Hutchinsonianism,Natural Philosophy and Religious Controversy in Eighteenth Century Britain

Hélène Metzger, Attraction universelle et religion naturelle chez quelques commentateurs anglais de Newton (Paris, 1938). For Mme Metzger's treatment of Hutchinson and his followers see pp. 8, 167, 199–200 and 207.

For Catcott's Hutchinsonianism see Neve Michael Porter Roy , “Alexander Catcott: Glory and geology”, The British journal for the history of science, ix (1977), 37–60.

Herbert Schneider Carol (eds), Samuel Johnson, president of King's College, his career and writings (4 vols, New York, 1929), ii, 291.

See Jones's William “Memoirs of the life and writings of Dr Horne”, in The works of the late Right Reverend George Horne, D. D. (2nd ed., 6 vols, London, 1818), i, 9f.

For Horne see op. cit. (ref. 4). A further edition of Horne's works was published in London in 1836. William Jones's The catholic doctrine of the Trinity … had reached its eighth edition by 1812, and was re-published in 1828 and 1866. His grandson, R. H. Walker, published Jones's Sermons on various subjects and occasions in 1830. A Latin work by A. S. Catcott first published in 1735 was translated by A. Maxwell and published as The ancient principles of true and sacred philosophy … (London, 1822). See also Philobiblus [Thomas Rudd?], A defence of the veracity of Moses … (London, 1820).

Park James Allan , Memoirs of William Stevens Esq. (London, 1812), 164f.

Kirby William , On the power, wisdom and goodness of God as manifested in the creation of animals and their history, habits, and instincts (London, 1835), Introduction, especially pp. xcii, xciii, and cii. Kirby is at pains to point out where he differs from Hutchinson and his followers (see pp. 1, lxxi and lxxxvii) but nowhere admits his debt to them. This reluctance to admit one's debt to Hutchinson and his followers was not confined to Kirby: See ref. 71 and the discussion in the present article.

For Skinner's Hutchinsonianism, and the influence of Hutchinson in Scotland, see Walker William , The life and times of the Rev. John Skinner (London, 1883), 58–70, 150–67, and passim.

Kuhn A. J. , “Glory or gravity: Hutchinson vs Newton”, Journal of the history of ideas, xxii (1961), 303–22.

Some of these accounts will be discussed below. See Heimann P. M. McGuire J. E. , “Newtonian forces and Lockean powers: Concepts of matter in eighteenth century thought”, Historical studies in the physical sciences, iii (1971), 233–306; Heimann P. M. , “‘Nature is a perpetual worker’: Newton's aether and eighteenth century natural philosophy”, Ambix, xx (1973), 1–25; Schofield Robert E. , Mechanism and materialism: British natural philosophy in an age of reason (Princeton, 1970), 91, 122–8, 133 and 164. Perhaps the best treatment of Hutchinsonianism in a specialized work is Thackray Arnold , Atoms and powers: An essay on Newtonian matter theory and the development of chemistry (Cambridge, Mass., 1970), 246.

For a brief sketch of Hutchinson's life see Biblioteca biographica (3 vols, London, 1760), appended to vol. iii. All subsequent accounts are taken largely from this biography, which was written by Robert Spearman, including that in the Dictionary of national biography and an inaccurate account of Hutchinson's life and philosophy in Abraham Rees's Cyclopaedia (London, 1819), xviii. Hutchinson himself gives some account of his life and education in “A treatise of power essential and mechanical …”, vol. v of The philosophical and theological works of John Hutchinson, Esq. , (3rd ed., London, 1748–9), 238f. All subsequent references to Hutchinson's works will be made to this edition with the original title of the work in brackets.

For an interesting alternative account of Hutchinson's approach to Hebrew see Cantor G. N. , “Revelation and the cyclical cosmos of John Hutchinson”, in Jordanova L. J. Porter Roy (eds), Images of the Earth (Chalfont St Giles, 1979), 3–22.

Hutchinson , Works , ii (“Moses's principia, part two”), p. xxiv.

Ibid., British Library copy, i (“Introduction”), p. xxxix.

Ibid., i (“Moses's principia, part one”), 7.

Ibid., ii (“Moses's principia, part two”), pp. xx–xxi.

Ibid., p. vii.

Ibid., pp. xxii–xxix.

Ibid., v (“A treatise of power essential and mechanical”), 89.

Ibid., 34–35.

Ibid., 12.

Ibid., iii (“Moses's … sine principio”), 280–5.

Ibid. , xi (“Glory or gravity, the mechanical or second part”), 25 and passim.

Hutchinson was concerned to deny Newton's speculations (in Quest. 30 of the 4th ed. of the Opticks) that gross bodies and light are convertible into one another–see Hutchinson, Works, v (“A treatise of power essential and mechanical”), 139–40.

Hutchinson , Works, v (“A treatise of power essential and mechanical”), 12 and 22.

Ibid., iii (“The covenant of the cherubim”), 328.

Ibid., v (“A treatise of power essential and mechanical”), 83.

Ibid., iii (“The religion of Satan or Anti-Christ, delineated”), 33 and 87.

Hutchinson frequently attacks Newton and Clarke for not being able to read Hebrew and therefore of being ignorant of true philosophy and religion. See, for example, Hutchinson, Works, v (“A treatise of power essential and mechanical”), 146.

Ibid., 24 and 118.

Ibid., 147–8.

Bentley Richard , Sermons on atheism (London, 1692–3), 4th lecture, 6.

Woodward John , Essay toward a natural history of the Earth (London, 1695), 57.

After a long discussion on God which occupies the major part of the General Scholium and in which God is asserted to be “omnipresent not virtually only but substantially”, and to govern “all things … as Lord over all”, Newton immediately moves onto the cause of gravity which, he says, “penetrates to the very centres of the sun and planets, without suffering the least diminution of its power”. Having laid great emphasis on the view that “it is the dominion of a spiritual being which constitutes God”, and that “God suffers nothing from the motion of bodies; bodies find no resistance from the omnipresence of God”, Newton almost forces the reader to the conclusion that God is the cause of gravity and is immanent in the world.

Hutchinson , Works, v (“A treatise of power essential and mechanical”), 64.

Ibid. , xi (“Glory or gravity, the mechanical or second part”), 224; for an explanation of the Earth's rotation see ibid., 41.

Ibid., 11.

Ibid., 26.

Loc. cit. and p. 133.

Ibid., 6.

In an interesting article, “Augustinianism and empiricism. A note on eighteenth century English intellectual history”, Eighteenth century studies, i (1967–8), 33–68, Donald Greene argues that Augustinianism and empiricism were far more characteristic of eighteenth century English thought than any other system of ideas such as Cambridge Platonism or Deism. His analysis of these two concepts and the complementarity which existed between them fits Hutchinsonianism perfectly. For the Hutchinsonians the belief in the insignificance and imperfection of man in the face of God went hand in hand with a distrust of human reason and an emphasis on the need for experience and revelation as external aids to reason.

Stromberg Roland N. , Religious liberalism in eighteenth century England (Oxford, 1954), ch. 4; Cragg Gerald R. , Reason and authority in the eighteenth century (Cambridge, 1964), 33–40.

Stromberg , op. cit. (ref. 42), chs 5 and 6; Redwood John , Reason, ridicule and religion. The age of enlightenment in England 1660–1750 (London, 1976), 174f.

Jacob Margaret C. , The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1688–1720 (Hassocks, Sussex, 1976), 29 and 68; Redwood , op. cit. (ref. 43), 94; Every George , The High Church party 1688–1718 (London, 1956), 67.

Jacob , op. cit. (ref. 44), chs 4, 5 and passim.

Bennett G. V. , The Tory crisis in church and state 1688–1730: The career of Francis Atterbury Bishop of Rochester (Oxford, 1975), 58–59; Every , op. cit. (ref. 44), 96–98.

Bennett , op. cit. (ref. 46), 65–66.

Sykes Norman , Church and state in England in the eighteenth century (Cambridge, 1934), 34; Every , op. cit. (ref. 44), 109–10.

Bennett , op. cit. (ref. 46), 14–15.

Redwood , op. cit. (ref. 43), ch. 9; Cragg , op. cit. (ref. 42), ch. 3.

Bentley , op. cit. (ref. 32), 3rd lecture, 5.

Sykes , op. cit. (ref. 48), 17 and 23; Every , op. cit. (ref. 44), 118–19, 132–3 and passim; Greene W. V. H. , Religion at Oxford and Cambridge (London, 1964), 154 and 167–75.

For a brief discussion of this controversy see Bennett , op. cit. (ref. 46), 38–43.

Jacob , op. cit. (ref. 44), 210; see also Stromberg , op. cit. (ref. 42), 56.

Hutchinson , Works, v (“A treatise of power essential and mechanical”), 238f.

Hutchinson tries to explain the origin of heathen religions as corruptions of the original, revealed religion (Christianity) given by God to man before the fall; see, for example, Hutchinson, Works, i (“An essay toward a natural history of the Bible”), 253–4; ii (“Moses's principia, part two”), passim; vii (“The covenant in the cherubim”), 328f. He claims that Newton was only able “to tell you what he had taken from the stupidest heathens”, ibid., v (“A treatise of power essential and mechanical”), 149.

Ibid., i (“An essay toward a natural history of the Bible”), 284.

Ibid. , viii (“The use of reason recovered by the data in Christianity”), 85–88 and 95; ix (“The use of reason recovered by the data in Christianity part two”), 199 and 213.

Ibid., viii (“The use of reason recovered by the data in Christianity”), 86.

Ibid., ix (“The use of reason recovered by the data in Christianity part two”), 119. Italics inserted.

Ibid., viii (“The use of reason recovered by the data in Christianity”), 71–72 and 197.

Ibid., v (“A treatise of power essential and mechanical”), 110.

Ibid., i (“An essay toward a natural history of the Bible”), 236–7.

Ibid., iii (“Moses's … sine principio”), p. xii.

It is import to distinguish between those High Church divines, like Jones and Horne, who adopted Hutchinson's philosophy from the 1730s onwards, and the High Church party which ceased to be an effective political force after 1714. The latter was far more militant in its political activities having challenged the authority of bishops over presbyters in Convocation and even the monarch's right to prorogue Convocation. The Hutchinsonians followed more strictly, in this respect, the High Church principle of passive obedience. As Horne wrote in a manuscript note “the Bps are all entered into a league never to promote them [the Hutchinsonians]—Gods will be done Sir & we are content—we shall always reverence and obey our Superiors in the church …” (Cambridge University Library, George Horne, add. mss. no. 8134, Common place book, p. 2).

Jones William , A full answer to the essay on spirit (London, 1753); Scott John , The holy scriptural doctrine of the divine Trinity … to which is prefixed a prefatory discourse wherein the errors of a late treatise an essay on spirit are clearly shown and confuted (London, 1754).

Jones William , “An address to the British government on a subject of present concern. 1776”, in The theological and miscellaneous works of the Rev. William Jones (6 vols, London, 1810), vi, 268–74.

Horne George , A letter to the Rev. Dr Priestley … (London, 1785). This was a response to Priestley's attack on Horne in Letters to Dr Horne,… (Birmingham, 1787).

Works by Jones and Horne were republished in perhaps the publication most representative of the conservative reaction to the French Revolution: Jones William (ed.), The scholar armed against the errors of the time …. A collection of tracts on the principles and evidences of Christianity, the constitution of the Church, and the authority of civil government (2 vols, London, 1795). George Horne's A fair, candid and impartial state of the case between Sir I. Newton and Mr Hutchinson (Oxford, 1753), was also republished in London in 1799.

Horne George , op. cit. (ref. 65), 2.

Pike's Samuel Philosophia sacra (London, 1753) is taken almost entirely from Hutchinson without once acknowledging the debt and William Jones purposely avoided mentioning Hutchinson in his Essay on the first principles of natural philosophy (London, 1762).

Schofield , op. cit. (ref. 10), 19, 29–30 and 56; Thackray , op. cit. (ref. 10), 28.

Newton , Opticks (repr. London, 1931, based on the 4th ed. of 1730), Query 21, p. 350.

Ibid., 352.

McGuire J. E. , “Force, active principles, and Newton's invisible realm”, Ambix, xv (1968), 154–208.

Hutchinson oscillates between accusing Newton of making God the immediate and continual cause of the laws of nature, and of attributing impossible powers to matter. The former was repugnant to Hutchinson's idea of God as a transcendent being. Also, since on this interpretation of Newton's thought, God is required to be infinitely extended, Hutchinson argued that it limited God's power by requiring him to be present where he acts—a limitation which, Hutchinson argued, Newton does not impose upon matter; see Hutchinson , Works , v (“A treatise of power essential and mechanical”), 147–8, 184 and 194–5. The latter would, according to Hutchinson, lead to the belief that the powers in matter were eternal, to a questioning of the distinction between matter and spirit, and to the destruction of revealed religion: See ibid., 101–2.

The letter to Oldenburg of 1675 was published in Birch Thomas (ed.), The works of the honourable Robert Boyle (5 vols, London, 1744), i, 74. This was written in connection with a paper of 1675 which was published in Thomas Birch, The history of the Royal Society of London (4 vols, London, 1756–7), iii, 251.

Birch , Works of Boyle (ref. 77), ii, 74.

Higgins Bryan , A philosophical essay concerning light (London, 1776), 13.

Leslie P. D. , A philosophical enquiry into the cause of animal heat … (London, 1778), 104.

Walker Adam , A system of familiar philosophy in twelve lectures (London, 1799), p. xi.

Hutton James , Dissertations on different subjects in natural philosophy (Edinburgh, 1792), 246.

There can be no doubt that Francis Penrose took many of his ideas from the Hutchinsonians. In his A treatise on electricity (Oxford, 1752) he asserts that through electricity we can become acquainted “with the immediate officer of God Almighty” (5), that “air, light and fire are of the same substance or essence; only differently modified, and appointed for performing different actions” (6), and that electricity is of the same substance as air, light and fire (15). An anonymous pamphlet defending the Hutchinsonians entitled Animadversions on a sermon preached before a bishop … (London, 1756), has been attributed to Penrose. For Jones see op. cit. (ref. 71), 26–27, 102f., 130, and 162.

Heimann P. M. , op. cit. (ref. 10), 2.

Loc. cit.

Ibid., 13–14.

Ibid., 15.

Hutchinson hints at the role of fire in his system in Works , i (“Moses's principia, part one”), 4 and 23–24. His ideas on this are clearly developed in ibid., i (“An essay toward a natural history of the Bible”), 186 and 236–7.

Heimann , op. cit. (ref. 10), 15.

Loc. cit.

Jones William , Physiological disquisitions (London, 1781), iii.

Jones , op. cit. (ref. 71), 208, 196, 220, and 228.

Heimann , op. cit. (ref. 10), 16.

Jones , op. cit. (ref. 4), xxxi–xxxii.

See Jones , op. cit. (ref. 67), vi, 13f., where Jones states and affirms what he considers to be the main characteristics of Hutchinsonianism. For Jones's affirmation of mechanism as the only cause of motion in nature see op. cit. (ref. 71), 5f., 14 and 26f., and Jones, op. cit. (ref. 91), 61. In his correspondence with Catcott in the Jeffries Collection, Bristol Central Library, vol. xx, ref. no. 26063, his conception of Newton and his followers as opponents, and his allegiance to Hutchinson, are clearly expressed—see especially 25 April 1759. Here he mentions his design to weaken “demonstrations against Mechanical Agency …. The vis inertiae & resistance are their sole topics of demonstration: If we can take away this which the world has worshiped [sic], their cause is naked”.

Heimann , op. cit. (ref. 10), 16.

Jones , op. cit. (ref. 71), 26.

Heimann McGuire , op. cit. (ref. 10), 291n.

Pike , op. cit. (ref. 71); Penrose , op. cit. (ref. 83, A treatise on electricity …); Jones , op. cit. (refs 71 and 91); for John Scott see his Notes and observations on the first three chapters of Genesis (London, 1753), and op. cit. (ref. 66); for Andrew Wilson see his Short observations on the principles and moving powers assumed by the present system of philosophy (London, 1764), and The principles of natural philosophy: With some remarks upon the fundamental principles of the Newtonian philosophy (London, 1754); for George Adams see his Lectures on natural and experimental philosophy (5 vols, London, 1794). See also Experimental philosophy asserted against some late attempts to undermine it (London, 1740), anon. but attributed to Julius Bate in a letter from John Robertson to A. S. Catcott, 27 September 1746, in the Jeffries Collection, op. cit. (ref. 95).

Lankester Edwin R. (ed.), The correspondence of John Ray (London, 1848), i, 271. In this letter, 20 January 1693/4, Paschall asserts, there is a “mutual contranitency between parts central and circumferential, those emitting outwards and those impelling inwards”. Within this planetary system the Sun emits fluid and the stars send it back “whence proceeds a plenitude as absolute as the nature of such a fluid can admit of”.

In claiming that certain ideas originated from a particular person it is important to define in what context, since, almost inevitably, they existed in some form prior to the person in question. Here I am arguing that where these ideas appear in eighteenth or early nineteenth century natural philosophy it can be assumed that they came from Hutchinson and his followers. Of course (a) and (b) in Group i are not single ideas but combinations of ideas; in these particular configurations it is extremely unlikely that they existed before Hutchinson's writings.

A recurring feature of Hutchinsonianism is the belief that mathematics is not capable of demonstrating the truth or falsity of a system nor of investigating causes in nature. Hutchinson objected against Newton that “It is to no purpose to stun us with mathematical principles of natural philosophy, until the principles themselves are simply proved: For mathematics are applicable to any data, real or imaginary: True or false”, Works, v (“A treatise of power essential and mechanical”), 162. See also Jones's letter to Catcott, op. cit. (ref. 95), and Horne, op. cit. (ref. 69), 9f.

It may be objected that since I am claiming that both (a) and (b) in Group i are peculiar to Hutchinsonianism the adoption of either of these positions should be sufficient to define someone as a Hutchinsonian. This would not, however, exclude the not unfeasible possibility of a Deist, who accepted (a) from a reading of Jones's Essay, being labelled as a Hutchinsonian. We would of course want to say that such a person had been influenced by Hutchinsonianism.

Schofield , op. cit. (ref. 10), 95.

Ibid., 99.

Heimann P. M. , “Voluntarism and immanence: Conceptions of nature in eighteenth century thought”, Journal of the history of ideas, xxxix (1978), 271–83, p. 283.

On this point see the essay review of M. C. Jacob's book by Holmes Geoffrey , “Science, reason, and religion in the age of Newton”, The British journal for the history of science, xi (1978), 164–70.