SOURCE: "His Father in Heaven," in The Religion of Isaac Newton, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1974, pp. 1-24.

In the following essay, Manuel examines the nature of Newton's religious beliefs, as exposed through both his published and unpublished writings. Manuel contends that throughout Newton's life, Newton believed in a "religion of obedience to commandments" in which God the Father, not "Christ the Redeemer," played the dominant role.

That the task of searching into the religion of Isaac Newton should fall to a historian rather than a theologian may require an apology. Fortunately I discovered one among Newton's manuscripts. In a treatise on the language of Scripture he remarked on the similarity between the historian's method of periodization and the system of chapters in the books of prophecy. 'For if Historians', he wrote, 'divide their histories into Sections, Chapters, and Books at such periods of time where the less...