Such is a brief abstract of this ingenious work, which is characterized by great learning, and marked with the sagacity of its distinguished author. The same qualities of his mind are equally conspicuous in his Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture.
This celebrated treatise relates to two texts in the Epistles of St. John and St. Paul. The first of these is in 1 John v. 7. “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one.” This text he considers as a gross corruption of Scripture, which had its origin among the Latins, who interpreted the Spirit, Water, and Blood to be the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in order to prove them one. With the same view Jerome inserted the Trinity in express words in his version. The Latins marked his variations in the margins of their books; and in the twelfth and following centuries, when the disputations of the schoolmen were at their height, the variation began to creep into the text in transcribing. After the invention of printing, it crept out of the Latin into the printed Greek, contrary to the authority of all the Greek manuscripts and ancient versions; and from the Venetian press it went soon after into Greece. After proving these positions Sir Isaac gives the following paraphrase of this remarkable passage, which is given in italics.
“Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God, that Son spoken of in the Psalms, where he saith, ‘thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee.’ This is he that, after the Jews had long expected him, came, first in a mortal body, by baptism of water, and then in an immortal one, by shedding his blood upon the cross and rising again from the dead; not by water only, but by water and blood; being the Son of God, as well by his resurrection from the dead (Acts xiii. 33), as by his supernatural birth of the virgin (Luke i. 35). And it is the Spirit also that, together with the water and blood, beareth witness of the truth of his coming; because the Spirit is truth; and so a fit and unexceptionable witness. For there are three that bear record of his coming; the Spirit, which he promised to send, and which was since shed forth upon us in the form of cloven tongues, and in various gifts; the baptism of water, wherein God testified ‘this is my beloved Son;’ and the shedding of his blood, accompanied with his resurrection, whereby he became the most faithful martyr, or witness, of this truth. And these three, the spirit, the baptism, and passion of Christ, agree in witnessing one and the same thing (namely, that the Son of God is come); and, therefore, their evidence is strong: for the law requires but two consenting witnesses, and here we have three: and if we receive the witness of men, the threefold witness of God, which he bare of his Son, by declaring at his baptism ‘this is my beloved Son,’ by raising him from the dead, and by pouring out his Spirit on us, is greater; and, therefore, ought to be more readily received.”
While the Latin Church was corrupting the preceding text, the Greek Church was doing the same to St. Paul’s 1st Epistle to Timothy iii. 16. Great is the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh. According to Sir Isaac, this reading was effected by changing σ into ΘΣ, the abbreviation of Θεος, and after proving this by a learned and ingenious examination of ancient manuscripts, he concludes that the reading should be Great is the mystery of Godliness who (viz. our Saviour) was manifest in the flesh.
As this learned dissertation had the effect of depriving the defenders of the doctrine of the Trinity of the aid of two leading texts, Sir Isaac Newton has been regarded as an Antitrinitarian; but such a conclusion is not warranted by any thing which he has published;[105] and he distinctly warns us, that his object was solely to “purge the truth of things spurious.” We are disposed, on the contrary, to think that he declares his belief in the doctrine of the Trinity when he says, “In the eastern nations, and for a long time in the western, the faith subsisted without this text; and it is rather a danger to religion than an advantage, to make it now lean upon a bruised reed. There cannot be better service done to the truth than to purge it of things spurious; and therefore, knowing your prudence and calmness of temper, I am confident I shall not offend you by telling you my mind plainly; especially since it is no article of faith, no point of discipline, nothing but a criticism concerning a text of Scripture which I am going to write about.” The word faith in the preceding passage cannot mean faith in the Scriptures in general, but faith in the particular doctrine of the Trinity; for it is this article of faith only to which the author refers when he deprecates its leaning on a bruised reed. But, whatever be the meaning of this passage, we know that Sir Isaac was greatly offended at Mr. Whiston for having represented him as an Arian; and so much did he resent the conduct of his friend in ascribing to him heretical opinions, that he would not permit him to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society while he was President.[106]
The only other religious works which were composed by Sir Isaac Newton were his Lexicon Propheticum, to which was added a Dissertation on the sacred cubit of the Jews, and Four Letters addressed to Dr. Bentley, containing some arguments in proof of a Deity.
The Lexicon Propheticum was left incomplete, and has not been published; but the Latin Dissertation which was appended to it, in which he shows that the cubit was about 26½ Roman unciæ, was published in 1737 among the Miscellaneous Works of Mr. John Greaves.
Upon the death of the Honourable Robert Boyle, on the 30th of December, 1691, it was found, by a codicil to his will, that he had left a revenue of 50l. per annum to establish a lectureship, in which eight discourses were to be preached annually in one of the churches of the metropolis, in illustration of the evidences of Christianity, and in opposition to the principles of infidelity. Dr. Bentley, though a very young man, was appointed to preach the first course of sermons, and the manner in which he discharged this important duty gave the highest satisfaction, not only to the trustees of the lectureship, but to the public in general. In the first six lectures Bentley exposed the folly of atheism even in reference to the present life, and derived powerful arguments for the existence of a Deity from the faculties of the soul, and the structure and functions of the human frame. In order to complete his plan, he proposed to devote his seventh and eighth lectures to the demonstration of a Divine Providence from the physical constitution of the universe, as established in the Principia. In order to qualify himself for this task, he received from Sir Isaac written directions respecting a list of books necessary to be perused previous to the study of that work;[107] and having made himself master of the system which it contained, he applied it with irresistible force of argument to establish the existence of an overruling mind. Previous to the publication of these lectures, Bentley encountered a difficulty which he was not able to solve, and he prudently transmitted to Sir Isaac during 1692 a series of queries on the subject. This difficulty occurred in an argument urged by Lucretius, to prove the eternity of the world from an hypothesis of deriving the frame of it by mechanical principles from matter endowed with an innate power of gravity, and evenly scattered throughout the heavens. Sir Isaac willingly entered upon the consideration of the subject, and transmitted his sentiments to Dr. Bentley in the four letters which have been noticed in a preceding chapter.
In the first[108] of these letters Sir Isaac mentions that when he wrote his treatise about our system, viz. the Third Book of the Principia, “he had an eye upon such principles as might work, with considering men, for the belief of a Deity, and he expresses his happiness that it has been found useful for that purpose. In answering the first query of Dr. Bentley, the exact import of which we do not know, he states, that, if matter were evenly diffused through a finite space, and endowed with innate gravity, it would fall down into the middle of the space, and form one great spherical mass; but if it were diffused through an infinite space, some of it would collect into one mass, and some into another, so as to form an infinite number of great masses. In this manner the sun and stars might be formed if the matter were of a lucid nature. But he thinks it inexplicable by natural causes, and to be ascribed to the counsel and contrivance of a voluntary Agent, that the matter should divide itself into two sorts, part of it composing a shining body like the sun, and part an opaque body like the planets. Had a natural and blind cause, without contrivance and design, placed the earth in the centre of the moon’s orbit, and Jupiter in the centre of his system of satellites, and the sun in the centre of the planetary system, the sun would have been a body like Jupiter and the earth, that is, without light and heat, and consequently he knows no reason why there is only one body qualified to give light and heat to all the rest, but because the Author of the system thought it convenient, and because one was sufficient to warm and enlighten all the rest.
To the second query of Dr. Bentley, he replies that the motions which the planets now have could not spring from any natural cause alone, but were impressed by an intelligent Agent. “To make such a system with all its motions required a cause which understood and compared together the quantities of matter in the several bodies of the sun and planets, and the gravitating powers resulting from thence; the several distances of the primary planets from the sun, and of the secondary ones from Saturn, Jupiter, and the earth, and the velocities with which those planets could revolve about those quantities of matter in the central bodies; and to compare and adjust all these things together in so great a variety of bodies, argues that cause to be not blind and fortuitous, but very well skilled in mechanics and geometry.”