Will Ladislaw's words, which so disillusion the young Dorothea, might also depress the modern interpreter of Newton's theology. Encountering the bulk of Newton's manuscript theology, it is tempting to sympathize with Dorothea's eventual response toThe Key to all Mythologies, and to want nothing of it. The assessment of John Conduitt, Newton's son-in-law and executor, that his ‘relief and amusement was going to some other study, as history, chronology, divinity, and chemistry’ has in the past provided an ample excuse for those (...) who have wished to take such a course, and to ignore Newton's biblical criticism. In the last three decades, however, Newton scholarship has come to terms with its hero's twilight activities, and reclassified them as being at least as important to him as the natural philosophy of thePrincipia, and intimately bound up with the thinking behind that philosophy. But although many modern scholars are now reluctant to see Newton as Stephen Hawking in breeches, historians of science have tended to concentrate on the implications for Newton's philosophy of his religious and alchemical writings, and in the process often have distorted their religious context. Historians of ideas have been beguiled by Newton's disciples, and by the esoteric texts from Newton's library, to ride hobbyhorses of their own which do not always illuminate Newton's reasons for writing theology. There is a danger of ‘knowing what is being done by the rest of the world’ before troubling with what Newton was up to when he worried about religion and theology, channelling his energies into treatise after treatise on the interpretation of prophecy. I want to suggest what some of Newton's concerns may have been, by looking at his ideas of religious duty and of the Church, and to liberate Newton from his disciples for long enough to consider some of his ideas about the relationships of prophetic and natural philosophical explorations of divinity. (shrink)

There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: the same came to Jesus by night…John 3: 1–2A lady asked the famous Lord Shaftesbury what religion he was of. He answered the religion of wise men. She asked, what was that? He answered, wise men never tell.Diary of Viscount Percival , i, 113NEWTON AS HERETICIsaac Newton was a heretic. But like Nicodemus, the secret disciple of Jesus, he never made a public declaration of his private (...) faith – which the orthodox would have deemed extremely radical. He hid his faith so well that scholars are still unravelling his personal beliefs. His one-time follower William Whiston attributed his policy of silence to simple, human fear and there must be some truth in this. Every day as a public figure and as the figurehead of British natural philosophy, Newton must have felt the tension of outwardly conforming to the Anglican Church, while inwardly denying much of its faith and practice. He was restricted by heresy laws, religious tests and the formidable opposition of public opinion. Heretics were seen as religiously subversive, socially dangerous and even morally debased. Moreover, the positions he enjoyed were dependent on public manifestations of religious and social orderliness. Sir Isaac had a lot to lose. Yet he knew the scriptural injunctions against hiding one's light under a bushel. Newton the believer was thus faced with the need to develop a modus vivendi whereby he could work within legal and social structures, while fulfilling the command to shine in a dark world. This paper recovers and assesses his strategies for reconciling these conflicting dynamics and, in so doing, will shed light on both the nature of Newton's faith and his agenda for natural philosophy. (shrink)