SIR ISAAC NEWTON. 261 



prove that Newton, the devout Christian believer, was an 1857. 

 Arian at the least. Besides this evidence, he was the 

 friend of Locke, Clarke, and Whiston, all distinctly 

 Antitrinitarians. 



It is to be remembered that during the whole of New- Newton's 

 ton's life the denial of the doctrine of the Trinity was belief 3 

 illegal, the statute of King William III. (which relaxed 

 the existing law) making the offender ineligible for any 

 position of trust for the first offence, and liable to three 

 years' imprisonment with other penalties for the second. 

 In these days, when few men of science do more than 

 tolerate the idea of the existence of God, we may dwell 

 with satisfaction on the fact that the world, if not 

 wiser, is better. For whereas in 1696 a man was hanged 

 for denying the Trinity, in 1881 men deny their Father 

 in Heaven, and their fellow-men, instead of hanging 

 them, are content to leave the opinion of each to find 

 its own place in philosophy. If our intellectual con- 

 clusions are chaotic, our moral sense, in this respect at 

 least, is clearer than it was 200 years ago. 



The c Life of Newton ' concludes with these words in 

 reference to the failings which truth compelled the 

 writer to disclose : ' Surely it is enough that Newton is 

 the greatest of philosophers and one of the best of men; 

 that all his errors are to be traced to a disposition which 

 seems to have been born with him ; that, admitting them 

 in their fullest extent, he remains an object of unqualified 

 wonder, and all but unqualified respect.' 



In the year 1855, three years after the appearance of Brewster's 

 Mr. De Morgan's tracts on the Fluxional Controversy, 

 Sir David Brewster's Life of Newton was published. Some 

 of the statements of the biographer in the British 

 Worthies were controverted, though not strongly; some 

 were softened, and some ignored. Sir David, in his great 

 veneration for his subject, had fallen into hero-worship, 

 and my husband's critique of his Life of Newton in the 

 North British Review, No. 46, 1855, shows this very clearly. 



