On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
the person of Christ there seems no doubt that Sir Isaac Newton was inclined to Unitarian ism . " Chalmers , in his Biographical Dictionary , tells us that " he not only shewed a great and constant regard to religion in general , as well by an exemplary life as in all his writings , but was also a firm believer in revealed religion , with one exception , an important one indeed , that his . sentiments on the doctrine of the Trinity by no means coincided
with what is generally held . " That most respectable authority , Dr . Thomson , asserts , in his History of the Royal Society , < € Newton ' s religious opinions were not orthodox—for example , he did not believe in the Trinity . This gives us the reason why Horsley , ( the Editor of his works , ) the
champion of the Trinity , found Newton ' s papers unfit for publication . But it is much to be regretted they never saw the light * ** T ) r . Chalmers will not be suspected of favouring the Unitarians , yet he has given the sanction of his authority to Newton ' s Antitrinitarianism . In the second of his ** Discourses on the Christian Revelation viewed in connexion with the Modern Astronomy , " he has pronounced a splendid and well-deserved eulogium on Newton as a biblical student . Lest he should hence be charged with
Unitarianizing , he softens the matter down in his preface , and tells his readers , •* I do not think that amid the distraction and the engrossment of other pursuits he has at all times succeeded in his interpretation of the book , ( the Bible , ) else he would never , in my apprehension , have abetted the leading doctrine of a sect or system which has now nearly dwindled away from public observation . " As next in value , we shall place the evidence of his Antitrinitarianism deducible from Newton ' s works .
There is in them an entire absence of all evidence that the writer believed in either the Trinity or the Deity of Christ . Silence on these subjects is universal and unbroken . Had it been , as we think it was , Newton ' s design to omit any thing that could , by any possibility , be construed into a belief in the Trinity , he could not have avoided the subject more cautiously and successfully than he has done . Occasions present themselves when , if such had been his behef , he could hardly have done otherwise than imply or declare the truth of the Trinitarian doctrine . But he is profoundly silent .
Would , could a Trinitarian have acted in this way ? Is he not , with propriety , styled an Antitrinitarian who so far opposes the doctrine as to withhold from it all countenance in his works ? Is it unfair to presume that he wished that to disappear from the face of society which he sedulously excluded from his own pages ? Newton was a Christian , and wrote as a Christian on Christian topics , and if be had held the Trinity , the fundamen - tal doctrine of Christianity in the opinion of its advocates , how could he have been guilty of omitting the mention of it , especially when there are passages , as we shall now shew , which imply his disbelief of the doctrine ?
The bare fact , that he exposed " Two notable Corruptions of Scripture , " which have been considered main supports of Trinitarianism , would not lead to the inference that he was an Antitrinitarian ; but that fact , coupled with another , viz . his omitting to declare , in the same tract as that in which be destroyed two witnesses , his belief in the doctrine , does warrant the
conclusion , that he was opposed as much to the corruption of the Trinity itself as to the corruptions by which it had for centuries been supported . No serious believer in the Trinity would , we are persuaded , have written to take away evidence on behalf ot the Trinity without declaring that he designed no ill to the doctrine itself—nay , was persuaded that the warrant of Scripture was still in its favour . A distinction would have been made between the
Untitled Article
154 Sir haac Newton an Anttivinitarian .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1831, page 154, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2595/page/10/
-