Memoirs of John Napier of' Merchtston. ^^5 



The Commentary on the Apocalypse was, on the part of Na- 

 pier, an edifying work, long meditated, which at first he had 

 undertaken with the design of converting the Papists, as he 

 himself narrates in his preface. But the crisis he chose for the 

 publication, affixes to his first project the character of a less 

 charitable intention ; for it took place precisely two days after 



English reader. Mr Napier contrasts the present enlightened period, (when 

 no Protestant of enlarged views or common sense is even startled by declared 

 scepticism, as to the truth of such interpretations of the Apocalypse,) with the 

 dark age in which Napier wrote, when Roman Catholic domination, powerfully 

 aided from abroad, was the engrossing object of political and patriotic resist- 

 ance in Scotland, when the subject of theology had not yet been treated 

 either learnedly or systematically, and when the field of prophecy was yet 

 imexplored by powerful minds. Dr Brewster, in his Life of Sir Isaac New- 

 ton, had not once mentioned the name of Nai)ier. The biographer of Napier 

 shews that whatever is valuable in Newton's scriptural commentaries is to 

 be found, even more learnedly treated, in Napier, a century earlier, when 

 circumstances rendered such considerations more rational than in the age 

 of Sir Isaac Newton. Mr Napier, contrary to M. Biot's assumption, equally 

 dissents from Dr Brewster's unqualified vindication of the " Newtonian inter- 

 pretation of the Scriptures." He merely maintains, that for '' Newtonian" 

 we ought to read " Naperian," and give the glory quantum valeat to Napier. 

 His biographer, moreover, contrasts Napier's very original Commentaries, 

 which may be said to have founded the school of theological learning in Scot- 

 land (a circumstance independent of fanciful interpretations, and therefore 

 biographically valuable), with certain weak, but not unpopular writers of the 

 present day (he instances Cunningham and Keith), whose mystical conceits 

 are unredeemed by solid learning, and not excused by local circumstances. 

 Napier's theological works (strangely overlooked by the learned M'Crie, in 

 his history of that department of letters of which they were the earliest and 

 most conspicuous productions), are an interesting and important step in the 

 progress of Scottish learning, not in respect of their peculiar interpretations, 

 but for the spirit of theological investigation, the learning, and the philoso- 

 phical method of inquiry therein displayed to a barbarous age and country. 

 The same subject, as handled by Sir Isaac Newton, to whom has been given 

 all the praise, is rather a retrograde step not pleasant to contemplate in the 

 history of letters ; and the more recent elucidations that same subject has 

 received from modern enthusiasts, who are much more jealous of their own 

 infallibility than Napier was of his, is simply a page of human folly. This is 

 all we can gather from that portion of Mr Napier's work which M. Biot re- 

 views with such elaborate sarcasm, as if it had been an insidious and illiberal 

 attack upon the Catholics. Nay, so far does M. Biot carry this mistake, as to 

 insinuate, what is equally contradicted by the work itself and by M. Biot's 

 whole abstract of it, namely, that Mr Napier's principal object in this biogra- 

 phy was to make the inventor of logarithms' scientific character and history a 

 stalking horse to superstitious Protestant illiberality.— rronj^a/or. 



