Abstract
In early April 1691, the Genevan born reformed theologian, Jean Leclerc (1657–1736), wrote to John Locke commenting upon a manuscript the latter had forwarded to him for consideration: “Des que j’aurai loisir, je traduirai ou en Latin, ou en Francois le petit Historical Account etc qui mérite de voir le jour.” While Leclerc was happy to oblige Locke’s request that the piece might be translated for a wider European audience, he commented further: “je eroi poutant qu’il pourait être meilleur, si l’auteur avoit lu avec soin ce que M. Simon a dit du sujet, dont il parle dans la Critique de NT.” On the 10/20 January 1692, Leclerc wrote again to Locke on the same subject: both dissertations had been translated into Latin carefully including the additions that Locke had sent “sur le passage de S.J.” On the 1/10 of April, 1692, Leclerc wrote again to Locke expressing his surprise (and pique: he had, after all, translated the manuscripts into Latin) that the edition was to be withdrawn. In July, the correspondence between Leclerc and Locke over this particular matter ended with the former commenting that he would faithfully guard the manuscript until the author decided what to do with it.2 Although Leclerc probably did not immediately know the author of the manuscript in question, Locke (and subsequent historians) knew that the pieces were composed by Isaac Newton.
I would like to thank Jim Force and Dick Popkin for organising the conference that provoked this paper. For their suggestions and insights 1 would also like to thank John Marshall, Robert Iliffe, Antony McKenna, Michael Hunter, and Scot Mandlebrote.
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References
See E. S. de Beer, ed., The Correspondence of John Locke, 8 vols., (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 4:Letters 1381, 1446, 1486, and 1511.
See J. Marshall, John Locke. Resistance, Religion and Responsibility ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 ).
The dissertations are reprinted in The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, ed. H.W. Turnbull et al., 7 vols. (Cambridge: Published for the Royal Society at the University Press, 1957–77), 3: 83–144
The original of the first two letters are in the Bodleian Library Oxford MS New College 361/4 ff. 2–41: it includes the additions that Newton made referred to in the Leclerc letter above. See Locke, Correspondence, 4: Letter 1446. There are two copies of the third letter in the same archive MS New College 361/4 ff. 49v-68 and ff. 70–83.
Newton, Correspondence, Letter 357, 3:82.
Locke, Correspondence, Letter 1465, 4:387.
Marshall, John Locke, passim; See, for some insight into the dangers of publicity, James E. Force, William Whiston: Honest Newtonian ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985 ).
Leclerc’s abridgement which included the controversial eleventh and twelve letters of the Sentimens was attacked by Claude Lamothe, The Inspiration of the New Testament Asserted and Explained (1694)
William Lowth, A Vindication of the Divine Authority and Inspiration of the writings of the Old and New Testament (Oxford, 1692, an enlarged edition was published in 1699 )
John Williams delivered two series of Boyle Lectures in 1695 and 1696 defending the theme of Scriptural inspiration against Leclerc, Spinoza, and Simon. For a very brief account see S. A. Golden, Jean Le Clerc ( New York: Twayne, 1972 ), pp. 133–7
M. C. Pitassi, Entre Croire et Savoir. Le Probleme de la Methode Critique chez Jean Le Clerc ( Leiden: Brill, 1987 )
M. I. Klauber, “Between Protestant Orthodoxy and Rationalism: Fundamental Articles and the Early Career of Jean Le Clerc,” Journal of the History of Ideas 54 (1993), pp. 611–36.
Locke, Correspondence, Letter 834, 2:748.
For Locke’s reception of Leclerc’s Sentimens, see Locke, Correspondence, 2: Letters 832, 834, 836. See, especially, Locke Correspondence, Letter 836, 2: 755.
See A. Barnes, Jean le Clerc (1657–1736) et la République des Lettres (Paris: E. Droz, 1938), Appendix IV, Burnet to Leclerc, 17 November 1694, p. 252, and 24 January 1696, p. 255. Bumet was writing as late as November 1703 about the “odium theologicum” suffered both by himself and Leclerc, p. 258.
On Newton’s concern for his public reputation see R. Iliffe, “`Is he like other men?’ The meaning of the Principia Mathematica, and the author as idol,” pp. 159–76, in G. Maclean, ed., Culture and Society in the Stuart Restoration: Literature, Drama, History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995 ).
Newton, Correspondence, Letter 359, 3:129.
Newton, Correspondence, Letter 359, 3:138.
Newton, Correspondence, Letter 3590, 3:139.
For important collections of essays on the wider ambition of Newton’s hermenuetics see James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin, eds., Essays on the Context, Nature, and Influence of Isaac Newton’s Theology ( Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990 )
James E. Force and Richard H. Popkin, eds., The Books of Nature and Scripture: Recent Essays on Natural Philosophy, Theology and Biblical Criticism in the Netherlands of Spinoza’s Time and the British Isles of Newton’s Time ( Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994 )
Richard H. Popkin “Newton et l’interpretation des prophetes,” in Jean Robert Armogathe, ed., Le Grand Siècle et la Bible ( Paris: Beauchesne, 1989 ), pp 745–56
S. Mandelbrote, “’A duty of greatest moment’: Isaac Newton and the writing of Biblical criticism,” Bulletin for the History of Science 26 (1993), pp. 281–302
Frank E. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974 )
A Portrait of Isaac Newton (Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1968).
See A. Barnes, Jean Leclerc, p. 252.
Newton, Correspondence, Letter 358, 3:83.
See for example popular discussion of the falsity of the text in the 1640s reported in Thomas Edwards, Gangraena (1646), Part III, p. 90.
See my review of Marshall’s John Locke in The Locke Newsletter 25 (1994) pp. 110–19.
Leclerc had started work on his Latin edition of the Old Testament in 1684. It was published in 1693. Sections had been circulated in England and Holland in 1690 for which he received encouragement from Gilbert Burnet. See Golden, Jean Leclerc, pp. 148–150
See also R. Voeltzel, “Jean le Clerc (1657–1736) et la critique biblique,” in Religion, Erudition et Critique it la fin du XVIle siecle et au debut du XVII/e (Paris: Presse Universitaire de France, 1968 ).
Newton, Correspondence, Letter 358, 3:87, 90 and 100. Footnotes 21, 27, and 46 point out that each of these sections and paragraphs were added into the form of the original composition, either by marginal indication, or on the facing page.
Locke’s attempts to get hold of the second and third volumes of Simon’s criticism of the New Testament can be followed in Locke, Correspondence, 4:Letters 1356, 1364, 1371, 1387, 1392, 1400, 1407, 1408, 1420, and 1464. For Locke’s ownership of Simon’s works and replies see, J. Harrison, P. Laslett The Library of John Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971) esp. pp. 233–4.
See Locke, Correspondence, Letter 1087, 3:514–5.
See Locke, Correspondence, Letter 1058, 3:475.
See Locke, Correspondence, Letter 1088, 3: 516–7. Interestingly, Locke commented that the writer has ploughed with the heifer of a certain friend of mine“: was this heifer Hampden or Furley’s son? Locke organised a copy to be sent to Toinard. See Locke, Correspondence 3:Letters 1097 and 1109.
For the role Hampden played in the transmission and translation of Simon’s work in England in the 1680s and 1690s, see J. A. I. Champion “Pere Richard Simon and English Biblical Criticism, 16801696,” in James E. Force and David S. Katz, eds., “Everything Connects ”: In Conference with Richard H. Popkin ( Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).
Both studies by Laslett and Harrison show copies marked or dog-eared.
Many thanks to John Marshall for this information. He is currently working upon a critical edition of Locke’s work against Stillingfleet.
John Marshall in a personal communication has made the valuable point that, because Newton initialled passages in one of Locke’s interleaved Bibles, Newton may have had access to Locke’s other notebooks. It may be as well to think of Locke and Newton as having a close hermeneutical relationship. Bodleian MS Locke f. 32, which contains notes from HCVT scattered throughout, also has a reference to Newton at fol. 145. G. Reedy, The Bible and Reason: Anglicans and Scripture in Late Seventeenth Century England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), pp.l 13–4, has a short summary of this document.
The references in MS Locke f 32 are to HCVT (1685). The one reference (fol. 5) not to the first book is marked by Locke as p. 639 (out of a book 667 pages long) which suggests that although the notes are confined to Book I he did at least glance through the rest of the work.
References in parenthesis represent Locke’s note of the page number in Simon.
R. Simon, Critical History of the Old Testament (London, 1682 ) Preface § 1. (Cited hereafter as CHOT). ai CHOT I, pp. 2–3.
CHOT 11, pp.75–76 (on Trent); pp.91–7 (on authenticity). For Hobbes see Leviathan (1651), Chap. 33.
An excellently clear exegesis is given by W. McKane, Selected Christian Hebraists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. l 11–51.
For a contemporary assertion of Simon’s point see W. Bamstone, The Poetics of Translation. History, Theory, Practice ( New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993 ).
CHOT III, pp. 22, 90–1, and Chap. 16, “of Socinians,” pp. 114–21.
It is no anachronism to suggest that in exploring the textuality of the Bible and the relationship between critic and text Simon opened the covers of modem critical theory. At least one modem critic, Michel de Certeau, notes this point in his essay “ L’idee de traduction de la bible au XVIIeme siecle: Sacy et Simon,” Recherches de Science Religieuse 66 (1978), pp. 73–92.
He commented that Walton et al. were rather “no Catholicks, than hereticks.” CHOT Ill, p. 153.
R. Simon, Critical History of the New Testament (London, 1689 ), I, Sig. A4. (Cited hereafter as CHNT).
There is an interesting history of this publication to be researched. While it was actually published in 1692, it seems to have been licensed in November 1689 and registered in the Term Catalogues in 1690. The licenser James Frazer, a Whig, was later dismissed from his position (April, 1692) for allowing a book by Anthony Walker throwing doubt on the authorship of Eikon Basilike to be published. See R. Astbury, “The Renewal of the Licensing Act in 1693 and its lapse in 1695,” The Library 33 (1978), pp. 298–322.
Importantly, CHNT I, Chap. 3, pp.19–30, was the basis of much of the biblical criticism of John Toland. This unnoticed relationship will be explored in my forthcoming edition of John Toland. Nazarenus ( Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1998 ).
See A. W. Wainwright, ed., John Locke: A Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistle of St Paul, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), Appendix X, 2:691–94, where Wainwright gives details of Locke’s interleaved Bibles. Locke’s Library No. 309, a 1648 octavo compiled in 1693, includes citations from Newton.
See Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton, pp. 118–9.
See the important discussion in M.C. Pitassi, “Le notion de communication dans l’exégèse biblique de la fin du XVIIe siècle,” in H. Botts and F. Waquet, eds., Commercium Litterarium. Forms of Communication in the Republic of Letters 1600–1750 ( Amsterdam: Amsterdam Univerity Press, 1994 ), pp. 35–50.
See M. C. Pitassi, “Le Philosophe et L’écriture. John Locke exégète de sainte Paul, ” Cahiers de la Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie 14 (1990).
Locke, Correspondence, Letter 3333, 8:64; Letter 3339, 8:69–71. For later advice to the same man on the importance of interpreters as a method of avoiding the dangers of “willful ignorance,” see Letter 3346, 8: 76–7.
Published with the 1682 issues of CHVT. Simon commented “we may find in several books the names of most printed Bibles, but those who publish these sort of Catalogues seldom give their own observations to make us understand the best editions.” A Catalogue of the Chief editions of the Bible, p. 1.
Simon, A Catalogue of the Chief editions of the Bible, pp. 3, 10–1.
Simon, A Catalogue o/’the Chief editions of the Bible, pp. l0, 12–3
Simon, A Catalogue of the Chief editions of the Bible, pp. 20–1.
Locke, Correspondence, Letter 3647, 8:414.
Locke, Correspondence, Letter 834, 2:749.
The warning comes, of course, from, M. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life ( California: University of California Press, 1988 ), pp. 131–77.
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Champion, J.A.I. (1999). “Acceptable to inquisitive men”: Some Simonian Contexts for Newton’s Biblical Criticism, 1680–16921 . In: Force, J.E., Popkin, R.H. (eds) Newton and Religion. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales D’Histoire des Idées, vol 161. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2426-5_4
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