Mandelbrote (2004)

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Mandelbrote, Scott. (2004) Newton and Eighteenth Century Christianity. In Cohen and Smith (Eds.) (2002), 409-430.

Title Newton and Eighteenth Century Christianity
Resource Type collection article
Author(s) Scott Mandelbrote
Year 2004
Collection Cohen and Smith (Eds.) (2002)
Pages 409-430

Abstract

Isaac Newton’s Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John, prepared for the press from his manuscripts by his nephew Benjamin Smith, was published in two editions in London and Dublin in 1733. According to Richard S. Westfall, Newton’s finest twentieth-century biographer, the author “had cleansed his Observations” and his heirs “could publish the manuscript without concern.”3 Yet one might be permitted to wonder whether either the actual or the intended reception of Newton’s posthumous work was as uncontroversial as it has seemed to late twentienth-century eyes. The book was dedicated to Peter King, baron of Ockham, the lord chancellor, who had defended Newton’s sometime disciple, William Whiston, during his trial for heresy in July 1713. Although Whiston later fell out with King, he nevertheless continued to maintain that King’s youthful writings on the primitive Church supported the Arian position for which he had himself been condemned.