Wise Men Never Tell

“There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: the same came to Jesus by night.” ~ John 3: 1-2

“A lady asked the famous Lord Shaftesbury what religion he was of. He answered the religion of wise men. She asked, what was that? He answered, wise men never tell.”
~ Diary of Viscount Percival



“Isaac Newton was a heretic.

But like Nicodemus, the secret disciple of Jesus, he never made a public declaration of his private faith which the orthodox would have deemed extremely radical. He hid his faith so well that scholars are still unravelling his personal beliefs. His one-time follower William Whiston, attributed his policy of silence to simple, human fear and there must be some truth in this. Every day as a public figure… and as the figurehead of British natural philosophy, Newton must have felt the tension of outwardly conforming to the Anglican Church, while inwardly denying much of its faith and practice. He was restricted by heresy laws, religious tests and the formidable opposition of public opinion.

Heretics were seen as religiously subversive, socially dangerous and even morally debased. Moreover, the positions he enjoyed were dependent on public manifestations of religious and social orderliness. Sir Isaac had a lot to lose. Yet he knew the scriptural injunctions against hiding one's light under a bushel. Newton the believer was thus faced with the need to develop a modus vivendi whereby he could work within legal and social structures, while fulfilling the command to shine in a dark world…

Newton was also well aware that he had enemies enough who would have pounced on any revelation of doctrinal waywardness. Newton knew the great damage the stain of heresy would do to the cause of his reformation in natural philosophy. Fear of this sort of public relations disaster must have been one of Newton's greatest deterrents to open preaching. He knew a time would come when this would not be so; he was too much a man of the world not to realize that that day had not yet come.”

~ Dr. Stephen Snobelen, is a professor of the history of science and technology at the University of King's College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Dr. Snobelen's main scholarly area of interest is Isaac Newton's theological and prophetic writings. He was featured in a BBC documentary on this subject matter, titled Newton: The Dark Heretic.

“Isaac Newton (1643 –1727) was, as considered by others within his own lifetime, an insightful and erudite theologian. He wrote many works that would now be classified as occult studies and religious tracts dealing with the literal interpretation of the Bible. Newton's conception of the physical world provided a stable model of the natural world that would reinforce stability and harmony in the civic world. Newton saw a monotheistic God as the masterful creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation. Although born into an Anglican family, by his thirties Newton held a Christian faith that, had it been made public, would not have been considered orthodox by mainstream Christianity; in recent times he has been described as a heretic.” ~ Wikipedia