Isaac Newton’s Sins
A project at the University of Sussex has discovered notes written by Isaac Newton during his teenage years that cover fifty sins he wished to avoid. The list includes such sins as, “striking many”, “punching my sister,” “wishing death and hoping it to some,” “lying,” and “twisting a cord on Sunday morning and making pies on Sunday night” [apparent Sabbath breaking].
Newton positioned himself as a Christian, though he denied the Trinity and remained a “closet Arian.” Despite his errant theology, Newton was helpful in the cause of Christianity against burgeoning Enlightenment thought which sought to discard belief in God. Historian Roy Porter writes, “What was crucial about Newton . . . was that . . . Newtonianism was an invincible weapon against atheism.” (Roy Porter, The Creation of the Modern World: The Untold Story of the British Enlighenment, 135-36).
The researches state the importance discovering Newton’s teenage letters: “Though we are lucky to have a substantial collection of second- and third-hand accounts of Newton’s early years, only a very few manuscripts in his own hand, dating from his boyhood and undergraduate years, give a more direct insight into his personal world.”
