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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2025
Of old, the name of Jones of Nayland was an honoured and familiar one, and the twelve volumes of his collected works found a place in the library of every self-respecting clergyman. To-day his is a quite forgotten personality, while as to his writings, the strain of false philosophy which runs through most of them would of itself be enough to warn off the ordinary reader.
When Sir Isaac Newton first propounded the theory of gravitation, it appeared to many religious-minded persons to contain within itself the seeds of atheism. Their alarm was eventually voiced by John Hutchinson (1674—1737), in his Moses’ Principia, in which was built up an opposing system of philosophy based on that inner significance which Hutchinson professed to discover in the sacred scriptures. Our modern books of reference decline altogether to make for us any analysis of Hutchinsonianism, and brush it aside as a worthless and exploded fallacy, utterly inconsistent with the received principles of physics. Yet, crude and wrong-headed as it may have been, in its day it exercised a powerful influence, and made many disciples. Of these the most conspicuous was Jones of Nayland.
The Reverend William Jones (1726—1800)1 was an Anglican divine of great learning, and (what was in the eighteenth century much more singular) one who never sought to make that learning the means of procuring a rich prebend or a comfortable benefice.