Newton's treatise on Revelation: the use of a mathematical discourse

© Institute of Historical Research 2006. Historical Research, vol. 79, no. 204 (May 2006)Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

Blackwell Publishing, Ltd.Oxford, UKHISRHistorical Research0950-3471© Institute of Historical Research 2005XXXOriginal ArticleNewton’s treatise on Revelation: the use of a mathematical discourseNewton’s treatise on Revelation: the use of a mathematical discourse

Newton’s treatise on Revelation: the use of a mathematical discourse*

Raquel Delgado-Moreira

Imperial College London

Abstract

This article focuses on the prophetic work of Newton and his peers, concentratingon a particular manuscript on Revelation for which Newton experimented witha ‘mathematical’ style. This text exemplifies two distinct levels in Newton’s work:structure and epistemology. Since Newton thought that prophecy and mathematicsrequired different kinds of proof, the possible similarities between the twodisciplines are not to be found at the level of demonstration. In explainingNewton’s use of a mathematical discourse, historians of Newton’s writings mustgive consideration to non-epistemological issues, such as his potential audience

and his rhetorical strategies.

1

August 1680 was almost certainly one of the very few times when IsaacNewton was described as ‘in a maner transported’. The phrase was usedin that year by the Cambridge Platonist Henry More (1614–87) todescribe Newton’s apparent approval of his prophetic scheme.

2

Theprecise nature of the relationship between the author of the

PrincipiaMathematica

and More, former disciple of the Cambridge don JosephMede (1586–1638), has been revised in recent times, and Newton has

* The author wishes to thank Rob Iliffe, Serafina Cuomo, John Young, William Vanderburgh,an anonymous reader and those attending presentations of the material in this article forvaluable comments on earlier versions. The author is grateful to the convenors of the I.H.R.2002–3 Postgraduate Seminar, especially to Jane Hamlett, for nominating the paper on whichthis article is based for the summer term 2003 Pollard Prize. Thanks are also due to MIT Pressfor permission to reproduce a table. Research for this article was made possible by a DarwinTrust scholarship.

1

All transcriptions of Newton’s papers are taken from the Newton Project digital editions<http://www.newtonproject.ic.ac.uk> (8 Feb. 2006). Diplomatic transcriptions are offered.Punctuation and spelling are left as in the original, as is superscript. Insertions are indicated byangle-brackets. Struck-through text stands for deleted or cancelled text in the original.Newton’s abbreviation of ‘th’ is transcribed as ‘y’. Newton’s own character is indistinguishablefrom ‘y’ and that is the reason why it has been preferred to the Latin letter ‘thorn’ or ‘

p

’, whichby the 17th century had in any case come to be used as an abbreviation of ‘th’ rather than asa letter. (The author thanks the Newton Project and, in particular, John Young for giving heraccess to the transcriptions of Newton’s untitled treatise on Revelation, Yahuda MS. 1)

2

The Conway Letters: the Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More, and theirFriends: 1642–94

, ed. M. H. Nicolson and S. Hutton (Oxford, 1992), p. 479, ‘Henry More toDr. John Sharp’.

Historical Research, vol. 79, no. 204 (May 2006) © Institute of Historical Research 2006.

Newton’s treatise on Revelation: the use of a mathematical discourse 225

been found to be less moved by More’s reading of the prophecies ofDaniel and John than the latter pretended.

3

More believed that prophecycould be proved mathematically or with mathematical certainty, andthere is evidence that he expected Newton to help him in this task.Paradoxically, however, Newton thought that prophecy was not susceptibleof a mathematical level of proof, although he was far from consideringhis own prophetic interpretation ‘uncertain’.

This article argues that at some stage in his career, Newton experimentedwith imitating the mathematical way of presentation for his propheticsynchronisms in his untitled treatise on Revelation, Yahuda MS. 1.

4

Thisfact has been misinterpreted by some Newton scholars, who have used itto show the allegedly ‘scientific’ style of Newton’s prophetic works.However, the mathematical structure of the most extensive of Newton’sprophetic manuscripts is far from being evidence of his belief that thetruth of his interpretations could be proved mathematically. In fact, whatone finds in Newton’s manuscripts and elsewhere disproves this claim.Nevertheless, there are similarities between his styles of argument in bothspheres, and a concern with avoiding hypotheses appears in bothNewton’s prophetic and natural philosophical works. Most importantly,prophecy and natural philosophy were connected for Newton insofar asexperience played a central confirmatory role in both areas of enquiry. Ademonstration of a specific prophetic interpretation could not be achievedwithout recourse to empiricism and for Newton, More’s neglect of thisapproach was his most egregious misdemeanour.

Having said that, the numbers that appear in the Apocalypse and in itsinterpretations – the groups of seven, the 1,260 years that equal three anda half days, 666 (the number of the Beast), and the like – are many andvery important, and they help to give a mathematical air to propheticexegesis. Newton was perhaps more concerned than his peers aboutgiving a precise account of the meaning of these numbers, or about datingthe events predicted by the prophecy, and when precision demanded ithe even referred to the particular month of the year in which somethinghappened.

5

In the sixteen-seventies and eighties Newton spent a considerableamount of time interpreting the book of Revelation and designing his own

3

For differences in the way in which Newton and More appropriated Mede, see S. Hutton,‘More, Newton and the language of Biblical prophecy’, in

The Books of Nature and Scripture:Recent Essays on Natural Philosophy, Theology, and Biblical Criticism in the Netherlands of Spinoza’sTime and the British Isles of Newton’s Time

, ed. J. E. Force and R. H. Popkin (Dordrecht, 1994),pp. 39–53; for a revision of the idea that Newton was influenced by More and for evidencethat Newton was indeed arguing

against

More, see R. Iliffe, ‘“Making a shew”: apocalyptichermeneutics and the sociology of Christian idolatry in the work of Isaac Newton and HenryMore’, in Force and Popkin, pp. 55–88.

4

Jerusalem, The Jewish National and University Library, Yahuda Var. 1/Newton Papers 1(hereafter Yahuda MS. 1).

5

E.g., Yahuda MS. 1.4 fo. 56r.

© Institute of Historical Research 2006. Historical Research, vol. 79, no. 204 (May 2006)

226 Newton’s treatise on

Revelation: the use of a mathematical discourse

prophetic ‘scheme’. At almost exactly the same time that he was workingon the

Principia Mathematica

– which appeared in 1687 – Newton filledfolios and folios with the extended interpretations of the mysteries ofthe Apocalypse, preceded by some prescriptive considerations on prophetichermeneutics. The manuscript, now in Jerusalem and known as YahudaMS. 1, is one of Newton’s early drafts on prophetic interpretation. Its 650folios contain elaborations of at least one projected treatise on Revelation.In what seems to be the beginning of the long text, Newton offered whathe called ‘Rules for interpreting and methodising the Apocalypse’.Superficial parallels have been established between those and the ‘Regulaephilosophandi’ or ‘Rules for natural philosophy’ from the

Principia

.

6

Thoseparallels have, however, prompted scholars to speculate, with less justification,about the similarities between both areas of Newton’s thought.

One of the first authors to note the existence of an ‘ideal scientificstructure’ in Newton’s methodizing of prophecy was Frank E. Manuel.Manuel remarked, in a series of lectures given in 1973, that Newton’s‘rules for interpreting the language of prophecy were a replica of thoseinsisted upon for interpreting the Book of Nature’.

7

Arguably, theobservation should have run in the opposite direction, since Newton’scomposition of rules for the methodizing of the Apocalypse probablypredated the set of rules in the

Principia

. Simplicity and harmony werethe features on which Manuel founded his conclusion that ‘Newtonapplied what might be called scientific criteria to the interpretation of thebooks of prophecy’.

8

Maurizio Mamiani has published three studies, one at the beginning ofthe nineteen-nineties the others in more recent years, exploring putativelinks between the prophetic set of rules and the ‘Regulae philosophandi’from the

Principia

.

9

In these articles he attempted to show that Newton’s

6

‘Rules for interpreting y

e

words & language in Scripture’ (Yahuda MS. 1.1 fo. 12r); ‘Rulesfor methodising <construing> the Apocalyps’ (fo. 12v ); ‘Rules for interpreting the Apocalyps’(fo. 15r). Cf.

The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

, ed. and trans. I. B.Cohen and A. Whitman (Berkeley, Calif., 1999), pp. 794–6.

7

F. E. Manuel,

The Religion of Isaac Newton

(Oxford, 1974), p. 98.

8

Manuel, pp. 97–8. In the last decades, Manuel’s ideas have been readopted. E.g., MattGoldish has declared that Newton applied, in the tradition of Mede, a scientific approach tohis prophetic interpretation (M. Goldish,

Judaism in the Theology of Sir Isaac Newton

(Dordrecht,1998), pp. 13, 57 ff ). See also R. H. Popkin, ‘Newton’s Biblical theology and his theologicalphysics’, in

Newton’s Scientific and Philosophical Legacy

, ed. P. B. Scheurer and G. Debrock(Dordrecht, 1988), pp. 81–97. Most recently, this and the inverse relation have been exploredby Ayval Leshem, and Newton’s mathematics interpreted as having a ‘spiritual function’(A. Leshem,

Newton on Mathematics and Spiritual Purity

(Dordrecht, 2003), pp. 104–5, 107, 111and

passim

).

9

M. Mamiami, ‘The rhetoric of certainty: Newton’s method in science and the interpretationof the Apocalypse’, in

Persuading Science: the Art of Scientific Reason

, ed. M. Pera and W. R. Shea(Canton, Mass., 1991), pp. 155–72; M. Mamiami, ‘To twist the meaning: Newton’s

RegulaePhilosophandi

revisited’, in

Isaac Newton’s Natural Philosophy

, ed. J. Z. Buchwald and I. B. Cohen(Cambridge, Mass., 2001), pp. 3–14; ‘Newton on prophecy and the Apocalypse’, in

The CambridgeCompanion to Newton

, ed. I. B. Cohen and G. E. Smith (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 387–408.



Figure 1.

First page of Mamiani’s 2001 comparative table (M. Mamiani, ‘To twist the meaning: Newton’s

Regulae Philosophandi

revisited’, in

Isaac Newton’s Natural Philosophy

, ed. J. Z. Buchwald and I. B. Cohen (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), pp. 3–14, at p. 11). By permission of the MIT Press.

Sanderson’s

Compendium

Rules of the

Treatise on the Apocalypse

(ca. 1672)

Regulae philosophandi

Law of brevity (

lex brevitatis

): ‘Nothing should be left out or be superfluous in a discipline (Nihil in disciplina desit, aut redundet).’

‘2. To assigne but one meaning to one place of scripture.’ ‘3. To keep as close as may be to the same sense of words.’

Regula I (1687) ‘Causas rerum naturalium non plures admitti debere, quam quae et verae sint & earum phaenomenis explicandis sufficiant.’

Law of harmony (

lex harmoniae

): ‘The individual parts of each doctrine should agree among themselves (Doctrinae singulae partes inter se consentiant).’

‘1. To observe diligently the consent of Scripture.’ ‘8. To choose those constructions w

ch

. . . reduce contemporary visions to y

e

greatest harmony of their parts.’ ‘9. To choose those constructions w

ch

. . . reduce things to the greatest

simplicity

.’

Comment to Regula I ‘Natura enim

simplex

est & rerum causis superfluis non luxuriat.’

Law of unity or homogeneity (

lex unitatis, sive homogeniae

): ‘No doctrine should be taught that is not homogeneous with subject or end (Nihil in doctrina praecipiatur, quod non sit subiecto aut fini homogeneum).’

Rules 4, 6, 7, 10, 12, 14, 15 Regula II (1687) ‘Ideoque effectuum naturalium eiusdem generis eaedem assignandae sunt causae, quatenus fieri potest.’

Law of connection (

lex connexionis

): ‘The individual parts of a doctrine ought to be connected by opportune transitions (Singulae partes doctrinae aptis transitionibus connectantur).’

‘5. To acquiesce in that sense of any portion of Scripture as the true one w

ch

results most freely & naturally from y

e

use & propriety of y

e

Language & tenor of the context in that & all other places of Scripture to that sense.’ ‘11. To acquiesce in that construction of y

e

Apocalyps as y

e

true one w

ch

results most naturally & freely from y

e

characters imprinted . . . for insinuating their connexion.’

Regula III (1713) ‘Qualitates corporum quae intendi & remitti nequeunt, quaeque corporibus omnibus competunt in quibus experimenta instituere licet, pro qualitatibus corporum universorum habendae sunt.’


228 Newton’s treatise on

Revelation: the use of a mathematical discourse

set of rules had their origin in a Ramist treatise on logic and rhetoric,Robert Sanderson’s

Logicae Artis Compendium

(1618) (Figure 1).

10

Crucially,he has also made the point that Newton’s definitions in Yahuda MS. 1are ‘mathematical’ and that we find the same philosophical discussion inthe

Treatise on the Apocalypse

as in

De Gravitatione et equipondio fluidorum

–an unfinished essay started by Newton, probably after 1668, in which hedismantled Cartesian relativist mechanism

11

– or in an early letter toHenry Oldenburg, the secretary of the Royal Society, concerning the natureof light and colours. The difference, according to Mamiani, is ‘one ofdetail and reference’.

12

In his most recent elaboration on the topic, Mamianiqualified this statement by pointing out that Newton applied the ‘method’sketched out in

De Gravitatione

to the interpretation of prophecy.

13

It is perhaps hardly surprising that such tight links between prophecyand mathematics should be established in contemporary literature, in viewof the fact that the connection between the talent for the interpretationof prophecy and for mathematics was widely discussed in the seventeenthcentury. John Worthington, the writer of the introduction to Mede’scomplete works, used the mathematical link to enhance the credibility ofthe latter’s

Clavis apocalyptica

(1627), praising it for displaying a strategy‘agreeable to his [Mede’s] Mathematical

Genius

’.

14

Manuel saw the‘scientific spirit’ at work in Mede’s demand for congruence of thesynchronisms with each other and with the historical events for whichthey stood, a spirit that began with the ‘symbiosis of mathematics andprophecy’ and reached its apogee in Newton.

15

Other historians havesuggested that Mede’s knowledge of mathematics was useful for his studyof the prophetic parts of Scripture and perhaps contributed to the successof his analysis. Thus, Katharine Firth wrote about Mede:

10

In 1977 Henry Guerlac had already suggested that Sanderson’s

Compendium

could have‘caught the eye of men like the young Newton’, although he did not think that Newtonimitated it in any way, rather the opposite. The evidence put forward by Richard S. Westfallin 1980, taken from Conduitt’s memorandum of a conversation with Newton in 1726, confirmsthat Newton read Sanderson but not that he felt particularly enthusiastic about it (H. Guerlac,Essays and Papers in the History of Modern Science (Baltimore, Md., 1977), pp. 204–5; R. S.Westfall, Never at Rest: a Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 82–3).

11 Dated by Westfall, pp. 302, 410. De Gravitatione is published in Unpublished Scientific Papersof Isaac Newton, ed. A. R. Hall and M. B. Hall (Cambridge, 1962).

12 ‘The difference between them is one of detail and reference, since the letter and DeGravitatione refer to natural experiments and not to parts of the Scripture’ (Mamiani, ‘To twistthe meaning’, p. 8). Mamiani refers to a letter from Newton to Oldenburg, Cambridge,21 Sept. 1672 (The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, ed. H. W. Turnbull, A. R. Hall, L. Tilling(7 vols., Cambridge, 1959–77), i. 237).

13 Mamiani, ‘To twist the meaning’, p. 4.14 The Works of the Pious and Profoundly-Learned Joseph Mede, ed. John Worthington (5 bks., 1672),

‘The General Preface’, bk. I, pp. *** 2, 3v. Mede’s Clavis apocalyptica ex innatis et insitis Visionumcharacteribus eruta et demonstrata was expanded in 1632 and translated into English as The Key ofthe Revelation Searched and Demonstrated out of the Naturall and Proper Charecters of the Visions (1643).

15 Manuel, p. 91.



Although he was basically a philologist, he had made a serious study ofmathematics, and Henry Briggs, the receiver of some of Napier’s papers, wasamong his friends. Perhaps partly because of this, Mede’s absorption of systematicanalysis in the Ramist fashion was more successful than Brightman’s had been.16

In 1988 Johannes van den Berg took this approach even further,describing Mede’s exposition as a ‘mathematically verifiable system’.17

The approaches outlined above define mathematics on the basis ofwhat it looks like rather than what it does.18 It will be argued here thatfor Newton and other contemporary exegetes, with the notableexception of More, mathematics and prophecy were quite differentthings. Only the Cambridge Platonist claimed to have demonstrated thetruth of his system with mathematical ‘evidence’, although he neverexplained what he meant by the term. That prophecy and mathematicsmight have shared some features in the seventeenth century, such asconsistency, parsimony and coherence, did not make prophetic exegesisa matter of mathematics for Newton’s contemporaries. Furthermore,some of the same historians who have argued for the mathematical natureof prophetic interpretation for Napier, Mede and Newton havevindicated other, often Ramist or so-called Ramist, origins for theprinciples that led to these authors’ research.19 It should be added thatRamus is the widely acknowledged inspiration for Sanderson’s treatise, fromwhich Mamiani argued that Newton took his prophetic and natural rules.

This article offers a brief introduction to what Mede called his ‘rule’(the synchronisms), to the application of that rule to the analysis of theApocalypse, and to the epistemological issues that were associated with it.It shows where the mathematical features of Newton’s manuscripttreatise on prophecy lie, but also provides evidence that prophecy and

16 K. R. Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain, 1530–1645 (Oxford, 1979),p. 218, and see also p. 214.

17 J. van den Berg, ‘Continuity within a changing context: Henry More’s millenarianism,seen against the background of the millenarian concepts of Joseph Mede’, in Pietismus undNeuzeit. Ein Jahrbuch zur Geschichte des Neueren Protestantismus, xiv: Chiliasmus in Deutschland undEngland im 17. Jahrhundert, ed. M. Brecht, F. De Boor and others (Göttingen, 1988), pp. 185–202, at p. 185. Author’s emphasis.

18 It is beyond the scope of this article to explore the philosophers’ ‘geometrical’ demonstrations(Descartes’s, Spinoza’s, etc.). The mathematical discourse of Newton and his contemporariescould be described on the basis of this weaker mathematical style. However, the present authorbelieves that these prophetic exegetes, and above all Newton, were often trying to imitate astronger, more rigorous mathematical style to give credibility to their arguments (see Pierre-DanielHuet, Demonstratio evangelica (1679), which apparently contains interesting epistemologicalclaims and was cast in a geometrical structure; and A. G. Shelford, ‘Thinking geometrically inPierre-Daniel Huet’s Demonstratio evangelica (1679)’, Jour. Hist. Ideas, lxiii (2002), 599–617).

19 Firth, pp. 137–9, 218. See also P. Christianson, Reformers and Babylon: English ApocalypticVisions from the Reformation to the Eve of the Civil War (Toronto, 1978), p. 125 (‘Joseph Medeapplied an enormous range of humanist linguistic training and historical knowledge, and a firmgrasp of Ramist logic to the mysteries of the Apocalypse’); and Berg, p. 192 (‘Mede’sphilosophical background does not become explicit, but we may assume that it was Aristotelianwith Ramist adaptations’).


230 Newton’s treatise on Revelation: the use of a mathematical discourse

mathematics were nonetheless for Newton two separate disciplines, to bekept apart. Despite the apparent confusion created by More – and the factthat Newton made mathematics the basis of his published naturalphilosophy – it was clear to Newton that the mathematical demon-strations valid for one discipline were not valid for the other.

The first half of the seventeenth century saw numerous interpretations ofthe prophecies from Daniel and John, relating the visions there describedto previous historical events. Interpreters thought that they had a moralduty to try to understand the visions and figures used by the prophets,and they frequently described them as ‘wrapt up in obscurity’.20 Nearlyall Protestant exegetes agreed that the Apocalypse, in the book now knownas Revelation, depicted the history of what for many was the greatestidolatry that had ever taken place, namely, Roman Catholicism, and theyconcurred in identifying the Roman pope with the Antichrist. In 1987,on the occasion of More’s tercentenary, Richard Popkin remarked thatthe idea that millenarian speculation had died out after the beginning ofthe Restoration period was clearly untrue21 – not only did it not dwindlebut, as pointed out in recent years, apocalyptic thought retained itsimportance after 1660.22 The works of the most influential interpreter ofapocalyptic images during the sixteen-forties and fifties, Joseph Mede,were rehabilitated to serve the goals of a new generation in RestorationEngland, and his new interpretative strategy was keenly embraced by bothMore and Newton, among others, in very different ways.23

It has been unfairly remarked that Mede’s strategy did not producenew results, or rather that it did not alter the standing interpretations.24

It is true that Mede’s originality has been somewhat exaggerated inmodern times, but the stir created by his interpretations should not beunderestimated. Mede caused a revolution in prophetic interpretation andwas to become, without doubt, the most influential apocalyptic thinkerof his time. This was largely thanks to the impact of what he called‘synchronisms’, which he used with great success, mainly in the Clavis

20 Yahuda MS. 1.1 fo. 18r. Cf. Henry More, Apocalypsis Apocalypseos or the Revelation of St.John the Divine Unveiled (1680), ‘The Preface to the Reader’, esp. p. v.

21 R. H. Popkin, ‘The spiritualistic cosmologies of Henry More and Anne Conway’, inHenry More (1614–1687): Tercentenary Studies, ed. S. Hutton (Dordrecht, 1989), pp. 97–114.

22 W. J. Johnston, ‘Apocalypticism in Restoration England’ (unpublished University ofCambridge Ph.D. thesis, 2000), pp. 1, 149. On the character of apocalyptic thought inRestoration England, see also two recent articles by the same author: W. J. Johnston, ‘Thepatience of the saints, the Apocalypse, and moderate nonconformity in Restoration England’,Canadian Jour. of History, xxxviii (2003), 505–20; and W. J. Johnston, ‘The Anglican Apocalypsein Restoration England’, Jour. Eccles. Hist., lv (2004), 467–501.

23 For the efforts that Worthington makes to conciliate Mede to the new Restoration times,see Worthington, ‘The General Preface’, bk. I, pp. **** 3, 1r. See also Johnston, pp. 146–7.

24 M. Murrin, ‘Revelation and two 17-th century commentators’, in The Apocalypse inEnglish Renaissance Thought and Literature: Patterns, Antecedents, and Repercussions, ed. C. A.Patrides and J. Wittreich (Ithaca, N.Y., 1984), p. 137; Firth, p. 217.



apocalyptica. Mede presented his ‘Synchronisme’ as a sure rule that couldbe demonstrated and by which ‘every interpretation [was] to be tried asit were by a square and a plumb-rule’.25

The notion of synchronisms, meaning the temporal correspondence ofgroups of visions distributed through the Apocalypse,26 was not entirelynew, as illustrated by the work of the earlier mathematician John Napier(1550–1617).27 As early as 1593 Napier had written that two differentseries of visions – the seven trumpets that sounded in chapters eight, nineand eleven, and the seven vials containing God’s wrath that were pouredby the angel in chapter sixteen of Revelation – were ‘all one’ (this was,incidentally, an idea that Newton, but neither Mede nor More, wouldtake up, and which became one of the main points of disagreementbetween More and Newton).28 What was new in the work of Mede wasthe systemization that he applied to the description of the temporalagreements between different visions in Revelation. Mede’s application ofsynchronisms relied on his idea that each symbol had a constant meaningthroughout the prophecy – a key idea in Newton’s own interpretationof the Apocalypse – based on a new and apparently consistent systemof deciphering the apocalyptic visions and relating them to historicalevents.29 A repetition of the same image, for example, indicated arepetition of the topic; the different appearances of the Beast – as a two-horned Beast, as a false prophet, as a ten-horned Beast and as the imageof the Beast – all referred to different aspects of the same thing.30 Onother occasions, the visions agreed because, even though they were notabout the same thing, they could be shown to extend over the samehistorical time span.31 Finally, the law of synchronisms was also transitive.

25 Key of the Revelation, pt. ii, p. 27.26 Mede’s own definition (Key of the Revelation, pt. i, p. 1) is in ‘Things to be fore-knowne’:

‘By a Synchronisme of prophecies I meane, when the things therein designed run along in thesame time; as if thou shouldest call it an agreement in time or age: because prophecies of thingsfalling out in the same time run on in time together, or Synchronize.’

27 J. Napier, A Plaine Discovery, of the Whole Revelation of S. Iohn: Set downe in Two Treatisesthe One Searching and Proving the True Interpretation Thereof: The Other Applying the SameParaphrasticallie and Historicallie to the Text (1611).

28 Napier, proposition 2, p. 3. For Newton’s and More’s arguments on this point, see Iliffe,‘ “Making a shew” ’, pp. 68–75.

29 See rule 2 in Yahuda MS. 1.1 fo. 12r.30 Key of the Revelation, ‘The second Synchronisme’, pt. i, p. 4. Cf. Yahuda MS. 1.2 fo. 42r:

‘The two hornd Beast became <by reason of his heathenising or committing spirituallfornication is also called> ye Whore of Babylon. Ffor they are ye same by ye agreement of theirdescriptions. The one is a fals Prophet deceiving them that dwell on ye earth by means ofpretended miracles: & the other Mystery – making ye inhabitants of ye earth drunk . . . &deceiving al nations wth her sorceries . . . & corrupting ye earth wth her fornication’. This appearsagain as proposition 7 in Yahuda MS. 1.3. See also proposition 5, Yahuda MS 1.3 fo. 5r.

31 ‘The woman remaining in the wilderness for a time, times and halfe a time; or as thereit is nore [sic] manifestly declared, 1260 dayes’, according to Mede, is synchronous with ‘thewitnesses prophecying in sackcloth 1260 dayes’. Still, Mede commented, the ‘aequality of timeswill not be sufficient to convince one that is perverse’ (Key of the Revelation, pt. i, p. 2).



Therefore, since the treading under foot of the court and holy city agreedin time with the prophecy of the witnesses, and the witnesses agreed intime with the Beast, the treading under the foot of the court and holy citywould also agree in time with the Beast.32 One set of synchronisms wouldbe built on another and further connections would be found as a result.33

Mede asked Richard Haydock to illustrate his prophetic scheme. Moreincluded plates similar to Mede’s figure in his Works, while Napier andNewton preferred to use charts to order their synchronisms. A brief glossof Mede’s foundational ‘Apocalyptick type’ will perhaps afford an idea ofthe kinds of images and possible interpretations that these authors foundin the Apocalypse. Mede’s scheme, as illustrated by Haydock, showed adivision of his pattern into two parts or halves. The first six seals told thestory of pagan Rome between the death of Christ and the conversion ofConstantine.34 The seven trumpets followed the seals. The first trumpetsounded in A.D. 395 at the death of Theodosius and the successivetrumpets marshalled the stages of the decline of the Roman empire. Thesound of the awaited seventh trumpet would usher in the millennium andthe defeat of the Beast, which would be coterminous with 1,000 years ofChrist’s reign on Earth. Mede found this process to be synchronous withthe other prophecy, or the prophecy of the opened book, that was heldby him to describe events in the history of the Church. The seven vialsin this second prophecy were said to begin under the sixth trumpet, andthey were all located there, except for the last one that would be pouredwithin the seventh trumpet. The image of the seven vials was highlyimportant for all of these interpreters, because it stood for the stages inthe defeat of the Antichrist. Thus, Mede identified the pouring of the firstvial with the teaching of medieval heretics; the second vial was poured upon‘the Popes iurisdiction’ and fulfilled by the reformers. The third vial referredto the termination of popery, the defeat of the Spanish Armada beinga token of this. Mede thought that he was living in the fourth vial andthat the forthcoming vials would eventually witness the overthrow of theremaining obstacles to the triumph over the Beast, that is, the power ofRome and the Turks. The last and seventh vial would last for the periodof 1,000 years that stood for the Day of Judgement, after which the ‘wickedshould be cast into Hell’ and the ‘Saints translated into Heaven’ forever.35

The concern with offering a non-conjectural, non-hypotheticalinterpretation of the prophecy was acutely present in Mede’s and More’s

32 Key of the Revelation, ‘The Synch of the Witnesses, of the Court, of the Beast, and of theWoman’, pt. i, p. 4.

33 Key of the Revelation, ‘A Consectarie of the generall Synchronisme of all hithertomentioned’, pt. i, p. 9.

34 Newton agreed that the ‘subject of this Prophecy is the Roman Empire signified by ye

Dragon & Beast’ (Yahuda MS. 1.4 fo. 4v). The seventh seal began for Newton with thedelivery of the churches to the Homoüsians in Dec. A.D. 380 (Yahuda MS. 1.4 fo. 210r).

35 Key of the Revelation, ‘A Compendium of Mr Mede his Commentary upon the Revelationcontaining two Prophecies’, pp. 5S3, 2r.



works, and earlier in Napier’s. Thus, in the preface to his Plaine Discovery,of the Whole Revelation of S. John (1593), Napier made the point that hehad not only ‘opened, explained and interpreted . . . the true sense ofeuery chiefe Theologicall tearme and date contained in the Revelation’,but also that every interpretation was ‘proved, confirmed anddemonstrated, by euident proof and coherence of Scriptures, agreeablewith the euent of histories’.36 Mede was equally interested in establishingthe potential of his method as warrant of the certainty of his reading.Accordingly, he wrote that the synchronism was the ‘Rule ofInterpretation’ on which the actual interpretation had to be based orgrounded. In the caption to his scheme of the synchronisms he expressedhis satisfaction that the ‘exact rule of the Synchronismes’ had indeed beendemonstrated. Mede’s concern with ruling out conjectures is manifest:

If the Order, Method and Connexion of the Visions be framed and grounded uponsupposed Interpretation; then must all Proofs out of that Book needs be foundedupon begged principles and humane conjectures: But on the contrary, if theOrder be first fixed and settled out of the indubitate Characters of the letter bythat Order; then will the variety of Expositions be drawn into a very narrowcompass, and Proofs taken from this Book be evident and infallible, and able toconvince the Gain-sayers.37

‘Opinion’ is also used by Mede to signify lower epistemologicalknowledge: ‘I confess I was once wonderfully pleased with thatOpinion . . . : But now at length the Law of synchronistical necessity hathbeat me from it, and shewed me (I think) a far more evident, unforcedand useful Exposition’.38 More was also keen to draw on similarepistemological categories in his exegetical works. When trying tosummon evidence for the truth of his interpretations, he dwelled on thecomparison between natural hypotheses and hypotheses on the meaningof Scripture. In both cases, he thought that, in order to be upgraded toa ‘real Truth’, a hypothesis needed to demonstrate its fitness in itsapplication, something that he thought he could also prove ‘by Induction’in prophetic hermeneutics.39

Newton was well acquainted with this literature. He owned the Worksby Mede, and he certainly expressed his admiration for him moregenerously than was his custom. He recognized that he was buildingupon Mede’s work, and he also wondered that the latter ‘erred so littlethen that he erred in some things’.40 Newton’s unusual acknowledgement

36 Napier, ‘Preface’, pp. A2, 1r.37 Worthington, bk. III, ch. i, p. 581, ‘Remaines on some passages in the Apocalypse’.38 Worthington, bk. III, ch. i, p. 583. Mede refers here to the ‘confounding of both Courts

into one Time’.39 Henry More, A Plain and Continued Exposition of the Several Prophecies or Divine Visions of

the Prophet Daniel (1681), p. 294. The claim to have proven by induction propositions aboutBiblical prophecy had been made previously by Napier (Napier, pp. 11–13).

40 Yahuda MS. 1.1 fos. 8r, 15r.



of his intellectual debt to Mede tells us of his interest in making his ownwork part of an established interpretative tradition. Newton was asconcerned as Napier, Mede and More – perhaps even more concerned –with the degree of certainty that pertained to his interpretation. Yet,although none of these authors doubted the truth of their respective‘schemes’, the question remained of how they could justify the certaintythat each of them professed for their own exegesis.

Since works produced in different genres possessed their own methodsof proof and levels of demonstration, it is reasonable to expect thatNewton would have attached varying levels of certainty to different kindsof knowledge. Moreover, an important redefinition of the languages,evidences and proofs that were appropriate to each subject matter tookplace in the seventeenth century. In the context of debates on thesetopics, the virtues of the mathematical demonstrative model werereappraised.41 In general, Restoration religious thinkers believed thatreligious truths could not be demonstrated geometrically – this level ofcertainty for their views was claimed only by Roman Catholics and thoseroutinely condemned as enthusiasts. Rather, they followed a lengthyAnglican tradition in claiming that religious truths, just like ourknowledge of nature, operated at the level of common sense, or moralcertainty. For Newton, only sinners could believe that a mathematicalproof was the right kind of proof for prophetic hermeneutics.

Let us turn now to Newton’s treatise on Revelation. Newton’s notes forhis untitled treatise are contained in different bundles of the Yahuda andKeynes collections of his theological writings from the late sixteen-seventies and sixteen-eighties.42 Newton’s untitled treatise on Revelation,which belongs to the Yahuda collection, is quite disordered, and in placesit is composed of a consecutive set of drafts. Not only that, its internalorder owes something to the arrangements of Abraham Yahuda andGabriel Wells – dealers who owned the document at various stages after

41 B. Shapiro, Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England: a Study of theRelationships between Natural Science, Religion, History, Law and Literature (Princeton, N.J., 1983),esp. introduction and ch. 2. See also H. G. Van Leeuwen, The Problem of Certainty in EnglishThought 1630–90 (The Hague, 1963). For questions related to the continuity in the 17th centuryof Renaissance debates on the status of mathematics, such as the Quaestio de CertitudineMathematicarum, see P. Mancosu, Philosophy of Mathematics and Mathematical Practice in the 17thCentury (Oxford, 1996), esp. ch. 1; and P. Dear, Discipline and Experience: the Mathematical Wayin the Scientific Revolution (Chicago, Ill., 1995).

42 Other important prophetic writings, apart from Yahuda MS. 1, are contained inCambridge, King’s College Library, Keynes MS. 5, draft treatises on prophecy (hereafterKeynes MS. 5); The Jewish National and University Library, Yahuda MS. 9, treatise onRevelation (mid–late 1680s) and Yahuda MS. 7, miscellaneous drafts and fragments ofprophecy, principally Daniel and Revelation (post-1700). All descriptions and dates of themanuscripts are taken from the Newton Project Catalogue, ed. R. Iliffe, P. Spargo and J. Young<http://www.newtonproject.ic.ac.uk/catalogue/A02.htm> (8 Feb. 2006).



the Sotheby’s sale of Newton’s non-scientific papers in 1936.43 Oneshould therefore be particularly careful not to impose a unique underly-ing structure to the manuscript. Indeed the ‘mathematical’ and‘chronological’ styles start to mix in the parts that now belong to YahudaMS. 1.4, and some fragments are interestingly reminiscent of Newton’sother works on the origin of monarchies, rather than of a commentaryof John’s prophecy. The fact that most of the phrases and paragraphscancelled out by Newton in this part of the manuscript refer to the useof rules and arguments laid down in the beginning of the document is ameasure of this change. In the 650 folios that make up the entire text,Newton tested more than one approach to the same theme. However,there are reasons to believe that at this period he was keen to exploit thefertility of the pseudo-mathematical discourse, as traces of a quasi-mathematical structure become visible again towards the end of themanuscript.

There was indeed something ‘mathematical’ about Yahuda MS. 1. Partof the structure of this untitled treatise, and some of its language, imitatedthe geometrical style that Newton used in mathematics and naturalphilosophy. However, Newton did not believe that Biblical commentarywas a ‘demonstrative science’ in the Aristotelian sense. In fact, pretendingthat a mathematical demonstration was possible was a perversity:

And hence I cannot but on this occasion reprove the blindness of a sort of menwho although they have neither better nor other grounds for their faith then ye

Scribes & Pharisees had for their Traditions, yet are so perverse as to call uponother men for such a demonstration of ye certainty of faith in ye scriptures thata meer naturall man, how wicked soever, who will but read it, may judg of it& perceive ye strength of it wth as much perspicuity & certainty as he can ademonstration in Euclide. Are not these men like ye Scribes & Pharisees whowould not attend to ye law & ye Prophets but required a signe of Christ? . . .I wish they would consider how contrary it is to God’s purpose yt ye truth ofhis religion should be as obvious & perspicuous to all men as a mathematicaldemonstration.44

As it happens, what seems remarkable in the case of Newton is not somuch the fact that he wrote in a geometrical manner, for seen in thecontext of seventeenth-century apocalyptic thought that is hardlysurprising, but rather the fact that he actively rejected the belief thatmathematical and prophetic demonstrations were of a kind, and that hedid so for reasons essential to his conception of prophetic hermeneuticsand the subject matter of prophecy. He did, however, make use of amathematically or logically laden language and was as worried as the other

43 The former was a Palestinian Jewish Arabist scholar and businessman who compiled oneof the largest collections of Newton’s theology, while the latter first acquired this particularmaterial at the 1936 Sotheby’s sale.

44 Yahuda MS. 1.1 fos. 18r–19r.



authors discussed here about excluding hypotheses and achievingcertainty. How and why did Newton then give the impression that his‘methodizing’ of the Apocalypse was some sort of axiomatic systemwhere all propositions could be deduced from the axioms?

Newton’s intended method or plan of research consisted of three steps.First, he employed ‘Rules of Interpretation’, then ‘Definitions’ and finallythe comparison of the different positions of the Apocalypse with oneanother, ordered according to their internal characters. In order toattempt the third step, Newton would first have to draw up the substanceof the prophecy into propositions, the truth of which would be carefullyevidenced. These first three steps of his method would allow him toproclaim the consonance of the prophecy of Revelation with the otherprophecies in the Old and New Testaments.45

Newton’s rules, given in the first section of the text after a shortuntitled preface, were based on principles of harmony and simplicity. Theformulation of rules on the interpretation of the Apocalypse was notuncommon among interpreters. In the second part of his Modest Enquiryinto the Mystery of Iniquity (1664), entitled Synopsis Prophetica, More hadproposed ‘Rules concerning the Preference of one Interpretation ofProphecy before another’. These promoted the same kind of principlesfor the reading of the words of Scripture and the assessment of thecorrectness of an interpretation.46

A few examples will further illustrate the point. More’s first rulepreferred the ‘Interpretation that keeps close to the approved Examplesand Analogie of the Prophetick style’ rather than ‘such as are framed atpleasure according to the private phancy of the Interpreter’. Newton’s firstrule for interpreting the words and language in the Scripture promotedthe same principle and was phrased in a markedly similar way – heencouraged the reader ‘to observe diligently the consent of Scriptures &analogy of the prophetique stile, and to reject those interpretations where thisis not duely observed. Thus if any man interpret a Beast to signify somegreat vice, this it to be rejected as his private imagination’. More’s secondrule contained the same hermeneutical recommendation as Newton’sthird, and both were formulated in similar terms. More wrote that ‘TheInterpretation that keeps one tenour of sense of the same words, in oneand the same Vision especially, is to be preferred before that which variesbackward and forward, and takes the same word in many different sensesas it occurs in different places of the Vision’, while Newton’s third rulestated that it was desirable ‘To keep <as> close <as may be> to ye samewords especially in ye same Vision and to neglect, <prefer> those

45 Yahuda MS. 1.1 fos. 12ff (‘Rules’), fos. 24ff (‘Definitions’). Newton spells out the stepsof his method in fo. 10.

46 Yahuda MS. 1.1 fos. 12r–12v. More, A Modest Enquiry into the Mystery of Iniquity: SynopsisProphetica or the Second Part (1664), pp. 259–60.



interpretations where this is not <most> observed unless any circumstanceplainly require a different signification’.47

This is not to say that More was a source for Newton or that Newtonwas ‘influenced’ by More. Indeed, the fact that at least two of More’sown rules for interpretation promoted remarkably similar hermeneuticalprinciples is evidence that those principles were commonplace. Giventhis, any recourse to Sanderson’s rhetoric textbook to explain Newton’suse of his methodological principles in Yahuda MS. 1 and of his naturalphilosophical rules in the Principia is not only unnecessary butmisleading.48 After all, Sanderson’s ‘Law of Brevity’ has little or nothingto do with Newton’s promotion of a unique meaning for every singlepassage. Observing the ‘consent of Scriptures’ (that is, Newton’s first commandto reject interpretations not backed by Scripture) does not amount tothe ‘Law of Harmony’ that promotes consistency within a doctrine.Properties of harmony or consistency are not the same as simplicity andthe other connections proposed are even more implausible.49

The mathematical spirit of Newton’s treatise did not in fact depend onthis set of rules, and their level of generality was precisely why Newtoncould use them in both contexts.50 There was, for example, nothingaxiomatic or mathematical in Newton’s implicit appeal to the principleof Ockham’s Razor either in the ninth rule of his theological treatise orin the first rule of the Principia.51 Some of the formulae used by Newtonin one text required only slight rephrasing for use in the other. Forinstance, as seen above in the first rule on interpreting the languageof Scripture, Newton called upon the reader to ‘observe diligentlythe . . . analogy of the prophetique stile’, while in the third rule of thePrincipia Newton claimed that we should not ‘depart from the analogy of

47 Newton wrote ‘not’ before the addition of ‘most’, but we may assume that he forgot todelete it after the change of ‘neglect’ for ‘prefer’. Incidentally, Newton’s first example of whatis to be avoided, under his third rule, is the same as that given by More under his second rule.Accordingly, Newton’s reads: ‘Thus if a man interpret ye Beast to signify a kingdom in onesentence & a vice in another <when there is nothing in ye text that does argue any change ofsense>, this is to be rejected as no genuine interpretation’. Whereas More wrote: ‘As forexample, if one should interpret that Iconism of a Beast, one while to signify a Kingdom orEmpire, another while some single Person of that Empire, and then again some grand Vice thereof;were not this a mere botch in comparison of interpreting this Beast of such a Kingdom or BodyPolitick in every place of the Vision?’ (Yahuda MS. 1.1 fos. 12r–12v; More, Modest Enquiry,pp. 259–60).

48 The point could be made as well that Sanderson’s laws are not even about the same thingas Newton’s rules. After all, the latter were about how to interpret the words of Scripture andmore specifically the visions of the Apocalypse. Sanderson’s laws were not about how tointerpret but about how to communicate. The author thanks Brian Vickers for this suggestion.

49 ‘Lex brevitatis’, ‘Lex harmoniæ’, ‘Lex unitatis’, ‘Lex generalitatis’ and ‘Lex connexionis’(Robert Sanderson, Logicæ Artis Compendium (Oxford, 1618), pp. 227–8).

50 Pace Mamiani, ‘To twist the meaning’, p. 4.51 Yahuda MS. 1.1 fo. 14r.



nature’, since nature is consonant with itself.52 Such broad, and oftenrhetorical, notions as simplicity, harmony and congruity were being usedby Newton across the board and by many other Scriptural exegetes andnatural philosophers.

The ‘Rules’ section of the treatise was followed by one headed‘Definitions’. This part of the manuscript has also been mistakenlydescribed as mathematical.53 The pseudo-mathematical features of thissection will be described here and an explanation given as to whyNewton’s definitions could not be considered axiomatic, and indeed ofwhat they were about. Newton clearly decided to replace ‘Definitions’with the title ‘Prophetic figures’ (the former is crossed out in themanuscript), but later restored the original. The more descriptive, butneutral, ‘Prophetic figures’ was of a different order to the previous ‘Rules’and the later ‘The Proof ’. It would seem that Newton was, at least atthat stage, trying to achieve a coherent mathematical overtone for histreatise.

The definitions or figures section translated the figurative language ortypes of the prophets into a language that could be understood by the‘vulgar’. Newton and More both followed Mede in postulating that theoriginal of the figurative language was the comparison of a kingdom tothe world. The Chalde Paraphrast, containing ancient interpretations of thesymbols and prophecy-like hieroglyphs, and the Oneirocriticks, an ancientvolume of Egyptian, Persian and Indian origins on the interpretation ofdreams, constituted the main sources for the definitions of all of theseauthors. As a consequence, Newton, More and Mede set the samemeanings for many figures, especially for those that were closest to thepolitical/universal comparison. They all agreed, for example, on therelative significance of the main images involved – Heaven, the Earth,the Sun and the Moon – as well as on the meaning of eclipses.54

To this author’s knowledge, Newton drafted his section concerningthe language of the prophets on at least three other occasions. The nameof the section, but not the contents, changed slightly from one manuscriptto another. It is instructive that the title ‘Definitions’, preferred byNewton in the sixteen-seventies and eighties, never appeared again.Other distinctive features of the ‘Definitions’ section in Yahuda MS.1 were the numbering of the terms and the brevity of Newton’sexplanations. As Newton converted his sharply formulated definitionsinto a more readable ‘Chap 1’, as in another manuscript on prophecy that

52 Author’s emphasis. Yahuda MS. 1.1 fo. 12r; Cohen and Whitman, p. 795.53 Mamiani, ‘To twist the meaning’, p. 8.54 Key of the Revelation, pt. i, ‘Of the Seales’, esp. pp. 56–7, 64; More, Modest Enquiry, bk.

I, ch. ii, esp. pp. 236–8, 251; Yahuda MS. 1.1 fo. 20r; and for Newton’s frequentacknowledgement of his Eastern sources, see Yahuda MS. 1.1 fos. 28r–48r and Yahuda MS.1.1a fos. 1r–19r.



is now in King’s College, Cambridge (Keynes MS. 5), the strict definitionsof one treatise expanded into longer entries.55 Newton’s decision to assigna number to each definition and to refer to these numbers throughoutYahuda MS. 1 was a strategic one, consciously taken. Newton was veryaware of the effect of the axiomatic appearance on his potential audience– although there is no evidence that anyone else saw this treatise in theseventeenth century. In natural philosophy, Newton explicitly justifiedhis decision to couch his philosophical proofs in a mathematical form.Some years earlier, for example, he had described in a letter to HenryOldenburg the mathematical carapace that he had given to his theory ofcolours:

I drew up a series of such Expts on designe to reduce ye Theory of colours toPropositions & prove each Proposition from one or more of those Expts by theassistance of common notions set down in the form of Definitions & Axioms inimitation of the Method by wch Mathematicians are wont to prove theirdoctrines.56

Newton would proceed to make true the different propositions aboutthe overlapping of prophetic events by explaining how each of thosepropositions was proved or confirmed by history (the experiments) aidedby the assistance of the definitions and rules established by him. Still,Newton’s definitions, like those of Mede or More’s ‘Alphabet ofProphetic Iconisms’, were not self-evident or a priori. They were derivedfrom a large archive of textual evidence that relied, in turn, on otherkinds of artefactual and linguistic evidence. They had also, apparently,been used with success by Eastern interpreters, and there was Scripturalevidence that backed their application. However, Newton felt that he hadto prove them before they could be used to compare the apocalypticalpositions with one another. The fact that he continued to refer to thedefinitions from the first part of the manuscript, and that the expression‘by Def __’ – followed by the number of the definition, or a gap thatNewton most often did not fill – appears so frequently, adds to theimpression that they were being used by Newton, the mathematician, toprove his doctrine. However, the use of a mathematical structure in thistext did not accompany a mathematical argument or demonstration.

55 The section appears in Keynes MS. 5 fos. 1r–7r, Ir–VIr, ‘The First Book. Concerning theLanguage of the Prophets. Chap. 1. A synopsis of the Prophetick figures’. A transcription of KeynesMS. 5 is available at the Newton Project website <http://www.newtonproject.ic.ac.uk/texts/keynes005_d.html> (8 Feb. 2006). Two drafts of the same section appear in Keynes MS. 7.1,pt. d, entitled ‘Of the prophetic language’. The same heading also features as the first sectionof a draft outline at least twice in Yahuda MS. 7.1, pt. o. Finally, it appears again as the firstsection of the first book of an outline in Yahuda MS. 9.1, where untitled fos. 5–51 are devotedto the prophetic figures. Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John(Dublin, 1733), published soon after Newton’s death, begins with the same chapter.

56 Turnbull and others, i. 237, ‘Newton to Oldenburg’, Cambridge, 21 Sept. 1672.



Finally, in folio 28r a rather unexpected section called ‘The Proof ’appeared after the ‘Definitions’. ‘The Proof ’, drafted twice, providedmuch of the information that in Mede’s and More’s works appeared inconjunction with the definitions themselves. ‘The Proof ’, however, wasnot aimed at demonstrating that Newton’s interpretation of the prophecywas right – that proof could only be given a posteriori, ‘out of history’, asNewton himself repeatedly said.57 Although prophetic visions shouldmake sense of each other – truly ‘opening Scripture by Scripture’ – andcongruity and harmony were necessary requisites for a true interpretationof the Apocalypse or Daniel, they were not sufficient.58 Most importantly,Newton’s proof was only evidence that his previously establisheddefinitions agreed with Scripture and were based on the knowledge ofancient sages who were more conversant with hieroglyphical language.

Newton held an organic conception of Scripture, according to whichthe different ‘demonstrations’ undertaken would feed into and reinforcethe truth of each other. Proving that the Bible was a coherent and truewhole was Newton’s ultimate aim; the different stages before the finalgoal was accomplished were built one on the other. Proving the perfectcorrespondence of history and the Bible was, for Newton, part of hismain endeavour. The more definitions one could prove on the basis ofBiblical evidence, the more synchronisms could be laid down andsubjected to the tribunal of experience. Newton’s ‘Proof ’ section would,therefore, have the role of making synchronisms possible, and the successof those synchronisms in accounting for past historical events wouldreinforce the rightness of the definitions. However, proving the truth ofthe design of the synchronisms, or the agreement of the different visions,and their association with different historical events was something else,and Newton did not think that anyone at the time could guaranteethe mathematical certainty, that is, the absolute certainty, of thoseinterpretations. Only the fulfilment of the prophecies would ultimatelyconfirm the interpretation.

Throughout the manuscript Newton used the previously establishedrules, definitions, propositions and positions (he used both names to referto the application of synchronisms to events in history), and he constantlyhad recourse to expressions such as ‘this proposition follows from ye Rule’or ‘it will be better . . . in ye next place to describe at large what washinted in Posit Arg:5’.59 In so doing, Newton gave the deliberateimpression that his methodizing of the Apocalypse was some sort ofaxiomatic system where all propositions could be deduced from theaxioms. Not only that, but all his positions were numbered and often

57 See, e.g., Yahuda MS. 1.1 fo. 16r; Yahuda MS. 1.4 fos. 1r, 67r; Yahuda MS. 1.6 fo. 11v;Yahuda MS. 1.7 fo. 66.

58 Yahuda MS. 1.1 fo. 13r, rule 8.59 Some examples of this are to be found in Yahuda MS. 1.3 fo. 1r; Yahuda MS. 1.7 fos.

32, 66.



called propositions, just as Napier’s were, rather than the more common‘synchronisms’ or ‘agreements’.60 In the same vein, Newton’s propositionswere presented with ‘objections’, or ‘questions’ and their respective‘responses’, just as Newton attached problems and scholia to some of hispropositions in the Principia Mathematica.61 Despite Newton’s loathing ofthose who held that one could prove the synchronisms geometrically, heused a range of expressions aimed at compelling the assent of the audienceafter the manner of a mathematical demonstration. Newton’s aim wasnothing less than certainty, and so he often claimed that his definitions orpositions were to be understood, interpreted or applied ‘necessarily’, sincethe principles from which they were derived had previously beendeclared or proved to be certain.62 In effect, his arguments would onlybe convincing to those who could believe and be saved, while hisdefinitions would appear dubious to an atheist or a heretic.63 Regardlessof his exact use of mathematicist terminology and epistemology,‘certainty’ and ‘uncertainty’ were categories liberally used by Newtonwhen discriminating between interpretations.64

Newton and his contemporary More agreed that the Apocalypse wasintrinsically comprehensible. Saying that it was unintelligible would havebeen blasphemous, since it had been revealed by God, who would not‘trifle’.65 However, they had very different ideas about how to prove thetruth of their respective interpretations and these were intimatelyconnected to their own ideas about the audience for whom they werewriting. More saw himself as writing for everyone who could be movedby force of ‘reason’ – that is, he claimed to write for reasonable people.In Apocalypsis Apocalypseos, for example, he expressed his conviction thatthe indispensability of his work would be appreciated by ‘every IntelligentMan’.66 Being a reasonable believer and making proper use of the key

60 Newton does not use the word synchronism very often in this manuscript. The wordposition was used by More, too, for example in Modest Enquiry, p. 269. This was not completelyunprecedented, since the famous mathematician Napier had laid down 35 so-called‘propositions’ in the first part of his treatise, by the side of which he detailed evidence for hisinterpretation, ‘by appearance’, ‘upon necessitie’, ‘by induction’ etc. (Napier, pp. 1–91).

61 See, e.g., the material in Yahuda MS. 1.2 fo. 6r, which is presented in the objection-response structure in Yahuda MS. 1.3 fo. 4r. The material from Yahuda MS. 1.2 fo. 9r,structured in two questions and two responses, appears again in a narrative style in Yahuda MS.1.3 fo. 4r. Cf. Cohen and Whitman, passim.

62 Newton writes very often that his interpretations follow ‘necessarily’ from previousground or are ‘necessarily’ understood (see, e.g., Yahuda MS. 1.2 fos. 33r, 37r, 45r, 55r, 58r).

63 Instances of Newton’s referring to the impossibility of doubting his ‘scheme’ are numerousin the first two parts of the manuscript (Yahuda MS. 1.1a fo. 1r; Yahuda MS. 1.2 fos. 6r, 17r,45, 58r, 61r).

64 E.g., in Yahuda MS. 1.1a fos. 2r, 5r, 8r, 13r, 14r, 18r.65 See, e.g., Henry More, Plain and Continued Exposition, p. 268; More, Apocalypsis

Apocalypseos, ‘The Preface to the Reader’, pp. v–vi; Yahuda MS. 1.1 fo. 3v.66 More, Apocalypsis Apocalypseos, ‘The Preface to the Reader’, p. xxxix.



provided was all that was required of More’s readers. Newton rejectedthis type of approach for it made ‘ye scriptures tautologise’.67 For Newton,Scriptures were not to be understood as a tautology, because they werenot a truism – it was for precisely that reason that a guide was necessary.Newton was not trying to provide a key that unlocked all the mysteries,but rather aimed at offering what he called ‘practical truths’ or ‘milk forbabes’. He wanted his rules to constitute a guide that would enable‘babes’ to tell a genuine interpretation from a false one.68 That was hismoral obligation and that of the other ‘chosen’. While More expectedthat the truth of his system could be proved with ‘mathematicalevidence’, Newton sought some other kind of certainty.69 He allowedthat some would consider his scheme ‘uncertain’, and consequently heinserted the following warning to his ‘reader’: ‘They will call thee it maybe a Bigot, a Fanatique, a Heretique &c: And tell thee of the uncertaintyof these interpretations, & vanity of attending to them.’70

Newton took offence at the mere hint that his method differed fromthat of others because he was a mathematician. William Whiston, forexample, recalled that he had reacted disproportionately when, in 1692,Richard Bentley asked him to ‘demonstrate’ that in prophetic linguisticsdays meant years: ‘Sir Isaac Newton was so greatly offended at this, asinvidiously alluding to his being a mathematician; which science was notconcerned in this matter; that he would not see him, as Dr. Bentley toldme himself, for a twelvemonth afterward’.71 Presumably, Bentley was‘invidiously’ implying that Newton should prove mathematically that daysmeant years if he believed this to be the case. Newton was offended byBentley’s apparent belief that mathematics was relevant to provingprophecy. Bentley had not understood that prophecy could not beproved in this manner; indeed, for the faithful, it did not need to beproved. Newton felt that the evidence he put forward could not fail toconvince believers, indeed ‘any humble and indifferent person that shallwth sufficient attention peruse them & cordially believes the scriptures’.This was enough for Newton, ‘& for ye rest who are so incredulous, itis just that they should be permitted to dy in their sins’.72

67 Yahuda MS. 1.1 fo. 28r.68 Yahuda MS. 1.1 fo. 7r: ‘Tis true that without a guide it would be very difficult not onely

for them but even for ye most learned to understand it right But if the interpretation be doneto their hands, I know not why the help of such a guide they may not be attentive & oftenreading be capable of understanding & judging of it as well as men of greater education. Andsuch a guide I hope this <Book> will prove.’ On this and other issues relevant to this article,see Iliffe, ‘“Making a shew”’, esp. last section, pp. 75–82.

69 See, e.g., More, Modest Enquiry, p. 10.70 Yahuda MS. 1.1 fo. 5r.71 William Whiston, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Whiston. Containing

Memoirs of several of his Friends also (2 vols., 1753), i. 94.72 Yahuda MS. 1.1 fos. 15r, 19r.



By contrast, More promised that he would demonstrate the truth ofhis interpretation of the prophetic figure that he called ‘Antichronismus’‘even with Mathematical Certitude’.73 The mathematical paradigm wasinvoked by More even when geometry was irrelevant or numbers wereabsent. For example, he proclaimed that ‘such a Mysterie as uponReligious pretences does really supplant all the grand Ends of theGospel . . . is Mathematically manifest to be that notorious Mystery ofIniquity’, and a few lines later, that the mystery would follow from hisprevious propositions describing the scope of the gospel, again ‘withevidence and certitude plainly mathematical’.74 Most importantly, in his1680 letter to John Sharp, he reported that one of his demonstrationshad been praised by a ‘Mathematical Head’ of Cambridge for its‘Mathematical evidence’, and subtly referred to Newton’s mathematicalgenius, as if that should have prevented him from holding on to his ‘veryextravagant conceit’.75 The irony is that we find Newton importingconventions from the mathematical discourse but claiming in practice thatthe truth of prophetic exegesis cannot be mathematically demonstrated,while we find More propounding the mathematical status of the evidenceand the demonstrations put forward, although his prophetic treatises wereless mathematical than Napier’s, Newton’s or even Mede’s in terms ofstructure.

Newton’s concern with the elimination of hypotheses, which hecondemned as the product of private fancy, is present in both his publicand private writings. The language used to refer to interpretations thatwere only provisionally introduced was remarkably similar to that whichhe employed in the natural philosophical sphere. As has been shown, thelevel of certainty expected varied greatly between Newton’s naturalphilosophical and theological writings. Nevertheless, there is aresemblance between Newton’s replies contesting the criticisms that histheory of light and colours received in the seventies, and his frontalrejection of hypotheses in Scriptural hermeneutics around the sametime.76 What Alan Shapiro has termed Newton’s ‘quest for certainty’ wassurely behind this attitude.77 However – and somewhat paradoxically –professing interpretations of the apocalyptic visions before they weresanctioned by experience, and invoking for them mathematical standards

73 More, Modest Enquiry, p. 225.74 More, Modest Enquiry, pp. 225, 9–10.75 Hutton, p. 479. The ‘conceit’ referred to is Newton’s conviction that the vials started at

the same time as the trumpets.76 On Newton’s rejection of hypotheses, see, e.g., Keynes MS. 5 fo. 1r; Yahuda MS. 1.1 fo.

28r. For Newton’s view on hypotheses in his theory of lights and colours, see W. Harper andG. Smith ‘Newton’s new way of inquiry’, in The Creation of Ideas in Physics: Studies for aMethodology of Theory Construction, ed. J. Leplin (Dordrecht, 1995), pp. 113–66, esp. pp. 113–22. See also A. E. Shapiro, Fits, Passions, and Paroxysms: Physics, Method, and Chemistry andNewton’s Theories of Colored Bodies and Fits of Easy Reflection (Cambridge, 1993), esp. pp. 18–19.

77 Shapiro, pp. 12–13.



of certitude, was for Newton as misguided as framing hypotheses innatural philosophical contexts. Since Newton thought that you couldonly prove the truth of his readings of prophecy post facto, announcingthe success of any other kind of proof before the due time was illegitimateand hotheaded.

The role of historical or empirical data, and their use as evidence in alarger explanatory system, forms a central link between the domains ofnatural philosophy and theology. Events proved the truth of theprophetic system and the prophetic system served to explain the events.This is what Newton meant when he said that a particular interpretationwould be amended and improved by events.78 In a way, therefore, theconstant re-reading of history refined Newton’s prophetic method, just asthe performance of experiments refined his method for naturalphilosophical enquiry. In his natural philosophical enquiry, as describedby William Harper and George E. Smith, Newton turned theoreticalclaims into provisionally established facts through experiments that, onthe one hand, allowed him to conduct his research and, on the other,became entrenched by virtue of their potential to allow a variety offurther facts to be firmly established.79 It is possible to extend thisdescription of Newton’s ‘way of enquiry’ to his method of prophecy,suggesting that, to paraphrase Harper and Smith, his scheme could onlybe corroborated or proved by historical events, which would have therole of experiments so to speak, while his prophetic scheme wouldbecome entrenched by virtue of allowing further reading andunderstanding of history.

This article has argued that the relationships between prophecy andnatural philosophy in the works of Newton are more complex than hasoften been suggested. For one thing, Newton’s professed predilection forsimplicity and harmony did not make his discourse epistemologicallymathematical and, indeed, this was a commonplace of Renaissanceargument in many disciplines. Newton certainly did distinguish betweenprophecy and natural philosophy and his claims about the proof thatcould be given in each field were different.80 It is, therefore, at the very

78 In drafts on the interpretation of Daniel’s prophecy, composed at a later time than YahudaMS. 1, Newton speaks of the prophecy ‘of the seven weeks (being) proposed, not as a certainty,but by way of enquiry, & to be examined, amended & improved by the events of things’(Yahuda MS. 7.2, pt. g, fo. 6v or 7; author’s emphasis).

79 Harper and Smith explain that during a period of 20 years, from the time of his work onlight and colours, Newton concentrated on a new method that made claims into scientific facts,which in turn affected the substance of Newton’s way of conducting his research: ‘Universalgravitation . . . is playing not the role of a conjectured hypothesis in this process, but of aprovisionally established fact that is becoming increasingly entrenched by virtue of its allowinga variety of further facts to be firmly established’ (Harper and Smith, p. 150).

80 See R. Iliffe, ‘Abstract considerations: disciplines and the incoherence of Newton’s naturalphilosophy’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, xxxv (2004), 427–54. Cf. S. D. Snobelen,‘To discourse of God: Isaac Newton’s heterodox theology and his natural philosophy’<www.isaac-newton.org> (8 Feb. 2006).



least misguided to make these types of connection between the two.There was a fundamental epistemological difference between Newton’smarshalling of evidence in both domains, but there were structuralsimilarities between the prophetic interpretation in Yahuda MS. 1 and inhis mathematics, while other issues, such as his forthright rejection ofhypotheses, connect his approach in both fields. However, it is probablyin his use of empirical evidence, both in prophecy and in naturalphilosophy, that the most distinctive features of Newton’s style lie.

Why did Newton borrow certain characteristics of a mathematicaltreatise for his work on Revelation? He did not retain this form in hiswork on prophecy as a whole – all we have, after all, is a fragmentaryand truncated manuscript in which traces of a structure may beappreciated. Since Newton did not seem to keep this scheme for his otherprophetic writings, there is no reason to think that he held themathematical model to be indissolubly related to prophetic hermeneutics.Rather, we have reason to believe the contrary and to suspect that thisrepresented a sort of experimental attempt to link structure, argument andlevel of demonstration. The suggestion here is that Newton knew he wasmixing conventions from different genres; perhaps even struggling tomake coherent, for rhetorical reasons, the demands from the differentgenres in which he worked. Ultimately, the function played by themathematical structure in this work on prophecy was rhetorical. To usethe terminology of classic Aristotelian rhetoric, for Newton mathematicshad an ethical (from ethos) rather than a logical (from logos) role;mathematics was, in Newton’s treatise on Revelation, an appeal tocredibility rather than to reason.81

Audience was crucial in prophetic writing, and Newton was writingfor an ideal reader ‘who knows how to improve upon the hints ofthings’.82 He addressed the ‘reader’ far too often not to think that he musthave had a potential ‘you’ in mind.83 We may be sure that More wasaiming at a much larger audience than Newton; any apparently‘reasonable’ person was a possible reader. Very few readers, however,agreed that he had proved his prophetic schemes with mathematical

81 G. Burton, ‘The forest of rhetoric: silva rhetoricae’ is a good guide to the terms of classicaland renaissance rhetoric <http://rhetoric.byu.edu> (8 Feb. 2006).

82 Turnbull and others, i. 108–9, ‘Newton to Oldenburg’, 10 Feb. 1671/2: ‘As to ye printingof that letter I am satisfyed in their judgment, or else I should have thought it too straight &narrow for publick view. I designed it onely for those that know how to improve upon hintsof things, & therefore to shun tediousnesse omitted many such remarques & experiments asmight be collected by considering then assigned laws of refraction’. The expression showsNewton’s awareness of his readership.

83 E.g. in Yahuda MS. 1.1 fo. 1r (‘Let me therefore beg of thee . . .’); Yahuda MS. 1.2 fo.34r (‘This I have premised to make way for ye next assertion where you will see . . .’); YahudaMS. 1.4 fo. 17r (‘Thus you see . . .’); Yahuda MS. 1.4 fo. 41r (‘I have now shown you . . .’);Yahuda MS. 1.5 fo. 5 (‘I have given you my reasons . . .’). Other very similar expressions canbe found in Yahuda MS. 1.6 fos. 8v, 9r, 16r; and Yahuda MS. 1.7 fo. 4.



certainty. On the other hand, despite writing potentially to all trueChristians, Newton’s decision to couch part of his treatise in a pseudo-geometrical style would have seemingly appealed only to a few of them.Perhaps he was simply unable to reconcile the not always compatibledemands of the readership he was trying to address and of the genre inwhich he was writing.

In any case, there is no reason to expect that Newton’s epistemologicalprinciples and ideas on the soundness of the knowledge that he couldproduce should always be consistent with his expository technique.Indeed, as pointed out above, both aspects also clashed in More’s work.More used the same sorts of proof as Newton, but demanded absolutecertainty for his interpretation and considered fools and nearly insanethose who denied its truth.84 At what kind of certainty did Newton aim?It is the opinion of this author that he had a religious conviction that hewas right and that he held this certainty even before setting out to fillhundreds and hundreds of folios of proofs. Religious certainty was moreprobable than moral certainty and at any rate much better thanconjecture. It was, therefore, the best possible scenario, since the materialof which the prophecies were made was intrinsically impossible tomathematize.85 This impossibility, however, would only have made thedemand to present his findings as if they were mathematical more acuteor pressing. The truth, he thought, could not be imposed by force, butimporting the justificatory power of the mathematical model was certainlynot impious86 – invoking mathematical standards of certainty was.

Newton’s deliberate use of conventions imported from mathematics,and a distinction between hypothetical and certain propositions carriedover from his natural philosophical studies, have driven moderncommentators to ignore the important differences that existed forNewton between mathematics and the reading of Scriptures. Theepistemological import of these issues for him and his contemporaries hasoften been overlooked. The method employed by Newton to warrantthe certainty of his interpretation involved an appeal to ‘experience’.Historians have perceived Newton’s effort to match geometrical structurewith prophetic interpretation as a mathematical feat – rather, it was arhetorical tour de force.

84 More, Plain and Continued Exposition, ‘The Preface to the Reader’, p. xxx.85 At least not with the same implications as in the philosophical sphere. Newton’s standards

of mathematical precision are found surely in prophecy and natural philosophy, but this authorremains unconvinced that one can say that Newton ‘mathematizes’ prophecy in the same waythat he claims to have mathematized his theory of colours, for example.

86 On Newton’s non-converting intention, see Yahuda MS. 1.4 fos. 67–8.

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Newton's treatise on Revelation: the use of a mathematical discourse