# Was it dangerous to be an Arian in Isaac Newton's lifetime? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 12, 2014, 11:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-dangerous-to-be-an-arian-in-isaac-newtons-lifetime/698277 "2014-09-12T11:27:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-dangerous-to-be-an-arian-in-isaac-newtons-lifetime/698277/21 "2014-09-12T14:24:27Z")
Thanks njtt and Cleverhouse. Thank you all. Very helpful. davidmich ---
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [September 12, 2014, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-dangerous-to-be-an-arian-in-isaac-newtons-lifetime/698277/22 "2014-09-12T15:52:59Z")
This clears things us. > **[Religious persecution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_persecution)** > > Religious persecution is the systematic mistreatment of an individual or a group of individuals as a response to their religious beliefs or affiliations or their lack thereof. The tendency of societies or groups within societies to alienate or repress different subcultures is a recurrent theme in human history. Moreover, because a person's religion frequently determines his or her sense of morality, worldview, self-image, attitudes towards others, and overall personal identity to a significant ... More than 300 Roman Catholics were put to death by English governments between 1535 and 1681 for treason, thus for secular than religious offenses.[14] In 1570, Pope Pius V had issued the bull Regnans in Excelsis, which absolved Catholics from their obligations to the government.[16] This dramatically worsened the situation of the Catholics in England. English governments continued to fear Popish Plot. An English act of government from the year 1585 declared that the purpose of Jesuit missionaries who had come to Britain was “to stir up and move sedition, rebellion and open hostility”.[17] Consequently Jesuit priests like Saint John Ogilvie were hanged. This somehow contrasts with the image of the Elizabethan era as the time of William Shakespeare, but compared to the antecedent Marian Persecutions there is an important difference to consider. Mary I had been motivated by a religious zeal to purge heresy from her land, and during her short reign from 1553 to 1558 about 290 Protestants[18] had been burned at the stake for heresy, whereas Elizabeth I of England “acted out of fear for the security of her realm.”[19] ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2014, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-dangerous-to-be-an-arian-in-isaac-newtons-lifetime/698277/23 "2014-09-13T20:51:47Z")
> [@davidmich](#): > > This clears things us. > > [Religious persecution - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_persecution) > > More than 300 Roman Catholics were put to death by English governments between 1535 and 1681 for treason, thus for secular than religious offenses.[14] In 1570, Pope Pius V had issued the bull Regnans in Excelsis, which absolved Catholics from their obligations to the government.[16] This dramatically worsened the situation of the Catholics in England. English governments continued to fear Popish Plot. An English act of government from the year 1585 declared that the purpose of Jesuit missionaries who had come to Britain was “to stir up and move sedition, rebellion and open hostility”.[17] Consequently Jesuit priests like Saint John Ogilvie were hanged. This somehow contrasts with the image of the Elizabethan era as the time of William Shakespeare, but compared to the antecedent Marian Persecutions there is an important difference to consider. Mary I had been motivated by a religious zeal to purge heresy from her land, and during her short reign from 1553 to 1558 about 290 Protestants[18] had been burned at the stake for heresy, whereas Elizabeth I of England “acted out of fear for the security of her realm.”[19] Even more to the point, perhaps, just by the numbers given here, Mary’s kill rate of Protestants was about 9 times that of Elizabeth for Catholics. But what has any of this got to do with your original question about attitudes to Arianism (a heresy to both Catholics _and_ the vast majority of Protestants), at a much later period, that was separated from the times of both Mary and Elizabeth not only by many years and several other reigns, but by the enormous further religious and political upheavals of the English Civil war and Interregnum? ---
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2014, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-dangerous-to-be-an-arian-in-isaac-newtons-lifetime/698277/24 "2014-09-14T23:47:16Z")
Yes, I did go off topic there, but my overall interest is to find out how tolerant the English government really was towards non-conformists in before, during and after Cromwellian England. Newton life straddles all of these periods. I wasn’t quite sure why (if at all) he his his religious views apart from the obvious fact that it wouldn’t have done him any favors in terms of his career. davidmich ---
**Author:** ![DingoelGringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@DingoelGringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DingoelGringo)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2014, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-dangerous-to-be-an-arian-in-isaac-newtons-lifetime/698277/25 "2014-09-14T23:51:04Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > Given that “Isaac Asimov’s lifetime” only ended in 1991, and I don’t recall any mass persecutions of Arians in the '90s… Are you really confused about Isaac Newton not being the same as Isaac Asimov? ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2014, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-dangerous-to-be-an-arian-in-isaac-newtons-lifetime/698277/26 "2014-09-15T00:01:55Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Well, Newton does not seem to have hidden his Arianism too assiduously. It led him to refuse to take holy orders in the Church of England as young man, which, if he had not already been recognized within the university to be a mathematical genius, would have prevented him from becoming a professor at Cambridge. The university was a Church of England establishment in those days, and I believe it was actually against the law to appoint someone who was not an ordained C of E minister, to a teaching position within it. I do not know if Newton actually told the university authorities about his Arianism at the time, but his refusal to be ordained, and to take the requisite oaths, even at the strong risk of aborting his academic career, would certainly have alerted them to the fact that he had strong religiously unorthodox views. Of course, the university really wanted him, and I believe they had to make a special petition to Parliament (possibly a special act was passed) in order for him to be able to take up his chair (and this was well before he had announced any of his major discoveries). > > Although having unorthodox religious beliefs could certainly have a very adverse effect on your career by Newton’s time, I do not think anyone was at much risk of being burned at the stake or even imprisoned for them. England had had quite enough of that sort of thing in the reigns of Edward VI and Mary Tudor. Even under Elizabeth I there was already a good deal of tolerance of divergent theologies within the Church of England (though you did have to be loyal to the C of E, and being an overt Catholic could certainly be a problem). But Newton’s adulthood came after the English Civil War, during which all sorts of sometimes very radical Protestant sects had flourished, and they did not disappear (indeed, new sects did not cease to appear) with the restoration of the monarchy, although they lost their political influence. Newton’s Arianism probably falls into this sort of category. It was an idiosyncratic form of Protestantism, and certainly not at all Catholic. (Catholics remained politically suspect because most of England’s enemy or rival nations were Catholic. Some forms of radical Protestantism were suspect because they were associated with extreme political radicalism. Newton, however, clearly did not fit into ether of those categories.) He would not have been (and was not) affirmatively persecuted by the authorities for failing to sign on to C of E orthodoxy, but it could certainly have adversely affected his career if he hadn’t been, you know, Newton, and even though he _was_ Newton, he probably found it prudent not to be too much in people’s faces about his heterodox religious views during his earlier career, even if he did not completely hide them. > > Mind you, even in his lifetime he published some fairly out-there books on theology and Biblical interpretation, but by the time they appeared he was already a recognized national treasure. Arianism isn’t a form of ‘Protestantism’. It’s it’s own thing, and predates Protestantism by twelve hundred years. The closest thing to modern neo-Arianism today (loosely considering the essence of Arianism to be ‘Jesus was a created being, inferior to God the Father’) would be, I guess, the Unitarians or Jehovah’s Witnesses. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2014, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-dangerous-to-be-an-arian-in-isaac-newtons-lifetime/698277/27 "2014-09-15T00:35:59Z")
> [@davidmich](#): > > Yes, I did go off topic there, but my overall interest is to find out how tolerant the English government really was towards non-conformists in before, during and after Cromwellian England. Newton life straddles all of these periods. I wasn’t quite sure why (if at all) he his his religious views apart from the obvious fact that it wouldn’t have done him any favors in terms of his career. > davidmich Well, there’s a big difference between “during” and “after” the Commonwealth, obviously. The Restoration, which followed the Commonwealth, was generally a period of relative tolerance. Personal unorthodox belief was not generally a big problem, except to someone in an occupation like Newman’s, where at least outward conformity to the doctrines and practices of the Church of England was expected or required. But it was problematic to be involved in any kind of organised religious movement in opposition to the Church of England. That issue didn’t arise for Newton because, while he had Arian beliefs, there was no Arian church attacking the Church of England. ---
**Author:** ![davidmich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e56c9b/32.png) [@davidmich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidmich)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2014, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-dangerous-to-be-an-arian-in-isaac-newtons-lifetime/698277/28 "2014-09-15T00:47:17Z")
Thanks UDS. That does clarify the issue for me. davidmich [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-it-dangerous-to-be-an-arian-in-isaac-newtons-lifetime/698277.md?page=1)