Beschreibung:

NEWTON, Isaac (1642-1727). Autograph manuscript, a draft for a theological tract on Christian doctrine focusing on the Book of Revelation, n.d. [1710s-1720s]. In English, one page, 160 x 187mm, 27 lines, autograph emendations and cancellations, the passage numbered '5'. Provenance : Isaac Newton – Catherine Barton (1679–1739), his half-niece – her daughter, Catherine (b.1721), married John, 1st Viscount Lymington – Earls of Portsmouth, sold as part of the Portsmouth Papers (Sotheby's, 13/14 July 1936, lot 255) to Emmanuel Fabius, Parisian bookseller. The text of the present manuscript is near-identical to part of SL255.7 in the Portsmouth Papers, the archive of Newton's writings whose sale in 1936 finally revealed the depth of his interest in theology – as well as his own unorthodox beliefs – and alchemy. This section of Newton's tract on Christian doctrine immediately precedes that in lot 45. Newton the theologian: an exploration of the Book of Revelation , the text opening after the Throne of God has appeared, with Newton's description of the worship offered to God Almighty, Jesus Christ, and 'God and the Lamb': 'The publick worship of Christians in their Churches is described in this prophesy by the worship of God & Christ in the Temple of heaven. The four Animals representing the people in the outward Court rest not morning & evening saying Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty w[hi]ch was & is to come. And when those Beasts Animals give glory & honour & thanks to him that sitteth upon the throne who liveth for ever & ever, the four & twenty elders fall down before him that sitteth on the throne & worship him that liveth for ever & ever & cast their crowns before the throne ', which is the proper worship of God Almighty; then follows the proper worship of Jesus Christ; and then 'the joynt worship of God & the Lamb' A number of the fragmentary religious tracts written by Newton that appeared in Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St John – collected and published posthumously by his half-nephew, Benjamin Smith in 1733 – dealt with the Book of Revelation: Biblical prophecy, and human capacity to understand it, was a subject to which Newton returned time and again.