SOURCE: "Isaac Newton's Theological Writings: Problems and Prospects," in Restoration: Studies in English Literary Culture, 1660-1700, Vol. 13, No. 1, Spring, 1989, pp. 35-48.

In the essay below, Markley surveys current scholarship on Newton's theology and notes that critics have used new approaches to his manuscripts to establish the proper relationship between Newton's spiritual inquiries and his scientific work.

Over the past fifteen years, studies by Frank Manuel, Richard S. Westfall, and other scholars on the problems posed by Isaac Newton's religious and theological writings have finally put to rest at least some of the hoary myths that had, for over two hundred years, effectively severed Newton the scientist from Newton the alchemist and Newton the supposedly doddering writer on biblical history and prophecy.¹ If the dispersal of Newton's unpublished manuscripts in the 1936 sale to Jerusalem, Wellesley, (Massachusetts), and Cambridge (England) has created logistical problems for scholars interested in Newton's "non-scientific...