Abstract
From the middle to the end of the 17th century a new, and short-lived, defense of the Christian religion based on exploring the foundations of pagan theology, ancient and modern, was developed. This defense seems to resemble what is considered Newton’s most original contribution to theology,1 though Newton, on the one hand, and Vossius and Cudworth, on the other, draw exactly opposite conclusions about the true character of Christianity from it. To appreciate their contributions in this regard, it is best, I think, to try to view these authors within the contexts of the eddying sceptical currents, the rapidly developing prophetic and Millenarian argumentation, and the budding development of comparative religion in their time.
Cf. Richard S. Westfall, “Isaac Newton’s Theologiae Gentilis Origines Philosophicae,” in The Secular Mind: Essays Presented to Franklin L. Baumer, ed. Warren Wagar (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982), pp. 15–34.
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Notes
Cf. Richard S. Westfall, “Isaac Newton’s Theologiae Gentilis Origines Philosophicae,” in The Secular Mind: Essays Presented to Franklin L. Baumer, ed. Warren Wagar (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982), pp. 15–34.
Edward Brerewood, Enquiries Touching the Diversity of Languages, and Religions through the chiefe parts of the world (London, 1614.)
Alexander Ross, A View of the Religions of the World, 4th ed. (London, 1664.)
See Bernard Picart’s uillustrations of the religions of the world in Cérémonies et coutoumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde… représentées par des figures dessinées de la main de Bernard Picart (et autres): avec une explication historique, & quelques dissertations curieuses, ed. Jean F. Bernard, et al., 8 tom. (Amsterdam, 1723–43.)
See Richard H. Popkin, Isaac La Peyrère (1596–1676). His Life, Work and Influence (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987), esp. chaps. III-VI
Paolo Rossi, The Dark Abyss of Time. The History of the Earth and the History of Nations from Hooke to Vico, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.)
Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan (London, 1651), offered such a theory about all religions except Judaism and Christianity.
This view had also been stated by Gabriel Naudé in his Considérations politiques sur les coups d’estat (Rome, 1639), probably drawing it from the discussion in Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio. The blanket thesis that all religions are the result of political activities appears in the notorious Les Trois Imposteurs ou l’Esprit de M. Spinoza at the end of the 17th century.
The study of the influence of Maimonides in Latin in the 17th century is just beginning. An inventory of Latin editions of Maimonides is being prepared by Dr. Jacob I. Dienstag. He has already published “Christian Translators of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah into Latin: A Bio-Bibliographical Survey,” in Salo Wittmayer Baron Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday, 3 vols. (Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1974; Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1974), 1:287–309.
Aaron Katchen deals with some of the Latin publications of Maimonides in his Christian Hebraists and Dutch Rabbis (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984.)
On the history of this edition, see C. S. M. Rademacher, The Life and Work of Gerardus Joannes Vossius (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1981.) See also Katchen, Christian Hebraists and Dutch Rabbis, pp. 287–90.
Cf. the listings in the catalogue of the British Library. Katchen, Christian Hebraists and Dutch Rabbis, pp. 287–90, offers evidence that the work was started much earlier, and independently of Dionysius Vossius’ edition of De Idolatria. It obviously builds on previous work by Seiden, Marsham, and others.
Gibbon’s Autobiography, ed. M. M. Reese (London: Routledge, 1970), pp. 64–5.
On his life, see Rademacher, Life and Work of G. J. Vossius, and Hugh Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans. Seventeenth Century Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 145–6 and passim.
This is the message of Liber I of Vossius’ De theologia gentili et physiologia Christiana; sive de origine ac progressu idololatriae ad veterum gesta, ac rerum naturam, reductae; deque naturae mirandis, quibus homo adducitur ad Deum (Amsterdami, 1641.)
Vossius, De theologia gentili, Liber I.
Vossius, De theologia gentili. Lib. I, cap. xxx, pp. 224–34.
Vossius, De theologia gentili., Liber II.
Cf. Rossi, The Dark Abyss of Time, pp. 153–6, and C. S. M. Rademacher, Gerardus Joannes Vossius (Zwolle: Wej Tjeenk Willink, 1967), pp. 249–50.
Rossi, The Dark Abyss of Time, pp. 153–6, and Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans, pp. 97ff and 192–5.
See discussions of both Grotius and Vossius in Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans.
Rademacher, Life and Work of G. J. Vossius, pp. 304–6, and Vossius, De theologia gentili, esp. Liber II. What Vossius may have had in mind were what are called the “NOACHIDE principles.”
See Richard H. Popkin, “Polytheism, Deism, and Newton,” infra.
Rademacher, Life and Work of G. J. Vossius, p. 309.
Newton’s own copy, which is preserved at Trinity College, Cambridge, has markings on over one hundred and twenty pages of Vol. 1. These markings consist of folds in the pages, sometimes as many as two or three per page.
Newton’s manuscript text consists of a draft of part of his study, “The Origins of Gentile Theology,” plus lots of notes and alternative drafts of particular passages. To ascertain both Newton’s originality and the degree of his reliance upon other sources, a detailed comparison of his manuscript text (and his marked passages in his copy of Vossius) to what is in Vossius, Bochart, and Marsham is needed. At this point, one can say that Newton uses Vossius’ material extensively. Whether Newton comes to significantly different conclusions, as Westfall claims, needs to be examined in terms of the actual texts in Vossius.
See Katchen, Christian Hebraists and Dutch Rabbis, pp. 287–90, for a possible date of composition.
Henry More, An Antidote against Atheism, Or, An Appeal to the Natural Faculties of the Minde of Man whether there be not a God, 2nd ed. (London, 1655.) A study by Alan Gabbey on More’s critique of Descartes will appear in the forthcoming volume of papers, edited by Alan Gabbey and Sarah Hutton, issuing from the conference in commemoration of the 300th anniversary of More’s death held in Cambridge in 1987.
See Richard H. Popkin, “The ‘Incurable Scepticism’ of Henry More, Blaise Pascal and S0ren Kierkegaard,” in Scepticism from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. Richard H. Popkin and Charles B. Schmitt, Wolfenbütteler Forschungen, Bd. 35 (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1987), pp. 169–74.
Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678), p. 638.
Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678),pp. 638–9.
Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678), p. 639.
Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678), Preface, p. ***.
Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678), p. 642.
Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678), p. 643.
Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678), p. 645.
Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678), pp. 645–6.
Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678), p. 647. Is this, perhaps, the source of Hume’s overworked maxim, that “whatever is conceivable is possible,” which plays such an important role in Parts I and II of A Treatise of Human Nature? A detailed comparison is needed to see if Cudworth is an as yet unrecognized source of Hume’s ideas.
Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the Universe, p. 647.
Ibid., p. 192.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 192–3.
See Vossius, De theologia gentili, Lib. I, cap. xxx, and Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the Universe, chap. IV.
Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the Universe, p. 253.
Ibid., p. 255.
Ibid., p. 256.
Ibid., p. 526.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 527.
Ibid.
Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the Universe, pp. 546–8. This is the “prisca theologia” tradition discussed by D. P. Walker, The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (London: Duckworth, 1972.)
Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the Universe, p. 547.
Ibid., p. 547–8.
Ibid., pp. 546–8.
Ibid., p. 620.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 655.
Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), esp. chaps, iii-v
see also Popkin, “Introduction,” in Pierre Bayle: Historical and Critical Dictionary Selections (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965)
Popkin, “Introduction,” in Pascal Selections (New York: Macmillan, 1988)
Popkin, articles s.v. “Bayle, Pierre,” “Fideism,” and “Pascal, Blaise,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 8 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1967.)
Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the Universe, pp. 692–6.
On all of this, see Richard H. Popkin, “Spinoza and Les Trois Imposteurs,” inProceedings of the International Spinoza Symposium, Chicago, 1987, ed. E. M. Curley (forthcoming from E. J. Brill)
Popkin, “Could Spinoza have known Bodin’s Colloquium Heptaplomares?” in Philosophia 17, Nos. 3–4 (Dec, 1986), pp. 307–14.
Some of the literature suggests that it is questionable whether Cudworth had read Spinoza. However, his book, the Tractatus-Theologico-Politicus, is cited in the True Intellectual System of the Universe, p. 658.
Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the Universe, p. 691.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 692.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 692–3.
Ibid., pp. 693–4.
Ibid., p. 694.
Ibid., p. 695. The text here looks very much like parts of Hume’s discussions of mathematics and the origin of ideas in Part II of Hume’s Treatise.
Ibid., p. 695.
Ibid., p. 696.
Ibid., p. 697.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 711.
Ibid., p. 712. On the similarity of Cudworth’s views on prophecy to those of Newton see Richard H. Popkin, “Polytheism, Deism, and Newton,” infra.
Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the Universe, p. 714.
Ibid., p.116.
Ibid., pp. 716–7. The earliest translation of Pascal, which postdates Cudworth’s book, omits this pensée.
Ibid., p. 117.
Ibid., p. 718.
Ibid., p. 719.
Ibid., p. 721.
Ibid., p. 899.
This manuscript is reproduced in the Appendix with the kind permission of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.
A recent study of these notes by Newton on Cud worth by Danton B. Sailor appears in “Newton’s Debt to Cudworth,” Journal of the History of Ideas 49, No. 3 (July-Sept., 1988), pp. 511–8.
Westfall, “Isaac Newton’s Theologiae Gentilis,” pp. 24–31.
The Catalogue of the Newton Papers Sold by Order of the Viscount Lymington to whom they have descended from Catherine Conduitt, Viscountess Lymington, Great-niece of Sir Isaac Newton. Which will be Sold by Auction by Messr. Sotheby and Co…. (London, 1936) states (p. 73) that there are “Drafts of various Portions, some in several states, in all about 30,000 words on 120 pp., unnumbered and confused… and many sheets imperfect” of Newton’s manuscript entitled Paradoxical Questions concerning y e morals & actions of Athanasius & his followers. The three main versions of this manuscript are located in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, Los Angeles; King’s College Library, Cambridge (Keynes MS 10); and the Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem (Yahuda MS 14.) A fourth, long and unpublished, manuscript, entitled The Mystery of the Grand Iniquity of the Church, is located in the Martin Bodmer Library, Geneva, and develops the theory of the corruption of Christianity by the Trinitarians.
See James E. Force, William Whiston. Honest Newtonian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.)
See David Berman, A History of Atheism in Britain. From Hobbes to Russell (London: Croom Helm, 1988), chap. 1.
Cf. [George B. Cheever], Cudworth Defended: and Unitarianism Delineated, by a lover of Cudworth and Truth, in the Salem Gazette, 1833.
See Daniel Walker Howe, “The Cambridge Platonists of Old England and the Cambridge Platonists of New England,” Church History 57 (1988), pp. 470–85, in which he shows how indebted the New England Unitarians were to the Cambridge Platonists.
Johann Jacob Brucker, Historia Critica Philosophiae, a Mundi Incunabulis ad nostram usque aetatem deducta, 6 vols. (Lipsiae, 1742–67), 4:437–8, a section entitled “The Restoration of Pythagorean Platonic Cabbalistic Philosophy.” Constance Blackwell is writing a translation and exegesis of this section, and of other important sections, in Brucker’s work.
Hume’s Natural History of Religion appears to be a satire on Cudworth’s position. After I wrote this, I was sent a dissertation done at Columbia by Charles S. Karsh entitled The Development of Hume’s Philosophy which makes this point in some detail.
Once again, a full scale study of Hume’s debt to Cudworth needs to be undertaken. As of now, Cudworth hardly appears in the Hume literature as a possible source for Hume.
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Popkin, R.H. (1990). The Crisis of Polytheism and the Answers of Vossius, Cudworth, and Newton. In: Essays on the Context, Nature, and Influence of Isaac Newton’s Theology. Archives Internationales D’Histoire Des Idées/International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 129. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1944-0_2
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