). The basic text of the Zohar itself, a late-
tbirteenth-century pseudonymous writing by !vfoses de Leon
in pseudo-Aramaic, owed its wide acceptance to the pretence
that it was a rcdiscoycred work by Simeon Bar YoJ:!ai of the
29 Newton, COTre.'ipondmce. iii. 279. Nrwton to PC'pys, 13 Sept.
)0 Yahuda I I. fo1. I
r
,
]I Yahuda MS. 15. 5, fol. 97'.
Christian Knorr \'on Kabhala Di'IIudata (i, Sulzbach, 1677; ii,
Frankfort, 1684).
CORRUl'TERS AI'!CIENT AND l'.\()I)ERN
second century. Along with the rest of the Christian and a
large part oftheJ ewish world, Newton credited this t raditiona I
dating. For his purposes the were not contem-
porary Jewish mystics but ancients who lived in the early
ages of Christianity. His use of the term Cabbalists to
identify those who propagated esoteric and theosophical
doctrines among Jews in Egypt and Palestine alJOut the time
of the primitive Church and his stress on Hellenic influence
in their inventions would enjoy favour among many prcscnt-
day scholars who trace the roots of Cabbala back to that
period.
Newton's Cabbalists, Platonists, ami Gnostics had a single
false doctrine in common, which they inlilsed into Christian
theology at the time of their conversion. This was the theol"y
of emanation, according to which lesser spiritual beings
derived from God and were of His substance, but were not an
act of creation of His divine Will. 'The Gnosticks after the
manner of the Platonists and Cabbalists considered the
thoughts or Ideas or intellectual objects seated in Gods mind
as real Beings or substances, and supposed them to be male
and female and to generate by emission of Substance as
animals generate or as the heathens supposed their Gods to
generate and thence accounted them consubstantial. ... '33
For Newton such a doctrine, which denied creation of the
world ex nihilo by one God and recalled fables about the
birth and proliferation of hundreds of pagan spirits, demi-
gods, gods, and demons, was of the very essence of corruption,
the denial of the first and most important commandment of
the Decalogue. He discovered the fountainhead of this
corruption far back in the degeneration of primitive Egyptian
and Chaldean monotheism into a confused metaphysical
idolatry that imputed real powers to forces ill nature. The
mechanics of this second fall of man had been milch pondered
in the seventeenth century, and Newton's \'ersion is all
amalgam of contemporary theories that can be traced to the
Church Fathers and to In Ncwton':; wurld-
historical view, there tended to be a single source of pollution
in religion from which all later forms had proceeded, and
JJ Y.huda M. '5. 7, t'ol. IOU'.
70 CORRUPTERS .\NCIE""T AND MODERN
whatever the subsequent embodiments, the quintessential
nature of the original evil persisted throughout all time.
Newton's ideal of simplicity was as acti,'c in his historical as
in his scientific and prophetic studies.
In Newton's rather fanciful history of Cabbalism, the
Cabbalist Jews, through contact with Chaldean seers during
the Babylonian captivity and with Egyptian priests and
Greek philosophers in Alexandria, had exposed their pure
Mosaic monotheism to contamination hy this doctrine of
emanation. It led them to conceive of the infinite, the en-soph,
as emitting ten gradual subordinate emanations which they
called sephirot and which were merely reifications of the
attributes of God. When some oftlH'se Cahbalist.Jews became
Christian, they injected their doctrines into the pure and
simple belief of the early Church, breeding a murky intel-
lectual atmosphere in which such idolatrous dogmas as
transubstantiation were developed. It was but a step from
doctrines of emanation to Trinitarianism.
The Cabbalists placed the root and fountain of the Sephiroths
above and said that the first sephiroth [Jic] Kether was a sphaere
which comprehended the other nine sephiroths and was there
called the highest crown. The Infinite retracted himself from a
great spherical space in which he designed to create the worlds
and emitted gradually into this space ten subordinate emana-
tions ....
And if the theology of the Cabbalists be compared with that of
the Gnosticks it will appear that the Cabhalist. were Jewish
Gnosticks and the Gnosticks were Christian Cabbalists.
H
The Sephiroths of the Cabbalists were nothing else then the
powers and aHections of God the father considered as divine
persons (namely his Crown or first and supreme emanation, his
Wisdom, his Prudence, his :\fagnificcncc, his Power, his Beauty,
his Eternity, his Glory, his being the Support and Foundation of
all things and his Reign) so the iEons of the Gnosticks were of the
same kind.'"
When the Apostle condemned Jewish fables, 'endless
genealogies and oppositions of science falsly so called', he
34 Yahuda MS. 15. 7, fo1. 127r, l\1arginalia 011 101. 127v include a reference
to the 'CaM. dlludnta Pars 2, p. 181, 182,203,20.1'.
" Yahuda MS. 15. 5. fol. 88
v
.
CORRUPTERS ANCIENT AND l\tOIlERN 7'
meant the learning of the Cabbalists then crcepillg iuto
Christianity.36
The Platonists, among whom Clement of Alexandria, 'a
great admirer of Plato', figured prominently, in a similar
spirit made the "Vord the omnipotent power and wisdom and
idea of the Father, and in their theology it was the Word that
effected the creation, and Jesus begot himself when the Word
became flesh.37 Platonic notions of emanation began to
spread in the Church before the end of the second century,
when Greek converts to Christianity who had been addicted
to the Platonic philosophy introduced them; lilr Stich men
after their conversion tended to carryover the philosophical
and religious manner of thinking on which they were
nurtured, and thus they were in large measure responsible
for the metaphysical disputes that arose in the Church. The
education oflearned men in the principles of Plato and other
heathen philosophers before they became Christians, the
study of the heathen learning by some learned men after they
became Christians ... and the easy admission of the hereticks
into the latine church ... gave occasion to the spreading of
some erroneous opinions very early in the Church herself.'38
On the back of working papers at the Royal Mint, Newton
branded such errors as Platonic distortions of Christianity
and singled out Athenagoras, the second-century Greek
Father who was born in Athens, author of a Libel/us pro
Chrisliallis, as a characteristic transmitter of false doctrines.
Athenagoras by calling Christ the Idea of all things, takes him
for the Logos of the Platonist; and by saying that God had this
Logos always in himself because he was rationallrom all eternity,
makes Christ the inward reason and wisdom of the father, the
<vouiO,To, without which the father would be arroq,oS' and
and by calling him the first begotten of the lather who was
not made (or created out of nothing) but Carne oul of the father
as the Idea and energy of all things in order to Gods creating the
world makes him generated not from all eternity but ill the
beginning of the creation, the internal Logos being then emitted
or projected outwardly like the Mons of the Cnosticks and Logos
,6 Yahuda MS. 15. 7, fol. 127'.
.. Yahuda MS. 15. 7, fol. 116'.
31 Yahuda MS. 15. 5, 101. 87' .
7' CORRUPTERS ANCIE:-IT AND MODERN
of the Cataphrygians and Platonists. For Athenagoras ... makes
also the Holy Ghost an emanation of the father, not a necessary
and eternal emanation but a voluntary and temporary one
sometimes flowing from the father sometimes returning back to
him as the rays of the Sun are emitted from him and reflected
back.'
Newton charged the Platonists with having bestowed esoteric
meanings upon plain scriptural names for Christ that were
readily understood, such as 'Lamb of God', 'Son of 1\1an',
'Son of God'. In his church history he exclaimed in high
dudgeon, ""'hat all this has to do with Platonism or Meta-
physicks I do not understand .... The Scriptures were given
to teach men not metaphysics but morals'.10 The facile
identification of Newton with the philosophical doctrines of
the Cambridge Platonists among whom he Jived as a young
man surely requires amendment.
The metaphysical opinions of the Gnostics, the third band
of early corrupters, were drawn from both the pagan idolaters
and the Cabbalists. The Gnostics separated deities male and
female from the First Cause and from one another by genera-
tion, 'that is by emission of substance as animals generate
other animals of the same species by seminal emissions'. 41
One branch of the Gnostics believed that the maker of the
world was different from the father of the Lord, that the son
of the fabricator was one person and Christ from above was
another, who descended upon Jesus in the form of a dove,
and that when Jesus was brought before Pilate, this dove flew
back to hispleroma.
42
Some Gnostics professed that Jesus was
the son of Joseph and l\1ary, others that he passed through
1\1ary 'as water through a pipe'.4' Newton extracted sum-
maries of the doctrines of Simon Magus from. the Church
Fathers who had attacked him, and interpreted them to mean
that Simon was the original conceptualizer of the Trinitarian
hercsy.44 Lest there be any doubt about the moral consequen-
ces of such beliefs and trafficking in emanations of the divine
,. Mint papers, V, fol. 37'.
40 Yahuda MS. '5.7, roJ. Igor, 41 Ibid., fol. 120r .
, Yahuda MS. '5. 3. fol. 54' .
.. Yahuda MS. '5.5, lo!. 8B .
.. Yahuda MS. '5, 3, fol. 53'; Yahuda 1\IS. '5, 5. fol. 83'.
essence, Newton described in some detail the assemblies and
'filthy mysteries' instituted by Simon:
His priests lived in lust and used exorcisms and incantations and
magical arts and philtres and things enticing weomen to lust and
fictions offamiliar spirits and of prophetick dreams and worshipped
the images of Simon and Helena in the form of Jupiter and
Minerva, and in their assemblies had filthy mysteries instituted hy
Simon which consisted in offering to their Gods the seminal
prolluvia of men and menstrua of weomen instead of the Eucharist.
... And after adultery they offered the filthy sacrifice illStitutcd
by Simon saying this is my body and this is my blood."
On the philosophical level, Newton's antagonism toward
the ancient Cabbalists, the Platonists, and the Gnostics, is
part of an ardent defence of God the Father who created the
world as an act of divine will. By contrast, doctrines of
emission, emanation, generation, projection, all of which are
suggestive of human procreation, seemed to derogate from
the absolute independence of God's fiee will. Whether
Newton's aversion to emissions and emanations, which re-
appears in scores of folios in his history of the early Church,
has covert origins in the intimate experience of this lone man
had best be left in the form of a question; but not to ask it
would be obscurantist. It is not a belittlement of the Illan to
consider the significance of his words on different levels.
Timc and again Newton broke his narrative exposition of
early church doctrine with bitter denunciations of the
Cabbalists and Gnostics, who separated out the 'powers,
affections, Ideas, operations, and dignities of God the lather'
and considered them as 'so many divine persons'.
All these things are but olle thing in several degrees and have
place only in the mind of man. They err therefore in ascribing
to God the affections and passions of men and making him a
compound. For God is not as man, nor are his thoughts like ours.
He is simple and not compound. He is all like and equal to
himself, all sense all spirit, all perception all Ennaea, all ,\6yos all
ear, all eye, all light. He is all sense which cannot he separated
from it self, nor is there any thing in him which can be emitted
from any thing else.
46
H Yahuda MS. 15. 3. fols. 53'. 54'. Yahuda MS. 15.7.1,.1. 1U9'.
F
Who upon reading this passage can fail to recall the famous
query in the Optics that distinguishes the animal from the
divine sensory and the excursion in the General Scholium
where Newton dilates upon our incapacity to have any idea
of the substance of God? ',"Vhence also it follows that he is
all Similar, all Eye, all Ear; all Brain, all Arm, all Sensation,
all Understanding, all active Power: But this not after a
corporeal Manner, but after a Manner wholly unknown to
US.'47
In Newton's history of early Christianity, a curious con-
ception of the cross-currents of religious ideas in the Nledi-
terranean world was unfulded. He established conjunctures
and relationships that have psychological, and at times even
a measure of historical, validity. His interpretation is multi-
faceted: he combines political motives with base human
passions, and he has some insight into the intellectual pre-
dispositions of converts from one religion to another. N ewtoll
made a valiant attempt to re-create the spiritual life of
AlexandrianJews, the emotional atmosphere of third-century
Rome, the interplay of Greek philosophy, Egyptian mystery
religions, and Jewisll mystical traditions about the time of
Christ. Mutatis mutandis, Newton might well have made a
respectworthy historian of ideas of the late-nineteenth-
century French or German positivistic school. Perhaps he
was a little too hasty in establishing chains ofinfiucnce on the
basis of rather flimsy cvidence. But there is much to be said
for his free and open associations of ideas, and I am quite
ready to propose him as a model for our twentieth-century
history of science, to dissuade it from turning in upon itself.
Operating through intrigues in Church Councils, encour-
aged by recent pagan converts who wanted to preserve
idolatry, supported by the secular power of emperors, the
Gnostics, the Jewish Cabbalists, and the Platonists perverted
the creed of the Apostles of the early Church and imposed
metaphysical principles and abstract concepts upon scriptural
statements about God and Christ. Such notions became
papist dogmas and were not completely eradicated from
Newton's own Church.
41 \Vhislon. }{ew/ulI':. CUlollaries, pr. 17-18.
N ewton's virulent anti-metaphysical bias, aile of the con-
stants of his religious and scientific outlook, was embodied in
the argument that God is a Creator, a !vlastn, that men have
a personal relationship to a Lord, not to abstract attributl's,
and was transplanted from ancient to modern times, li'om
considerations of early church history to polemics in the
General Scholium of the Principia. In the General Scholium
the very same language with which Newtoll had excoriated
the old corrupters of the Christian religion was adapted, as
we have seen, to an attack on the mctaphysical arguments
of Leibniz and his attempts to drag Newton into a discussion
of the attributes of God. After the turn of the century, when
Newton was engaged in writing a critical history of ancient
heresies and their propagators, the duel with Leilmiz was
never far from his mind. Leibnizians and Cartesians were
modern exemplars oCthe Cabbalists, Gnostics, and Platonists.
Leibniz with his intricate, metaphysical system-making
understood nothing about thc true nature of God. In Newton's
manuscripts the word 'metaphysical' has already assumed
the set pejorative meaning of its later usage among the
French philosophes. The undertones of these uttnalH:CS -and
there are many-run something like this: 'I, Isaac Newton,
the lad from Lincolnshire, have a plain religious tiith based
on my personal obedience to the Lord, and I will Hot hc
C'lltrapped by the Leibnizian subtleties. 11etaphysics wr"ugilt
havoc in the early centuries of Christianity, as the history of
the apostolic creed and o[ the church councils bears witness,
and the Leibnizian arguments arc likely to l')ster the sallie
divisive spirit in our time.'
Newton's contempt for metaphysics thus had religious as
well as scientific roots. The personal element, his rivalry with
the two system-makers the dead Descartes and the living
Leibniz, was always present; but even if the personal element
is ignored, metaphysics remains an evil to be combated.
Abstract system-making, building hypothetical structur(,s,
was a mode of thinking responsible for the perversion of the
only truly revealed religion, primitive Christianity, The
modern philosophical system-makers who were molesting him
were acting precisely as had the ancient l'latonists, Gllostics,
76 CORRUPTERS ANClENT AND MODERN
and Cabbalisls. Instead of concentrating upon God's works,
His actions, the phenoml'na, as a form of worship, they were
presuming a knowledge of His attributes or His essence.
Leibniz was Athanasius redivivus. Supramundaneintelligences,
pre-established harmonics, were hypotheses of the same order
as the Cabbalist sephirot, Plato's logos, and Simon Uagus'
foul emanations.
The question arises why Newton did not eschew meta-
physical debate altogl'titcr, why he employed Dr. Samuel
Clarke to set forth in elegant phraseology arguments for
whieh he felt ;t\Trsion and disdain. Only in the context of
Newton's general conduct during the last two or three
decades of his life, when he was the autocrat of British
science, is his course of action in the Lcibniz debate compre-
hensible. Newton delighted in beating his adversaries at their
own game. In unmasking monkish falsehoods, he revelled in
quoting Cardinal Baronius, the olTicial historiographer orthe
papal establishmmt.
48
Even in what wcnt by the name of
metaphysical disquisition, he could worst Leibniz and the
Leibnizians. The precise nature of the collaboration between
Clarke and Ncwton can never be determined; much oral
converse was involved since they both lived in London. In
the correspondcnce with Leibniz thc refinements of the argu-
ments were left to Clarke, but Newton's dialectical skills,
when hc wanted to engage, were not to be underestimated,
and there arc drafts in his hand that prove what was generally
supposed at the timC', that he was a most active contestant.4
9
.. 8 Yahuda I I. 3, fol. 5
r
; the rdefence is to Caesar llaronius, Amlales
Ecclesiastici (Antwerp, 159,t), IU tomes.
49 Koyre and Cohen, '1'\ewton and the Lcibniz -Clarke Correspondence', pp.
63-126. See also A. R. and 1\1. B. Hall, 'Clarke and Newton', his, Iii (1961),
584, for the draft ofa kiln in Newton's hanel, written some time in J715, that
attacks Lcibniz's metaphysical position and is paralleled by Clarke's fifth
reply: 'And at the same time he is propound {But its said that hypotheses may
in time meet with an Experinlt'l1tum Crucis and hiT. Leibnitz: proposes
Hypotheses for that end. "'hell meet with Experimenta Crucis
they will cease to be Hypolhf'.'>es and descend] answer that when his hypotheses
that God is Intelligeotia supramUndalli.l. that there is an IIarmonia praesLaLiliLa
that all animal mutioH (t-vt-n in llIall himM-lf) purely Illl'ehallieai, that God
ha the world so perrct"L thal it Ilen-r call fall into disorder or need to
be amended. that all the Phacilomella ill nature arc purdy mechanical, that
matt('r is indued wilh a :-.df tllU\"ing Hypotheses (that is) (not
CORRUPTERS ANCIENT AND MOIJERN 77
Newton showed himself to be a master of aradcmic debaling
techniques, and he could demolish an encmy on his own
ground, with his own weapons, and with a certain cruel
satisfaction. I am not Newlon fiJr sainthood.
Clarke 'broke Leilmilz's Heart with his Reply to him',
Newton once exulted.
so
From Newton's viewpoint, the insults in Leilmiz's letters
were outrageous. "Vhen Newton wrote 'sensorium of God' in
a Query to the 1706 edition of the Optics hc was tossing ofr
a similitude, an analogy, he was thinking in terms of the
world as God's templum; and yet Leibniz pretended to take
him literally though he patently knew otherwise. He was well
aware that Newton was trying to distinguish between 0111'
limited sensoria that act as dearing-houses luI' external
images and the immediacy of God's knowledge of the world,
which is incomprehensible to liS. Newlon had an anli-
enthusiastic doctrine of the cessation of miracles, which ht:
considered no longer necessary; but he was accused of
believing that God would have to proliferate miracks. He
had proclaimed God's absolute free will and His power to
create, in accordance with that will, all manner of beings --
animals, humans, angels, the Son VdlO was His viceroy, amI
a variety of spiritual entities who in the future would move
over the whole world by their own motion-and he was
criticized for limiting and curtailing the power of God.
Did Newton mean that God intim<ltdy discerns and
clearly sees things in infinite space in His sensoriulIl, or 'as it
were' in His sensorium? Did he later add the word tal/quam,
the 'as it were', on page 315 of some copies of the 1706 Optics
with the intention of covering himself? Inquiry into such
momentous problems doubtless is a legitimate iIllt'llectual
enterprise, along with the collnting of those extant copies of
the 1706 edition that do or do not have the tilllquamY But let
Quaeres Lo be examined by experiments but prec..l.rious (suppositions or)
opinions to be believed without proof) vlhich tuI'll Philosophy illtu OJ.
Romance.'
50 Historic(/l i\1emoin" of Dr. Clarke, p. 132.
51 SecA. Koyreand l.ll. Cohcn, 'The Case of the lwlf.Juam; Leibniz,
Newlon and Clarke', Iii (1961). 555-66. III SOInt' \'opit's of the 17u(J Optia,
lhe passage on p. 315 contaills the phrJ.!)c IUl/qllam ill others. the
me cut thc Gordian knot ancr my own fashion. Ncwton as
homo religiosus could not have carcd less about such trivia.
The politic, human Newton cared a great deal about losing
or scoring debating points, about priority in the invention of
the calculus, and especially about charges that he was a base
anthropomorphite imputing to God 'une org"ane', as Leibniz
declared, when it was clear that Newton was using the word
sensorium as an analogy, whether or not he preceded it with
the phrase 'as it were' y
While Leibniz and his cohorts were plaguing Newton for
having posited a universe that was not perfect in itself and
required God's intervention from time to time, Newton
glorified those very interventions as the supreme acts of God's
providential will. God had constantly intervened in the
history of the physical world: in creating it through a sub-
ordinate spiritual agent who was probably Jesus in one of
His many manifestations, and in creating it in one way
rather than in another; in preserving and sustaining the
world and in directing comets one way rather than another.
And He would possibly do other things to the physical world,
perhaps burn it and start life over again on some other planet,
perhaps leave a remnant and renew life on the same planet.
God had also intervened continually in the history of man-
kind, restoring true religion after successive lapses among
both Jews and Christians. The whole creation and all of
history were interventions. For Newton intervention did not
imply physical or historical chaos. There were underlying
operational designs in the world that could be defined as the
history of the motions of the planets, which displayed a
marvellous orderliness, and the history of the revolutions of
empires and churches, which had a similarly simple pattern
-one so simple that it could be contained in two small books,
originals Koyre and Cohen argue, the phraseology is Jiflcrent and the lallqu.am
is missing. It seems likely that Leibniz had a copy in which the tanquam was
missing. According to Koyre and Cuhen, in four out of eighteen copies they
examined the tanquam was omitted.
!l In the draft of a lc:tler to the Abbe COllli Newlon wrote that no man
'except the Anthropomorphites evt'f f'r'ignc:d that God had a sensorium in a
litteral senee' (Koyre and Cuhen, . i\' t"wtUIi alld Ihe Leibniz-Clarke Correspon-
dence', p. 114).
CORRUPTERS ANCIENT ANO MODERN 79
Daniel and the Apolalypse, that wer .. [t'ally !'I'petitiolls uf
each other.
Newton's exasperation over the mt'taphy,i('al debate with
Leilmiz was perhaps most sharply expressed in 1725, in the
last paper he ever published in the Transactiolls of the Royal
Society-there are seven drafts of it in Jerusalem. After
publicly dressing down the Abbe Conti for divulging the
existen(,e of Newton's Abstract if Chrol/ology, he could not
refrain from again dragging in Leilmiz, now dead lor almost
a decade, and scolding him for his attempt to embroil him in
metaphysical disputes about oewlt qualities, universal
gravity, the sensorium of God, spact', time, vaCllum, atums,
the perfection of the world, supramundane intdligt'nct'. As
a parting shot, Newton magistl,rially slammed down the lid
on all thost' who would impugn his religious 1:lith and eu-
snare him in the babblings of \'ain philosophy: . J hope that
these Things, and the perpetual JI.\()tiun, will be th .. last
Efl'lIts of this Kind.'53
S3 Philosophical Tmw{lcliulH (if the,' RL!.yat xxxiii p. j abu
Yahu<Lt Jl.IS. 27, [vI. 4'.
1

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IV
PROPHECY AND HISTOR Y
IV
AFTER Newton's death, his library was acquired by John
Huggins, the notorious warden of the Fleet Prison. A cata-
logue drawn up at the time of the purchase has provided us
with an incomparable guide to the intellectual inlluences
that played on Newton's mind, lor he was nOl a man to
spend rrioney on books he did not read. This catalogue also
bears an entry abollt five volumes excluded li'om the sale-
'books that has notes of Sir Isaac Newton'. Along with an
interleaved Optics and Principia and Descartes's Geumetria and
Secrets Reveal'd: or all OPen Entrance to the Shut-Palace of the King,
there is a 'Bible with service Dirty and leaf wanting JG60'.'
Many other books from the library have heen tracked down,
but to my knowledge this Bible has not. If it should ever be
discovcred, its marginalia may yet rcveal secrets of Newton's
religion that now elude LIS. But even in the absence of so
intimate a witness to his daily devotions, it is evident fi'OI11
the phenomena-the piles of manuscripts he leli --that study-
ing this book was Newton's worship. He knew it as fCw
theologians did, awl he muld string out citations like a
concordance.
A man who was wnscientious and probed luI' the truth of
Scripture to its innermost depths would bc rcwarded with
'assurance and vigour' to his laith and a steady satisfaction
to the mind 'which he ondy can know how to l'stimate who
I London, British Add. I\'IS. 2542.4-, 'Huggins' A \'ersion has
been published in Richard de Villamil, ""ew/ou: the .. Hall (Londoll, 1931), pp.
62-1 )0. The full title of Secrds Reveal'd, a pseudonymous work, is SeC/tis RClicaL'd:
or all Opel! Entrance to the Shut-Palace of the Killg Containing, The GIt:ulesl Trea)u((
in Chymistry, Never yet so plainly Discovered. l.omposed by a mostfallww EnglishmaN,
Stylillg himself AnOl!ylllous, or F;YTaclIcus Philalel)1a Cosmvpolita: JVlto, by 1ilspiTatiufi
aTld Reading, attained to tlte Philosopher SIOllC at J,is Age uj Twenty tinct: TeaTS, Auno
Domini, 1645 (London, (669).
PROI'HECY AND IIISTORY
shall experience it"', a religious contentment that Newton
described in those very words.'
Though the study of the Old and New Testaments was
Newton's primary form of devotion, to the virtual neglect of
most other religious ceremonies, his was not the bibliolatry
of traditional Judaism or the precisianism of a Puritan.
Newton's religion betrayed differences, as well as profound
psychic similarities, with these other scriptural religions. In
the course of his lifelong pondering of the texts of the Bible
in English, Latin, Greek, and sometimes Hebrew (a language
he could use with the aid of a dictionary), in print and in rare
manuscripts, Newton came to distinguish rather sharply
between two types of books in the Biblical canon: those that
were narrative-historical and those that were direct prophecy,
the word of the living God. By his middle years Newton had
come to believe that Biblical descriptions of historical events
were written for the most part by contemporaries of those
events, men of extraordinary virtue and reliability. They
might be prophets themselves-110ses, Samuel, Gad, Ezra-
or apostles of prophets like Joshua and Christ's disciples.
And in addition to depicting what they saw with their own
eyes, they had sometimes assembled materials about the
immediate past drafted by their equally trustworthy pre-
decessors. Only one case was truly exceptional, that of1\10ses,
who had access to the most ancient records of all time, known
as the Law of God and the Book of Generations. Newton's
full account of what had happenl?cl to the narrative sections
of the Bible over the centuries allowed for many later redac-
tions and for losses and restorations, most of which he
investigated with reasonably critical instruments.
Before arrhing at his rather heterodox conclusions about
the authorship of some of the books of the Bible, Newton had
clearly been exposed to the new Biblical criticism. That he
read Richard Simon is certain, that he knew Hobbes is very
likely; and there is even a good possibility that he may have
perused Spinoza's Tractatus Tlteologico-Politicus soon after its
appearance, rare in England in the early 1670s. We know
that a copy was in Isaac Barrow's library, which Newton
, Yahuda ~ I S I. I, 101. 2'. Sec Appendix A below. p. 108.
PROPHECY AND HISTORY
helped put in order in !lin aftcr Barrow's death - the
catalogue is in the Bodkian
3
-and to which he had always had
free access.
Departure from the tradition that ewry word in the books
of :Moses was written hy ]\[oses himself did nOI, however,
lead Newton to denigrate the worth of the Old Testament
histories. On the contrary, he held them to be superior
to any ancient history the Gentile natiolls had to 011(01', f(JI'
the basic texts had been preserved relatively intact through
regular weekly readings in the synagogues of the.J cws. Though
even these canonical histories had not entirely escaped the
ravages of time, they were 1:11' more dependable tilan Greek,
Persian, Chaldean, and Phoenician cum pilat ions, and, where
sources contradicted one another, the Judaic W('flO always tu
be preferred.
Nevl'ton's approach to the historical narrativt's CJj'the 01,1
Testament was similar to that of Joseph Kimchi and Abra-
ham Ibn Ezra, medieval commentators highly respected
by the major Christian Hebraists of seventeenth-century
England, whose writings Newton had studied with great carc.
Abraham Ibn Ezra tended to adopt the comnwnsensical
reading dictated by the natural word ordn and the ordinary
rules of grammar. Newton J(.llowt'd suit and generally
accepted the plain meaning, though he permitted himsdf
I"ee historical commentary on the background of events,
learned either from geography--he had edited Vart'nius--or
from pagan histories and chronologies. Ami sometimes he
went even further. To extract the fullness of meaning from
the Biblical narratives he uSt'd the techniques of reasoning-
on-the-evidence developed in the lawcourts and in humanist
scholarship. Orcasionally he glanced at translations and with
the aid of fl'it'ndly scholars searched Jor alternatin' m('anings
of key words in Aramaic and Arabic. "Vith a learned
apparatus at his disposal, he vexed the texts to eliminate those
inconsistencies and improbabilities that, despite the Bible's
excellent state of presc'rvation, had crept in over the years.
3 llodleian Library, 1\.1S. Rawlinson D B78, Job, 59: 'A Catalogut' of the
bookes of Dr. Isaac Barrow sent to S. S. Ly 1\1r. Isaac Newloll Ft.'H(I\-\" of Tliu.
r:oll. Camb . .July 14, IU77i oLiit DI". HaJTU' .... 4. It'7i.'
86 PROPHECY AND HISTORY
Since the narratives ill Scripture were evidently an amalgam
of excerpts limll lost histories, minur corruptions could be
accounted for without calling into question the over-all
credibility of the Bible as the available ancient history
of mankind.
While Newton depended for the most part on eminent
Christian Hebraists-there are frequent citations from Selden,
Dionysius and Gerard John Vossius, Lightfoot, Pocock,
Buxturf-he always managed to give a cast of his own to any
commentary. The narrative Bible histories, for example,
became a literary support for the astronomical proofs of his
revision of world chronology, which sliced some 500 years off
the traditional antiquity of the Greeks and ensured the un-
contested priority of Israel's civilization, a priority that
brought the Jews closer to the divine source. Newton's
criticism of the narrative books of the Bible was matter-
of-fact and commonsensical probing I(lr evidence, neither
Pyrrhonic in its scepticism about what must men considered
admissible historical testimony, nor gullible to the point of
crediting every statement without examination. Though
Newton never went as far as Spinoza in blatantly asserting
that the Old Testament was a book on political and moral
conduct composed for a particular people at a given moment
in time and framed primarily for their needs-to teach them
obedience to authority-in practice he read the narrative
sections of the Old Testament as human history recorded as
it had been enacted by men capable of willing good and evil,
though under the constant guidance of a Providence and with
frequent interventions on His part.
But for Newton there were other books of Scripture-
especially the Book of Daniel and the Revelation of John-
whose character was entirely different from that of the narra-
tives. These books of prophccy were unique, set apart from
the rest of the Bible because they did not speak the language
of ordinary men, as had 1I.10se5, Samuel, and Ezra when they
wrote history as it actually happened, in Leopold von Ranke's
manner. The language of prophetic writings was symbolic
and hieroglyphical and their comprehension required a
radically different mcthod of The prophecies
I'ROPHECY AND HISTORY
were God's direct rC\'clatiolls of hidden truths, and Newton
wrestled with the meaning of these hooks from early manhood
until his death.
What was Newton's conception of a prophet? It flatly
excluded all enthusiasts, ranters, men who spoke with
tongues. England's experience with the Fifth-Monarchy mell
made academic interpreters ofpniphecy during the Restora-
tion suspicious of sudden illuminations. TIlt: wild, ignorant
mechanics possessed with the spirit were blse prophets,
devil-inspired abominations. Newton's revulsion "t the out-
pourings of fanatic enthusiasts of the Civil 'War period
equalled that of Henry l\fore and the Christian Hebraist
John Spencer of Cambridge, who wrote angry polemics
against them.
4
The true prophet was defined I(>t Newton, as lor other
respectable Anglicans, by the writings or J\laimonides, whose
anti-mystical works were highly esteemed. Portions of his
commentarics on the Mishna had becn translated into
Latin (with the Arabic texl printed in Hebrew characters)
by Edward Pocock ufOxlunl in thePo/la ,Hosis (1655), and
the substance of the rest of his vasl body of work was com-
municated to the learned v;'Orlel by John Spencer in a
magnificent, sao-page analytic compendium of I\Iaimunides'
writings in Latin, which bore a title that had bt'st be trans-
lated as Explanation of the Laws of Ihe Hebrews.
s
The Anglicani-
zed 'prophet' of J\tfaimonidt>s was immcnsely learned, of
impcccable moral virtue, a man who had devoted himself to
years of study, and who when properly prepared was the
perfect vehicle for God's word. For .Maimonides, Mure,
Spencer, and Newton, the true prophet was a supremely
rational man, a man worthy of receiving a message from the
Divine Reason through the agency of the prophetic spirit.
Nothing would have been more alien to their conception of
oJ See, t'Ot" example, Henry J\Iore, EllthUJiaslflus Triomphatus (1662) and
Antidote against Atlleisme (1656), amI John Spencer, A DiJCOUflC cOllcemillg Vulgar
prophecies wherei'l the llarlity of receivillg them lIS the certilin indications l ~ tu!y JUIU/1!
Event is di.,'covered; alld some Characters III /)i)lillctiolf hdwet:Ji true {/lid pll!teuJillg
Plopilels are laid dowlI (16G5).
s John Spt'llcer, lJe Jegihu.'J Jld)f(JeulUlfl lilllllli&m d {(lI/lJ/llulionibw (( :.uIlLridgl,
loH5)
88 PROPHECY AND HISTOR Y
the ancient proph('t than the distraught mystic running
naked through the streets of Jerusalem that Voltaire later
conjured up. The prophet was a religious teacher who had
been favoured and chosen by God because of his hard-won
rational perfections, not his unbridled flights of fantasy.
It was the language of pmphecy that was obscure and
veiled; the mind of the prophet was pellucid in its clarity,
precise and parsimonious in its expression of the Holy Spirit.
The meaning of prophecy was concealed, as were the laws of
nature, that other book in which God had written a record
of his actions; and Newton drew frequent parallels between
unravelling the mysteries of the books of prophecy and
discovering the secrets of the Book of Nature. That the com-
plete content of prophecy had been hidden until the seven-
teenth century was (or Newton 'nothing but what ought to
have been'.6 And perhaps with a touch of circularity he
reasoned that the very circumstance of his revealing in his
commentaries the fullness of prophecy was no mean sign that
the consummation of the times was not far distant.
It is understandable that men like Newton should turn to
Daniel and John as the preferred prophets-their enigmatic
symbols and images were a challenge, the bafHing episodes
and visions demanded explanation. As long as the cryptic
books remained scaled, what had men really uncovered in
Scripture? God's communication of these words to two
chosen prophets was a historical act that made no sense
whatever unless it was intended that their meaning would
ultimately be deciphered. 'If they are never to be understood,
to what end did God reveale them?',7 Newton asked in a
manuscript of the early Cambridge period.
Demonstration that prophecies and other divine promises
had in fact been fulfilled in the historical world was one of
the most ancient and enduring apologies for Jewish and
Christian religion; but it is still difficult for some of us to
appreciate the continued fascination of great European
intellects of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries
with the interpretation of Daniel and the Apocalypse. In
Yahud. illS. I. I, fol. I'. See Appendix A below, p. 107.
7 Ibid.
PROPHECY AND HISTORY 89
retrospect this absorption now appears as the swan song of an
expository tradition that produced hundreds of volumes and
had an uninterrupted existence going back to the early
centuries of Christianity. With the triumph of the philosophes,
this type of literature, though it increased in quantity,
became the refuge of cranks and an occasional poetic or
artistic genius. In the seventeenth century it was still at the
core of the religion of a scholarly divine. Time and again
Newton warned of the perils of neglecting the study of the
prophecies, quoting the words of Jesus: 'Ye Hypocrites ye
can discern the face of the sky but can ye not discern the
signes of the times ?'8 Without the guidance of prophecy, how
would men recognize Antichrist? Prophecy interpretation
was no idle speculation, no matter of indifference, but a duty
of the greatest moment. 'Wherefore it concerns thee to look
about thee narrowly least thou shouldest in so degenerate an
age be dangerously seduced and not know it. Antichrist was
to seduce the whole Christian world and therefore he may
easily seduce thee if thou beest not wdl prepared to discern
him.'9
I wonder whether anyone in our times has really mastered
the whole of the mammoth corpus of Judaic expositions of
Daniel and Christian expositions of Daniel and the Apoca-
lypse from the beginning to the end. An academic history of
this form of knowledge illustrating changing techniques,
devices, and fashions in interpretation through the ages is
another of those enterprises that I leave to posterity without
much regret. But even now one can say something about the
state of prophecy interpretation at the time Newton was
engaged upon it. Many of the scientists and apologists of
science in Newton's circle, among whom Edmond HaUey was
a notable exception, tried their hands at the exposition of
prophecy, and the number of such works composed in
England during Newton's adult life is staggering; as the Age
of Reason dawned, seventeenth-century manuscript exposi-
tions of the Apocalypse in Oxford University libraries alone
bear witness that there was still more than one way of seeking
Yahuda MS. I. I, fol. 2'. See Appendix A below, p. loB.
Yahuda 1\IS. I. I, fol. 3'. See Appendix A below, p. log.
go PROPHECY AND HISTORY
enlightenment. Though no royal society existed for the
exchange of ideas on the subject, there are detailed reports of
Newton's discussion of these books in 1680 with Henry 'More
(who showed him his own writings on the Apocalypse and
Daniel before their publication), and of conversations with
Fatio de Duillier, John Locke, and Richard Bentley in the
1690s, with 'Villiam V,'histol1 in 17"7, with Samuel Clarke,
Brook Taylor, and sundry erudite bishops, Contemporary
memoirs and letters are unanimous in portraying Newton's
dogged obstinacy in sticking to his own interpretations despite
the criticism of his friends. Henry More at first thought that
he had convinced his young colleague, and Newton's
countenance seemed to him 'transportee!' by what 1\1ore
called the mathematical evidcnce of his exposition; but then
Newton lapsed into his former conccits. Bentley offended
Newton by asking him to prove the self-evident truth that a
day in prophecy meant a calendar year, and as a consequence
there was a breach in their relations for a time. 'Whiston in
his turn was unreceptive to Newton's four-hour geographic
and chronological disquisition on the four monarchies in
Daniel because he thought himself superior in scriptural
interpretation, though admittedly inferior in mathematics.
As for Fatio, Newton gently chided him early in their
relationship for giving way too readily to mystical fancies,
whereas Newton's readings of prophecy always had impec-
cable warranties in Scripture.
In the world of the English academic expositors, something
resembling a Copernican revolution had taken place earlier,
in the decade between 1628 and 1638-the invention of a
novel interpretive system by Joseph Mede of Christ's College,
Cambridge. Almost all of the respectable expositors of the
Restoration relied upon his fundamental innovating methods.
This most remarkable of English expositors had apparently
routed his rivals Henry Hammond and the great Hugo
Grotius. Newton was invariably more generous to dead than
to living predecessors, and he paid his respects to 'Mede in
unwontedly strong terms, considering himself to be the next
qualified interpreter after him.IO As the Master of Balliol has
10 Yahuda MS. 1. I, fol. ISr. See Appendix A below, p. J21.
9'
shown, the impact of Mede's work is visible throughout the
seventeenth century on all sociallevds;" it can be detected
among uneducated Fifth-Alonarchy men, who acquired his
doctrines through intellectual seepage, as w{'l1 as in the
scholarly writings of Henry More and 'William Whiston.
I do not know whether Newton ever read ,,vorthington's
essay on the crucial significance of the interpretation of
prophecy and his analysis of the true method, which prefaced
Mede's collected works, enlarged and republished in 1664,
a few years after Newton went up to Cambridge.'" But
Newton's manuscripts constantly echo the same sentiments
with respect to the pivotal role of prophecy interpretation
for a Christian who wanted to advance bcyond milk for babes.
To interpret prophccy was a grace and favour of God com-
parable to prophecy itself: Random enthusiastic evocations,
inspired by the verses, were to be sedulously avoided. For
centuries prophecy interpretation had in effect been fluid,
free association; but ~ l e e now demand .. d congruence in the
exposition of its various parts. The scientific spirit began to
emerge in Mede, was strengthened in More's use of mathe-
matical language, and reached its apogee in Newton's
system of interpretation. John Napier, an earlier example of
the symbiosis of mathematics and prophecy, is somehow
never mentioned by Newton, despite the reprinting of his
works during the Civil War.
In addition to Mede's great erudition, his learned referen-
ces to treatises on symbols and ancient Indian and Arabic
dream-books, his reputation rested upon the introduction of
a totally new tech'lique in manipulating prophetic texts.
The historical events foretold by the images in the Apocalypse
did not parallel the order of the visions themselves chapter
by chapter. A system of synchronisms had to he invented
to determine the right chronological sequence (confused
in the original books). Mede had discovered that visions
which were 'synchronal' and 'homogeneal' were dispersed
here and there throughout the text; in identifying and
" Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Dowll (London, 1972), p. 77.
12 Joseph Mede, JVorks, corrected and enlarged according to the Author's
own manuscript [by]. Worthington] (London, .664-63),2 vol<.
regrouping them preparatory to interpretation, he had
come upon a method that his admirers glorified as equal in
importance to Aristotle's syllogistic reasoning. (From all
appearances, Mede would have been at home with modern
structuralists. )
Newton was heir to Mede's method, and he began working
along these lines as early as the I1i70s; even ill the sixties therc
is a record of his purchase of Sieidan's Four Monarchies, a
world history based on Nelmchadnezzar's dream in the Book
of Daniel. Prophecy interpretation is central in Newton's
non-mathematical writings. If one passes in review the whole
body of his theological and chronological works, it appears
that many grew out of an initial absorption with Daniel and
the Apocalypse, that they were offshoots from one main
trunk, the books that held the ultimate secret, the history of
the world condensed into a series of visions. In arranging
Newton's manuscripts after his death, John Conduitt already
perceived that the Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended,
which covers world history from the earliest beginnings, when
joined and connected with Newton's history of empires and
churches since Daniel, forms one complete, universal history
of mankind, both sacrcd and profane, since the Creation. IJ
It is not mere chance that folios on the emendation of an dent
chronology arc intermingled with drafts of prophecy inter-
pretation. A piece on the Temple of Solomon, for example,
which is now a chapter in the published Chronology, was
originally undertaken in order to cxplain the vision of the
Temple in the Apocalypse. To decipher the prophecy, the
structure had to be re-created with meticulous accuracy, its
ground-plan and equipment laid out, because every dctail
was a prefiguration. The only forthright commitment to the
idea of progression that I have been able to discover in
Newton involves the size of the Sanctuary of God, whose
linear measurements, according to Newton's careful com-
putations, doubled from the Tabernacle under the Judges to
the Temple under the Kings; and similarly the dimensions
of the new Jerusalem under the King of Kings would be
double that of royal Jerusalem. With the force of inevitability
oJ Cambridge, University Library, Add. MS. 3987, fol. 123'.
93
the quantitative expression of superiority was taking posses-
sion of the holiest of holies."
There are additional reasons for the interlocking of
Newton's chronological and prophetic researches. Radical
revisions in chronology were needed to establish absolute
benchmarks against which to verify the lulfilment of prophecy.
If traditional chronology was inaccurate, how could one ever
expect to try a prophet? If the birth of Christ and the CnlCi-
fixion in the accepted system were in error by years or even
months, how could one judge the correctness of reckonings
offuture events for which these dates were points of reference?
During his Cambridge period, Newton prepared several
drafts of what were entitled 'Rules lor interpreting tile
Apocalypse' and 'The Language of Prophecy' , wilh IllIl11ucred
items. Some pieces used formal scicntilie heading, like
'Propositiones' and 'Lemmata'. But one can bypass many or
the details of this methodological framework, which are
perhaps more appropriate subject-mattn for the thorough
training of a latter-day expositor of prophecy than for a
public lecture, to arrive at the general spirit of Newton's
work and his manner of reasoning.
Prophecy interpretation required a series of operations, no
one of which was to be performed casually or sloppily, any
more than a scientific experiment should be. The stages as
I describe them do not represent Newton's actual procedure
-his working-out of the grand dC"sign year by year may
some day be reconstructed, thollgh not by me-but elements
in the total process can be isolated, even though he \\as
engaged in some of these operations simultaneously or in a
different order.
Qne step involved the establishment of unimpeachable
texts for Daniel and the Apocalypse, the Masoretic Hebrew
and Aramaic for the former, the Greek lor the latter. In the
Jerusalem archive there is a closely written notebook of
Newton's that contains variant readings of the Apocalypse,
14 \VeJlesley, ~ I a s s . Babson Institute Library, No. 434: Ne\\ton, 'Prolegomena
ad l.exici Prophctici partem secundam, in qui bus agitur De Jorma Sanetuarii
Judaici ... Commentarium', drawing of the ground-plan of the Temple of
Solomon. See also Appendix n below, p. 135.
94
verse by verse, gathered together from every conceivable
manuscript and printed edition he could lay his hands on.IS
From Newton's correspondence with the Biblical scholal'
John Mill, it is evident that this particular compilation was
already complete and in final form in 1694;16 Newton had
of course already been drafting general commentaries on
prophecy in the 16705 and 1 680s.
In another stage, Newton worked out a dictionary of
historical, political, and ecclesiastical equivalents for the
images and symbols in prophetic literature. His presumption
was that prophecies were congruent in all their parts without
fault or exception. Once an appropriate political translation
of any given 'prophetic hieroglyph' (the phrase is Newton's)
had been determined, that same meaning had to apply when-
ever it appeared in a book of prophecy. The tests of truth
were constancy and consistency.
This type ofhieroglyph I'eading and its reverse-inventing
new hieroglyphs to represent ideas, persons, or deeds-were
very much in fashion. Such activities, which had been
carried on since the ancient Greeks, reached a zenith in the
baroque world. There were many counterparts in the
general culture of Europe to what Joseph Mede and Isaac
Newton were doing in prophecy interpretation. Books of
emblems and iconology were manuals of instruction pre-
scribing standard artistic representations for abstract virtues
and vices, philosophical ideas, characters and humours,
continents, callings, and statuses. The compendia of N atalis
Comes and Cesare Ripa and especially ofVincenzo Cartari,
with which Newton was quite familiar, were the most
popular of the type. And in fact Newton himself, when he was
!-vfaster of the ~ 1 i n t designed with his own hand a number of
emblems for coins commemorating historical events.
The euhemeristic interpretation of pagan mythology, the
tendency of historian-mythographers to discern in every
classical myth a kernel of ordinary political history related to
the obscure period before the great classical historians began
to write, was common in the seventeenth and eighteenth
os Yahuda MS. 4.
16 Newton, Correspondence, iii. 305-7, John l\lill to Nl'wlon, 21 Feb. 1694_
95
centuries. Newton used this euhemeristic method constantly
in his papers on world chronology to extract from myths
a rl'asonable, consecutive account of the early ages of man-
kind bcJ()re any rC("Qrlls were kept. In thl' interpretation of
prophecy he adopted fundamentally the same method as the
euhemerists and iconologists, treating the visions of the
Apocalypse as if tlwy were mythic speech and transldting
their symbols into political actors and .. vellts. But if as a
mythographer Newton was derivative, the elahoration of a
complete lexicon of scriptural prophecy, a dictionary ()f
prophetic symbols, so to speak, was his own achievement.
One of his manuscripts on the language of the prophets out-
lines the objects mentioned in the Apocalypse and pains-
takingly arranges them in a grand, orderly chain of heing
from the heavens through things terrestrial, t'nding with
images of men and women 'in various cirr.uIl1stances', as
Newton prosaically remarked, 'as with a r.rown or on hors-
back, or with a sword or bow, or with weights and measures
or c10athed in white or in other apparel or naked, or holding
a cup of wine or drinking it, or with a wound or sore or in
pain, or pained in child-birth, or bearing a manchild: and
of the death of man or beast, and of worshipping them and
their images' .'7 Each of these objects or persons and the
attributes with which they were endowed or the actions in
which they were engaged had concrete equivalents in the
political world: cherubim meant armies, sealing meant
the heathen custom of marking believers with a sign o/"
their god, the eagle was a Roman legion, a dragon a
Roman company, and of course the \,yhore of Babylon was
the Papacy.
For Newton, this language of prophecy, in which objects
heheld in visions stood fiJr political and religious entities, was
not a special, coded speech invented solely by Daniel and
John. Such hieroglyphic expressions had a resemblance to
the system of symbols common to many Eastern nations and
to the ancients in general. Newton was fumhling with an idea
that Giambattista Vico was soon to develop into one of the
primary themes of his philosophy of history: that the earliest
17 Yahuda f\.IS. 9. I, fi>l. 4r.
PROPHECY AND IIISTORY
peoples expressed themselves in symbols and poetic speech,
not in ordinary prose. Vi co sent Newton a copy of the first
edition of the Scien;:a Nunva of 1725 through a rabhi ill
Livorno; but if it ever arrived, it was probably too late for
Newton to have consulted it.
Lest Newton's scientific method of interpreting prophecy
sound abstruse and involuted, let me illustrate it with an
Apocalyptic creature who figures prominently in the jeru-
salem manuscripts-the frog. john saw issuing from the
mouth of the dragon and from the mouth of the beast and
from the mouth of the false prophet three foul spirits like
frogs.
IS
Newton concluded that whenever john wrote 'frogs'
in the Apocalypse, he meant papal idolaters and idolatrous
practices. According to Newton's system, the term frogs
applied both to demons and to their victims, the societies of
Christians whom they seduced into idolatry by preaching
falsehoods and working factitious miracles. But how did
Newton deduce this? What were the proofs? He marshalled
the evidence from a wide range of sources. He did not for a
moment pretend that in all the authorities he consulted, frogs
were identiral with devils and devils with idolaters. But he
showed that there was a general consensus about the simi-
larity between the characteristics of frogs and the characteris-
tics of devils and false teachers and vain babblers, everything
that idolaters represented. To substantiate his generalization
Newton quoted seriatim Artemidorus' famous book on
dreams to the effect that frogs in dreams signified impostors
and scoffers; the assertion of the sixteenth-century commen-
tator Benedictus Arias 1\10ntanus that unclean and loqua-
cious animals stood for false prophets; Hugo Grotius, his
rival interpreter, in the same vein; Origen's denigration in
his Homily on Exodus of poets, who 'with an empty and vain-
glorious cant as with the noise and song of froggs have
introduced fables into the world'; Aristotle, who said that
'they whose sides are turgid and as it were blown up are
loquacious and foolish babblers and are referred to frogs';
Joannes Tzetzes, commenting on Aristophanes' play The
Frogs, that frogs are garrulous and senseless; and finally Ovid's
II Revelation l6; 13- The Vulgate reads 'in modum ranarum'.
97
fable that the Lycians were turned into frogs for railing at
Latona.
I9
One is tempted to cry: Q.ueUe galere! But who has
not seen hypotheses sustained with far scantier evidence?
Since so many impeccable authorities ancient and modern
were agreed in imputing to frogs the vilest qualities of dirty
impostors and empty babblers, whom "Ise could John have
meant by ti'ogs but idolaters, and who are the bearers of
modern idolatry if not the Papists? To point out similitude
in some striking respects is to establish identification---a
manner of thinking from which we are not as emancipated as
we pretend.
Once the political equivalents for all the physical word-
images in the prophecy had been discovered and fixed,
Newton proceeded to read the synchronized visions of pro-
phecy as straightforward narratives of dated events in the
history of empires and religious institutions since the age of
Daniel, which he sct in the second century before Christ. To
work out the chronology of political and religious crises, the
turning-points in world history such as the LarLarian inva-
sions, the establishment of papal hegemony, the birth of
monkery, he had recourse to standard Greek and Roman
histories, and books such as Carlo Sigonio's Hisloriarum de
occidenlali imperio libri .\x, Caesar Baronius' Annales Ecclesiaslici,
and the works of Arias Montanus, supplemented by the
Church Fathers and histories of heresies and persecutions. As
he reached modern times, Newton availed himself of the most
varied sources without prt:judice; in a reference to Florentine
history, he could even say with shocking approval: 'Well
wrote lVIachiavell.'20 With the assistance of these classic works
Newton could prove, point by point, that everything fore-
told in the prophetic books had actually taken place, that
the correspondence between prophecy and recorded history
had been perfect.
Newton applied what might be called scientific criteria to
the interpretation of the books of prophecy, particularly the
law of parsimony. He showed not only that every notaLle
political and religious occurrence conformed exactly to some
vision in prophecy, but that his set of equivalents had totally
" Yahuda MS. 9. I, fol. 25'. '0 Yahuda MS. 7. I, luI. 31'.
9
exhausted the possible meanings of each of the objects and
images appearing in any prophetic verse. There was nothing
left over, no random words stillunexpiainecl, no images that
were superfluous. The system was (,nclosed, complete, and
flawless. Newton saw his 'methodising of prophecy' as an
ideal scientific structure, ('xhiiJiting the greatest possible
simplicity and harmony. His rul('s for interpreting the
language ofprophery were a replica of those he insisted upon
for interpreting the Book of Nature. With obvious sell:
satisfaction he surveyed his results as a perfect embodiment
of the same guiding principle in both natural philosophy and
prophecy: 'To choose those constructions which without
straining reduce things to the greatest simplicity.'''
Newton was as certain of his method and results in the
interpretation of the Apocalypse as he was in the Principia,
and he uttered thinly veiled threats against those who might
be rash enough to contradict him. In all likelihood their
motive was not to understand prophecy hut to 'shuillc it of',
to befuddle the minds of men and not to instruct them."
Newton hurled a challmge:
Hence if any man shall contend that my Constfllction of (he
Apocalyps is uncertain, upon pretence that it may be possible to
find out other ways, he is not to be regarded unless he shall show
wherein what I have done may be mended. If the ways which he
contends for be less natural or grounded upon weaker reasons,
that very thing is demonstratiori enough that they are fals, and
that he seeks not truth but the interest ofa party. And if the way
which I have followed be according to the nature and genius of
the Prophesy there needs no other demonstration to convince it.
For as of an Engin madc by an excellent Artificer a man readily
beleives that the parts arc right set together when he sees them
joyn truly with one allot her notwithstanding that they may be
strained into another posture; and as a man acquiesces in the
meaning of an Author how intricate so ever whcn he sees the
words construed or set in order according to the laws of Grammar,
notwithstanding that there may be a possibility of forceing the
words to some other harsher construction: so a man ought with
equal reason to acquiesce in that construction of these Prophesies
%1 Yahuda I\ts. I. I, rol. q.r. S('e Appendix A bc1ow, p. 120.
" Ibid.
PROPHECY ANO HISTORY
99
when he sees their parts set in order according to their suitahleness
and the characters imprinted in them for that purpose.
Tis true that an Artificer may make an Engin capable of being
with equal congruity set together more ways then one, alld that
a sentence may be ambiguous: but this Oujectioll can have lIO
place in the Apocalyps, hecaus God wllO knew how to frame it
without ambiguity intended it lor a rule of lilith. 21
Newton's posthumously published OlJJervillivlIJ upon t h ~
Prophecies of Dallie!, and the Apocalypse of St. John stops short of
predicting the future. In his later years Newton cautiously
avoided the trap into which activist millenarians had
stumbled in their attempt to fix precise dates. There is even
a passage in which he attacked those given to prognostication,
for while the books of prophecy were the history of things Lo
come, they could be understood by mere mortals only after
the events prophesied had actually occurred. But in private
in his Cambridge days, a younger Newton had made many
conjectures about the approximate time of the Second
Coming of Christ, proposing terminal dates that depended
on calculating when the reign of the papal Antichri,t had
been initiated. One could then hegin to count off the crucial
1,260 years of Daniel's 'time times and half a time'. In his
notes Newton was quite specific. The reign of Antichrist had
started 'about the time of the invasion of the Barbarous
nations and their erecting several! Kingdoms in the Roman
Empire, and had wee nothing more then this it were suffi-
cient to ground an expectation that the prevalency yet to
come of Popery cannot continue long; it being certain that
1200 of the 1260 years are run out already'.H
There are other manuscripts writtt>n during his Cambridge
years in which Newton did not hesitate to indulge in broad
speculations about what the millennium and the kingdom of
heaven would be like when they were finally inaugurated.
His eschatology is set forth with a magnificent prolilsion of
pictorial detail in one long section of a Jerusalem manuscript
entitled 'The end of the world day of judgment and world to
come', which I have tentatively dated to the IG805. It is
23 Yahuda MS. I. ., fols. q.r, I ~ { Set! Appendix A below, p. 121.
" Yahuua MS. "3, j(,l. 6'.
clearly finished copy, of which there are parallel, perhaps
earlier, drafts in the usual truncated state. This extensive
text-and I do not pretend to cover its many controversial
assertions that polemize with Henry More by implication,
though his name is not mentioned-proves beyond question
that Newton's world-view in the decade when the Principia
was composed admitted of a far greater diversity of beings
than those recognized by positivist physical scientists and
nineteenth-century Unitarians. Newton envisaged the co-
existence during thc millennium of beings of different
natures, some mortal, others spiritual and invisible, the
children of thc resurrection-a condition no stranger, he
said, than what obtained in the present everyday world. On
the mode of their converse he was quitc specific.
But you will say how then comes it to pass that in the thousand
years there are Mortals on earth? ... Doth the earth last after
the day of judgment, and do mortals live on it, and do the Sons
of the resurrection live among them like other men and reign
over them in the beloved city? I answer that its true the beloved
city is a city of mortals, a'nd I say further that the glorious
description of the new J('rusalem under the types of pretia us stones
and pearles is a commentary upon this City .... But to conceive
that the children of the resurrection shall live among other men
and converse with them daily as Mortals do with one another,
and reign over them after the way of temporal kingdoms is very
absurd and foolish. Do :Men convers with Beasts and Fishes, or
Angels with men ?25
It would surely not be beyond the power of God in the
millennium to create beings who made only occasional
epiphanies to men. The bodies of the 'children of the resur-
rection' would be like Christ's, visible only at times. 'Such
as is his body, such shall ours be', wrote Newton, with morc
than a touch of self-assurance that he would be among those
'children of the resurrection'.26 The spirits of just men would
be made perfect, and for them the ncw Jerusalem signified
" Yahuda MS. 9.2, fol. 138'; Yahuda MS. 6, fols. 12'-19', 'Of the Day of
Judgment and \YorJd to come', which appears as Appendix II below, pp. I ~
36, presents an alternath'c version, in rnor(" compact form, of some of the ideas
expr<>sed in Yahuda MS. 9. 2. fols. 123'-170'.
,6 Yahuda MS. 9. 2, fol. 138'.
PROPHECY AN!) HISTOf{\' 101
not only a 'local city on earth' but 'the whole assembly of
Christ and his Angels with the Saints raised from the dead
and reigning with him in heaven'.n
And where would the heavenly city be situated? Newton
alternates sceptical ignorance with untrammclled flights of
imagination.
If you ask where this heavenly city is, I answer, I do not kllow.
It becomes not a blind mall to talk of colours fa metaphor,
repeated in the General Scholium, to suggest the limitations of
human knowledge]. Further then I am informed by Ihe pro-
phesies I know nothing. But this I say that as fishes in water
ascend and descend, move whether they will and rest where they
will, so may Angels and Christ and the Children of the resurrec-
tion do in the air and heavens. 'Tis not the place but the stale
which makes heaven and happiness. For God is alike in all
places, He is substantially omnipresent, and as much present ill
the lowest Hell as in the highest heaven, bUl the enjoyment of his
hlessings rnay be various according to the variety of places, and
according to this variety he is said to be more in one place less
in another, and where he is most enjoyed and most obeyed, there
is heaven and his Tabernacle and Kingdom in the language of
the Prophets. \Ve usually conceive it 10 be above.
Z8
In this manuscript Newton gave expression to a theology of
glory in effusive language. There was genuine, almost
rhapsodic, wonderment at the complex and infinite powers
of the Creator.
As all regions below arc replenished wilh living creatures, (not
only the Earth with Beasts, and Sea with Fishes anel the air with
Fowls ancl Insects, but also standing waters, vineger, the hodies
and blood of Animals and other juices with innllnlerablc living
neatures too small to be seen without the help of magniJ)'ilLg
Glasses) so may the heavens above he replenisht'd with beings
whose nature we do not understand. He tltat shall wdl consider
the strange and wonderful nature ofiili: and the frame of Animals,
will think nothing beyond the possibility of nature, nothing too
hard for the olllnipotent power of God. And as the Planets
remain in their orhs, so may any other bodies subsist at any
distance from the earth, and much more may beings, WllO have a
sufficient power of self motion, move whether they will, place
Z7 Ibid., fol. 139'. " Ibid.
themselves where they will, and continue in any regions of the
heavens whatever, there to enjoy the society of one another, and
by their messengers or Angels to rule the earth and convers with
the remotest regions. Thus may the whole heavens or any part
thereof whatever be the habitation of the Blessed, and at the
same time the earth be subject to their dominion. And to have
thus the liberty and dominion of the whole heavens and the
choice of the happiest places for abode seems a greater happiness
then to be confined to anyone place whatever.'.
This from a man who virtually never in his life ventured
beyond the Woolsthorpe, Cambridge, London triangle!
In such passages Newton successfully communicates his
sense of the presence of invisible things and his awed amaze-
ment at the plenitude of the creation. His universe is a
plenum of spiritual beings, and this may help to account for
his opposition to the idea of a material plenum. The man of
the melancholy countenance, as Henry J\fore described him,
seemed to fancy himself soaring through the heavens. The
prospect of moving through vast spaces did not terrify h i m ~
they would be filled with a happy throng of saintly com-
panions, as in many a Church Father's description of
paradise. And as a child of the resurrection he would not be
wholly cut off from mortal men, but through the angels
would rule over them and remain in relationship even with
the furthermost extremities of the universe.
Having said all this, Newton issued a kind of disclaimer:
'But the truth and manner of these things we shall not under-
stand before the resurrection. I only speak of the possibility.' 30
Newton feigned no hypotheses and he never wove fancies-
that was the official stance. And he had a way of holding
himself aloof from his own visions and even partially
retracting them. The dream of beatitude was only a possi-
bility, he cautioned. Alas, in the manuscripts of his late
London period I find no poetic transports. When the ageing
Newton was an administrator of British science and Master
of the Royal Mint, he copied and edited and abstracted and
emended his apocalyptic interpretations of earlier years, until
they turned into an arid chronicle of political and ecclesiasti-
" Yahuda MS. g. 2, fol. '40'. J. Ibid.
cal events. The fonts of creativity had dried up in science and
in religion.
Newton's statement offundamental religious principles, his
interpretation of prophecy, his textual criticism of the
historical works of Scripture, his system of world chronology,
his cosmological theories, and his euhemeristic reduction of
pagan mythology all bespeak the same mentality and style
of thought. If nature was consonant with itself; so was Isaac
Newton's mind. At the height of his powers there was ill him
a compelling drive to find order and design in what appeared
to be chaos, to distil from a vast, inchoate mass of materials
a few basic principles that would embrace the whole and
define the relationships of its component parts. Newton could
not rest content with merely contemplating the sheer variety
and multiplicity of historical events, any more than he could
a world of disparate observations about nature. In whatever
direction he turned, he was scare hing lor a unifying structure.
He tried to force everything in the heavens and on earth into
a grandiose but tight frame from which the most minuscule
detail could not escape.
All of Newton's studies were animated by one over-
whelming desire, to know God's will through His works in
the world. For myself, I have come to believe that the
fervour of Newton's quest for a knowledge of God was related,
as I proposed at the beginning of these lectures, to a psychic
quest for his own father. Such assertions are not demonstrable
in accordance with the accepted canons of historical evidence.
But perhaps the canons themselves now stand in need of
some revision. In attempting to recapture a past religions
experience, either we have to be npr.n to psychological
analogies and covert meanings, or else we must rl'strict our-
selves to mere descriptions of religious conduct alJd the
analysis of rationalist theological argumcnts in written exposi-
tions-in which event an inquiry into the religion of Isaac
Newton would be an impoverished exercise indeed.
In concluding these lectures I would like to revcrt once
more to Newton's religious credo. In a fragment bmied away
in his church history, he proclaimed his submission to the
Father. It is not highly original in its thonght or in its
.04 PROPHECY AND HISTORY
expression of religious emotion; but as a confession of personal
faith it has a simple authenticity.
We must beleive that there is one God or supreme Monarch that
we may fear and obey him and keep his Jaws and give him honour
and glory. We must beleive that he is the father of whom are all
things, and that he loves his people as his children that they may
mutually love him and obey him as their father. We must
beleivc that he is 1TaVTOKpaTWp Lord of all things with an irresistible
and boundless power and dominion that we may not hope to
escape if we rebell and set up other Gods or transgress the laws
of his monarchy, and that we may expect great rewards if we do
his will. We must beleive that he is the God of the Jews who
created the heaven and earth all things therein as is exprest in
the ten commandments that we may thank him for our being
and for all the blessings of this life, and forbear to take his name
in vain or worship images or other Gods. ''Ie are not forbidden
to give the name of Gods to Angels and Kings, but we are for-
bidden to have them as Gods in our worship. For tho there be
that are called God whether in heaven or in earth (as there are
Gods many and Lords many) yet to us there is but one God the
father of whom are all things and we in him and one Lord Jesus
Christ by whom are all things and we by him: that is, but one
God and one Lord in our worship.3'
,. Yahuda MS. 15.3, fol. 4&".
APPENDIXES
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APPENDIX A
Fragments from a Treatise on Revelation
These three consecutive are part of a 550-page lllanuscript
described in the Sotheby Catalogue under lot 227. Its present signature is
Yahuda MS. I, and it consists of eight bundles. This trealise is related to
Keynes MS. 5 and Yahuda MS. g. The introduction, which bears no
title, is followed by 'Rules for interpreting the words and language in
construing
Scripture' and 'Rules for methodising the Apocalyps'. The fragments
cover folios 1-19 of the first hundle; folio numbers out of sequence
indicate insertions by Newton on the verso or in the rnargins. The lext
on folio roT breaks off abruptly, and folio I I is wanting.
(IT) Having searched ([and by the grace of God obtdned) after
knowledg in the prophctiquc scriptures, I have thought Illy self
bound to communicate it for the benefit of others, remembring
the judgment of him who hid his talent in a napkin. For I am
perswaded that this will prove of great benefit to those who think
it not enough for a sincere Christian to sit down contented with
the principles of the doctrin of Christ such as the Apostd aCCOlIIlIs
the doctrin of Baptisms and oflaying on of hands and of the resur-
rection of the dead and of eternall judgmcnt, but leaving these
and the like principles desire to go on unto perfection until they
become offul! age and by reason of use have their seIlSes exercised
to discern both good and evil. Hebr 5. 12
I would not have any discouraged by the dilliculty and ill
success that men have hitherto met with in these attempts. This
is nothing but what ought to have been. For it was revealed to
Daniel that the prophecies concerning the last tillles should be
closed up and sealed until! the time of the end: but then the wise
should understand, and knowledg should be increased. Dan 12.
4, 9, 10. And therefore the longer they have continued in obs-
curity, the more hopes there is that the time is at hand in which
they arc to be made manifest. If they are never to be understood,
to what end did God reveale them? Certainly he did it I'lr the
edification of the church; and if so, then it is as certain that the
church shall at length attain to the understanding thereof: I
108 APPENDIX A
mean not all that call themselves Christians, but a remnant, a few
scattered persons which God hath chosen, such as without being
(blinded) led by interest, education, or humane authorities, can
set themselves sincerely and earnestly to search after truth. For as
Daniel hath said that the wise shall understand, so he hath said
also that none of the wicked shall understand.
Let me therefore beg of thee not to trust to the opinion of any
man concerning these things, tor so it is great odds but thou
shalt be deceived. l'vIllch less oughtest thou to (keep to) rely upon
(2<) the judgment of the multitude, tor so thou shalt certainly be
deceived. But search the scriptures thy self and that by frequent
reading and constant meditation upon what thou readest, and
earnest prayer to God to enlighten thine understanding if thou
desirest to find the truth. Which if thou shalt at length attain thou
wilt value above all other treasures in the world by reason of the
assurance and vigour it will add to thy faith, and steddy satisfac-
tion to thy mind which he onely can know how to estimate who
shall experience it.
That the benefit which may acerew by (the) understanding the
sacred Prophesies and the danger by neglecting them is very
great and that the obligation to study them is as great may appear
by considering the like Case of the Jews at the coming of Christ.
For the rules whereby they were to know their 1vlessiah were the
prophesies of the old Testament. And these our Saviour recom-
mended to their consideration in the very beginning of his
preaching Luke 4.21: And afterward commanded the study of
them for that end saying, Search the scriptures for in them ye
think ye have eternall life, and these are they which testify of
mee: And at another time severely reproved their ignorance
herein, saying to them when they required a sign, Ye Hypocrites
{can) ye can discern the face of the sky but can ye not discern the
signes of the times And after his resurrection he reproved also
this ignorance in his disciples, saying unto them, 0 fools and
slow of heart to beleive all that the Prophets have spoken!
Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into
his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets he
expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning
himself. Thus also the Apostles and those who in the first ages
propagated the gospel urged chiefly these Prophesies and exhorted
their hearers to search and see whether all things concerning our
Saviour ought not to have been as they fell out. And in a word
it was the ignorance of the Jews in these Prophesies which caused
APPENDIX A
109
them to reject their :Messiah and by consequence to be not onely
captivated by the Roman, but to incur etemall damnation. Luke
19 4
2
, 44
I[ then the Prophesies which concerned the Apmtolique age
were given for the conversion of the men of that age to the truth
and for the establishment of their faith, and if it was their duty
to search diligently into those Prophecies: why should we not
think that the Prophesies which concern the latter times into which
we (3') are fallen were in like manner intended for our use that
in the midst of Apostacies we might be able to discern the truth
and be established in the faith thereof: and consequently that it
is also our duty to search with all diligence into these Prophesies.
And if God was so angry with the Jews for not searchiug IlIore
diligently into the Prophesies which he had given them to know
Christ by: why should we think he will excuse us for not searching
into the Prophesies which he hath given us to know Antichrist
by? For certainly it must be as dangerous alld as easy an error for
Christians to adhere to Antichrist as it was f(Jr the .I ews to reject
Christ. And therefore it is as much our duty to indeavour to
(know him as) be able to know him lhat we Illay avoyd him, as
it was theirs to kllow Christ that they might fi)llow him.
Thou seest therelore that this is no idle speculation, no matter
of indiHerency but a duty of the greatest moment. \Vlu.'re!'lle it
concerns thee to look about thee narrowly least thou ,houldest in
so degenerate an age be dangerously seduced and not know it.
Antichrist was to seduce the whole Christian world and therefore
he may easily seduce thee if thou beest not well prepared to
discern him. But if he should not be yet come into the world yet
amidst so many religions of which there call be but one true and
perhaps none of those that thou art acquainted with it is great
odds but thou mayst be deceived and therefure it concerns thee
to be very circumspect.
(2v) Consider how our Saviour taught theJcws in Parables that
in hearing they might hear and not understand and in seeing they
might see and not perceive. And as these Parables wcre spoken to
try the Jews so the mystical! scriptures were written to try us.
Therefore beware that thou be not found wanting in this tryall.
For if thou beest, the obscurity of these scriptures will as little
excuse thee as the obscurity of our Saviours Parables excused the
Jews.
Consider also the instructions of our Saviour concerning these
latter times by the Parable of the Fig-tree. Now leam a parable
110 APPENDIX A
of the Figtree, sailh he: When his branch is yet tender and putteth
forth leaves, ye know that Summer is nigh. So likewise (when) ye
when ye see these things know that it is nea,' even at the doors.-
Watch therefore for ye know not what hower your Lord doth
come. \Vhercfore it is (4') thy duty to learn the signes of the times
that thou mayst know how to watch, and be able to discern what
times are coming on the earth by the things that arc already past.
If thou doest watch thou mayst know when it is at the door as a
man knows (thai) hy the leaves of a figlree that Somer is nigh.
But if through ignorance of the signes thou shalt say in thine
heart My Lord delayeth his coming; And shalt begin to smite thy
fellow servants and to eat and drink with the drunken: Thy Lord
will come in a day when thou lookest not for him and in an hower
that thou art not aware of, and cut thee asunder and appoint thy
portion with the Hypocrites, and there shall be weeping and
gnashing of teeth. :Matt 24. If thou doest not watch, how canst
thou escape more then other men, For as a snare shall it come
(up) on all them that dwell upon the face of the whole earth.
Luke 21.
(3
v
) Consider that the same Proplwts who foretold our saviours
first coming foretold also his second coming; and if it was the
main and indispensable duty of the Church before the first
corning of Christ to have searched into and understood those
prophesies aforehand, why should it not be as much the duty of the
church before his second coming to understand the same pro-
phesies aforehand so far as they are yet to be fulfilled? Or how
knowest thou that the christian church if they continue to neglect,
shall not be punished even in this world as severely as ever were
the Jews? Yea will not the Jews rise up in judgment against us?
For they had some regard to these prophesies insomuch as to be
in generall expectation of our Saviour about that time when he
came, onely they were not aware of the manner of his two
comings; (and were mistake) they understood the description of
his second coming, and onely were mistaken in applying that to
the time of his first coming, Considcr thcrefore, if the description
of his second coming was so much marc plain and perspicuous
then that of the first, that the Jews who could not so much as
perceive any thing of the first could yet understand the second,
how shall we escape who understand nothing of the second but
have turned the whole description of it into Allegories. And if
the Jews were so severely punished for not understanding the
(first) more difficult Prophesy, what can we plead who know
APPENDIX A III
nothing of the more perspicuous; and yet have Ihis advanlage
above Ihem that the Jirst which is a key to the second and was
hidden from them is made manifest to us, and that we have the
second also much further explained in the new Te,tament.
(4') (Consider how also) Again consider how the Apostc1s
instructed the Churches of the Jirst age in the knowledg of
these latter times 2 Thes 2. 5. And if it was the d,lty of those
Christians to understand them which were not to live in them,
shall we think that the knowledg thereof is of uo concernment
to us.
(Again) Consider also the designe of the Apocalypse. Was it
not givcn for the usc of the Church to guide ami direct her in the
right way, And is not this the end of all prophetick Snipture! It'
there was no need of it, or if jt cannot be understood, thell why
did Cod give it? (But jf was ne) Docs he trille? BlIt if it was
necessary for the Church then why doest thou neglect it, or how
knowest thou that thou art ill the right way, and yet doest not
understand it? (3
v
) ('l'bis was the principal GIUS of tbe rdorma-
tions which have hitherto been made li'oJll the Roman errors
first by \Valdenses and Albigenses and thell by Ihe
and therefore \ve have reason to LJeleive that God i()H"Seeillg ho\v
much the Church would want a guide in tltese Jatter agn
designed this Prophesy lor Ihis end and by COnsC'IUeIlCt: 1I't: llIay
expect (hat hc hath sOllie further counsel to be brought auout by
the fuller manifestation of it.)
(4') Lastly consider the Blessing which is promised to them
that read and study and keep the things which are written in
(5') this Prophesy. Blessed is he that readeth and Ihey that hear
(he words of this Prophesy and keep the things (I hal! which are
written therein, for (he time is at hand, Rev. t. 3. Alld again to
reinforce the invilalion (0 lake Ihese (hings into consideration,
(he same Blessing is repeated in Ch 22. 7 And does God ever
annex Itis ulessings (0 trifles or things of inditlerency! Where/()fc
be not overwise in thine own conceipt, bUl as Iholl desirest IU
inherit this blessing consider and search into Ihese Scriptures
which Cod hath given to ue a guide in Ihese latter times, and be
not discouraged by (lte gainsaying which these lhings will meet
with in tlte world ..
[They will call thee it may be a (hot-headed I"llow) a Bigol,
a Fanatique, a IIeretique etc: And tell thee of the uncertainty of
these interpretations, and vanity of attending to them: Not con-
sidering that the prophesies concerning our Saviour's first
112 APPENDIX A
coming were of more difficult interpretation, and yet God
rejected the Jews for not attending better to them. And whither
they will beleive it or not, there are greater judgments hang over
the Christians for their remissness then ever the Jews yet felt. But
the world loves to be deceived, they will not understand, they
never consider equally, but are wholly led by prejudice, interest,
the prais of men, and authority of the Church they live in: as is
plain becaus all parties keep close to the Religion they have been
brought up in, and yet in all parties ther" are wise and learned
as well as fools amI ignorant. There arc but few that seek to
understand the religion they profess, and those that study lor
understanding therein, do it rather for worldly ends, or that they
may defend it, then (for world I) to examin whither it be true
with a resolution to choose and profess that religion which in their
judgment appears the truest. And as is their faith so is their (fi')
practise. For where arc the men that do never yeild to anger nor
seek revenge, nor disobey governours, nor censure and speak evil
of them, nor cheat, nor lye, nor swear, nor use God's name idly
in their common talk, nor are proud nor ambitious nor covetous,
nor unchast, nor drink immoderately? "Vhere are they that live
like the primitive Christians, that love God with all their hearts
and with all their souls and with all their might, and their
neighbour as their selves; and that in what they do well are not
rather led by fashions and principles of Gentility then religion,
and where those disagree do not account it rudeness to depart
from the former? I feare there are but very few whose righteousness
exceeds the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees.
This is the guise of the world, and therefore trust it not, nor
value their censures and contempt. But rather consider that it is
the wisdom of Cod that his Church should appear despicable to
the world to try the faithful!. For this end he made it a curs under
Law to hang upon a tree that the scandal of the Cross might be
a tryall to the Jews; and for the like Tryall of the Christians he
hath suffered the Apostacy of the latter times, as is declared in
calling it the hower of temptation whic.h should come upon all the
world to try them that dwell upon the earth Rev 3. 10. Be not
therefore scandalised at the reproaches of the world but rather
looke upon them as a mark of the true church.
And when thou art convinced be not ashamed to profess the
truth. For otherwise thou mayst become a stumbling block to
others, and inherit the lot of those Rulers of the Jews who
beleived in Christ but yet were afraid to confess him least they
APPENDIX A
should be put out of the Synagogue.' 'Wherefore when thou art
convinced be not ashamed of the truth but proless it openly and
indeavour to convince thy Brother also that thou mayst inherit
at the resurrection the promis made in Daniel 12. 3, that they
who turn many to righteousness shall shine as the starrs ff)r ever
and ever. And rejoyce if thou art counted worthy to suffer in thy
reputation or any other way lor the sake (7') uf the Gospel, /"r
then great is thy reward.
But yet I would not have thee too forward ill becOlllillg a
teacher, like those men who catch at a Jew similitudes and
scripture phrases, and for want of further knowledg make use of
them to censure and reproach superiours and rail at all things
that displeas them. Be not heady like them, hut first he throughly
instructed thy seJfand that not only in the prophetique Scripmres
but more especially in the plain doctrines delivered therein so
as to put them in practice and make them familiar and habitual!
to thy self. And when thou hast thus pulled out the bealll out of
thine own eye then shalt thou see clearly to pull OUl the mote Ollt
of thy Brothers eye. Otherwise how wilt thou say to lhy Brother,
Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye and bt"hold a bealll is in
thine own eye.
Some I know will be offended that I propound these things so
earnestly to all men as if they were fit onely I',r the contemplation
of the learned. But they should consider thal God wito e ~ l knows
the capacities of men does hide his mysteries li'om the wise and
prudent of this world and reveal them unto bahes. They were not
the Scribes and Pharisees but the inferiour people who beleived on
Christ and apprehended the true meaning of his Parables and of
the Prophesies in the old Testament concerning him. The wise
men of the world are often too much prepossesl with their owu
imaginations and too much intangled in designes I"l' this liJe.
One has bought a piece of ground, another has buught five yoke
of Oxen, a third has Married a wife, and therefore sillce they are
for the most part otherwise ingaged it was tit that the (halt and)
poor and the maimed and the halt and the blind and those that
are in the high ways and hedges should be also iuvited. (And)
God who intended this Prophecy chielly lor their sakes is able to
fit their understanding to it. And it is the gift of Cod and not of
human wisdom so to understand it as to beleive it.
Tis true that without a guide it would be very difficult not
onely for them but even for the most learned to understand it
I 'see Ezek. 3.18' added in margin of MS.
"4 APPENDIX A
right But if the interpretation be done to their hands, I know not
why by the help of such a guide they may not by attentive and
often reading (8') be capable of (judgi) understanding and
judging of it as well as men of greater education. And such a
guide I hope this Book will prove: especially if the judgment of
the Reader be prepared by considering well the following Rules
for inabling him to know when an interpretation is genuine and
of two interpreta tions which is the Best.
It was the judiciously learned and conscientious Mr Mede who
first made way into these interpretations, and him I have for the
most part followed. For what I found true in him it was not
lawful for me to recede from, and I rather wonder that he erred
so little then that he erred in some things. His mistakes wcre
chiefly in his Clavis, and had that been perfect, the rest would
have fallen in naturally. ''''hence may be guessed the great
uncertainty of others who without any such previous methodising
of the Apocalyps have immediately fallen upon giving interpreta-
tions. For so by taking the liberty to twist the parts orthe Prophesy
out of their natural order according to their pleasure without
(observing whe) having regard to the internall characters
whereby they were first to be connected, it might be no very
difficult matter amongst the great variety of things in the worId
to apply them more ways then one to such as should have some
show of an interpretation. And yet all that I have seen besides the
labours of Mr l\,fede have been so botched and framed without
any due proportion, that I (could heartily wish those Authors)
fear some of those Authors did not so much as beleive their own
interpretations, which makes me wish that they had been moved
to more caution by considering the curs that is annexed to the
end of this Prophesy.
I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the Prophesy
of this book; If any man shall add unto these things God shall add
unto him the plagues that are written in this book. And if any
man shall take away from (9') the words of the book of this
Prophesy, God shall take away his part out of the book of lifC,
and out of the holy city and from the things which arc written in
this book.
For to frame fals interpretations is to prejudice men and divert
them from the right understanding of this book. And this is a
corruption equipollent to the adding or taking from it, since it
equally deprives men of the use and benefit thereof. But yet I
hope they did it neither out of the vanity of appearing somebody
APPENDIX A
in the world, nor out of designe to promote the external! splendor
and felicity of Churches rather then the internall purity which is
of infinitely more value, nor out of any other telllporal ends, but
with an upright heart that God may not lay it to their charge.
Yet I could wish that those who make all to be long since pa,t,
even in the Apostels age, had considered that when according to
them this Prophesy should have been use/ull to the Church, their
interpretations were not so much as thought upon. All sacred
Prophecies are given for the use of the Church, and therefore
they are all to be understood by the Church ill those ages f,)r
whose use God intended them. But these prophesies were never
understood by the Church in the former ages. They did not so
much as pretend to understand them, nor thought that they
concerned their times, but with Olle universall comelll delivered
down to posterity the famous Tradition of the Antichri,t des-
cribed therein to come in the latter ages. And therefore since they
were never yet understood, and God cannot be disappointed, we
must acknowledg that they were written and shall prove j()r the
benefit of the present and future ages, and so arc not yet fllifilled.
Wherefore let men be carefull how they indcavour lo divert or
hinder the use of these scriptures, least they be fOlllld to fight
against God.
Considering therefore the great concernment of these scriptures
and danger of erring in their interpretation, (10') it concerns us
to proceed with all circumspection. And for that end I shall
(propound to myself) make use of this Method.
First I shall lay down certain (Rules) general Rules of Inter-
pretation, the consideration of which may prepare the judgment
of the Reader and inable him to know whell an inlerpretatioll is
genuine and of two interpretations which is the best.
Secondly, To prepare the Reader also for understanding the
Prophetique language I shall lay down a short description there-
of, showing how it is borrowed from comparing a kingdom either
to the Univers or to a Ileast: So that by the resemblance of their
parts the signification of the figurative words and expressions in
these Prophecies may be apprehended at one view and limited
from the grownd thereof. By which means the Language of the
Prophets will (appear) become certain and the liberty of wresting
it to private imaginations be CUl of. The heads to which I reduce
these words I call Definitions.
Thirdly, These things being premised, I compare the pts of the
Apocalyps one with another and digest them into order by those
116 APPENDIX A
internal characters which the Holy-ghost hath for this end
imprest upon them. And this I do by drawing (them) up the
substance of the Prophesy into Propositions, and subjoyning the
reasons for the truth of every Proposition.
And here I cannot but loudly proclaim the admirable and
more then humane wisdom that shines in the contexture of this
Prophesy and its accurate WllSent with all other prophesies of the
old and new Tcstament.
Fourthly,
(12') Rules for interpreting the words and language
in Scripture.
I. To observe diligently the consent of Scriptures and analogy
of the prophetique stile, and to reject those interpretations where
this is not dudy observed. Thus if any man interpret a Beast to
signify some great vice, this is to he rejected as his private
imagination becaus according to the stile and tenour of the
Apocalyps and of all other Prophetique scriptures a Beast
signifies a (kingdom) body politique and sometimes a single person
which heads that hody, and there is no ground in scripture for any
other interpretation. (excepting that it is sometimes spoken of a
single person)
2. To assigne but on!' meaning to one place of scripture, un
unles it be by way orconjecture. (For a man cannot be obliged to
beleive more meanings of a place then one. If the place be
intended litterally he is not obliged to beleive any mystical! sense,
but if mystically, he is not obliged to beleive the litterall sense.
And if two meanings seem equally probable he is obliged to
beleive no more then in general that olle of them is genuine untill
he meet with some motive to prefer one side.
Yet this rule is not so to he understood but that the same thing
may have divers meanings but then each meaning is to be col-
lected from a different place passage or circumstance of
Scripture. As when of any thing done under the Law we collect
the literalltruth from out orthe old Testament and a mystical
meaning from out of the new: Or understand the heads of the
Beast both of mountains and. Kings out of Rev 17. 9, 10. Or
consider the number of the Beast as it is the number of his name
Rev 13.17, as it is apposite to the number of the churches Rev
7.4 and 21.17 and as it is the type of some iniquity Rev 19.2.)
(12v) (as where) unless it be perhaps by way of conjecture, or
where the literal sense is designed to hide the more noble mystical
APPENDIX A
sense as a ,hell the kernel (unlill such time) frolll being lasted
either by unworthy persons, or ulltill such lime as God shalllhillk
fit. III this case there may be for a blind, a true literal sensc, even
such as in its way may be beneficial to the church. Hut wben we
have the principal meaning: If it be mystical we can insist 011 a
true literal sense no farther then by bistory or arguments drawn
Irom circumstances it appears to be true: ifliteral, though there
may be abo a by mystical sense yet we (cannot scarce be) can
,carce be sure there is one without (divine authority li,r it, and>
some further arguments for it then a bare analogy. :tvfuch 1lI0re
are we to be cautious in giving a double (literal 01' a duuble>
mystical sense. There may be a double one, as where the head, uf
the Beast signify both mountains and Kings Apoc 17. 9, 10. (Or
in the number) But without divine authority or at e a ~ l ,ome
further argument then the analogy and resemblance and ,imili-
tude of things, we (can be sure of) cannot be sure lhat the Pro-
phesy look, more ways then one. Too much liberty ill this kind
savours of a luxuriant ungovernable fansy and borders OIl
enthusiasm.
(12') 3. To keep as close as may be to the same sense of words,
especially in the same visiun, (2 unless where the propriety of
the language or other circumstances plainly require a dillcrent
signification in divers places scripture it ,elf declares that there
is a double meaning I) and to (reject) prefer those interpretations
where this is (not) uest observed. (12v) 3. To keep as close as
may be to the same sense of words especially in the same Vision
and to (neglect) prefer those interpretations where this i, IIlO:H
not (duely) observed unles (the propriety of the language; any
circumstance plainly require a dim'rent signification. (12') Thus
if a man interpret the Beast to signify a Kingdom in one semenee
and a vice in another when there is nothing in the text that doe,
argue any change of (signification,) sense, this is to he rejected as
(a patch and) no genuine interpretation. So if a man in [he sam ..
or contemporary visions where the earth and sea or the earth and
waters stand related to one another shall interpret the earth to
signify sometimes the dition of a Kingdom as in the firsl Trumpet
in chap 12 where the Dragon came down to the inhauitants of
the earth and sea, sometimes councils as where the Earth helped
the woman, and sometimes onely a low estate as where (the
Dragon was cast into the earth or the two hornd Beast rose up
out of earth) the Dragon was cast into the earth or the two hornd
Beast rose out of the earth this wavering is not readily to be
118 APPENDIX A
acquiesced in but such an interpretation to be (sought) indea-
voured after as retains the same signification of Earth in all cases.
(12v) So in the vision of the whore chap 17 and 18, to take the
Kings of the earth (chap 17. 18) over which the woman or great
city reigned chap 17. 18 for any other then the kings of the earth
which committed fornication with her eh 17.2 and 18. 3, 9 and
lamented her fall ch 18. 9, 10 that is for any other then the 10
kings or horns (who gave their Kingdom to the Beast) of the
Beast she reigned over, is not congruous. (12') So in the vision of
the whore chap. 17 and 18 to take Kings of the Earth in (chap)
one sence chap 17.2 and ch 18.3,9 and in another ch 17. 18 is
is not harmonius.
4. To (prefer) chose those interpretations which are most
according to the lilterall meaning of the scriptures unles where
the tenour and circumstances of the place plainly require an
Allegory. Thus if the wound by a sword should be interpreted of
a spirituall wound, or if the bath:l at the seventh Trumpet and
vial exprest by the concours of Armies, and by a hail-storm with
other meteors should be in interpreted of a spiritual Battel; since
there is nothing in the text to countenance such an interpretation
it ought to be rejected as a phantasy, wht're note that the usuall
signification of a prophetic figure is in the application of this Rule
to be accounted equipullent to the litterall meaning of (12v) a
word when ever it appears that the Prophets speak in their
figurative language. As if they describe the overthrow of nations by
a tempest of Hail, thunder, lightning and shaking of the world,
the usuall signification of this figure is to be e ~ t e e m e the proper
and direct sense of the place as much as ifit had been the litterall
meaning, this being a language as common amongst them as any
national language is amongst the people of that nation.
(12') 5. To acquiesce in that sense of any portion of Scripture
(13') as the true one which results most freely and naturally from
the use and propriety of the Language and tenor of the context
in that and all other places of Scripture to that sense. For if this
be not the true sense, then is the true sense uncertain, and no man
can attain to any certainty in the knowledg of it. Which is to
make the scriptures no certainrule of faith, and so to reflect upon
the spirit of God who dictated it.
He that without better grounds then his private opinion or the
opinion of any human authority whatsoever shall turn scripture
from the plain meaning to an Allegory or to any other less
naturall sense declares thereby that he reposes more trust in his
APPENDIX A
"9
own imaginations or in that human authority theu in the
Scripture (and by consequence that he is no true beleever). And
therefore the opinion of such men how numerous soever they he,
is not to be regarded. Hence is it and not from any real! un-
certainty in the Scripture that Commentators have so distorted
it; And this hath been the the door through which all Heresies
have crept in and turned out the ancient faith.
conslruing
Rules for melhodising the Apocalyps.
(12v) Rule 5B. To prefer those interpretations which, caeteri,
paribus, are of the most considerable things. For it was Gods
designe in these prophesies to typefy and describe not triUes but
the most considerable things in the wold during the tillie, time of
the Prophesies. Thus were the question put whether the three
froggs, the head or horn of any Beast, the (13
v
) whore of Babylon,
the woman Jezabel, the Fals Prophet, the Prophet Balaam, the
King Dalac, the martyr Antipas, the two witnesses, the woman
c10athed with the Sun, the jVranchild her Son, the Eagle pro-
claiming "Vo and the like were to be interpreted ofsingle persous
or of Kingdoms Churches and other great bodies of men: I
should by this Rule (also) prefer the latter, unless perhaps in auy
case the single person propounded might be of more nOle and
moment then the whole body of men he stands in compelition
with, or some other material circumstance might make mure lur
a single person then a multitude.
(13
r
) 6. To make the (visions and) parts of (the same) a vision
succeed one another according to the order of the narration
without any breach or interfering unless when there are Illanikst
indications of such a breach or interfering. For if the order (of
visions and) of (their) its parts might be (inter) varied or inter-
rupted at pleasure, (they) it would be of no certain interpretation,
which is to elude (them) it and make (them) it no prophcsie bllt
an ambiguitie like those of the heathen Oracles.
7. In collaterall visions to adjust the most notable parts and
periods to one another: And if they be not throughout (equ)
collaterall, to make the beginning or end of one vision filII in with
some notable period of tbe other. For the visions are duely
proportioned to the actions and changes of the times which they
respect by the following Rule and therefore they are duely pro-
portioned to one another. <)lJ But yet this Rule is not over strictly
to be adhered to when the visions respect divers kingdoms or one
120 APPENDIX A
vision respects the Church and another the state. CD (because there
may be remarkable revolutions in) An instance of this you have in
suiting the Dragon to all the seals the Beast to all the Trumpets
and the Whore to the 'Vo Trumpets.
8. To (prefer) choose those (interpretations) constructions
which without straining reduce contemporary visions to the
greatest harmony of their parts. I mean not only in their pro-
portions as in the precedent rule, but also in their other qualities,
and principally so as to make them respcct the same actions. 1'01'
the design of collate-rail visions is to be a key to one another and
therefore the' way to unlock thelll without straining must be by
fitting one to the other with all diligence and curiosity. This is
true opening scripture by scripture. All instance of this you have
in the comparison of the Dragon's history with the seales and
Trumpets in Prop , and of the Tl"llmpets with the (seals)
Vials, in Prop etc.
(14') 9. To (prefer) choose those (interpretations) constructions
which without straining reduce things to the greatest simplicity.
The reason of this is manifi'st by the precedent Rule. Truth is
ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and
confusion of things. As the world, which to the naked eye exhibits
the greatest variety of objects, "ppears very simple in its intel'llall
constitution when surveyed by a philosophic understanding, and
so much the simpler by how much the better it is understood, so
it is in these visions. I t is the perfection of (all) God's works that
they are al! done with the greatest simplicity. He is the God of
order and not of confusion. And therefore as they that would
understand the frame of the world must indeavour to reduce their
knowledg to all possible simplicity, so it must be in seeking to
understand these visions. And they that shall do otherwise do
not oncly make sure never to understand them, but derogate from
the perfection of the prophecy; and (declare) make it suspicious
also that their designe is not to understand it but to shuffle it of
and confound th" ,understandings of men by making it intricate
and confused.
10. In construing the Apocalyps to have little or no regard
to arguments drawn from events of things; (For there) Becaus
there can scarce be any certainty in historicall interpretations
(un till) unless the construction be first determined.
II. To acquiesce in that construction of the Apocalyps as the
true one which results most naturally and freely from the charac-
ters imprinted by the holy ghost on the several! parts thereof for
APPENDIX A 121
insinuating their connexion, and from the observation of the
precedent rules. The reason of this is the same with that of the
fift rule.
Hence if any man shall contend that my Construction of the
Apocalyps is uncertain, upon pretence that it may be possible to
find out other ways, he is not to be regarded ulliess he shall show
wherein what I have done may be mended. If the ways (15')
which he contends for be less natnral or grounded upon weaker
reasons, that very thing is demonstration enough that they are fal.,
and that he seeks not (after) truth but (labours for) the interest of
a party. And if the way which I have followed be according to the
nature and genius of the Prophesy there needs no other demon-
stration to convince it. For as of an Engin made by an excellent
Artificer (every) a man readily beleives that the pans are right set
together when he sees them joyn truly with one another notwith-
standing that they may be strained into another posture; and as
(every) a man (readily) acquiesces in the meaning of an Author
how intricate so ever when he sees the words construed or set in
(the) ordcr according to the laws of Grammar, notwithstanding
that (the words may possihly be forceing) there may he a possibility
of forceing the words to some other harsher construction: so a
man ought with equal (construction) reason to acquie.sce in that
construction of these Prophesies when he sees their parts sct in
order according to their suitableness and the characters imprinted
in them for that purpose.
Tis true that an Artificer may make an Engin capable of
being with equal congruity sct together more ways then one,
and that a sentence may be ambiguous: but this Objection
can have no place in the Apocalyps, becaus God who knew
how to frame it without ambiguity intended it for a rule of
faith.
But it is needless to urge with this general reasoning the
Construction which I have composed, since the reasons where-
with I have there proved every particular are of that evidence
that they cannot but move the assent of any humble and in-
different person that shall with sufficient attention peruse them
and cordially beJeives the scriptures. Yet I would not have this
so understood as to hinder the further search of other persons.
I suspect there are still more mysteries to be discovered. And
as Mr Mede layed the foundation and I have built upou
it: so I hope others will proceed higher untill the work be
finished.
'2'
APPENDIX A
Rules for interpreting the Apocalyps.
12. The Construction of the Apocalyps after it is once deter-
mined (16
r
) must be made the rule of interpretations; And all
interpretations rejected which agree not with it. That must not
be strained to fit history but such things chosen out of history as
. are most suitable to that.
13. To interpret 'sacred Prophecies of the most considerable
things and actions of those times to which they are applied. For
if it would be weakness in an Historian whilst he writes of
obscurer actions to let slip the greater, much less ought this to be
supposed in the holy Prophecies which are no other then histories
(prophesies) of things to come.
14. To proportion the most notable parts of Prophesy to the
most notable parts of history, and the breaches made in a con-
tinued series of Prophesy to the changes made in history. And to
reject those interpretations where the parts (of) and breaches of
Prophesy do not thus bear a due proportion to the parts and
changes in History. For if Historians divide their histories into
Sections Chapters and Books at such periods of time where the
less, greater and greatest revolutions begin or end; and to do
otherwise would be improper: much more ought we to suppose
that the holy Ghost obse."Ves this rule accurately in his prophetick
dictates, since they are no other then histories of things to come.
Thus by the great breaches made between the sixt and seventh
seal by interposing the vision of the sealed saints, and between
the sixt and seventh Trumpet by interposing the vision of the
little book, that prophesy is divided into three cardinal parts, and
the middle part subdivided by the little breach between the fourth
and fift Trumpet made by interposition of the Angel crying Wo,
and all the other seals and trumpets are as it were less sections.
And therefore to these breaches and sections, according to the
rule, must be adapted periods of time which intercede and
disterminate proportional revolutions of history. Again if a
Historian should use no proportion in his descriptions but
magnify a less thing above a greater or attribute the more
courage to the softer of two per.sons etc. : we (17r) should count it
an argument of his unskilfulness. And therefore since the dictates
of the Holy-Ghost are histories of things to come, such dispropor-
tions are not to be allowed in them. Thus in Daniel's vision of
the four Beasts, it would be grosly absurd to interpret, as some
(have) Polititians of late have done, the fourth Beast of
APPENDIX A
Antiochus Epiphanes and his successors; since that is described
to be the most terrible, dreadful, strong, and warlike Beast
of all the four, and the Prophet dwels far longer upon the
description of that then of all the others put together: whereas
the kingdom of Antiochus Epiphanes and his successors was
both less and weaker and less warlike then any of the three
before him.
15. To chose those interpretations which without straining do
most respect the church and argue the greatest wisdom and
providence of God for preserving her in the truth. As he that
would interpret the (actions or) letters or actions of a very wise
states-man, so as thence to know the council wherewith they are
guided and the des ignes he is driving on, must consider the main
end to which they are directed and suppose they are such as most
conduce to that end and argue the greatest wisdom and pro-
vidence of the states-man in ordering them: so it is in these
Prophesies. They are the counsels of God and so tlie most wise,
and fittest for the end to which they are designed: And that end
is the benefit of the Church to guide (her) and preserve her in
the truth. For to this end are all the sacred prophesies in both
the old and new Testament directed, as they that will consider
them may easily perceive. Hence may appear the oversight of
some interpreters whose interpretations if they were true would
make the Apocalyps of little or no (benefit) concernment to
the Church?
Yet I meane not that these Prophesies were (to con) intended
to convert the whole world to the truth. For God isjust as well as
merciful, and punishes wickedness by hardening the wicked and
([8') visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children. But the
designe of them is to try men and convert the best, so that the
church may be purer and less mixed with Hypocrites and luke-
warm persons. And for this end it is that they are wrapt up in
obscurity, and so framed by the wisdom of God that the incon-
siderate, the proud, the self-conceited, the presumptuous, the
sciolist, the sceptic, they whose judgments are ruled by their lusts,
their interest, the fashions of thc world, their (opini) esteem of mell,
the outward shew of thing or other prejudices, and all they who,
of how pregnant natural parts soever they be, yet canllot discern
the wisdom of God in the contrivance of the creation: that these
men whose hearts are thus bardncd ill seeing should see and not
2 'Perhaps what foHows may be better inserted into the preface.' added iu
margin of MS.
APPENDIX A
perceive and in hearing should heare and not understand. For
God has declared his intention in these prophesies to be as well
that none of the wicked should understand as that the wise
should understand, Dan: 12.
And hence I cannot but on this occasion reprove the blindness
of a sort of (people) men who although they have neither better
nor other grounds for their faith then the Scribes and Pharisees
had for their (religion) Traditions, yet are so pervers as to call
upon other men for such a demonstration of the certainty of faith
in the scriptures that a meer naturall man, how wicked soever,
who will but read it, may judg of it and perceive the strength of
it with as much perspicuity and certainty as he can a demonstra-
tion in Euclide. 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
(19
r
) 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 endeavour by all possible means to destroy the faith which
men have in them, and to make them disregarded. I could wish
they would consider how contrary it is to God's purpose that the
truth of his religion should be as obvious and perspicuous to all
men as a mathematical demonstration. Tis enough that it is able
to move the assent of those which he hath chosen; and for the rest
who are SO incredulous, it is just that they should be permitted to
dy in their sins. Here then is the wisdom of God, that he hath so
framed the Scriptures as to discern between the good and the bad,
that they should be demonstrations to the one and foolishness to
the others.
And from this consideration may also appear the vanity of
those men who regard the splendor of churches and measure them
by the external form and constitution. Whereas (God) it is more
agreable to God's designe that his church appear contemptible
and scandalous to the world to try men. For this end doubtless he
suffered the many revoltings of.theJewish Church under the Law,
and for the same cnd was the grand Apostacy to happen under
the gospel. Rev . If thou relyest upon the externall form of
churches, the Learning of Scholars, the wisdom of statemen or of
other men of Education; consider with thy self whither thou
wouldest not have adhered to the scribes and Pharisees hadst
APPENDIX A
thou lived in their days, and if this be thy case, [ben is it no belter
then tbeirs, and God may judg thee accordingly, unless thou
chance to be on the right side, which as tis great odds may prove
otherwise so if it should happen yet it would (not) scalre exCuse
thy lolly although it might something mitigate it.
APPENDIX B
'Of the <world to come,) Day of Judgment
and World to come.'
This fragment) Yahuda ~ l S 0, folio 1:,11-- Iql, is part of 'The Synchronisnls
of the Three Parts of the Prophetick Interpretation' (Sotheby Catalogue, lot
244). Newton's quotations from the Old Testament prophets and the
Revelation of John generally conform to thc King James version, but
they are not always precise. Brackets and the phrases they enclose are
Newton's insertions, as are the footnotes. \vhich in the original text
appear as marginalia.
(12') So then the mystery of this restitution of all things is to be
found in all the Prophets: which makes me wonder with great
admiration that so few Christians of our age can find it there. For
they understand not that the final return of the Jews captivity
and their conquering the nations of the four Monarchies and
setting up a (peaceable) righteous and flourishing Kingdom at
the day of judgment is this mystery. Did they understand this
they would find it in all the old Prophets who write of the last
times as in the last chapters of Isaiah where the Prophet conjoyns
the new heaven and new earth with the ruin of the wicked
nations, the end of (all troubles) weeping and of all troubles, the
return of the Jews captivity and their setting up a flourishing and
everlasting Kingdom, the springing up of the bones of the
righteous as an herb, and the judgment of transgressors whose
worm dieth not and whose fire is not quenched: So also inJer. 30
and 31. Ezek 37 and 38. Hosea 3. Joel 2 and 3 Amos g. Obadiah.
Mica 3 and 7. Nahum). Zeph. 3. Hagg. 2. Zech 12 and 14. Mal
4. Deut 30. Psal 2 and other places. I forbear to cite the places
because enough has been already said to confirm this synchron-
ism. But yet for removing some prejudices which may make this
synchronism difficult to be beleived lout of all the Prophets
compared together observe the following particulars.
First that the earth shall continue to be inhabited by mortals
after the day of judgment and that not only for a 1000 years but
even for ever. For at the sounding of the 7th Trumpet the King-
APPENDIX Ii 127
doms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his
Christ and he shall reign for ever and ever. Apoc. J J. One like
the son of man came with the clouds of heavcn,-and there was
given him dominion and glory and a kingdom that all people
nations and languages should sel"VC him: his dominion is all
everlasting dominion which shall not pass away and his Kingdom
that which shall not be destroyed Dan. 7. 14, 27 In the days 01
these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall
never be destroyed and the kingdom shall not be left to other
people but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdonl>
and it shall stand for ever Dan. 3. 44. The Lord God shall give
unto him the throne of his Father David and he shall reign over
the house of Jacob for ever and of his kingdom there shall be 110
end Luke I. 33. Of the encrease of his government and peace
there shall be no end upon the throne of David and upon his
Kingdom to order it and to establish it with judgment and with
justice ji-om henceforth even for ever. Isa 9.7. I will take the
children of Israel from among the heathen whether they be gone
and will gather them on every side and bring them into their own
land-and they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto
Jacob my servant wherein yonr fathers have dwelt and they shall
dwell therein even they and their children and their childrens
children for ever and my servant David shall be their Prince for
ever. Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them: it
shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and I will place them
and multiply them and I will set my (I3
r
) sanctuary ill the midst
of them for evermore. My tabernacle also shall be with them:
Yea I will be their God and they shall be my people. And the
heathen shall know that I the Lord do sanctity Israel whell my
sanctuary shall be in the midst of them lor evermore. Ezek. 31l.
Thus saith the Lord which giveth the Sun for a light by day and
the (Moon) ordinances of the Moon and of the starrs j(lr a light
by night,-if those ordinances depart from before me saith the
Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease Ii-om beiug a nation
before me for ever Jer 31. 35,36. In the Apocalyps where tis said
that they bring the glory and honour of the nations into the new
Jerusalem those nations are certainly mortals, for they are the
nations whom the Dragon deceived no more till the thousand
years were expired and who being at the end of those years again
deceived by him did compass the beloved city and were devoured
by fire from the throne, that is by war. Thus is there an end of
those rebellious nations but not of the beloved city. Their
128 APPENDIX B
dominion is confirmed and perhaps enlarged by the conquest uf
those nations nor is the end of it any where described but on the
contrary tis said that tluy shall reign for ever Q/ld ever Apoc. 22.5. And
that the citizens of this city are not the saints risen from the dead,
but a race of mortal men like those nations over whom they reign
is evident from Isaiahs description of the new heavens and new
earth and new Jerusalem. For of this Jerusalem he saith: The
voice of weeping shall no more be heard in her nor the voice of
crying. There shall be no more thence an infant of days nor an
old man that hath not filled his days: for the child shall die an
hundred years old but the sinner being an hundred years old
shall be accursed and they shall build houses and inhabit them
and plant vineyards and eat the fruit of them ete Isa 65. 19,20,2 I.
These mortal inhabitants of this city the Prophet aftelwards (tells
you are) describes to be the nation of the Jews returned from
captivity and saith of them that as the new heavens and new
earth which he will make shall remain before him so shall their
seed remain: which is as much as to say that both shall remain for
ever. And to assure you that this is after the day of judgment he
adds that they shall go forth and look upon the carcasses of the
men that have transgressed: for their worm shall not die neither
shall their fire be quenched and they shall be an abborring to all
flesh. The state of this new Jerusalem you may see further
described in Isa. 60 namely how it is a city of mortals assemhled
from captivity and rules over the nations and continues for ever
and how (as in the Apocalyps) the Gentiles come to her light and
the Kings to the brightness of her rising and her gates are open
continually that (men theyr bring) they may bring unto her the
riches of the Gentiles and the Sun is no more her light by day nor
the moon, but the Lord is her everlasting light. So again in Isa 54
the same state is thus described. Thy seed [returning from captivity]
shall inherit tlu gmtiles and make the desolate cities to be illhabited.-for
thy maker is thy Husband (tlu Lord qf(14') Hosts is his name) and
thy redeemer [from captivity] the holy one of Israel, the God of
the whole earth shall he be called. For the Lord hath called thee
as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit and a wife of youth
when thou wast refused saith thy God. For a small moment have
I forsaken thee [during thy captivity] but with great mercies will
I gather thee [from among the nations.] In a little wrath I hid
my face from thee for a moment but with everlasting kindness will
I have mercy on thee saith the Lord thy redeemer. For this is as
the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters
APPENDIX B 12
9
of Noah should no more go over the earth: so have I sworn that
I would no more be wroth with thee nor rebuke thee. For the
mountains shall depart and the hills be removed but my kindness
shall not depart froIll thee, neither shall the covenant army peace
be removed saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee. 0 thou
alnicted, tossed with tempest and [during thy captivity/ not COIII-
furted: behold [the days come that] I will build thy walls with
carbuncles and lay thy foundations with saphires and I willlllak"
thy windows of Jasper and thy gates of carved Jewels and all thy
borders of pleasant stones. And all thy children shall be taught by
the Lord and great shall be the peace of thy children. In righteous-
ness shalt thou be established: thou shalt be Jar from oppression
for thou shalt not fear, and from terror for it shall not come near
thee. Behold they shall surely gather together [in the war of Cog
and lVlagog] but not by me. ''''hosoever shall gather against thee
shall fall for thy sake. Behold I have created the smith that
blowcth the coales in the firc and that bringeth forth an instru-
ment for his work and I have created the waster to destroy. No
weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper, and every
tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt
condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord. Thi;
prophesy I have set down at large because of its analogy with that
of the new Jerusalem. For here by calling this people the wile of
the Lord and describing her an holy and peaceable city built of
precious slones and inheriting the nations, you may know that
she is the new Jerusalem the Lamb's wile. By her being returned
from captivity, her inhabiting the desolate cities and her inheriting
the nations and by their making war upon her with weapons
formed by the Smith you may know that she is a city of morlals;
a city not in a literal sense, but mystically put Ii,.. the whole
nation of the Jews, the pretious stones and pillars and foundations
thereof being the saints and Apostles. And by Gods oath that he
will never rebuke her as he did the old world you lIlay know that
she shall be eternal. The mountains, saith he, shall depart and
the hills be removed but Gods kindness shall not depart from her
nor the covenant (15
r
) of his peace be removed: an expression of
the same kind with that whereby the eternity of the Son of God
himself is in the highest manner asserted Heb. I. II. She is so
far from ending with the millennium that the time of her captivity
(which hath already lasted much above a thousand years) being
compared with the time of her flourishing reign which is to
follow it. is here represented but as a moment to eternity. In a
APPENDJX n
little wrath, saith he, 1 hid my face from thee for a moment, but with
everlasting kindness will I have mercy 012 thee. Seing this Kingdom out-
lasts the Millennium in so vast a disproportion of time and its
end after that is no where predicted: we may well conclude with
Jeremy that it shall last as long as the ordinances of the Sun
Moon and starrs, with Daniel John and the other Prophets that
it stand for ever and ever and with Luke that it shall have no end.
This was God's covenant with Abraham when he promised that
his seed should inherit the land of Canaan for ever, and on this
(promise) covenant was founded the Jewish religion as on that is
founded the Christian; and therefore this point is of so great
moment that it ought to be considered and understood by all men
who pretend to the name of Christians.
In the next place I would observe out of the Prophets that in
the end of this present world when Christ shall come to judg the
quick and dead, the quick to be then judged are the people of
this kingdom, both Jews and Gentiles. For Isaiah thus describes
the last day. In that day, saith he, shall the branch of the Lord be
beautiful and glorious and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and
comely for them that are escaped of Israel. And it shall come to pass that
he that is lefl in Zion and he that remaineth in Jerusalem shall he called
holy, even every one that.is WRITTEN c"nl;> TO LIFE ill .Jerusalem,
when the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zioll
and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the
spirit of JUDGMENT and by the spirit of BURJVIJliG(Isa. 4 2, 3,4.)
that is everyone that escapeth the captivity, whose name is
written in the book of life then opened in judgment, shall be
called holy, when he shall have (purged) washed and refined
them in that judgment (as (Gold in a furnace) white linnen in
water and Gold in a furnace) from the filthy and from the
murderers and from all the wicked (Isa. 1. 25. Mal. 3. 2, 3) by
sending his Angels to gather out of his Kingdom all them that do
iniquity Math 13.41. So then the Book of life conteins not only
the names of the Saints in heaven but also the names of them that
escape the captivity. For to this purpose Daniel also tells us
Daniel tells us that (at the end of) in the great tribulation (that
out of which the Palmbearing multitude comes) Michael shal
stand up the (l\Iichael) great Prince which is set over the people of
the Jews and they shall be delivered everyone that shall be found
written in the Book and that at the same time many of those that
sleep in the dust shall awake some to everlasting life and some to
shame and everlasting contempt. Here (is the judgment of both)
APPENDIX B
13
1
Michael the Prince of the Jews at his second coming stands up in
judgment and judges both quick and dead. For the book here
mentioned, wherein the captivated Jews as mallY as shall iJe
delivered are written is the book oflifc now opened in judgmellt
as you may understand by comparing this place with such another
in the Apocalypse where 'tis said, Tltere sltall no wise tmler illio [the
new Jerusalem) a'!)' thillg that difileth or workelh abomill(ltioll ur a (re
but they which are writtm ill the Lambs book if life, Apoc 2I.27. This
book was opened before in the general judgment and all the d"ad
who were not found written in it were there cast into the I.ake
of fire Apoc 20.15: here in the same day of judgment the living
are also judged out of it and only those admitted into the new
Jerusalem whose names are found written therein. \Vhence
also the living (both Jews and Gentiles) as well as the dead are
now said to be saved. The Ilatiolls if them which are SAVED shall
walk ill the light lif it and the Kin,IfS if the earth do bring there glory arid
honour into it. Apoc. 2J.24. (15
v
) These are the innumerable palm-
bearing multitude out of all nations and peoples and tongues
which at the end of the great tribulation had all tears wiped from
their eyes and cried SALVATiON to our God alld to the Lamb. (Apoe.
7.10) These the Lamb fed with the tree orlil" and led lInto the
living fountains of waters, that is he granted life to them whilst
he passed a sentence of death upon the rest (vers 17) and therefore
they cry Salvation to the Lamb. In the same language write also
the old Prophets. {I will save my flock and they shall be no more
a prey and I will judge between cattel and cattel) I will seek out
my sheep and deliver them out of all places where they have been
scattered and bring to their own land and feed them upon the
mountains of Israel-and judg between cattel and caw'l between
the Rams and the he-goats.-I will save my flock and they shall
be no more a prey and I will set up one Shepherd over them and
he shall feed them even my servant David. Ezek. :H. 12,13,17,22,
23. (16
r
) They shall be ashamed and confounded all if t h ~ m they shall go
to confusion together tllat are makers of idols: but israel shalt be SAVED
in the Lord with all EVERLASTiNG SALVATION. ye shall not be
ashamed nor co'!foullded world without end. For thus saith the Lord that
created the heavens God himself that fomted the earth, he creat.d it not ill
vain, he formed it to be inhabited.-Assemble your selves and tome draw
neaT together ye that aret saved if the nations: they have 110 knolAedge that
set up the wood of their graven image, that pray unto a God that canf/ot
Save. Isa. 45. 17,20. I will send those that are SAVED 'If them unto the
t So the 70, the Lalill and Chalde Par.
132
APPENDIX B
nations etc Isa. 66. We waited Jor him and he will save us Isa. 25 9.
The saving in these and such like places of scripture is (both from
the hand of the enemy in the battle of the great day of God
almighty and from [he Lake of fire) of morlals at the last day
from misery and death both temporal and eternal. \Vhen Christ
comes to judge the dead he comes also to smite the nations with his
two edged sword and 10 rule them ,,ith a rod oj iron and as the vessels oj
a patter shall be broken to shivers Apoc 19.15 and 2.27. And at that
time he shall send Jarth his Angels and they shall gather out oj his King-
dom all things that offend and them which do iniquity and shall cast them
into aJurnace oj jire. Matt 13.41. The rest of his kingdom are the
nations of them which are saved: and they are mortals remaining
on earth, because Christ has a kingdom there which he now
begins [0 rule with a rod of iron. and tis only out of this kingdome
which the wicked could be gathered. Conceive therefore that
when Christ comes to judge the (world of the dead and raised, the
living arc also judged) dead he judges also the living and that as
many as are found written in the Book oflife are adjudged to life
and saved by being either canght up into the air to be with the
Lord or left below on earth in the Kingdome of mortals which he
thenceforth rules with a rod of iron and that the rest are adjudged'
to death and cast into the Lake of fire. 1 Thess. 4.16. Matt 2+31.
(And this I take to be the division of the great City into three parts
(Apoc. 16) and the judgment of) Th us Christ judges the quick and dead
at his coming and his Kingdomc (2 Tim. 4.1.) Which being an Article
of faith ought to be well (considered) understood.
Its a received opinion that this judgment shall be accompanied
with a conflagration of the world; and some hearing that in the
future world the Wolf shall lye down with the Lamb and all
beasts shall become gentle and harmless and the earth become
fuller of rivers and more fruitfull and the light of the sun and
moon be much encreased and the royall City be as it were of
Jewels and gold like clear glass, have conceived (17r) that an
amendment of the whole frame of nature shall ensue that con-
flagration. But these fansies have been occasioned by under-
standing in a vulgar and litteral sense what the Prophets writ in
their own mystical language. For the conflagration of the world
in their language signifies the consumption of Kingdoms by war,
as you may see in Moses, where God thus describes the desolation
of Israel. I will (saith) provoke them to anger with a Joolish nation. For
ajire is kindled in mine anger and shall burn unto the lowest hell and shall
(onsume the earth with her encrease and set on jire the foundations oj the
APl'ENDlX II
mountains. 1 will heap mischi'i/J' UpOIl them. 1 will spend 1II;lIe allowS
UPOIl them. TIleY shall be bUTTIt with hUllger and devoured with bill/illig
heat and with bitter destructioll Deut 32.22. But in the (end of lhe
world) day of judgment there is also a lillerall conflagration of
the world politique in the lake of fire and to those that are cast
into it a conflagration also of the world natural, the heaven ami
earth where they are being on fire and the elements lllelting ",ith
fervent heat. And whilst the Apostle Peter tells us that none but
the wicked shall suffer (by) in this conflagration and thal this is
a time of refreshing to the Godly I cannot lake it for a conflagra-
tion of any considerable part of this (habitable worldi globe
whereby the rest of the habitable world may be annoyed. And if
the world natural be not burnt up there is no ground 101' such a
renovation thereof as they suppose The glorious Sun and 1100n,
multiplied rivers and copious vegetables of the new world arc its
Kings and people, the peaceable and harmless Beasts it's peaceble
Kingdomes, and the new Jerusalem lhat (mystical) spiritual
building in Sion whereof the Chief corner stone is (Christ. The
12 Gates are the elders of the Tribe which used anciently tll
judge in the Gates) Christ and the rest of the stones and gold are
the saints, 1 Pet. 2.4, 5, 6: 4 particularly the City and streets of
pure Gold are the holy people purged [rom the wicked as Cold
is refined from dross Isa. 1.25 lvIal. 3. 2' the 2 foundations are
the 2 Apostles (whose names are written on them and the rest of
the pretious stones and gold are the rest of its citizens. Tis
represented of a cubical fi) and" the 2 Gates the Elders of the
Tribes. For the names of the Apostles and Tribes are written on
them. Gates are put for Elders because the Elders judged ill them,
and these Gates (Pet. 2. 4, 5,6, the Gold being the holy people
refined from the wicked Isa. I. 25) and foundations are of Pearls
and pretious stones to denote them Kings and Princes. For great
and valuable men are known by rich and precious ornaments.
The City and streets of pure Gold are the holy people purged
from the wicked as Gold is refined from impure metals }sa r. '-'.'i.
Mal. 3. 2. 'Tis represented of a cubical llgure with the throne of
God in it and without any Sun Moon or Temple, to insinuate
that it is a spiritual building and that heavenly City which was
prefigured by the most holy. For the most holy was cubical, alld
had in it the throne of God; <in it) but (not any other Temple then
it self) not the (fire and) flame and fire of the Altar which are the
sun and moon of the Temple, nor had it allY windows to let ill
a See Isa. :lH .. 6 IJ See ]sa. : p ~ 6 and 60.1H.
'34
APPENDIX Il
the light of the natural Sun and Moon. Neither had it any Temple
in it, but is the Temple it self, that Temple in whose courts the
Palm-bearing multitude worship (amI who) (A poe. 7. 15) and
(whose) the pillars of whose courts are the saints of all nations
(chap. 3.12.)
If you desire to know the manner orthis eity on earth and of the
war of Gog and Magog you may see them both described by
Ezekiel chap 38 and 39 (and particularly) where he represents
how the Jews after their return from captivity dwell safely and
quietly upon the mountains of Israel in unwalled towns without
either gates or barrs to defend them until! they are grown very
rich in Cattel and gold and silver and goods and Gog of the land
of Magog stirrs up the nations round about, Persia and Arabia
and Arrie and the northern nations of Asia and Europe against
them to take a spoile, and God destroys (18
r
) all that great army,
that the nations may from thenceforth know that the (nations)
Jews went formerly into captivity for their sins but now since their
return are become invincible by their holiness.
We have hitherto considered the new Jerusalem as a City of
mortals only: but whilst Christ is the chief corner stone of this
city, whilst he rules the nations with a rod of iron and gives power
over them to the saints risen from the dead (Apoe. 2.26) and
makes them Kings over the earth (ch. 1.6. and 5.(0) and gives
them to eat of the trec of life which is in the midst of the Paradise
of God and to enter in through the gates into the City (eh. 2.7
and 22.(4) and writes upon them the name of this (city) new
Jerusalem (ch. 3.12) this city must be understood to comprehend
as well Christ and the children of the resurrection as the race of
mortal Jews on earth. It signifies not a material city but the
(spiritual) body politique of all those who have dominion over
the nation whether they be the saints in heaven or their mortal
viceregents on earth and therefore the Apostle Paul in his
Epistle to the Hebrews chap I I understands it of the saints in
heaven and in Gal. 4.26. calls it Jerusalem which is above. Hence
this city is not only long and broad as other cities are but rises
high from the earth into heaven. Hence also the dimensions of
the sides thereof are double to those of the terrestrial Jerusalem
described by Ezekiel: for understanding which, you are to know
that the Prophets have written of superficial and solid measure as
well as of linear. Ezekiel tells us that the oblation, which was
25000 cubits in length and as much in breadth, shall be five and
twenty thousand by five and twenty thousand, and calls it four
APPENDIX B
135
square. So John tells us that the wall rifthis ciIY was Iii cubitI' accord-
ing to the Art of measuring used by men, that is 12 cubits high
and 12 cubits broad and so in square measure 141 cubits. For he
had told us a little before that this wall was great (that is broad)
and high, and now he gives the measures of (the) it according to
those dimensions. Ezekiel had put the wall of his Temple six
cubits high and six cubits broad (Ezek 40.5) and John puts the
measure of his wall double. And as the Angel in (john) the
Apocalyps measured the wall by superficial measure so he
measured the city by solid measure, for John saith that he measured
the ciIY with the reed twelve thousandfurlongs, the length the breadth and
the height rif it are equal. The last words shew that the measure of
12000 furlongs respects all the three dimensions and so is a solid
measure. \Vhence the cubic root of 12000 furlongs (will be the
side of the city and this side will be repeated four times will ue
the compass thereof below, which uy lily computation is 91t
furlongs or in round numbers ninety furlongs, that is thirty six
thousand cubits recconing four hund.'edJewish cubits to aJewish
furlong as Authors teach. And the half of this compass being
eighteen thousand cubits is the com pas of Ezekiel's city. Ezek.
48. 35), that is 22)8
0
9
0
4
0 furlongs of 9157 cubits (reeconning 400
Jewish cubits to a Jewish furlong as Authors teach) will be the
side of this City, and this side, if you take the round number of
9000 cubits, is double to the side of Ezekiel's city, which was only
4500 cubits. Ezek. 48. 16,32. As the linear dimensions of the
Temple under the Kings were double to those of the Tabernacle
under the Judges, so those of the City under the King of Kings
are double to those of the City under the Kings.
But whilst this doubled City is the inheritance of the saints both
(19') mortal and immortal, we are not to conceive that Christ and
the Children of the resurrection shall reign over (mortals) the
nations after the manner of mortal Kings or convers with mortals
as mortals do with one another; but rather as Christ after his
resurrection continued for some time on earth invisible to mortals
unless (when) upon certain occasions when he thought fit to
appear to (mortals) his disciples: so it is to be conceived lhat at
his second coming he and the children of the rcsurrectioll shall
reign invisibly unless when they shall think fit upon any extra-
ordinary occasions to appear. And as Christ after some stay in or
neare the regions of this earth ascended into heaven so after the
resurrection of the dead it may be in their power (also) to leave
this earth at pleasure and accompany him into any part of the
APPENDIX B
heavens, that no region in the whole Univers may want its
inhabitants. For Christ at his second coming must (reign) rule
the nations with a rod of iron and reign till he hath put down all
rule and all authority and power and when he hath put all
enemies under his feet (the last whereof is death, to be conquered
in these regions) he shall deliver up the Kingdome to God the
father [ Cor. 15.24, that is he shall withdraw himself from it and
depart into the heavens. For when the Martyrs and Prophets live
again they may reign here with Christ a thousand years till aU
the nations Gog and Magog be subdued and the dominion of the
new Jerusalem be estahlished and death be vanquished by raising
the rest of the dead (those who do not live again untill (the end of)
the thousand years be finished,) and all this time they may be in
the same state of happiness in or neare these regions as afterwards
when they retire into the highest heavens.
INDEX
Abraham, 130
Africa, J34
Albigenses, I I I
Alchemists, 23, 45, 46
Alchemy, II, '4,23,42,44,45,46, '17
Amos, 126
Angels, 57, 60, 101, 102, 10.j., 122,
'30
, 132, 135
Anglicanism, 5, 7, I 1,61
Anglicans, 5, 7, 9, 87
Antichrist, 49, 67, 89, 99, 109, 115
Antiochus Epiphanes, 123
Antitrinitarianism, 31, 58,62, 63
Apocalypse, see Revelation
54, 55, 59, 67, 74, 108, J I I,
lIS,
12
9, 133
Arabia, I34
Arianism, 5, 7, 58
Arias Benedictus, 96, 97
Aristophanes, 96
Aristotle, 28, 42, 92, 96
Arius,58
Arminianism,5
Ashmole, Elias, 44
Asia, 134
Astronomers, 30,44
Astronomy, 30, 43
Athanasius, Saint, lI, 58, 59, 76
Atheism, 34, 65
Atheists, 65
Athenagoras, 71-2
Babson, Roger, 10
Babylonia, 43
Babylonians, 44
Bacon, Francis, 28, 3D, 33, 41
Advancemeut of Learning, 30
Baronius, Caesar, Cardinal, 76, 97
Barrow, Isaac, 30, 84-5
Bentley, Richard, 34, 35, 39, 6[, go
Berkeley, George, t6
Bernoulli, Johann, 12
Bernoulli, Nicholas, 12
Bible, vi, 3,5,6, I I, 16, row, 22, 23, 28,
2g, 3[, 32, 33,36,37,38,39,41,46,
47,4
8
,49,53,54,55,57,58
,59,68,
72, 83, 8.}, 85, 86, 88, go, 103, 107,
108, 109, I I I, 1'3, [15, J 10, 110
1
[2{1 132; sec alJu Old and New
Testament
14-
Birch, Thomas, 34 II.
Blount, Charles, 56
of Nature', 28, 29, 37, 4J,
49,88, gil
'Hook of Scripture', 29,32,37,41,
49
Boul1ee, Etienne-Louis, 53
Boyle, Robert, '5,30,33-4,47
The Clldstian Virtuoso, 34-
Boyle 3h 35, 39
Brahmins (Brachmans), 4-i
Brewster, Sir David, 6 n., II, 57
Browne, Sir Thomas, 33
Burnet, Thomas, 37
BurtOll, Robert, 66
Butler, Samuel, 65
Hudibras, 65
Johannes, 29, 86
Cabbala, 11,40,68,69
Cabbalislll, 70, 1 I I
Cabhalists, 46, 66, 68.7 passim
Calvin, John, 62
Cambridge Platonists, 63, 72, 71
Campanella, TOlllmaso, 28
Cartari, VinceuzlI, 94-
Cartesians, 75
Casaubon, Isaac, 44
Caspar J 11.
Castillejo, David, v
Cataphrygians, 72
Catholicism, 60, 68, 99
Catholics, 61, '24
Chaldea,43
Chaldeans, 44, 69, 70
Champlain de Ia Blandu:rie, see
Pahin-Champlain
Cheyne, George, 35
Christ, 9, I I, 16, [9, :l0, 4 1, 49,54,
55, 57-65 passim, 67, 7', 72, 74, 77,
78, 84, 89,93, IUD, 101, 104, 108,
INDEX
[og-]O, ] I I, 112, 113, 124, 127,
129, 130, 132-6 passim
Christian Hebraists, 29, 66, 85, 86, 87
Christianity, 17, 29,55,64,65,68,71,
74, 75, 88, 89, [30
Christians, 56, 57, 63, 67, 7[, 78,
108, III, 1[2, 126, 130, 131
Chronology, II, 12, 14,23,42,61-2,
85,86,9,92,93,95, 103
Church of England, 5,6, [6, 74; see
also Anglicanism, Anglicans
Church Fathers, I I, 14, 19,36,69,72,
97, [02
Cicero, !vIarcus Tullius, 35
Clarke, Dr. Samuel, 7, 9, II, 3h 35,
36,58,6[,62 n., 76, 77, 78,90
Clement of Alexandria, 71
Cohen, I. Bernard, v, 19 n., 35 n.,
40 n., 76 n., 77 n., 78 n.
Collins, Anthony, 56
Comeniw,Johann Amos, 2:8
Comes, Natalis, 94
Conduitt, John, 6, 12, 31, 45, 63, 92
Constantine the Great, 7, 6:1
Consubstantiality, 58, 60, 69
Conti, Abate Antonio,I2, 36 n., 78 n.,
79
Craig,john, 12,35
Creed, 54, 55, 57, 59, 62, 68, 74
Crell, Samuel, 58
Daniel, 88, 95, 97, 99, 107, 108, 122,
130
Daniel, Book of, [', '4,66,79.86,88,
Sg--go, 92, 93, 107, 113, 124, 127
Deism, 56, 58, Go, 61
Deists, 65
Deluge, 37, 38, [28-9
Derham, \ViUiam, 3'b 35, 36
Physico- Theology, 34
Descartes, Rene, 31, 39, 4j, 61, 65,
75,83
Des Maizeaux, Pierre, 35, 36
Deuteronomy, J 26, J 33
Devil, 13, 14,22,41,47,63-4,66,87
Drake, Stillman, 32 n.
Egypt, 4', 43, 44, 69
Egyptians, 47
Einstein, Albert, 27, 48
Emlyn, Thomas, 58
Enlightenment, 4, 53, 8g-g0
Enthusiasm, 65, 66, 11 7
Enthusiasts, 5[, 65, 66, 87
Epicureanism, 31, 41, 65
Eucharist, '5, 73
Euclid, 124-
Euhemerism, 23, 94-5, 103
Europe, [34
Ezekiel, 113 n., 126, ]27, 131, 134,
'35
Ezra, 84, 86
Fatio de Duillier, Nicolas, 7, go
Fifth Monarchists, 87, 9'
Flamsteed, John, 12,30
Francis, Father Alban, 6
Freret, Nicolas, 12
}-;'rogs, 96-7, I 19
Gad, [R,
Galatians, 134-
Galen, 35
Galileo Galilei, 28, 29, Sf, 32, 34. 36,
6,
Genesis, 36, 37, 39, 63
George J, 7
Glanvill, Joseph, 48
Gnostics, 1 J) 60, 65, 68-75 passim
Gowing, 11argaret, 27 n.
Greeks, 44, 58, 86, 94
Gregory, David, 7, 36, 47, 48
Grotius, Hugo, go, 96
Guerlac, Henry, 39 n.
Haggai, 126
Hall, A. Rupert, v, 76 n.
Hall, Francis, 12
Hall, Marie Boas, v, 76 n.
Haller, Albrecht von, 4
Halley, Edmond, 7, 8g
Hamann, Johann Georg, 4
Hammond, Henry, go
Hartsocker, Niklaas, 16
Haynes, Hopton, 7, 58, 62
Hearne, Thomas, 30 fl.
Heathens, 56, 57, 68, 119
Hebrews, To the, 41, 129, 134
Helena, 73
Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 38
Heresies, 55, 75, 97, 119
Heretics, 56, 57, 71
Herivel, John \-V., v
Hermes Trismegistus, 44, 45
INDEX
'39
Hieroglyphs, 47, 94, 95
Hill, Christopher, 90-1
Hiscock, W. G., 48 n.
Hobbes, Thomas, 29, 65, 84
Hobbism, 34
Holy Ghost, 3, 32, 59, 61, 72, J 16,
120, 122
HOnJoousians, 58
Hooke, Robert, 12,34
Hosea, 126
Howell, T. n., 6 n.
Huggins, john, 83
Hume, David, 8
Hutton, 48 n.
Ibn Ezra, Rabbi Abraham, 85
Idolaters, 60, 65, 72, gfi, 97
Idolatry, 42, 43, 47, 60, 67, 6g, 70, go,
97
India, 43
Indians, 44-
Irenicism, 64-
Isaac, 19
Isaacs, Nathan, 27 n.
Isaiah,67, 126, 127, 128, 130, 131-2,
133
Israelites, see Jews
Jacob, 60, ]27
jacob, :'1. C., 39 n.
james II, 6, 47
Jeffreys, George, Lord, G
Jeremiah, 126, 130
Jerome, Saint, 59
Jerusalem, 67, 100-1, 127. 128-g,
130-6 passim
Jesus, see
jews, 39, 46, 56, 65, 66, 67, 74, 7
3
, 35,
86, 104, I08--g, J 10, 112, 12.b 126,
127-34 paSjim
joel, 126
jo}m, Saint (John the Divine), 12,42,
57,88,95,96,97, '30, 135
joseph, 7.
joshua, 8+
judaism, 17,66,84,88, '30
Judgment, The Last, 42, 99, 100, 107,
126, 130-1, 132, 133
jupiter, 73
Keill,john Ball, 38
Kepler, Johallnes, 2B, 29, 31, 32, 3
6
,
37 n., 6,
Keynes, John Maynard, 10,57
Kimchi, Joseph, 85
Kings, 11, 21
Knorr VOll Rosenroth. Christian, 46,
68
Kabbala D'I/udala, 68
Koyre, Alexandre, 1911.,35 n., 40 JI.,
76"., 77 n., 78 n.
Latitudinarianism, 5, 65
Latona, 97
Le Clerc, Jean, 12, 29
Leibniz, GOtlfl-icu \Vilhdm \00, 7. 9,
Il, 12, 16, '21, 28,35--6, ti5,
75-9 paSSIm
Leiboiz-Clarkc 9,
11,35-<>, 7
8
75, 76, 7B
Licinius, Valerius Licinianus, 63
Lightfoot, john, 29, 86
Locke, John, 7, 12, 58,63,66,90
Luard, H. R., 19 o.
Luke, Saint, loB, 109. 110, 127, Igo
Luria, Rabbi haac BtH Solomon, 6U
Luther, f...fartiIl, 62
LyciaIls,97
Machiavelli, Niecol,), 97
I\lacphail, Ian, 46 n.
1\1aier, COUlIt 44. 46 n.
l\.faimonides, !\tloses, 27, 66, ti9, 87
1falachi, [26, 130, 13:J
l\Jarx, Karl, 4
Mary, 72
1\1alhematician.s, 23, +4
1fauht:\'\.', Saint, 56, 110, 1::;0,
McGuire, .J. E., 23 n.
lYfcLachlan, Herbert, I I 11., 28 n.,
11.,57,59
11

IViede,JO$tph, 90-2, 94, I Lj., J21
Cia vis I If
Mersenne, Father I\larin, 3:1
Messiah, 24, 61, lOB, 109
Metaphysicians, 45, 66, 67, 71
Metaphysks, 20, 21, 2'..!, 1-1, 57. 58,
65, 68, 69, 72
, 75
Micah, 126
Michael, Archangel, 63, l:.!U-I
Mill, john, 9+
11i1lenarianism, 7, 65. 6
7, 99
14
0 INDEX
Millennium, 99-100, 126, ISO, 136
Minerva, 73
Miracles, 66, 77
Monks, 13, 14, 65, 66, 76
Monotheism, 47, 6G, 70
Primitive, 42, 43, 47, 65, 69
More, Henry, 34, 41, 66, 68,87,
go, 91, 100, 102
Moses, 39, 46, 54, 66, 70, 84, 85, 86,
loB,132
Moses de Leon, 68
Munby, A. N. L., II fl.
Mystics, 66
Mythology, 23, 94, 103
Nadav, v
Nadler,joscf,4
Nahum, 126
Napier, John, 91
Nebuchadnezzar, 92
New Testament, 59, 65, 84, J I I, 116,
12
3
Newton, Humphrey, 6
Newton, Isaac (the Elder), 4, 17-18,
103
Newton, Sir Isaac:
Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms
Amended, 10, 92
'lrenicum', II, 54, 64
Obserl}alions upon Dallie.l and the
Apocalypse, 4, 10, 99
Optics, 9, 20, 40, 43, 74, 77, 83
Principia, 9. 14, 16, 19, 31, 40, 65,
83,98; 'General Scholium to the',
4,16,20,21,23,40 ,66-7,74,75,
101
Newtonianism, 49
Newtonians, 4, 38, 39
Noah, 128-g
Obadiah, 126
Oldenburg, Henry, 47, 49
Old Testament, 37, 84, 85, 86, 108,
113, 116, 123, 126
Origen, 96
Ovid,96-7
Pabin-Champlain de la Blancherie,
F. C. C., 53
Pansophia, PansophislS, 28
Papacy, 67, 95, 119
Papists, 5, 65, 67, 68, 74, 97
Paradise, 134
Paul, Saint, 134-
PeUct, Thomas, 14
Samuel, 68
Persia, 134-
Peter, II, t33
Pharisees, 65, 112, I 13, 124
Philosophers, 23, 43, 45, 65, 68, 70, 71
Philosophes, 75, 89
Physica sacra, :17, 39
Pielisls,8
Plato, 42, 68, 71, 76
Platonism, Platonists, 65, 68, 69, 71,
7
2
, n 75
Pocock, Edward, 26, 66, 86, 87
Pope, Alexander, 20
Prophecies, vi, 3, 46, 48, 5:1, 66, 67,
84. 86-7, passim, 97-8,
103, 107-23 passim, 129
Prophets, 7, 23, 24. 54, 60, 66, 67, 84,
87-8,93.101, IoH, 110,115, IJB,
12.1, 126, 130, 131, 132, 136
False, 41, 56, 65, 66, 87, lI9
Protestants, 6J, II I
Psalms, 33, 126
Puritanism,8, I 1,41,84
Ranke, Leopold \"on, 86
Rattansi, P. 11., 23 n.
Ray, john, 30, 34
Resurrection, 54, 60, 101, 102, 107,
113, 132, 134, 135. 136
Revelation, vi, II, 14,41,42, 45, 63,
66, 79, 86, 88-99 passim, 107,
I II passim
Ripa, Cesare, 94-
Romans, 55, 56, log
Roosevelt, President Franklin D.,
27 n.
Rosicrucians, 28, 45, 46
Royal Society of London, 30, 31, 32,
33, 39, 48, 54, 62
Saint-Simon, Claude-Henri de, 53
Salusbury, Thomas, 31
Samuel, 84, 86
SartOll, George, 27
Schoolmen, 68
Science, 4, 5, 9, 28, 29, 31, 37, 3D, 39,
40, f2-3, 47, 48, 49, 62, 6f, 75, 103;
.see also "Book of Nature'
INDEX
Scientists, 9, 23, 29, 30, 31, 36, 43, 4 .. h
46, 47, 4
H
, 89
Scripture, Scriptures, see DiLle
Selden, John, 29, 86
Sigonio, Carlo, 97
Simeon Bar YODai, 68
Simon, Richard, 29, 84
Simon 68, 76
Siddan, John,
Smith, Revd. Barnabas, 19
Smith, Revd. Benjamin, 10
Smith, Thomas, go n.
Society for the Restoration of Primi-
tive Christianity, 62
Socinianism, 5, 58
SolzhenitsYIl, Alexsandr I., 4
Spencer, John, 29, 66, 87
Spinoza, Baruch, 29, 39, 84, 86
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, 8.1
Spinozism, 35
Stewart, Agnes Grainger) 48 n.
Stirling, James, 7
Stubbs, Henry, 32
Stukeley, lJr. William, '7
Suphan, B., 38
Talmud, II, 19,36,41
Taylor, Brook, go
Temple of Solomon, 12, 92, 93 fl.
Theodosius, 56
Theologians, 4, 30, 32 , 36, 83
Theology, 5, 20, 23, 27, 30,33,44,53,
57,65, 7u, 71, 92, 101, 103
I, J 32
Thomas, Saint, 60
Thotli,45
Timothy, 1,12,54,57
Timothy, II, '32
Toland, John, 56
Transubslantiation, 63, 7U
Trinitarianism, 4:2, 57, 59, 61, 6:1,7,
72
T:tl!Lze> J J oallllcs, go
Unitarianism, 5, 58, 61, IOU
Van HdmoIll, Francis 68
Bernhard, Us
Vaughau, Thomas, 45, 46 II.
Vicu, Giambattista,
Villamil, Richard dc, 8:
1
11.
Voltaire, Franc;ois Arouet de,
5,88
Vossius, Dionysius, 29, 86
Vossius, Gcral"d John, 86
'Valdenses, III
\Vallis, John, 30
\Vard, St:th, 30
Weber, Max, q
'Vestfall, Richard S., v, 1511., 63 Il.
\VhistOll, \ViUiam, 7, 9, 10 II" J6,
17 n., 3', 37, 38, 58, 0", ti3, 74 11.,
77 n., go, 91
Whiteside, D. T., v
\Vilkins, John, 30, 3 [, --tB
\Villughby, i"rallcis, :H
\Vaodward, John, ::18
\\rorld to Come, 1:2&-7, ijO, IJ6
,,\'onhington, .1., 9l
'Vyciif: John, \'i
Yahuda, A. S., 10, 27 I\,
Zechariah, 126
Zephaniah, 12G
ZetzllcC, Lazarus, 44
<ohar, 68

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