Abstract
In seeking to tidy up historical reality, many scholars have, for a variety of reasons, closely linked Sir Isaac Newton with the latitudinarian movement. Stephen H. Daniel claims that Newton is an “adherent” of latitudinarianism because of the toleration for dissent which Daniel claims that they both espouse.1 Frank E. Manuel, while noting that the young Newton’s strict Church of England religion never quite disappears, identifies the “aged autocrat of science” as one who, in a “latitudinarian” spirit of tolerance, “received French Catholic abbés, a notorious Socinian, High Churchmen, and, thanks to his last illness, just missed a confrontation with Beelzebub himself in the person of an importunate visiting Frenchman named Voltaire.”2
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Notes
Stephen H. Daniel, John Toland. His Methods, Manners, and Mind (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1984), p. 39.
Frank E. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 5. I don’t mean to distort Manuel’s point which he makes with his usual clarity. He goes on to say that the early “strict Church of England religion of 1661” is still identifiable even in the “aged autocrat of science” who receives all these different people. Manuel does not attempt to put Newton into the wrong category, but attempts to trace the real complexity of Newton’s religious views.
This text, from Keynes MSS 130.6, Book 2; 130.7, Sheet 1, is cited by Richard S. Westfall in Never at Rest. A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 569.
Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 594.
A crisis arose for Newton in 1675 when, according to the statutes of Cambridge University, he was required to become ordained or to resign his Fellowship at Trinity College. Probably through the intervention of his friend, Isaac Barrow (whom Newton succeeded as Lucasian Professor), Newton won a most unusual royal dispensation from this requirement. Westfall, Never at Rest, pp. 331–4.
Henry Guerlac and Margaret C. Jacob, “Bentley, Newton, and Providence,” Journal of the History of Ideas 30, No. 3 (July-Sept., 1969), pp. 307–18, esp. p. 317.
S. P., A Brief Account of the New Sect of Latitude-Men (London, 1662.) Margaret C. Jacob, Henry R. McAdoo, and Jan Van den Berg have all identified S. P. as Simon Patrick. See Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689–1720 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976), p. 40;
McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism. A Survey of Anglican Theological Method in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1965), p. 19;
and Van den Berg, “Between Platonism and Enlightenment: Simon Patrick (1625–1707) and his Place in the Latitudinarian Movement,” Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, Dutch Review of Church History 68 (1988), pp. 164–79.
William Cobbett, The Parliamentary History of England, 36 vols. (London, 1806–20), 6:496. Cited by Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 626.
Keynes MS 130.7, Sheet 1. Cited by Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 601.
The evidence for the character and composition of these meetings comes from G. V. Bennett, “An Unpublished Diary of Archbishop William Wake,” Studies in Church History 3 (1966), pp. 258–66. Cited by Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, pp. 157–9. Jacob utilizes this record to show that, as party factionalism increases in the first decade of the eighteenth century and promotes a split between the High Churchmen and the latitudinarians, the latitudinarian alliance with the “Newtonians” gains in strength. Jacob writes: In this period of low-church ascendancy the Newtonian natural philosophy as presented in the Boyle lectures was primarily an expression of latitudinarian thinking, and the circle that included the Finches, Wotton, Tenison, Evelyn, Bentley, Harris, later Samuel Clarke, and at times Newton himself was the intellectual center of the church, (p. 159)
Westfall, Never at Rest,p 594.
For a more complete delineation of the personal connections between all the Newtonians and the latitudinarians, see Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, pp. 29ff. Regarding Newton, I have not so far indicated the important role played by the latitudinarian natural philosopher, Isaac Barrow, in the formulation of his views. See McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism, pp. 230–9. I discuss Whiston’s stormy relationships with various members of the latitudinarian circle in Section I. Here I pause only to point out that, as a young scholar at Cambridge, Whiston was selected by Archbishop Tillotson to tutor Tillotson’s nephew and that, from 1694 until 1698, Whiston acted as Chaplain to the latitudinarian Bishop of Norwich, John Moore.
Newton to Locke, 14 Nov. 1690, in The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, 7 vols., ed. H. W. Turnbull, J. F. Scott, A. R. Hall, and Laura Tilling (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959–77), 3:82.
E. Fowler, Sermons, 2nd ed. (London, 1671), Pt. I.
Ibid., Pt. II, Sermon XXXVIII.
H. F. Kearney, “Puritanism, Capitalism and the Scientific Revolution,” in The Intellectual Revolution of the Seventeenth Century, ed. Charles Webster (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), p. 234. On the connection between Cambridge Platonism and the latitudinarian movement, see McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism, pp. 158ff.
Jacob acknowledges that her study “does not deal directly with Newton himself, except where he is representative of commonly held latitudinarian views or aided the latitudinarians….” She also remarks that Newton’s “religious and ecclesiastical thinking so generally reflects latitudinarian positions that it is not unique.” See Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, pp. 33–4. What Jacob terms “Newtonianism,” then, is just that portion of Newton’s views which, from the start, are identified with the latitudinarians by definition. The alliance is thus between the latitudinarians and a truncated, public version of Newton. See James E. Force, William Whiston. Honest Newtonian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 91.
Barbara J. Shapiro, “Latitudinarianism and Science in Seventeenth-Century England,” in The Intellectual Revolution of the Seventeenth Century, p. 315.
Shapiro, “Latitudinarianism and Science,” p. 315.
Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, passim.
Luther remarks of Erasmus that “He is thinking of peace, not the cross.” Cited in Shapiro, “Latitudinarianism and Science,” p. 315. It is worth observing in passing that William Whiston considered himself to be a new “Luther” and, for that reason, believed himself to be one who was less interested in peace than truth. William Whiston, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Whiston…, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (London, 1753), 1:208. This fact will take on some significance in the light of the discussion in Section I.
Shapiro, “Latitudinarianism and Science,” p. 315.
This list of shared features between Newton and the latitudinarians closely resembles Jacob’s characterization of the basic convictions shared between the latitudinarians of the post-Restoration period. These tenets include: “rational argumentation and not faith is the final arbiter of Christian dogma and belief; scientific knowledge and natural philosophy are the most reliable means of explaining creation; and political and ecclesiastical moderation are the only realistic means by which the Reformation will be accomplished.” Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, p. 35.
Gilbert Burnet, History of His Own Time, 2 vols., ed. Thomas Burnet (London, 1734), 2:80.
S. P., A Brief Account of the New Sect of Latitude-Men: Together with some Reflections upon the New Philosophy (London, 1662), p. 4.
S. P., New Sect, p. 4.
S. P., New Sect, p. 4. The case of Chillingworth is of some interest at this point. While residing at Lord Falkland’s residence between 1635 and 1637 and working on his great treatise, Chillingworth remarks that Arianism is, at least, “no damnable heresy” and refuses preferment in the Church of England because of his inability to accept those parts of the Creed which damn those who dissent from the Athanasian, Nicene, and Apostles’ Creed, even though the reasons for their non-subscription “may be proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture.” Pierre Desmaizeaux, Historical and Critical Account of the Life and Writings of William Chillingworth (London, 1725), pp. 49–56. Chillingworth, of course, eventually subscribed to the Thirty-Nine Articles and becomes a bishop in due course.
S. P., New Sect, p. 5.
Edward Stillingfleet, Irenicum (London, 1659), Preface to the Reader.
See R. H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1979), passim
Henry G. Van Leeuwen, The Problem of Certainty in English Thought 1630–1690 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963);
Robert Todd Carroll, The Common-Sense Philosophy of Religion of Bishop Edward Stillingfleet, 1635–1699 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975);
Barbara J. Shapiro, Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England. A Study of the Relationships between Natural Science, Religion, History, Law and Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.)
Stillingfleet, Irenicum, p. 39.
Stillingfleet’s development on this point is clearly traced by John Marshall in “The Ecclesiology of the Latitude-Men 1660–1689: Stillingfleet, Tillotson and ‘Hobbism’,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36 (1985), pp. 407–27.
Stillingfleet, Irenicum, pp. 11–2. Cited by Marshall, “The Ecclesiology of the Latitude-Men,” p. 417.
John Tillotson, The Protestant Religion Vindicated from the Charge of Singularity and Novelty (London, 1680), p. 9. Cited in Marshall, “The Ecclesiology of the Latitude-Men,” p. 422.
Stillingfleet, The Unreasonableness of Separation (London, 1681), pp. lxxxii-xciii. Cited in Marshall, “The Ecclesiology of the Latitude-Men,” p. 419.
Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 77.
Ibid. , pp. 312–3.
Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton, pp. 64–5.
Quoted by Herbert McLachlan in Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951), p. 335.
William Whiston, Historical Memoirs of the Life of Dr. Samuel Clarke. Being a Supplement to Dr. Syke’s and Bishop Hoadley’s Accounts. Including Certain Memoirs of Several of Dr. Clarke’s Friends (London, 1730), p. 13. For the sense in which Newton may be characterized as the “mentor” of Whiston, see James E. Force William Whiston, Introduction, and Chapter 1.
Whiston, An Historical Preface to Primitive Christianity Reviv’d. With an Appendix. Containing an Account of the Author’s Prosecution at, and Banishment from the University at Cambridge (London, 1711), p. 27.
Whiston claimed that he sent the same letter reprinted in his Historical Preface, pp. 15–8, to both Archbishops. He sent a copy to Samuel Clarke and recommended a path whereby Clarke might possibly retain his preferment by subscribing to the Thirty-Nine Articles. Whiston writes: “Above all, act openly; advise with Sir Isaac Newton: and, if you can do it with a safe conscience in that sense, declare at the time of subscription, that you sign them as Articles of Peace, which you will never oppose by Preaching or Writing, and no farther.” (p. 17)
Whiston records this reply from Archbishop Sharp in his Historical Preface, p. 19. In his original letter to the Archbishops, Whiston writes: I am well aware that several political or prudential Considerations may be alledg’d against wither the doing this at all, or at least the doing it now. But then, if the sacred Truths of God must be always suppress’d, and dangerous Corruptions never inquired into, till the Politicians of this world should say it were a proper Time to examin and correct them, I doubt it would be long enough e’re such Examination and correction could be expected in any Case. I think my self plainly oblig’d in point of Duty to communicate my Collections to the publick Consideration; and therefore from this Resolution in general no worldly Motives whatever, by the blessing of God, shall dissuade me. (Whiston, Historical Preface, p. 17.) In his Memoirs, 1:242, Whiston asserts that Sharp shares his Arianism. Of Sharp, McAdoo writes that he “was a Yorkshireman who had mathematical and scientific interests. He was also an admirer of Newton and he had known both More and Cudworth at Cambridge.” The Spirit of Anglicanism, p. 287.
Again, Lloyd’s letter is reprinted by Whiston in his Historical Preface, p. 21. In this case, I have been able to discover a difference between Lloyd’s manuscript copy of his reply to Whiston’s letter and the version of Lloyd’s reply which Whiston prints. Whiston’s printed version of Lloyd’s letter ends as follows: “God knows I desire nothing else but your good, and to keep you from doing Hurt to the Church. I beseech God that these Notices I have given you may have the effect I design by them.” Lloyd’s manuscript copy reads, “But knowing so much as I do of the things before mentioned, I fear you. And therefore I hold it my duty to do a friend’s part in warning you whither you are going.” British Library Manuscripts, Add. MS. 24197, f. 16.
William Whiston, Memoirs, 1:131.
Force, William Whiston, pp. 75–6.
McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism, p. 287.
Whiston, An Account of the Author’s Prosecution at, and Banishment from the University of Cambridge (London, 1711), p. 10.
See Eamon Duffy, “‘Whiston’s Affair’: The Trials of a Primitive Christian, 1709–1714,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 27, No. 2 (April, 1976), p. 140;
and G. V. Bennett, “The Convocation of 1710: An Anglican Attempt at Counter-Revolution,” in Councils and Assemblies: Papers Read at the Eighth Summer Meeting and Ninth Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical Society, ed. G. J. Cuming and Derek Baker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 314–5.
Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, pp. 81, 151, 159. Just as one must be wary in labeling Newton as a latitudinarian, one must also be wary in identifying Whiston, who is a crusader for toleration and Whig political theory, as a latitudinarian theologian. See Jack Fruchtman Jr., The Apocalyptic Politics of Richard Price and Joseph Priestley: A Study in Late Eighteenth-Century English Republican Millennialism (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1983), p. 15.
McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism, p. 395.
More to Sharp, 16 Aug., 1680, in Conway Letters, The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More, and Their Friends, ed. Marjorie Hope Nicholson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930), pp. 478–9.
Richard Ward, The Life of the Learned and Pious Dr. Henry More (London: 1710), pp. 6–7.
Ralph Cudworth, “Sermon Preached Before the Honorable House of Commons,” in The Cambridge Platonists, ed. Gerald R. Cragg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 387–8. On the strong reactions of the Cambridge Platonists against predestinarianism, see Anglicanism. The Thought and Practice of the Church of England Illustrated from the Religious Literature of the Seventeenth Century, ed. P. E. More and F. L. Cross (London, 1935), p. lix.
Margaret C. Jacob, “Christianity and the Newtonian Worldview,” in God and Nature. Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science, ed. David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), p. 239.
On Edwards, see S. I. Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), pp. 50–2, and R. Stromberg, Religious Liberalism in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 11. The quotation of Bolingbroke is taken from his Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope (London, 1894), pp. 178–9. Tillotson’s sermons are full of arguments against the harsh predestinarian doctrine. For example, in his sermon “Of the Inward Peace and Pleasure which attends Religion,” Tillotson argues that true religion does not make one “disconsolate.” Only “False and mistaken principles in Religion” lead to unhappiness and anguish. His chief example of a false religious doctrine which naturally culminates in “a melancholy temper and disposition” is the doctrine that: God does not sincerely desire the Salvation of Men, but hath from all eternity effectually barr’d the greatest part of mankind from all possibility of attaining that happiness which he offers to them; and everyone hath cause to fear that he may be in that number. This were a melancholy consideration indeed, if it were true; but there is no ground either from Reason or Scripture to entertain any such thought of God. Our destruction is of our Selves; and no man shall be ruin’d by any decree of God who does not ruin himself by his own fault. See The Works of the Most Reverend Dr. John Tillotson, Late Lord Archbishop of Canterbury: Containing Fifty Four Sermons and Discourses, on Several Occasions. Together with “The Rule of Faith.” Being all that were published by his Grace Himself and now Collected into One Volume, 5th ed. (London, 1707), p. 138.
On Edwards, see S. I. Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), pp. 50–2, and R. Stromberg, Religious Liberalism in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 11. The quotation of Bolingbroke is taken from his Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope (London, 1894), pp. 178–9. Tillotson’s sermons are full of arguments against the harsh predestinarian doctrine. For example, in his sermon “Of the Inward Peace and Pleasure which attends Religion,” Tillotson argues that true religion does not make one “disconsolate.” Only “False and mistaken principles in Religion” lead to unhappiness and anguish. His chief example of a false religious doctrine which naturally culminates in “a melancholy temper and disposition” is the doctrine that: God does not sincerely desire the Salvation of Men, but hath from all eternity effectually barr’d the greatest part of mankind from all possibility of attaining that happiness which he offers to them; and everyone hath cause to fear that he may be in that number. This were a melancholy consideration indeed, if it were true; but there is no ground either from Reason or Scripture to entertain any such thought of God. Our destruction is of our Selves; and no man shall be ruin’d by any decree of God who does not ruin himself by his own fault. See The Works of the Most Reverend Dr. John Tillotson, Late Lord Archbishop of Canterbury: Containing Fifty Four Sermons and Discourses, on Several Occasions. Together with “The Rule of Faith.” Being all that were published by his Grace Himself and now Collected into One Volume, 5th ed. (London, 1707), p. 138.
The original Latin manuscript is located in the Library of the Royal Society: David Gregory MS 245, fol. 14a. This translation is from J. E. McGuire, “Force, Active Principles, and Newton’s Invisible Realm,” Ambix 15 (1968), p. 190. I am much indebted in my exposition of this text to McGuire’s article.
Sir Isaac Newton, Opticks or A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections & Colours of Light. Based on the Fourth ed., London, 1730 (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1952), p. 403.
Sir Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World. Translated into English by Andrew Motte in 1729. Revised by Florian Cajori. 2 vols. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1934), 2:544. Newton’s scornful reference to “those who fancy God to be the soul of the world” is aimed both at the pantheism of Bruno and Spinoza, and, more immediately, at John Toland. In his Pantheisticon, or the form of celebrating the Socratic Society (London, 1751), Toland writes that “God [is]… the soul of the universe” and the world his attributes, (p. 17.)
Newton, “History of the Church,” a fragment. Yahuda MS 15.1, f. 154, Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Westfall has argued that Newton’s conception of God comes from his Arianism and is an “incidental acquisition by Newton.” Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 317.
Harro Höpfl, The Christian Polity of John Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 236 and 289n.
Newton, “Commonplace Book,” s.v. “Predestinado,” Keynes MS 2, King’s College Library, Cambridge. According to Westfall, eight books survive with Newton’s signature and the inscription “Trin: Coll: Cant: 1661.” One of these books is John Calvin’s Institutio christianae religionis…. (Geneva, 1561.) Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 31 On.
Jacob, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, pp. 141–2.
Ibid.
Newton, “A Short Scheme of True Religion,” Keynes MS. 7, King’s College Library, Cambridge.
Shapiro, “Latitudinarianism and Science,” pp. 302–3.
On the development of this theory of knowledge, see Van Leeuwen, The Problem of Certainty in English Thought, passim. Van Leeuwen shows how the latitudinarians develop the concept of “moral certainty” in the context of the Rule of Faith controversy.
Sir Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, p. 400. This rule is not added to the Principia until the second edition of 1713. Newton’s view about the contingency of our human ability to know nature in the light of God’s power to change nature at any moment parallels Robert Boyle who writes that [I]f we consider God as the author of the universe, and the free establisher of the laws of motion, whose general concourse is necessary to the conservation and efficacy of every particular physical agent, we cannot but acknowledge, that, by with-holding his concourse, or by changing these laws of motion, which depend perfectly upon his will, he may invalidate most, if not all the axioms and theorems of natural philosophy: these supposing the course of nature, and especially the established laws of motion among the parts of the universal matter, as those upon which all the phaenomena depend. [Robert Boyle, Reconcileableness of Reason and Religion, in The Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, 6 vols., ed. Thomas Birch (London, 1772), 4:161.] This text is cited by Mitchell Salem Fisher in Robert Boyle: Devout Naturalist. A Study in Science and Religion in the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia: Oshiver Studio Press, 1945), pp. 127–8. Fisher goes on to note that Newton agrees with Boyle’s view about God’s power over creation: “[Boyle’s] God, like that of Newton’s was an absolute, free, and omniscient being who governed all the phenomena of nature not at all as any indwelling soul of the world, but as the mechanical master and lord of the universe.” (p. 160.)
Newton, Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (London, 1733), pp. 252–3.
Frank E. Manuel, Isaac Newton, Historian (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), pp. 146–7.
Force, William Whiston, p. 77.
Whiston, A Supplement to the Literal Accomplishment of Scripture Prophecies (London, 1725), p. 5.
Whiston, Memoirs, 1:191.
Christopher Hill, “Sin and Society,” in The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill, 2 vols. (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), 2:132–3.
McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism, p. 158.
McAdoo himself goes on to exonerate the latitudinarians for causing, in any sense, the deistic movement and states that they “maintained that natural religion could only find its completeness in revealed religion.” The Spirit of Anglicanism, pp. 158–9.
David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Norman Kemp Smith (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons Ltd., 1947), p. 227.
Voltaire, The Metaphysics of Sir Isaac Newton, trans. David Erskine Baker (London, 1747), p. 3.
This paper is being printed for the first time in this volume. An earlier version of it was presented by the author at a conference on “Latitudinarianism, Science, and Society: A Revaluation of Late Seventeenth-Century British Culture” sponsored by the U.C.L.A. Center for 17th- and 18th-century Studies and the N.E.H. on April 9, 1987.
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Force, J.E. (1990). Sir Isaac Newton, “Gentleman of Wide Swallow”?: Newton and the Latitudinarians. 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_7
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