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Untitled Article
and giving me the full profits of the place , brought me to be a candidate ; as his recommendation of me to the heads of colleges in Cambridge made me his successor ; so did I enjoy a large portion of his favour for twenty years together . But he then perceiving that I could not do as his other darling friends did , that is , learn of him , without contradicting him when I differed in opinion from him , he could not , in his old age , bear such contradiction , and so he was afraid of me the last thirteen years of his life .- —He was of the most fearful , cautious , and suspicious temper that I ever knew . " This
is the account of the affair which Whiston himself gave , who surely ought to have best known all the circumstances . But the writer in " The Spirit of the Pilgrims" ascribes Whiston ' s rejection to his having declared Newton an
Arian <—and on what authority ? Verily , the authority of that most ancient work , the Eclectic Review . But even the Eclectic does not say what the Pilgrim affirms ; it says no more than that Newton was angry with Whiston for several years for having said he was an Arian . As to all the mighty deductions that the Pilgrim makes from this , we have little anxiety . Let them stand for what they are worth ; they will pass current nowhere but with those who have neither eyes nor ears to detect their spuriousness . As
little do we think of the Pilgrim ' s essay to deduce Newton ' s orthodoxy from his published works . One thing the extracts do prove , that the maker of them had a large reliance on the easy credulity of his readers ; else could he ever have ventured to bring this and two other passages no more to the purpose , in order to realize his magnificent promise — to " produce several passages from the writings of Newton , which plainly indicate his Trinitarian sentiments" ?
" In the Eastern nations , and for a long time in the Western , the faith subsisted without this text ( 1 John v . 7 ) , and it is rather a danger to religion than an advantage to make it now lean on a bruised reed . " How does the Pilgrim make this quotation serve his purpose ? Let the reader try his skill in the art of divination ; and if he succeeds in making out any thing like a satisfactory case , he will have this reward—to know that he is a person of great penetration and extraordinary ingenuity , and may take courage from his success to try his hand at the perpetual motion or the philosopher ' s stone .
Let , then , our readers sum up the evidence now brought forward , —the testimony of biographers and historians , the evidence of omission in the circumstances of the case , the positive implications furnished by Newton ' s published works , the strong suspicion of evidence suppressed " unfit for publication , " the explicit declarations of two contemporaries , and both intimate acquaintances , of an anonymous yet respectable pamphleteer , and say , if we are not warranted in the conclusion , that Sir Isaac Newton was an
Antitrinitarian . Had he explicitly avowed himself and suffered persecution for that avowaJ , we should have honoured his memory more highly than we do ; but leaving him to his Master , we shall do well to take care that , in these " piping days of peace , " as regards religious persecution , we do not
compromise the truth by wicked concealment , or barter it for the world's smile . And well will it be tor us if we imitate the great Philosopher ' s diligence in the study of the Scriptures , and follow him in his piety , gentleness , and benignity , so far as he was a follower of Christ . For , at the utmost , the time cannot be far distant when all diversities of mere earthly knowledge will have passed away ; but charity " abideth for ever . "
Untitled Article
Sir Isaac Newton an Antitrinitaruin . 159
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1831, page 159, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2595/page/15/
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