1. William Whiston was an English theologian, historian, natural philosopher, and mathematician, a leading figure in the popularisation of the ideas of Isaac Newton.
34 Facts About William Whiston
1. 2.
William Whiston is probably best known for helping to instigate the Longitude Act in 1714 and his important translations of the Antiquities of the Jews and other works by Josephus.
3.
William Whiston was a prominent exponent of Arianism and wrote A New Theory of the Earth.
4.
William Whiston rejected the notion of eternal torment in hellfire, which he viewed as absurd, cruel, and an insult to God.
5.
William Whiston was born to Josiah William Whiston and Katherine Rosse at Norton-juxta-Twycross, in Leicestershire, where his father was rector.
6.
William Whiston's mother was daughter of the previous rector at Norton-juxta-Twycross, Gabriel Rosse.
7.
Josiah William Whiston was a presbyterian, but retained his rectorship after the Stuart Restoration in 1660.
8.
William Whiston was educated privately, for his health, and so that he could act as amanuensis to his blind father.
9.
William Whiston applied himself to mathematical study, was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and AM, and was elected Fellow in 1691 and probationary senior Fellow in 1693.
10.
William Whiston now divided his time between Norwich, Cambridge and London.
11.
William Whiston first met Isaac Newton in 1694 and attended some of his lectures, though he first found them, by his own admission, incomprehensible.
12.
In 1701 William Whiston resigned his living to become Isaac Newton's substitute, giving the Lucasian lectures at Cambridge.
13.
In 1707 William Whiston was Boyle lecturer; this lecture series was at the period a significant opportunity for Newton's followers, including Richard Bentley and Samuel Clarke, to express their views, especially in opposition to the rise of deism.
14.
William Whiston supported a qualified biblical literalism: the literal meaning should be the default, unless there was a good reason to think otherwise.
15.
William Whiston had started writing on the millenarianism that was integral to the Newtonian theology, and wanted to distance his views from theirs, and in particular from those of John Lacy.
16.
William Whiston read in Louis Ellies Dupin, and the Explication of Gospel Theism of Richard Brocklesby.
17.
The matter was not allowed to rest there: William Whiston tried to get a hearing before Convocation.
18.
William Whiston did have defenders even in the high church ranks, such as George Smalridge.
19.
The party passions of these years found an echo in Henry Sacheverell's attempt to exclude William Whiston from his church of St Andrew's, Holborn, taking place in 1719.
20.
William Whiston founded a society for promoting primitive Christianity, lecturing in support of his theories in halls and coffee-houses at London, Bath, and Tunbridge Wells.
21.
William Whiston supported anointing the sick and touching for the king's evil.
22.
William Whiston was fervent in his views of ecclesiastical government and discipline, derived from the Apostolical Constitutions.
23.
Around 1747, when his clergyman began to read the Athanasian Creed, which William Whiston did not believe in, he physically left the church and the Anglican communion, becoming a Baptist.
24.
William Whiston held that Song of Solomon was apocryphal and that the Book of Baruch was not.
25.
William Whiston challenged Newton's system of The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended.
26.
William Whiston gave regular courses at coffee houses, particularly Button's, and at the Censorium, a set of riverside meeting rooms in London run by Richard Steele.
27.
William Whiston's passing remarks on religious topics were sometimes objected to, for example by Henry Newman writing to Steele.
28.
William Whiston's A New Theory of the Earth from its Original to the Consummation of All Things was an articulation of creationism and flood geology.
29.
William Whiston Wake as Archbishop of Canterbury officially denied this prediction to calm the public.
30.
William Whiston saw the creation of man as an intervention in the natural order.
31.
William Whiston picked up on Arthur Ashley Sykes's advice to Samuel Clarke to omit an eclipse and earthquake mentioned by Phlegon of Tralles from future editions of Clarke's Boyle lectures, these events being possibly synchronous with Christ's crucifixion.
32.
William Whiston married Ruth, daughter of George Antrobus, his headmaster at Tamworth school.
33.
William Whiston was survived by his children Sarah, William, George, and John.
34.
William Whiston translated the complete works of Josephus into English, and published them along with his own notes and dissertations under the title The Genuine Works of Flavius Josephus the Jewish Historian in 1737.