Check out what I found over at The Newton Project....
It's a collection of Isaac Newton's writings online. Eventually, they hope to put everything the man ever wrote up there.
But what's really interesting is that throughout his life (not just in his old age), Newton was really into interpreting Bible prophecy, and came up with his own guidebooks for decoding mystic language.
That guide is about a quarter of the way down this page...
I love this language:
To assigne but one meaning to one place of scripture; unless it be perhaps by way of conjecture, or where the literal sense is designed to hide the more noble mystical sense as a shell the kernel from being tasted either by unworthy persons, or untill such time as God shall think fit. In this case there may be for a blind, a true literal sense, even such as in its way may be beneficial to the church. But when we have the principal meaning: If it be mystical we can insist on a true literal sense no farther then by history or arguments drawn from circumstances it appears to be true: if literal, though there may be also a by mystical sense yet we can scarce be sure there is one without some further arguments for it then a bare analogy. Much more are we to be cautious in giving a double {Illeg} mystical sense. There may be a double one, as where the heads of the Beast signify both mountains & Kings Apoc 17.9, 10. But without divine authority or at least some further argument then the analogy and resemblance & similitude of things, we cannot be sure that the Prophesy looks more ways then one. Too much liberty in this kind savours of a luxuriant ungovernable fansy and borders on enthusiasm.
The "featured text" right now is another one of the theological works, and it's history is similarly interesting -- the text was shuffled between libraries, then turned up in the 1880s or so as a source for a Seventh Day Adventist article. The writer had apparently bought it for his own collection because Newton's views fell so close to that denomination's.
So, in addition to optics, physics and calculus, you can stick eschatology up on Newton's list of fields of inquiry. |
