SOURCE: "Divine Causality: Newton, the Newtonians, and Hume," in Greene Centennial Studies: Essays Presented to Donald Greene in the Centennial Year of the University of Southern California, edited by Paul J. Korshin and Robert R. Allen, University Press of Virginia, 1984, pp. 40-56.

[In the following essay, Popkin asserts that Newton, as well as other major scientists of the time (David Hartley and Joseph Priestley), conceived of divine causality in a manner that subordinated their views on natural causality and scientific achievement to their "millenarian religious views."]

The usual picture of the development of causal theory in modern science is to portray the transformation from metaphysical to mechanistic explanations during the seventeenth century and to show that the mechanistic explanations did not account for why things happened but only constituted statements of regularities in nature. From Galileo to Hume occult qualities and necessary connections were removed from the study of nature. God as first cause dwindled in importance as Hume transformed Malebranche's denial of the efficacy of secondary causes into a commentary on the inefficacy of first causes—God's action. Father Nicolas Malebranche had shown very acutely thatsecondary agents cannot function as efficient causes. Malebranche derived this claim in part from his contention that God, the Omnipotent Being, is the sole and unique cause of everything. One kind of evidence that Malebranche offered to establish the inefficacy of secondary causes was that nothing is perceived in the alleged agent that could affect the recipient (as in the case of two billiard balls colliding).' Hume studied Malebranche carefully and used the French priest's ideas in his own famous analysis of the idea of necessary connection. But Hume then applied Malebranche's critique to the conception of divine causation. Hume contended that no connection is found between the idea of the Deity and any perceivable effect. He also contended that appealing to the relation of God to events added nothing to our understanding of how or why events occur as they do.² With Hume, we have often been told, theological and metaphysical notions of causality were exploded, clearing the way for a purely scientific theory of causality. This history of the transformation of the notion of causation to a purely scientific one may look plausible long after Hume, when most philosophers have come to adopt this view (as they only did when positivism became a major position).

However, to grasp the magnitude of the transformation that has occurred, I think that one has to appreciate fairly the views held by major scientists of the time. In this paper I shall try to show that three of the major scientists—Isaac Newton, David Hartley, and Joseph Priestley (and there were many more like them)—held a view about divine causality that overshadowed their views about natural causality and made their scientific achievements subordinate to their millenarian religious been views. Natural history for these thinkers was going on within divine history and would last only as long as necessary to fulfill God's prophetic history.

I have not chosen these three because of the uniqueness of their views. Many other contemporaries of Newton and members of the Newtonian movement held the same kinds of views and often held them more blatantly (as in the case of Newton's chosen successor, William Whiston). Newton, Hartley, and Priestley were the leading figures in their fields of scientific endeavor, and in many ways their views were typical of the mainstream of intellectual activity of the time.

This sort of science seen within a religious framework continued into the nineteenth century with figures like Faraday, but the mainstream of scientists tended toward the deism, agnosticism, and atheism of the French Enlightenment, culminating in LaPlace's Newtonian cosmology without God that he presented to Napoleon.

Newton is often portrayed as the perfect empirical scientist because of his denial of hypotheses about why bodies gravitate, in favor of such a statement of the law of how gravitation goes on, and because of his rules of right reasoning, which appear to be rudimentary maxims for empirical induction. For fifty years or more a dispute has been going on among scholars as to whether Newton was such an empiricist or whether he was some kind of metaphysician believing in occult qualities and forces.³ The vast Newtonian literature gives ammunition to both sides, but I think the evidence, especially from the Newton manuscripts, supports the contention of McGuire and Rattansi that Newton was in the Renaissance Hermetic tradition and that Newton believed in a prisca theologia going back to Moses and Hermes that contained all wisdom about the world.⁴ Lord Keynes, who made a pretty exhaustive study of the Newton manuscripts (and saved many of them for Cambridge University before they were dispersed), claimed Newton was not the first to live in the age of reason but rather was the last of the magicians.⁵ Keynes claimed that Newton "looked on the whole universe and allthat is in it as a riddle, as a secret which could be read by applying pure thought to certain evidence, certain mystic clues that God had laid about the world to allow a sort of philosopher's treasure hunt to the esoteric brotherhood."⁶ If Newton held to a magical metaphysical view as to how things happened in nature, he also had a theological view as to why (and how) they happened. It is this view that I want to trace in this paper.

Before examining Newton's theological causal theories, let me outline what I will try to cover. Newton was the dominant intellectual figure in the British scientific world of the early eighteenth century. Two major figures who tried to develop the Newtonian approach in other areas were David Hartley (in psychology) and Joseph Priestley (in electricity and in chemistry.) All three would have won the Nobel Prize if it had existed in their day. Hartley and Priestley both developed in more detail the kind of prophetic theology of Newton as the ultimate interpretation of what is going on in the world. They represented a theological tradition now ignored or forgotten, but one that was the mainstream view of the scientific community of their day. Priestley, who was the only one to live until Hume's supposed solution of the problem of the possibility of knowledge of scientific causality, sternly rebutted Hume's analysis and pointed out what he saw as its inadequacies.⁷ This tradition of Newton, Hartley, and Priestley was central in eighteenth-century intellectual history. If we are to understand how we got where we are and what we have gained or lost, I believe we have to look honestly at our past and not try to ignore it or falsify it.

Having said this much, let us look at the data. Everyone knows Newton was religious. He offered a proof of the existence of God (by the argument from design) in the second edition of Principia Mathematica. He wrote on questions like the structure of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. His last two published works were The Chronology of Ancient Times, justifying Biblical chronology, and the posthumous Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Book of Revelation (1733). When Newton died, his followers tried to prevent the publication of the latter work, plus the voluminous religious writings, most of which are still unpublished.' Later explanations have claimed this suppression was (1) due to trying to save Newton's reputation as a scientist, and (2) to cover up the fruits of Newton's senility. As Frank Manuel has pointed out, however, the testimony of Newton's star disciple and later archenemy, William Whiston, shows that Newton was writing the religious material all of his life, including the period of his greatest scientific achievements.⁹

In fact, even the long delay on Newton's part in publishing his theory of gravitation seems to have been due to religious factors. In 1680 Henry More described how he and Newton were studying the Bible and "Apocalyptical Notions" together."⁰ Newton drew from the passage in Daniel, which reads, "O Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, even to the time of the end: Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased," the interpretation that "tis therefore a part of this Prophecy, that it not be understood before the last age of the world; and therefore it makes for the credit of the Prophecy, that it is not yet understood. But if the last, the age of opening these things, be now approaching, as by the great successes of later interpreters it seems to be, we have more encouragement than ever to look into these things."¹¹ Newton believed that the text "In the time of the end the wise shall understand, but none of the wicked shall understand" applied to those of his time and that immediately following. Because of this belief, apparently, Newton told Robert Hooke that he, Newton, had "been endeavouring to bend myself from philosophy to other studies in so much that I have long grudged the time spent in that study unless it be perhaps at idle hourssometimes for a diversion."¹² Nonetheless, Newton was finally induced by Halley and others to work out and publish his Principia Mathematica in 1687.¹³

The suppression of Newton's religious writings seems more likely due to the fact that Newton was a heterodox Christian. Like Whiston he was an Arian and, in early eighteenth-century terms, a Unitarian. Whiston proclaimed and published such views and got himself fired from Newton's chair at Cambridge and from the Royal Society. Newton, who led the fight against Whiston, was a closet heretic.¹⁴ The publication of Newton's religious writings would have ruined his reputation with the positivist-agnostic scientists of the day. (A few documents have been published by H. McLachlan. Both he and Keynes contend that Newton was not even a Unitarian, but a "Judaic monotheist of the school of Maimonides.")¹⁵

(Recently I met an American mathematician. When he found out what I was working on, he asked me if it was really true that the great Isaac Newton held strange religious views. When I told him that I thought the answer was yes and that Newton believed stranger things than has been suspected, the mathematician was heartsick. How could it be possible that the discoverer of the calculus believed such nonsense?)

In Newton's theological view, God created and directs nature through intelligent design. God still intervenes in nature to keep the stars from colliding and to maintain the stability of the solar system.¹⁶ Newton said in one of his theological papers that one should keep religion and science separate, "that religion and Philosophy are to be preserved distinct. We are not to introduce divine revelations into Philosophy nor philosophical opinions into religion."¹⁷ However, Newton's views about the Bible would suggest this cannot be done. First, by vindicating biblical chronology, Newton made clear that he accepted Mosaic chronology including the creation story in Genesis 1. Frank Manuel, in his chapter "Israel Vindicated," in his Isaac Newton, Historian, shows that Newton was trying to deflate the claims to greater antiquity of the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Chaldeans, the Persians, or the Chinese over the Jews. In his argument over ancient chronology Newton maintained that "the Bible [is] the most authentic history in the world."¹⁸ Nature, therefore, starts when God commences history. Nature is part of the historical creation. In the Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Book of Revelation Newton laid down a theory of interpreting prophetic passages that he took over principally from Joseph Mede's Key to the Apocalypse. Mede (1586-1638), who was professor at Cambridge early in the seventeenth century, said that he had become a complete skeptic after his university studies. He found no certainty in any of the sciences he had examined. Finally, he was saved from complete despair by discovering the key to the Apocalypse. He then became the theoretician for those trying to interpret the prophecies, especially in Daniel and Revelation. In fact, his system, with some alterations, is still being used, at least in Southern California. Mede's major work, Clavis Apocalyptica, became the source and model for a great many biblical interpreters, including Isaac Newton.¹⁹

In the theological paper "The Language of the Prophets," Newton claimed that to understand the prophets one has to understand their unique mystical language.²⁰ In the Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Book of Revelation he contended that "the authority of the Prophets is divine, and comprehends the sum of religion."²¹ The prophecies in Daniel and Revelation describe the development of the postbiblical world until the end of time (and of history and nature). Newtondid not hold that one could foretell future events this way. Rather, as events took place, one could figure out that they had been foretold in the prophecies. These are part of the clues that God has put into creation for us to find. But the whole structure of human history had been foreordained in the prophecies.²² Newton traced how Roman and medieval history is all the fulfillment of the prophecies. However, he did not follow out further history as Hartley and Priestley did to the immediate present and the millennial future (including the end of physical creation).²³

In the Newtonian picture God creates, directs, and has ordained a plan for history that his prophets have set forth. This plan not only involves the destruction of the mighty empires of the world but, if one takes the Book of Revelation seriously, the world itself. Newton's scientific contemporary John Ray gave a graphic picture of how the physical world will end in a fire.²⁴ Whiston wrote on this subject, too.²⁵ The result would be that Newtonian physics is an explanation of a physical universe that will last about six thousand years; it is an explanation inside a prophetic reading of the Bible. Without worrying about miracles and how they might fit in, physical science is a uniformitarian picture of an aspect of the historical creation that will be true until the prophecies about the end of the world come true.²⁶"

Newton did not spell out this scheme as clearly as I have painted it, though he came close to it in his Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Book of Revelation. Dayid Hartley (1707-1757) made the case crystal clear. Hartley, like Hume, claimed he was discovering the Newtonian laws about mental life.²⁷ His Observations on Man (1749) was more successful than Hume's Treatise of Human Nature and is a more scientific and systematic presentation of a mechanistic psychology. Through his influence on Coleridge and on James Mill, Hartley became the founder of modern psychology.²⁸ Those who know about his theory of association of ideas seem unaware that there is a second and at least coequal part of his book, devoted to explaining natural and revealed religion.²⁹

Hartley began by proving God's existence principally through the argument from design. He then turned to justifying acceptance of the biblical account of how God acts in the world. Basically, Hartley followed the commonsense argument that had been developed in seventeenth-century Anglican theology, principally by William Chillingworth, Bishop Edward Stillingfleet, and Archbishop John Tillotson; namely, that it is more reasonable to accept the Mosaic account than to deny it. It is implausible that Moses and the prophets would lie. It would fly in the face of common sense to deny an account of the world that fits the facts and has been accepted by so many eminent persons. Hartley also argued that "the Genuineness of the Scriptures proves the Truth of the Facts contained in them," as well as their divine authority, and that "the Prophecies delivered in the Scriptures prove their divine Authority."³⁰

If it is reasonable to accept the Bible, then a crucial part of this acceptance is recognizing the role of prophecy. That biblical prophecy is a genuine way of foretelling events is first of all established by the fact that within the Bible prophecies are made about events to come in Jewish history, and these events happened, such as the fall of the first Temple, the Babylonian captivity, the return from the exile, the fall of the second Temple. More important, prophecies principally in Isaiah foretell the coming of the Messiah. The Gospels show over and over again the way in which the arrival of Jesus of Nazareth is the fulfillment of those prophecies. Finally in Daniel, in certain lines in the Gospels, and especially in the Book of Revelation, prophecies about postbiblical history are made. Hartleyclaimed the same kind of success rate. The fall of the Roman Empire was predicted, and it fell. The dispersion of the Jews was predicted, and they are scattered to the four corners of the earth. And Hartley went on and on, with great detail.³¹ Then he moved to the next state of things. The time for the fulfillment of the final prophecies was near. What he envisaged (though he wouldn't date when all of this would happen) was revolutions all over the world, the collapse of kingdoms, the reemergence of the Lost Tribes of Israel, the return of the Jews to Palestine, the rebuilding of the Temple, the second coming of Jesus, and the conversion of the Jews.³² At this point developmental history would be over. Jesus would reign for one thousand years, the Millennium, and then the historical and natural world would disappear in the destruction of the world by fire (presumably a spiritual world would survive for all eternity).³³ So in Hartley's scheme prophetic history is the blueprint for what will happen in both natural and human history, and God brings about his plan through the fulfilling of prophecies in history. Hartley was more detailed than Newton (at least in his published writings). In adjoining his theological work to his psychological one, he obviously saw his scientific work as both compatible with his theology and to some extent explained by it. Hartley also made the fulfillment of the prophetic plan an immediate issue in that the specific program set forth in Revelation was about to take place though one could not tell exactly when.

Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) brought this kind of scientific theology to a climax. Priestley, unlike Newton or Hartley, was a preacher by profession, albeit a heterodox one. He was extremely influenced by Hartley's writings and was always recommending them to people. He gave Benjamin Franklin a copy of Hartley to cure him of his deism.³⁴ He said over and over again that Hume would not have offered so many bad arguments and would not have come to so many wrong conclusions if he had read Hartley's Observations.³⁵ Priestley put out an edition of Hartley (making his explanation of sensory processes even more materialistic and Newtonian than it was in the original).³⁶ And when Priestley fled to America in 1794 (when he was driven out of England for his pro-French views), he read the Bible and Hartley's religious views on the ship for comfort and solace.

Priestley made fundamental contributions to modern science in his History of Electricity and his work on oxygen. He also wrote dozens and dozens of religious works. He held a position similar to that of Newton and Hartley about the evidence of God's existence from the argument from design and the authenticity of the Bible as world history. In his Discourses Relating to The Evidences of Revealed Religion, he held that prophecy was God's exclusive province which God gave to certain Hebrews and Apostles.³⁷ In his Letters to The French Philosophers, Priestley claimed it was evident that prophecy is true from the fact that Moses predicted the fate of the Israelites to the end of the world, and his prophecies have been accurate up to the present. Also, Jesus prophesied the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and it happened.³⁸ Since many of the prophecies have come true, it appeared to Priestley that the ultimate ones were about to be realized. In view of the fact that many of these prophecies involve the Jews, Priestley began a campaign in 1787 to convince the Jews of their role in prophetic history and to urge them to act accordingly by becoming Christians. In 1787 Priestley rejoiced at the prospects for the Jews.³⁹ The French Revolution increased Priestley's conviction that the millennial prophecies were about to be fulfilled.⁴⁰ (Many English theologians saw prophetic implications in the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era. There is some similar literature in France, mainly by Jansenists).⁴¹ In his Memoires there is a note that in the early 1790s he told people that the second personal appearance of Christ was very near, and he placed it at nomore than twenty years.⁴²

The Jews rejected his advances. At least one Jewish writer, David Levi of London, denied in his answer to Priestley that biblical prophecies could be translated into current history.⁴³ Priestley, nonetheless, became more convinced by the course of events. From Philadelphia he declared in 1797 that on reading Scripture he was especially impressed by "the glorious prospects that are given us of the future state of things in the world, with respect to the great events which seem now to be approaching."⁴⁴ In 1799 Priestley tried to make clear to the Jews (and everyone else) that the great events had arrived. In An Address to Jews on The Present State of the World and the Prophecies Relating to it, Priestley said the Jews had been wise in not trying to fix a time of their redemption. But now "the state of the world at present is such as cannot fail to engage your particular attention."⁴⁵ The fall of various European powers and the capture of the pope indicate that several prophecies in Daniel about the deliverance of the Jews are about to be fulfilled. Priestley dated it all within fifty years, with the Turkish Empire falling first. He presented the French Revolution as the beginning of the whole process leading to the culmination of history.⁴⁶ (Priestley was such an enthusiast for the French Revolution that he was made an honorary French citizen and a member of the National Assembly. He never took his seat.) Priestley saw that the prophetic theory advanced by Newton and Hartley was becoming reality. And in this, he, unlike them, saw immediate events as the culmination of divine history. Since he died a few years before his date for the second coming, he never knew that history just went plodding on.

What does this brief survey show? Three of the greatest mechanistic scientists in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries held to a picture of the natural world functioning within the divine world. The divine world was not just a general design but a prophetic plan in which nature was created when divine history began and in which nature would last only as long as divine history. They held to the view that was stated by one of Newton's greatest admirers, his namesake, Bishop Thomas Newton, who held Sir Isaac's scientific and theological work in the highest esteem. In his Dissertation on the Prophecies (1758), Bishop Newton declared, "In any explication of the prophecies you cannot but observe the subserviency of human learning to the study of divinity. One thing is particularly requisite, a competent knowledge of history sacred and profane, ancient and modern. Prophecy is, as I may say, history anticipated and contracted; history is prophecy accomplished and dilated; and the prophecies of scripture contain, as you can see, the fate of the most considerable nations, and the substance of the most memorable transactions in the world from the earliest to the latest time."⁴⁷

Ultimately, the cause of everything was God acting through his prophetic plan. This picture was held to not only by Newton, Hartley, and Priestley but by most of the scientists in the United Kingdom.

Hume was a misfit in his day because he did not believe in divine causality, Scripture, or prophecy and saw events as just parts of regular sequences. In his earliest work, the Treatise, Hume had said that "if no impression, either of sensation or reflection, implies any force or efficacy, 'tis equally impossible to discover or even imagine any such active principle in the deity. Since philosophers, therefore, have concluded, that matter cannot be endow'd with any efficacious principle, because 'tis impossible to discover in it such a principle; the same course of reasoning shou'd determine them to exclude it from the supreme being. Or if they esteem that opinion absurd and impious, as it reallyis, I shall tell them how they may avoid it; and that is, by concluding from the very first, that they have no adequate idea of power or efficacy in any object."⁴⁸ Thus divine causal power is unknown, as is any other kind of causal power.

In his later works Hume went on to question any meaningful role that divine causation was supposed to have. In the Enquiry, when Hume discussed miracles, a major alleged form of divine causality, he contended that the occurrence of miracles was always extremely improbable. Also, he maintained that it was always more probable that the testimony concerning the occurrence of a miracle was false than that the supposed miraculous event had occurred. Hume applied this analysis to the Pentateuch, and declared, "I desire any one to lay his hand on his heart, and after a serious consideration declare, whether he thinks that the falsehood of such a book, supported by such a testimony, would be more extraordinary and miraculous than all of the miracles it relates; which is, however, necessary to make it be received, according to the measures of probability above established."⁴⁹ Hume followed by saying that the same point can be made about prophecies, since prophecies are supposed miracles.⁵⁰ (If they were not, they would not count as proofs of revelation.) Because human beings are not able to foretell future events by using their natural capacities, prophecies are therefore supposed to go beyond what can be known by natural means. In the next chapter, entitled "Of a Particular Providence and of a Future State," Hume insisted that "all the philosophy, therefore, in the world, and all the religion, which is nothing but a species of philosophy, will never be able to carry us beyond the usual course of experience, or give us measures of conduct and behavior different from those which are fumished by reflections on common life. No new fact can ever be inferred from the religious hypothesis; no event foreseen or foretold; no reward or punishment expected or dreaded, beyond what is already known by practice and observation."⁵¹

Hume's empirical theology does not allow for such speculation about what may take place in the world. In the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion Hume's character, Philo, asserted that it was dangerous to speculate about the two eternities "before and after the present state of things" because we have no basis for making any meaningful judgments.⁵² At the close of the Dialogues Hume had Philo say "that the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence."⁵³ From this situation no further data could be inferred. Hume, thus, had constructed a view of the world in which no providential events are likely to take place and in which there could be no prophetic knowledge of them.

On the other hand, the prophetic scientists had made great discoveries in the sciences. But their days of glory came to an end in the early nineteenth century. Two factors seem to have played a part in changing the role of the scientist from interpreter of prophecy to predicter of regularities. One is the translation of prophetic historian to interpreter of immediate events that came to a critical point in the failure of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic age to lead to the millennium. The continuation of the world after Waterloo made most see the world in secular terms. Those who continued the prophetic interpretation after 1815 (and there were and are plenty of them) were mainly outside the scientific community and became the founders of fundamentalism.⁵⁴

The other major development was the emergence of a new scientific mentality as expressed by Pierre-Simon de La Place (1749-1827). He, unlike Newton, Hartley, or Priestley, could conceive of a Newtonian world without God. As a product of the French Enlightenment, he had been divorcedfrom the religious and theological traditions so strongly rooted in England. During the chaos of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, La Place worked out a modernized and polished version of the Newtonian world system. He believed that everything in the world could be explained by this system and that all future observations would confirm it. Unlike Newton, La Place was sure that such a perfect and beautiful system required no divine maintenance. When he explained the system to his former student, the emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, the latter asked him, according to the story, "Where does God fit in your system?" La Place is supposed to have replied, "I have no need for such an hypothesis."⁵⁵

One reason for making such a claim was that La Place was certain that our knowledge of future events came only from our scientific knowledge of causes and effects. He said, "Being assured that nothing will interfere between these causes and their effects, we venture to extend our views into futurity, and contemplate the series of events which time alone can develop."⁵⁶ Here we have the complete separation of scientific thought from any prophetic religious view. There is no possibility in this view of prophesying the future. It can only be revealed in terms of the continuation of scientifically established causal laws. And, as a consequence of what La Place is supposed to have told Napoleon, there is no longer any need for the hypothesis that there can be prophetic clues about the future.

The failure of prophecy and the separation of science from religion created our modern scientific mentality. To appreciate what that is and what it has become, one must remember what it emerged from. And to understand the heroes of previous ages, like Newton, Hartley, and Priestley, one has to be willing to appreciate them for what they really were like, rather than what we might wish them to have been. In so doing, perhaps we will gain a richer appreciation of some of the conflicting currents of ideas that have gone into the making of our intellectual world.

Notes

Some of the research for this paper was supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities (No. RO-22932-75-596), and from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. I should like to thank both foundations for their kind assistance.

¹ See, for instance, Nicolas Malebranche, Entretiens sur la Metaphysique et sur la Religion, in Oeuvres compltes, Tome XII (Paris, 1965), Entretiens VI and VII, pp. 130-72.

² David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford, 1951), Book I, Part III, sec. XIV, pp. 159-60.

³ See for instance, E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (New York, 1925), pp. 280-93; E. W. Strong, "Newton and God," Journal of the History of Ideas, 13 (1952), 147-67; and Alexandre Koyré, Newtonian Studies (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), esp. Ch. i, "The Significance of the Newtonian Synthesis," pp. 16-24.

⁴ J. E. McGuire and P. M. Rattansi, "Newton and the 'Pipes of Pan,'" Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 21 (1966), 108-43; and J. E. McGuire, "Force, Active Principles, and Newton's Invisible Realm," Ambix, 15 (1968), 154-208.

⁵ John Maynard Keynes, "Newton, the Man" in Essays in Biography (London, 1961), p. 311.

⁶ Ibid., p. 313.

⁷ See Joseph Priestley, Letters to a Philosophical Unbeliever, Part L Containing an Examination of the Principal Objections to the Doctrines of Religion, and especially those contained in the Writings of Mr. Hume (Bath, 1780). Priestley criticized Hume in many of his works, and especially in this work attacked Hume's causal analysis. See R. H. Popkin, "Joseph Priestley's Criticisms of David Hume's Philosophy," Journal of the History of Philosophy, 15 (1977), 437-47.

⁸ On what happened to the manuscripts, see H. McLachlan, Introduction, Sir Isaac Newton's Theological Manuscripts (Liverpool, 1950). See also Keynes, p. 323. On the struggle about the Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Book of Revelation, see Frank E. Manuel, Isaac Newton Historian (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), Ch. x. The greater part of Newton's theological papers are in the National Library of Israel, Jersusalem, forming Yahuda MSS Var.1. Out of this vast collection, only one item has been published, as an appendix to Frank Manuel's The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford, 1974). Professors B. J. Dobbs, Richard S. Westfall, and myself are preparing an edition of all of Newton's theological and alchemical papers, which Cambridge University Press will publish.

⁹ Manuel, p. 171. Keynes states that Newton's writings on esoteric subjects and on theological matters "were nearly all composed during the same twenty-five years of his mathematical studies" (p. 316).

¹⁰ Arthur Quinn, The Confidence of British Philosophers, an Essay in Historical Narrative (Leiden, 1977), p. 31, drawn from Henry More, A Plain and Continued Exposition of the several Prophecies or Divine Visions of the Prophet Daniel (London, 1681).

¹¹ Ibid., p. 32. Cited from Isaac Newton, Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (London, 1733).

¹² Quinn, pp. 32-33.

¹³ Ibid., pp. 33-34.

¹⁴ Cf. McLachlan, Ch. ii, "Newton's Theology," in Newton's Theological Writings, esp. pp. 12-16; Manuel, p. 143; and Keynes, pp. 316-18. James Force has done an excellent study of Whiston as a dissertation under my direction. He is presently preparing it for publication.

¹⁵ McLachlan, p. 13, and Keynes, p. 316.

¹⁶ Dudley Shapere, "Isaac Newton," in Encyclopedia of Philosophy, V, 490.

¹⁷ Isaac Newton, "Seven Statements on Religion," in McLachlan, p. 58.

¹⁸ Manuel, Ch. vi. The quotation is on p. 89.

¹⁹ On Joseph Mede, see "The Author's Life," in The Works of the Pious and Profoundly Learned Joseph Mede, B. C. (London 1672), pp. I-XXXIV; Ernest Tuveson, Millennium and Utopia (Gloucester, Mass., 1972), pp. 76-85; Quinn, pp. 11-12; and Peter Toon, Puritans, the Millennium and the Future of Israel: Puritan Eschatology, 1600-1660 (Cambridge and London, 1970), pp. 56-65.

²⁰ McLachlan, pp. 119-20.

²¹ Isaac Newton, Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John, p. 14.

²² Ibid., p. 251.

²³ In the Observations Newton covered events in prophetic terms up to the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

²⁴ John Ray (Fellow of the Royal Society), Three Physio-Theological Discourses concerning, I. The Primitive Chaos, and Creation of the World. II. The General Deluge, its Causes and Effects. III. The Dissolution of the World and Future Conflagration (London, 1713).

²⁵ William Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth from its Original, to the Consummation of all Things, wherein the Creation of the World in six Days, The Universal Deluge, and the Great Conflagration, as laid down in the Holy Scripture, are shown to be perfectly agreeable to Reason and Phylosophy With a Discourse concerning the Mosaick History of the Creation (London, 1696). This is the work of Whiston's that first brought him to Newton's attention.

²⁶ There was some dispute about whether the natural world had proceeded by uniform laws, or whether the Flood had altered the laws.

²⁷ In his opening chapter, Hartley indicated that both his methods and his subject matter derived from Newton. David Hartley, Observations on Man, his Fame, his Duty and his Expectations (London, 1749), facs. ed. (Gainesville, Fla., 1966), introd. by Theodore L. Huguelet. Hume, in the Treatise, claimed he was introducing the Newtonian method of reasoning into moral subjects (title page), and later on that he, Hume, had discovered the law of attraction for the mental world (Book I, Part I, section iv).

²⁸ Coleridge even named his son Hartley. T. L. Huguelet traces Hartley's influence in the development of psychology. See his introduction to the Scholars' Facsimile ed. of Hartley.

²⁹ One of the few studies of the relation of the two parts is Robert Marsh, "The Second Part of Hartley's System," Journal of the History of Ideas, 20 (1959), 264-73.

³⁰ Hartley, Observations, Part II, Chs. i and ii.

³¹ Ibid., Ch. ii.

³² Ibid., Ch. iv, sec. ii, propositions 81-84. While making it appear that signs point to the rather imminent fulfillment of these prophecies, Hartley cautiously said, "How near the Dissolution of the present Governments, generally or pafticularly, may be, would be great Rashness to affirm'" (p. 368).

³³ See proposition 85, "It is not probable, that there will be any pure or complete Happiness, before the Destruction of this World by Fire," p. 380. Sect. iii, which follows this proposition, deals with "Of a Future State after the Expiration of this Life."

³⁴ Joseph Priestley, Observations on the Increase of Infidelity, 3d ed. (Philadelphia, 1797), p. 110, and The Memoires of Dr. Joseph Priestley, ed. and abr. John T. Boyer (Washington, D.C., 1964), p. 77.

³⁵ Hartley was brought up throughout Priestley's answer to Hume in the Letter to a Philosophical Unbeliever. At one point Priestley declared, "Mr. Hume had not even a glimpse of what was at the same time executing by Dr. Hartley, who, in an immence work, of wonderful comprehension and accuracy, has demonstrated" (p. 20).

³⁶ Priestley's edition was entitled Hartley's Theory of the Human Mind, on the Principle of the Association of Ideas; with Essays Relating to the Subject of It (London, 1775).

³⁷ Joseph Priestley, Discourses relating to the Evidences of Revealed Religion, Delivered in the Church of the Universalists at Philadelphia (Philadelphia, 1796).

³⁸ Joseph Priestley, Letters to the Philosophers and Politicians of France, in Theological and Miscellaneous Works (London, 1817-32), XXI, 122.

³⁹ Joseph Priestley, Letter to the Jews (Birmingham, 1787) in Theological and Miscellaneous Works, XXI, 231.

⁴⁰ Priestley's strongest statement on the role of the French Revolution in fulfilling prophecies is his The Present State of Europe Compared with Ancient Prophecies (London, 1794). Newton is used as a source.

⁴¹ Two leading English prophetic interpreters of the French events were the Reverend James Bicheno with his The Signs of the Times; or the Overthrow of the Papal Tyranny in France, The Prelude of Destruction to Popery and Despotism (London, 1793), and The Restoration of the Jews, The Crisis of All Nations to which is now prefixed, A Brief History of the Jews from their first Dispersion to the Calling of their Grand Sanhedrin at Paris, October 6, 1806, 2d ed. (London, 1807); and the Reverend George Stanley Faber, A General and Connected View of the Prophecies relative to the Conversion, Restoration, Union, and Future Glory, of the Houses of Judah and Israel; The Progress and Final Overthrow of the Antichristian Confederacy in the Land Palestine, 2 vols. (London, 1809).

For a survey of prophetic interpretations of French events from 1789 to Waterloo, see Leroy E. Froom, The Prophetic Faith of our Fathers, Vol. II (Washington, 1948), pp. 744-82, and Mayir Verete, "The Restoration of the Jews in English Protestant Thought," Middle Eastern Studies, 8 (1972), 3-50.

There is a French Millenarian literature that has hardly been studied. There are works like Dissertation sur l'èpoque du Rappel des Juifs, et sur 1'heureuse revolution qu 'il doit opérer dans I'Eglise (Paris, 1779); and Avis aux Catholiques sur le caractére et les signes du temps ozu nous vivons; ou de la Conversion des Juifs, de 1'Avènement intermediaire de Jesus-Christ et de son Regne visible sur la terre (N.p., 1795). A small portion of French millennial thought is treated in R. H. Popkin, "La Peyr&re, the Abbé Grégoire and the Jewish Question in the Eighteenth Century," Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, 4 (1975), 209-22. See also Clarke Garrett, Respectable Folly (Baltimore, 1975).

⁴² Priestley, Memoires (London, 1831-82) II, 119.

⁴³ David Levi, Letters to Dr. Priestley in answer to his Letters to the Jews (London, 1787).

⁴⁴ Priestley, Observations on The Increase of Infidelity, 3d ed. (Philadelphia, 1797), p. vi.

⁴⁵ Priestley, An Address to the Jews on the Present State of The World and the Prophecies Relating to it (Northumberland, 1799) in Theological and Miscellaneous Works, XX, 283.

⁴⁶ Ibid., pp. 286-89.

⁴⁷ Thomas Newton, Dissertation on the Prophecies, 2d ed. (London, 1760), III, 439.

⁴⁸ Hume, Treatise, p. 160.

⁴⁹ Hume, "Of Miracles," in An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, ed. Selby-Bigge (Oxford, 1966), p. 130.

⁵⁰ Ibid., pp. 130-31.

⁵¹ Hume, Enquiry, p. 146. See also R. H. Popkin, "Hume: Philosophical versus Prophetic Historian," in K. R. Merrill and R. W. Shahan, eds., David Hume, Many-Sided Genius (Norman, Okla., 1976), pp. 83-95.

⁵² Hume, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, ed. Norman Kemp Smith (London, 1947), pp. 134-35.

⁵³ Ibid., p. 227.

⁵⁴ Ernest R. Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism, British and American Millenarianism, 1800-1930 (Chicago, 1970).

⁵⁵ R. Harre, "Pierre Simon de LaPlace," Encyclopedia of Philosophy, IV, 291-92.

⁵⁶ Ibid., p. 393.