Summary
The ‘holy alliance’ between Newtonian natural philosophy and Anglican latitudinarianism had, by the end of the eighteenth century, proved a fruitful marriage. Confident assertions that science and religion were allies remained part of the intellectual landscape in the first half of the nineteenth century and natural theology continued to be one of the most influential vehicles for the dissemination of new scientific theories (Gillispie, 1959: 227). Natural theology also continued to serve the irenical ends which latitudinarians like Wilkins and Tillotson had ascribed to it in the late seventeenth century, drawing together those, like the early members of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (founded 1831), who shared a common interest in God's Revelation through nature even if they disagreed about the nature of his Revelation through Scripture (Morrell and Thackray, 1981: 229). Newton's name continued to be invoked, in almost talisman fashion, as an instance of the happy conformity of the highest reaches of scientific endeavour and religious belief. Thus William Whewell, in one of his university sermons, cited Newton (along with Bacon, another Trinity graduate) as proof ‘that the most capacious intellects of the Christian times have found room for the love of knowledge without expelling the love of God’ (Todhunter, 1876, 1: 324) and Adam Sedgwick in his Discourse on the studies of the university (1834) asserted that ‘A study of the Newtonian philosophy… teaches us to see the finger of God in all things animate and inanimate’ (p. 14).
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- Cambridge in the Age of the EnlightenmentScience, Religion and Politics from the Restoration to the French Revolution, pp. 300 - 308Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1989