Augustus De Morgan

“ Locke, in his reply, says "there is not one word of Socinianism in it:" and he was right: the positive Socinian doctrine has not one word of Socinianism in it; Socinianism consists in omissions. Locke and Hobbes did not dare deny the Trinity: for such a thing Hobbes might have been roasted, and Locke might have been strangled. Accordingly, the well-known way of teaching Unitarian doctrine was the collection of the asserted essentials of Christianity, without naming the Trinity, etc. This is the plan Newton followed, in the papers which have at last been published. ”

“ Grosart says, speaking of Bacon's "Remains," "All who have had occasion to examine our early literature are aware that it was a common trick to issue imperfect, false, and unauthorized writings under any recently deceased name that might be expected to take. The Puritans, down to John Bunyan, were perpetually expostulating and protesting against such procedure." I have met with instances of all this; but I did not know that there was so much of it: a good collection would be very useful. The work of 1728, attributed to Newton, is likely enough to be one of the class. ”

“ He believes the God of all grace to have been angry with one that never offended Him; and that God that hates sin to be reconciled to himself though sinning continually, and never making or being able to make Him any satisfaction. ”

“ He believes a most just God to have punished a most just person, and to have justified himself, though a most ungodly sinner. He believes himself freely pardoned, and yet a sufficient satisfaction was made for him."
Who can doubt that if Bacon had written this it must have been wrong? Many writers, especially on the Continent, have taken him as sneering at (Athanasian) Christianity right and left. Many Englishmen have taken him to be quite in earnest, and to have produced a body of edifying doctrine. More than a century ago the Paradoxes were published as a penny tract ”

“ Not all the blood of all the Howards will gain respect for a writer who maintains that eclipses admit no possible explanation under the Copernican hypothesis, and who asks how a man can "go 200 yards to any place if the moving superficies of the earth does carry it from him?" ”

“ This is an elaborate correction of Newton's followers, and of Newton himself, who it seems did not give his own views with perfect fidelity. Father Castel, for instance, assures us that Newton placed the sun at rest in the center of the system. Newton left the sun to arrange that matter with the planets and the rest of the universe. ”

“ Gus! at 'em a' round!" ought to be the backing of the scientific world to the author of the Budget of Paradoxes.
The whole collection commenced existence in the head of a powerful mathematician during some sleepless nights. Seeing how large a number was practicable, he amused himself by inventing a digested plan of finding more.
Is there any one whose name cannot be twisted into either praise or satire? I have had given to me,
"Thomas Babington Macaulay Mouths big: a Cantab anomaly."
NEWTON'S DE MUNDI SYSTEMATE LIBER. A treatise of the system of the world. By Sir Isaac Newton. ”

“ Bacon's Paradoxes,—so attributed—were first published as his in some asserted "Remains," 1648. [299] They were admitted into his works in 1730, and remain there to this day. The title is "The Character of a believing Christian, set forth in paradoxes and seeming contradictions." The following is a specimen:
"He believes three to be one and one to be three; a father not to be older than his son; a son to be equal with his father; and one proceeding from both to be equal with both: he believes three persons in one nature, and two natures in one person.... ”

“ The plan was certainly impracticable; but Whiston and Ditton might have retorted that they were nearer to the longitude than their satirist to the kingdom of heaven, or even to a bishopric. Arbuthnot, I think, here and elsewhere, reveals himself as the calculator who kept Swift right in his proportions in the matter of the Lilliputians, Brobdingnagians, etc. Swift was very ignorant about things connected with number. He writes to Stella that he has discovered that leap-year comes every four years, and that all his life he had thought it came every three years. ”

“ But all did not agree: in my copy of Peter Shaw's [300] edition (vol. ii, p. 283) the Paradoxes have been cut out by the binder, who has left the backs of the leaves. I never had the curiosity to see whether other copies of the edition have been served in the same way. The Religious Tract Society republished them recently in Selections from the Writings of Lord Bacon, (no date; bad plan; about 1863, I suppose) . No omissions were made, so far as I find.
I never believed that Bacon wrote this paper; it has neither his sparkle nor his idiom. ”

“ I suspect they have a kind of liking for the word; it sounds like so sinful. The learned clergy and the higher laity know better: they know that the bulk of the modern Unitarians go farther than Socinus, and are not correctly named as his followers. The Unitarians themselves neither desire nor deserve a name which puts them one point nearer to orthodoxy than they put themselves. That point is the doctrine that direct prayer to Jesus Christ is lawful and desirable: this Socinus held, and the modern Unitarians do not hold. ”

“ It should seem that it is easier to square the circle than to get round a mathematician.
An attempt to demonstrate that all the Phenomena in Nature may be explained by two simple active principles, Attraction and Repulsion, wherein the attraction of Cohesion, Gravity and Magnetism are shown to be one the same. By Gowin Knight. London, 1748, 4to. Dr. Knight [329] was Mr. Panizzi's [330] archetype, the first Principal Librarian of the British Museum. He was celebrated for his magnetical experiments. ”

“ It is very possible that some observant turnpenny might construct such a treatise as this from the third book, that it might be ready for publication the moment Newton could not disown it. It has been treated with singular silence: the name of the editor has never been given. Rigaud [294] mentions it without a word: I cannot find it in Brewster's Newton, nor in the Biographia Britannica. There is no copy in the Catalogue of the Royal Society's Library, either in English or Latin, except in Castiglione. ”

“ The last writer is hardly out of the time in which aristocracy suppressed its names; the avowal was then usually meant to make the author's greatness useful to the book. In our day, literary peers and honorables are very favorably known, and contain an eminent class. ”

“ But—purposing to become a Creator, and to communicate to his creatures, he ordained in his eternal counsel that one person of the Godhead should be united to one nature, and to one particular of his creatures ”

“ But his implied satire on aristocratic writing forgets two points. First, during a large period of our history, when persons of rank condescended to write, they veiled themselves under "a person of honor," "a person of quality," and the like, when not wholly undescribed. ”

“ His Treatise on Fluxions (London, 1704) was the first work in English to explain Newton's calculus. He wrote a work entitled The Moon (1723) to prove that our satellite shines by its own as well as by reflected light. His Chronographia Asiatica & Aegyptica (1758) gives the results of his travels.
275 ↑ Publick in the original.
276 ↑ Whiston (1667-1752) succeeded Newton as Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge. In 1710 he turned Arian and was expelled from the university. His work on Primitive Christianity appeared the following year. He wrote many works on astronomy and religion. ”

“ His idea for finding longitude at sea was to place stations in the Atlantic to fire off bombs at regular intervals, the time between the sound and the flash giving the distance. He also corresponded with Huyghens concerning the use of chronometers for the purpose.
278 ↑ This was John Arbuthnot (c. 1658-1735) , the mathematician, physician and wit. He was intimate with Pope and Swift, and was Royal physician to Queen Anne. Besides various satires he published a translation of Huyghens's work on probabilities (1692) and a well-known treatise on ancient coins, weights, and measures (1727) . ”

“ Selecta aliquot theoremata adversos atheos, etc., Paris, 1635, 4to.
323 ↑ The British Museum Catalogue mentions a copy of 1740, but this is possibly a misprint.
324 ↑ This was Johann II (1710-1790) , son of Johann I, who succeeded his father as professor of mathematics at Basel.
325 ↑ Samuel Koenig (1712-1757) , who studied under Johann Bernoulli I. He became professor of mathematics at Franeker (1747) and professor of philosophy at the Hague (1749) . ”