Abstract
“Deism,” from the Latin deus, denotes belief in some form of deity. As with “latitudinarianism,” the term “deism” resolutely resists definitions both now and when it is first used. In England in the 17th and 18th centuries, the term applies to a range of people from un-Christian theists to anti-Christian theists. Paradoxically, many, if not all, 18th-century crusaders on behalf of the Christian revelation simply equate it with atheism despite its etymology.
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Notes
Joseph Trapp, Thoughts upon the Four last Things; Death; Judgement; Heaven; Hell. A Poem in Four Parts. Part I. Death. (London, 1734), p. 11. In Part IV of the Poem, entitled Hell (London, 1735), Trapp again makes the straightforward identity (p. 5) between atheism and deism: Where is his [i.e., God’s] Greatness, Majesty, Awe; If Man be with Impunity his Foe? Under Pretext, in impious vain Dispute, Of honouring his ONE mild ATTRIBUTE; Thou mak’st Him despicable, a God of small, Or no Account; that is, no God at all. In thy Mock-Robe the Deity thus dress’d, Appears a perfect Ridicule, and Jest: The DEIST quite unmask’d; the ATHEIST stands confess’d. In his note glossing this text, Trapp writes that this example — denying God’s absolute power to punish sinners — “is one instance among Others; by which it appears that DEISM (as it is Now call’d) resolves at last into downright ATHEISM. Such a God as These Men have painted out to us is a most contemptible, ridiculous Being; that is no God.”
The unknown deistic author responsible for republishing Charles Blount’s A Summary Account of the Deists Religion: In a Letter to that Excellent Physician, The late Dr. Thomas Sydenham (London, 1745) prefaces his edition with the observation that the “disingenuous Conduct of those, who endeavour’d to persuade the unthinking Part of Mankind that DEISM and ATHEISM are the same Things [here the anonymous editor/author quotes the above lines from Trapp’s poem], induc’d me to republish this Summary Account of the Deists Religion, to undeceive such who had been lead into mistaken Notions concerning that Sect, many of which are the very best of Men, yet have the Misfortune to be branded with Atheism.”
Peter Annet, Deism fairly stated, And Fully Vindicated From the Gross Imputations and Groundless Calumnies of Modern Unbelievers. Wherein Some of the Principal Reasons contained in Dr. Benson’s Answer to “Christianity not founded on Argument” are fully considered, and proved to be far from conclusive. In a Letter to a Friend (London, 1746), p. 4.
Francis Gastrell, The Certainty and Necessity of Religion in General: Or, The First Grounds & Principles of humane Duty Established; In Eight Sermons Preach’d at S. “Martins in the Fields” at the Lecture for the Year 1697, founded by the Honourable Robert Boyle, Esquire (London, 1697), The Preface, pp. vi-vii.
Charles Gildon, in The Deists Manual (London, 1705), argues that “Hobbists” constitute one of the few groups, “the very Foundation of whose System is Atheism in speculation.” But besides the Hobbists, according to Gildon, “there are a very numerous Party of Practical Atheists, who… are really Atheists in their Opinions, as well as Practice. For if they really believ’d in God and thought justly and truly of him, they cou’d not Act, as they do.” As Gildon’s title proclaims, one of this “numerous” group of practical atheists is Blount.
See Charles Gildon, The Deists Manual: Or, A Rational Enquiry into the Christian Religion, With some Considerations on Mr. “Hobbs,” “Spinoza,” the “Oracles of Reason,” “Second Thoughts,” &c. (London, 1705), the Epistle Dedicatory.
Samuel Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation. Being Eight Sermons Preach’d at the Cathedral-Church of St. Paul, in the Year 1705, at the Lecture Founded by the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq. (London, 1706), p. 19. For Clarke, this first sort of deism “must unavoidably terminate in absolute Atheism” for reasons precisely parallel to those he later outlines to Leibniz. Clarke writes that while it may be possible, through “very nice and abstract reasoning,” to hypothesize about a creator god who set the world machine up so precisely in the beginning that “worthy Effects” might have successively been produced “without the immediate interposition of his Almighty Power upon every particular occasion,” it still is difficult to reconcile our particular world, with its particular quantities of matter and motion and its particular ordering of causal laws, especially gravity, with such an absconding deity. Clarke writes that “to fancy that God originally created a certain Quantity of Matter and Motion, and left them to frame a world at adventures, without any determinate and particular view, design or direction… must of necessity recur to downright Atheism” (Ibid., pp. 19–20.)
Samuel Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation. Being Eight Sermons Preach’d at the Cathedral-Church of St. Paul, in the Year 1705, at the Lecture Founded by the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq. (London, 1706), pp. 26–7. Once again, this kind of deism, Clarke argues, must terminate in “downright Atheism” because the “Practice and Behaviour” of such deists “is exactly agreeable to that of the most openly professed Atheists” (Ibid., p. 28.)
Samuel Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation. Being Eight Sermons Preach’d at the Cathedral-Church of St. Paul, in the Year 1705, at the Lecture Founded by the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq. (London, 1706), p. 32. Clarke once again argues that deists in the third group “must finally recur to absolute Atheism.” This is because “the Moral Attributes of God, however they be acknowledge in words, yet in reality they are by these Men entirely taken away” just because God’s Justice and God’s Goodness are so wholly “Transcendental” to human justice and human goodness that we “mean nothing when we say that God is necessarily Just and Good.” (Ibid., pp. 33–4.)
Samuel Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation. Being Eight Sermons Preach’d at the Cathedral-Church of St. Paul, in the Year 1705, at the Lecture Founded by the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq. (London, 1706), pp. 34–6.
Samuel Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation. Being Eight Sermons Preach’d at the Cathedral-Church of St. Paul, in the Year 1705, at the Lecture Founded by the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq. (London, 1706), p. 37.
Samuel Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation. Being Eight Sermons Preach’d at the Cathedral-Church of St. Paul, in the Year 1705, at the Lecture Founded by the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq. (London, 1706)
Samuel Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation. Being Eight Sermons Preach’d at the Cathedral-Church of St. Paul, in the Year 1705, at the Lecture Founded by the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq. (London, 1706)
Samuel Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation. Being Eight Sermons Preach’d at the Cathedral-Church of St. Paul, in the Year 1705, at the Lecture Founded by the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq. (London, 1706), p.4l.
Samuel Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation. Being Eight Sermons Preach’d at the Cathedral-Church of St. Paul, in the Year 1705, at the Lecture Founded by the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq. (London, 1706), p. 39.
Samuel Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation. Being Eight Sermons Preach’d at the Cathedral-Church of St. Paul, in the Year 1705, at the Lecture Founded by the Honourable Robert Boyle Esq. (London, 1706), pp. 41–2.
William Whiston, Astronomical Principles of Religion, Natural and Reveal’d (London, 1717), pp. 242–3.
John Leland, A View of the Principal Deistical Writers that Have Appeared in England in the Last and present Century; With Observations upon them, and Some Account of the Answers that have been published against them. In several Letters to a Friend. 3rd ed., improved. 2 vols. (London, 1757), I:ii.
William Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth, From its Original, to the Consummation of all Things. Wherein The Creation of the World in Six Days, The Universal Deluge, And the General Conflagration, As laid down in the Holy Scriptures, Are shewn to be perfectly agreeable to Reason and Philosophy. With a large Introductory Discourse concerning the Genuine Nature, Stile, and Extent of the “Mosaick” History of the Creation (London 1696), from the separately paginated “Introductory Discourse,” pp. 72–3.
Ibid., p. 64.
Ibid., p. 3.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 2.
Whiston, Astronomical Principles of Religion, Natural and Reveal’d (London, 1717), p. 133.
Ibid., p. 65.
Ibid., p. 64.
Ibid., p. 134.
Ibid., Whiston, “Introductory Discourse,” p. 64.
Ibid., pp. 74–5.
Ibid., p. 95.
Whiston, Astronomical Principles, p. 289.
Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, pp. 39–40.
Clarke cites Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations (Lib. III.i.2-ii-3.) with regard to the “present corrupt State of Humane Nature,” Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, pp. 196–7. A little further on, just before a section entitled “A Divine Revelation absolutely necessary for the recovery of Mankind,” Clarke returns to the theme of the contrast between man’s ability to obtain knowledge now compared to his ability before the Fall: Indeed in the original uncorrupted State of Humane Nature, before the Mind of Man was depraved with prejudiced Opinions, corrupt Affections, and vitious Inclinations, Customs and Habits; right Reason may justly be supposed to have been a sufficient Guide, and a Principle powerful enough to preserve Men in the constant Practice of their Duty: But in the present Circumstances and Condition of Mankind, the wisest and most sensible of the Philosophers themselves have not been backward to complain, that they found the Understandings of Men so dark and cloudy, their Wills so biassed and inclined to evil, their Passions so outrageous and rebelling against Reason; that they lookt upon the Rules and Laws of right Reason, as very hardly practicable, and which they had very little Hopes of ever being able to persuade the world to submit: In a Word, they confessed that Humane nature was strangely corrupted; and acknowledged this Corruption to be a Disease whereof they knew not the true Cause, and could not find out a sufficient Remedy. So that the great Duties of Religion, were laid down by them as Matters of speculation and dispute, rather than as the Rules of Action; and not so much urged upon the Hearts and Lives of Men, as proposed to the Admiration of those, who thought them scarce possible to be effectually practised by the generality of Men. To remedy all these Disorders, and conquer all these Corruptions; there was plainly wanting some extraordinary and supernatural Assistance’, which was above the reach of bare Reason and Philosophy to procure, and yet without which the Philosophers themselves were sensible there could never be any truly Great and Good Men. (Ibid., pp. 239–40.) For both Whiston and Clarke, divine revelation aids enfeebled human rational understanding to understand God when properly read, i.e., read in the light of all the external and comparative guides available to modern scholarship. Matthew Tindal quotes long portions of the above text from Clarke’s A Discourse the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion (relying upon the fourth edition, corrected, of 1716), and points out that such a view of human nature supposes that, for nearly 4,000 years, right up to Tindal’s day, God has left mankind destitute of sufficient Means to do their duty, and to preserve themselves from sinking into a corrupted and degenerate State; and that it was impossible for them when thus sunk, to recover themselves; and yet that God (their Duty being the same after, as before the Fall,) expected Impossibilities from them; viz. either to preserve themselves from thus falling; or if fallen, to recover themselves. But if they had not Power to do This, and it was not their Fault, that they at first were in, and after remain’d in what he calls a State of universal Degeneracy and Corruption; this must then be the State God design’d they shou’d be in: And it wou’d seem not only to be in vain, but a Crime in them, to endeavour to change that State, in which, God, of his infinite Wisdom and Goodness, thought fit to place them…. The Dr’s Scheme outdoes That of the most rigid Predestinarians; for That at all Times saves the Elect: But here are no Elect; but all, for many Ages, are inextricably involv’d in a most deprav’d, corrupted, and impious State.
[Matthew Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation: Or, The Gospel, A Republication of the Religion of Nature (London, 1730), octavo ed., pp. 375–7.]
Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, pp. 306ff. Cf. Whiston, Astronomical Principles, Part VII (“Important Principles of Divine Revelation confirm’d from the foregoing Principles, and Conjectures”) and, especially, Part VIII (“Such Inferences shewn to be the common Voice of Nature and Reason, from the Testimonies of the most considerable Persons in all Ages.”)
Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, pp. 295–6n.
E. Chambers, Cyclopaedia: Or, An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, 2 vols. (London, 1738), Vol. 2., s.v. “IDOLATRY.”
George Hickes to Roger North, May 23, 1713. B.M. Add. MSS 32551, f. 34. Cited in Larry Stewart, “Samuel Clarke, Newtonianism, and the Factions of Post-Revolutionary England,” Journal of the History of Ideas 42, No. 1 (Jan.-March, 1981), p. 65.
For Blake, Newton is the supreme spokesman of pernicious materialism based upon the evidence of the “Five Senses.” Thus, in “Europa, a Prophecy,” Blake writes A Mighty Spirit leap’d from the land of Albion Nam’d Newton: he seized the Trump & blow’d the enormous blast! Yellow as leaves of Autumn, the myriads of Angelic hosts Fell thro’ the wintry skies seeking their graves, Rattling their hollow bones in howling lamentation. [From The Complete Writings of William Blake. With All the Variant Readings, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (London: The Nonesuch Press, 1957), p. 243.] Blake concludes the second chapter of his “Jerusalem” with a section entitled “To the Deists.” Newton is not specifically mentioned here, although Voltaire, Rousseau, Gibbon, and Hume are. Blake describes the nature of deistic religion: Deism, is the Worship of the God of this World by the means of what you call natural Religion and Natural Philosophy, and of Natural Morality or Self-Righteousness, the Selfish Virtues of the Natural Heart. This was the Religion of the Pharisees who murder’d Jesus. Deism is the same & ends in the same. (See The Complete Writings, p. 682.) Accordingly, I think Paul J. Korshin is correct when he writes that, for Blake, “The Deists of history — Locke, Newton, Voltaire, Rousseau, Gibbon, and their ilk — are the Pharisees and hypocrites responsible for human suffering.” See Paul J. Korshin, Typologies in England, 1650–1820 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 351.
Gerald R. Cragg, Reason and Authority in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1964), p. 13.
John Redwood, Reason, Ridicule and Religion. The Age of Enlightenment in England. 1660–1750 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), p. 169.
Richard S. Westfall, “Isaac Newton’s Theologiae Gentilis Origines Philosophicae,” in The Secular Mind: Essays Presented to Franklin L. Baumer, ed. Warren Wagar (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1982), p. 15.
Richard S. Westfall, “Isaac Newton’s Theologiae Gentilis Origines Philosophicae,” in The Secular Mind: Essays Presented to Franklin L. Baumer, ed. Warren Wagar (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1982), p. 31. In a brief descriptive catalog of books prepared recently in conjunction with a library exhibition, Westfall makes an exceptionally brief and clear statement of his argument that Newton is a deist. Describing the context and nature of Matthew Tindal’s Christianity as old as the Creation, Westfall writes that: Matthew Tindal was another of the prominent Deists. The title of his book suggests its central argument, that true Christianity consists solely of the natural religion known to all men by their natural reason from the beginning of the world, that the Gospels only republished the religion of nature, and that all the rest of Christianity during the previous fifteen hundred years, was a packet of superstitions foisted onto believers by priests serving their own self interest. Newton’s published works contain the argument from design for the existence of God, an argument so similar to a thousand other arguments common in his age that commentators have assumed his orthodoxy. His extensive theological papers, however, which he kept very private during his own life and which have become available to scholars only recently, indicate a much more religiously troubled man, who believed that the ground was shifting under the traditional structure of Christianity and that it was necessary to rethink some of its teachings. He rejected the doctrine of the Trinity as irrational. He pursued the themes of natural religion, and in one manuscript treatise composed shortly before the Principia and thus long before Tindal even thought of his book, he adopted a position on what he called the one true religion that was very close to the position Tindal expressed nearly half a century later. Newton manifestly considered this treatise important; he continued to draw upon it for the rest of his life. [See Newton and the Scientific Revolution. An exhibition prepared and described by Richard S. Westfall (Bloomington: The Lilly Library, Indiana University, 1987), pp. 66–7.]
Westfall, “Newton’s Theologiae Gentilis” p. 31.
Ibid., pp. 18–9. Westfall here cites the basic manuscript which alone is entitled Theologiae Gentilis Origines Philosophicae, which is now known as Yahuda MS 16, and which is a sizeable and nearly complete Latin treatise in five chapters. Westfall rightly suggests that this manuscript is the basis for Newton’s treatise entitled “The System of the World.” Newton wrote “The System of the World” sometime before the fall of 1685. An English translation was first published in 1728. The title of this work is the same as the title of Bk. III of the Principia. This separate treatise was intended to be the second book in Newton’s original conception of the Principia in two books. When he decided in the summer of 1685 to expand the Principia to three books he also decided to change the nature of Book III and to shift it from the open accessibility of his original “System of the World” to a treatise for mathematicians. He therefore wrote an entirely new Bk. III at this time and entitled it “System of the World (In Mathematical Treatment.)” His original treatise was copied in part by his amanuensis, Humphrey Newton, and deposited in the University Library. Originally composed by Newton in Latin, this work was published in English in 1728 by an anonymous translator. This translation was followed into print by the original Latin text which was published by John Conduitt who changed the title from Newton’s original, De motu corporum (Liber secundus), which no longer made any sense, to De mundi systemate. A modernized English translation was published by Florian Cajori along with his updated edition of the Principia. Newton is most clear in this statement of his view about the nature of ancient rational theology: It was the ancient opinion of not a few, in the earliest ages of philosophy, that the fixed stars stood immovable in the highest parts of the world; that under the fixed stars the planets were carried about the sun; that the earth, as one of the planets, described an annual course about the sun, while by diurnal motion it was in the meantime revolved about its own axis; and that the sun, as the common fire which served to warm the whole, was fixed in the centre of the universe. This was the philosophy taught of old by Philolaus, Aristarchus of Samos, Plato in his riper years, and the whole sect of the Pythagoreans; and this was the judgment of Anaximander, more ancient still; and of that wise king of the Romans, Numa Pompilius, who as a symbol of the figure of the world with the sun in the centre, erected a round temple in honor of Vesta, and ordained perpetual fire to be kept in the middle of it. The Egyptians were early observers of the heavens; and from them, probably, this philosophy was spread abroad among other nations; for from them it was, and the nations about them, that the Greeks, a people more addicted to the study of philology than of Nature, derived their first, as well as soundest, notions of philosophy; and in the Vestal ceremonies we may yet trace the ancient spirit of the Egyptians; for it was their mysteries, that is, their philosophy of things above the common way of thinking, under the veil of religious rites and hieroglyphic symbols. [See Sir Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and his System of the World, Translated into English by Andrew Motte in 1729, the translations revised by Florian Cajori, 2 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1934), 2:549.] Just as Newton’s “Theologiae Gentilis” serves as the Ur-source for the above text, it also serves as the spring for what are now known as the “classical scholia.” These scholia were composed by Newton in the 1690’s when he was considering a second edition of the Principia in which these “classical scholia” would be additions to Propositions IV through IX of Book III. This contemplated second edition was never published. In these “classical scholia,” Newton tries to show that important elements of his natural philosophy — atomism, gravity, the inverse square law, and the cause of gravity by a “certain infinite spirit,” an “anima mundi,” which “pervades all space into infinity, and contains and vivifies the entire world” — were known by ancient philosophers. On these scholia, see the original groundbreaking article by J. E. McGuire and P. M. Rattansi, “Newton and the ‘Pipes of Pan,” in Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 21, No. 2 (Dec, 1966), pp. 108–43.
McGuire and Rattansi’s study must now be examined in the light of Paolo Casini’s more recent essay entitled “Newton: The Classical Scholia,” History of Science, 22 (1984), pp. 1–57.
About 300 B.C., Euhemerus of Messene wrote The Sacred History in which he theorized that the traditional deities were merely earthly rulers deified and worshipped by their subjects. See Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods. The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art, trans. Barbara F. Sessions (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1953), pp. 11–36.
Newton, The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended (London, 1728), pp. 225–6. Newton’s basic project in this massive work is to apply a version of what Whiston calls the “third way” to the chronological data of scripture and “to make Chronology suit with the course of Nature, with Astronomy, with Sacred History, with Herodotus… and with itself.” ]
Cited in Derek Gjertsen, The Newton Handbook (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986), p. 565.
Westfall, “Newton’s Theologiae Gentilis,” pp. 19–21.
Ibid., p. 20.
Ibid., pp. 23–4. Cf. Frank E. Manuel, Isaac Newton, Historian (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 104
Manuel, The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1959), pp. 103–25.
Westfall, “Newton’s Theologiae Gentilis” pp. 18 and 22. In a recent article, Danton B. Sailor shows how Newton’s keen interest in both the rational religious knowledge of the gentiles of antiquity and its progressively idolatrous subversion through ancestor, hero, and kingly deification is influenced by Newton’s reading of his long-time Cambridge colleague, Ralph Cudworth. Sailor has carefully analyzed Newton’s notes on Cudworth’s True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678) which are contained in four pages of folio holograph manuscript by Newton entitled “Out of Cudworth” and in the possession of the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in Los Angeles. (This manuscript is included as an Appendix in this volume.) Newton is interested in Cudworth, therefore, in precisely the same way that he is interested in the works of Bochart, Marsham, and Vossius.
See Danton B. Sailor, “Newton’s Debt to Cudworth,” Journal of the History of Ideas 49, No. (July-Sept., 1988), pp. 511–8.
Westfall, “Newton’s Theologiae Gentilis” p. 24.
Whiston, “Introductory Discourse,” p. 95.
Westfall, “Newton’s Theologiae Gentilis” p. 29.
Ibid., pp. 22–3.
Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation, p. 163.
Ibid., p. 184.
Ibid.
These Pauline texts are quoted in Edward Synge’s work of practical devotion entitled A Gentleman’s Religion: With the Grounds and Reasons of It. In Which the Truth of Christianity in general is vindicated; Its Simplicity asserted; And some Introductory Rules, for the discovering of its particular Doctrines and Precepts are proposed (London, 1693), pp. 132–3. Synge, p. 130, cites St. Paul in support of his 43rd Rule — “That the knowledge of God Almighty, his Attributes, and his Law, may, in part, be gathered from the Light of Nature (antecedent to any Revelation) is evident from Reason, and acknowledged by St. Paul.” Synge, the son of a bishop, the nephew of a bishop, himself an archbishop and father of two bishops, is never accused of deism.
Newton, Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John. In Two Parts (London, 1733), p. 6.
Burnet to Newton, January 13, 1680/1, in The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, Vol. 2, 1676–1687, ed. H. W. Turnbull (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), p. 324.
Ibid., p. 332.
Ibid., p. 331.
Ibid., p. 334.
Ibid., p. 332.
Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation, p. 247. Here Tindal writes that: “Among the numerous Answerers of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion, Mr. Chandler is deservedly reckon’d to stand in the foremost Rank; and this judicious Divine says, that “Natural Religion is the only Foundation, upon which Revelation can be supported and which must be understood, before any Man is capable of judging either of the Nature and Evidence of Chris tianity.” Tindal here gives the following source for this text: “Chandler’s Dedic. to Serm. preach’d in the Old Jury, p. 8.” Tindal is referring here to the “judicious Divine,” Edward Chandler, Bishop of Litchfield and Coventry.
Whiston, “Introductory Discourse,” p. 95.
Newton, Yahuda MS 41. ff. 9–10. Cited by Westfall, “Newton’s Theologiae Gentilis” p. 25.
Ibid.
Newton is adamantly cautious in his treatment of prophecies. One must never attempt to predict exactly how, where, and when God will fulfill his prophetic promises. Such an ability exceeds our rational power. God gives us such prophecies not to gratify human curiosity but so “that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the Event, and his own Providence, not the Interpreters be manifested thereby to the world.” (Newton, Observations upon the Prophecies, p. 251.) In contrast to Newton’s explicit voluntarism, Tindal, again, argues that, because of the rational nature of man, God cannot “reveal” to him any truth save by “shewing its Agreement with those self-evident Notions, which are the Facts by which we are to judge of everything, even the Being of a God and natural religion” (Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation, p. 184.) Tindal here echoes Ralph Cudworth who adopts this position to argue against the voluntarism of Des cartes. In Cudworth’s view, God is unable to do anything repugnant to human reason and urges that “Conception and knowledge are hereby made to be the Measure of all Power, even Omnipotence” [Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678), p. 719.] Newton, by contrast to both Cudworth and Tindal, adopts a voluntarism akin to that of Descartes and em phasizes God’s omnipotence over the constraints of human rationality. Similarly, Whiston writes that “We depend on God Almighty as to what we know, as well as what we have, or what we are.” (Whiston, “Introductory Discourse,” p. 77.) See Richard H. Popkin’s commentary on this passage in Cudworth in “The Crisis of Polytheism and the Answers of Vossius, Cudworth, and Newton,” supra. Of course, in his agreement with Tindal on the point of the constraints on God’s power by the limits of human understanding, Cudworth sounds more like a deist than Newton who adamantly maintains the totality of God’s power and dominion over creation.
The absolute nature of God’s dominion over creation makes human knowledge of nature and nature’s laws necessarily contingent upon God’s power and will to change the ordinary course of events. Thus, Newton writes in Rule IV that: “In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypothesis that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exception” See Sir Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 2:400. See also James E. Force, “Newton’s God of Dominion,” infra, under the section headed “Newton’s God of Dominion, Matter, and Knowledge.”
Clarke, A Discourse Concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, pp. 239–40. In his “Newton’s Theologiae Gentilis,” p. 30, Westfall cites this text as evidence that Newton’s “deism” goes well beyond the slightly more orthodox theology of his disciple, Samuel Clarke. For the reasons which I give, I take this text to represent Newton’s own position and to be the reason why he utilizes the evidence of scripture in contrast to a deist such as Tindal whose chief desire is simply to proscribe the use of scripture totally. Newton shares with Clarke an acute awareness of the cyclical rise and fall of purely rational religions. They also share the same view about the nature of Jesus Christ. See Note 71.
Westfall, “Newton’s Theologiae Gentilis,” p. 29.
Newton, Yahuda MS 15, Ch. 2, ff. 96–7. Cited in David Castillejo, The Expanding Force in Newton’s Cosmos as Shown in his Unpublished Papers (Madrid: Ediciones de Arte y Bibliofilia, 1981), p. 77. Clarke agrees exactly with Newton about how the Supreme Father has delegated a portion of his own dominion to Jesus. Clarke writes that: The reason why the Scripture, though it stiles the Father God, and also stiles the Son God, yet at the same time always declares there is but One God; is because in the Monarchy of the Universe, there is but One Authority, original in the Father, derivative in the Son: The Power of the Son being, not Another Power opposite to That of the Father, nor Another Power coordinate to That of the Father, communicated to, manifested in, and exercised by the Son.
[Samuel Clarke, The Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity (London, 1712), pp. 332–3.]
Samuel Chandler, Reflections on the Conduct of the Modern Deists, In their late Writings against Christianity: Occasioned Chiefly By Two Books, Entitled, A Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons, &c. And the Scheme of Literal Prophecy considered. With a Preface containing some Remarks on Dr. Rogers’s Preface to his Eight Sermons (London, 1727), pp. 73–4. Most significantly, the dissenter Samuel Chandler observes how untenable is Collins’ scoffing argument against the very possibility of a true text of the Bible solely because Whiston is in opposition “to the generality of Christians” and differs with them about whether the Apostolical Constitutions are divinely inspired and, therefore, possess the same “authority” as the other books of the New Testament, (p. 71) The mere fact that Christians disagree with one another is not a sufficient argument for setting the pursuit of the true text aside as impossible a priori. Chandler asks, “Is this the impartial debate, the fair reasoning, that our adversaries, these strenuous asserters of liberty, plead for?” (p. 74)
Chambers, Cyclopaedia, s.v. “Deists.” Cf. Samuel Johnson’s more succinct definition: “The opinion of those that only acknowledge one God, without the reception of any revealed religion.” Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, 2 vols. (London, 1755), Vol. 1, s.v. “DEISM.”
Gjertsen, The Newton Handbook, p. 155–6.
John Edwards, Brief Remarks upon Mr. Whiston’s New Theory of the Earth (London, 1697), p. 3.
Ibid., pp. 1–2.
Samuel Parker, Censura Temporum, or the Good and III Tendencies of Books, Vol. II (August, 1709), pp. 613–4.
Anonymous, A Letter to the Revd. William Whiston A. M. Occasioned by his Publication of the Memoirs of His Own Life (London, 1750), pp. 37–8.
Jonathan Swift, Dean Swift’s True, Genuine, and Authentic Copy of that most Strange, Wonderful, and Surprizing Prophecy Written by St. Patrick, the Patron of Ireland, Above a Thousand Years ago: Faithfully Translated from the Irish Original above two hundred years since, in the reign of K. Henry VII. New Publish’d with Explanatory Notes (London, 1740), p. 7.
Whiston, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Whiston, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London, 1753), 1:158.
Anthony Collins, A Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (London, 1724), p. 196.
Ibid.
Newton, Yahuda MS 1, f.1.
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Force, J.E. (1990). The Newtonians and Deism. 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_4
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