Home > William Whiston

He was educated privately, partly on account of the delicacy of his health, and partly that he might act as amanuensis to his father, who had lost his sight. After his father's death, he entered at Clare College, Cambridge, where he applied himself to mathematical study, and obtained a fellowship in 1693. He next became chaplain to John Moore (1646-1714), the learned bishop of Ely, from whom he received the living of LowestoftLowestoft is a town in Suffolk, East Anglia, England, within The Broads National Park. The name is said to come from 'toft' (a Viking word for 'homestead') and 'Loth' or 'Lowe' (a Viking male name). The town's name has been spelled variously: Lothnwistoft in 1698Events January 4 Palace of Whitehall in London is destroyed by fire. June 19 Volcano of Carguarazon erupts in the Andes and causes a rain of fish August 25 Peter the Great arrives back to Moscow general Gordon has already crushed the streltsy rebellion 34. He had already given several proofs of his noble but over-scrupulous conscientiousness, and at the same time of a propensity to paradoxFor other meanings of "Paradox", see Paradox (disambiguation). Robert Boyle's self-flowing flask fills itself in this diagram, but perpetual motion machines don't exist. A paradox is an apparently true statement or group of statements that seems to lead t.

His New Theory of the Earth ( 1696The year 1696 had the earliest equinoxes and solstices for 400 years in the Gregorian calendar, because this year is a leap year and the Gregorian calendar would have behaved like the Julian calendar since March 1500 had it have been in use that long.), although destitute of sound scientific foundation, obtained the praise of both NewtonKneller's portrait of 1689. Sir Isaac Newton ( December 25, 1642 March 20, 1727 by the Julian calendar then in use; or January 4, 1643 March 31, 1727 by the Gregorian calendar) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and alchemis and LockeJohn Locke ( August 29 1632 — October 28 1704) was a 17th century philosopher concerned primarily with society and epistemology. An Englishman, Locke's notions of a " government with the consent of the governed" and man's natural rights— life, liberty, an, the latter of whom justly classed the author among those who, if not adding much to our knowledge, "At least bring some new things to our thoughts." In 1701Events January 18 Frederick I becomes King of Prussia. May 23 After being convicted of murdering William Moore and for piracy, Captain William Kidd is hanged in London. July 24 Detroit, Michigan founded. September 16 Prince James Francis Edward Stuart bec he resigned his living to become deputy at CambridgeThis article is about Cambridge, England; see also other places called Cambridge. The city of Cambridge is an old English University town and the regional centre of the county of Cambridgeshire. It lies approximately 50 miles (80 km) north of London and i to Sir Isaac Newton, whom two years later he succeeded as Lucasian professor of mathematics. Here he engaged in joint research with his junior colleague Robert Cotes , appointed with Whiston's patronage to the Plumian professorship in 1706.

In 1707 he was Boyle lecturer . For several years Whiston continued to write and preach both on mathematical and theological subjects with considerable success; but his study of the Apostolical Constitutions had convinced him that Arianism was the creed of the primitive church. For Whiston, to form an opinion and to pubish it were things almost simultaneous. His heterodoxy soon became notorious, and in 1710 he was deprived of his professorship and expelled from the university. The rest of his life was spent in incessant controversy-- theological, mathematical, chronological, and miscellaneous. He vindicated his estimate of the Apostolical Constitutions and the Arian views he had derived from them in his Primitive Christianity Revived (5 vols., 1711- 1712).

In 1713 he produced a reformed liturgy, and soon afterwards founded a society for promoting primitive Christianity, lecturing in support of his theories in halls and coffee-houses at London, Bath and Tonbridge Wells. One of the most valuable of his books, the Life of Samuel Clarke, appeared in 1730. While heretical on so many points, he was a firm believer in supernatural Christianity, and frequently took the field in defence of prophecy and miracle, including anointing the sick and touching for the king's evil. His dislike of rationalism in religion also made him one of the numerous opponents of Benjamin Hoadly's Plain Account of the Nature and End of the Sacrament.

He proved to his own satisfaction that Canticles was apocryphal and that the Book of Baruch was not. He was ever pressing his views of ecclesiastical government and discipline, derived from the Apostolical Constitutions, on the ecclesiastical authorities, and marvelled that they could not see the matter in the same light as himself. He assailed the memory of Athanasius with a virulence at least equal to that with which orthodox divines had treated Arius. He attacked Sir Isaac Newton's Biblical chronological system with success; but he himself lost not only time but money in an endeavour to solve the problem of longitude.

Of all his singular opinions the best known is his advocacy of clerical monogamy, immortalized in the Vicar of Wakefield. Of all his labours the most useful is his translation of Josephus ( 1737), with valuable notes and dissertations, often reprinted. His last "famous discovery, or rather revival of Dr Giles Fletcher's," which he mentions in his autobiography with infinite complacency, was the identification of the Tatars with the lost tribes of Israel. In 1745 he published his Primitive New Testament. About the same time ( 1747) he finally left the Anglican communion for the Baptist, leaving the church literally as well as figuratively by quitting it as the clergyman began to read the Athanasian creed. He died in London, at the house of his son-in-law, on the 22nd of August 1752, leaving a memoir (3 vols., 1749- 1750) which deserves more attention than it has received, both for its characteristic individuality and as a storehouse of curious anecdotes and illustrations of the religious and moral tendencies of the age. It does not, however, contain any account of the proceedings taken against him at Cambridge, these having been published separately at the time.

Whiston is a striking example of the association of an entirely paradoxical bent of mind with proficiency in the exact sciences. He also illustrates the possibility of arriving at rationalistic conclusions in theology without the slightest tincture of the rationalistic temper. He was not only paradoxical to the verge of craziness, but intolerant to the verge of bigotry. "I had a mind," he says, "to hear Dr (John) Gill preach. But, being informed that he had written a folio book on the Canticles, I declined to go to hear him." When not engaged in controversy he was not devoid of good sense. He often saw men and things very clearly, and some of his bon mots are admirable.