Happy Birthday Dr Clarke!

On this day in 1675 Samuel Clarke was born at Norwich, England.

Who is Samuel Clarke? I'm glad you asked!

Samuel Clarke was a theologian and natural philosopher, particularly well-known for his interest in Isaac Newton's work. My interest in Clarke lies primarily in the Boyle Lectures he presented in 1704 and 1705, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation.

Clarke was educated at the Norwich Free Grammar School (1685-90) and afterwards at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge (10 points for the first person who can tell me which famous athlete was also educated at Caius!) At Cambridge, Clarke was noted for his encyclopaedic knowledge, "the range of his interests and his attempt to span all fields of knowledge in an age when science, and learning more generally, were increasingly becoming the province of the expert."

He was also one of the first people to understand Isaac Newton's famous Principia (Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, or, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy). At this time, even people who agreed with Newton's ideas still tended to based their teaching on Rene Descartes' natural philosophy, which was more accessible. Clarke's tutor at Caius, John Ellis, asked him to translate into Latin a popular French textbook of Cartesian natural philosophy by Jacques Rohault - Traite de physique - so it could be used by students at Cambridge. Clarke performed this task, but amended the text with a series of Newtonian footnotes, correcting all the Cartesian errors.

While Clarke achieved the status of one of the Church of England's leading theologians and metaphysicians with his Boyle lectures, he was a rather controversial figure. He opposed the high-church preoccupation with religious ritual, suggesting the relative insignificance of sacramental practices when compared with those imposed by the moral order. He also opposed Calvinism, placing a strong emphasis on the role of reason in religion. However, he held firmly to the Protestant belief of judging doctrine by scripture alone, though this, for Clarke, led to a rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity.

Like Newton, Clarke was theologically heterodox. In 1712, he published his doubts about the full divinity of Christ in The Scripture-Doctrine of the Trinity: Wherein Every Text in the New Testament relating to that Doctrine is Distinctly Considered. Clarke closely analysed some 1251 biblical texts and concluded that:

The Father Alone is Self-Existent, Underived, unoriginated, Independent

and that:

The Son is not self-existent; but derives his Being and All his Attributes From the Father, as from the Supreme Cause.

Interestingly, people who tried to persuade Clarke not to publish his work did so by appealing to his political loyalties. Clarke supported the Whig political order, and at a time when politics and religion were thoroughly intermingled, there were fears that Clarke's views could be used to damage the moral credibility of the party. However, in the face of theological dispute, Clarke agreed to modify the wording of his belief - a compromise that did not satisfy everyone, but avoided further conflict.

Samuel Clarke is perhaps most well known for his correspondence with the German philosophy Leibniz, in which he defended Isaac Newton against the charge that his work had contributed to a decline in natural religion in England - a claim that seems unusual in some ways, as Newton and his followers firmly believed that his natural philosophy supported the church. Clarke's work in this area won him the support of the Princess of Wales, Caroline of Ansbach. Caroline attempted to persuade Clarke to accept a bishopric, though he declined due to his heterodox beliefs on the Trinity. As John Gascoigne writes in his DNB article on Clarke,

Voltaire, who had met Clarke during his extended visit to England in the 1720s, later spread the unlikely but delightful story that the bishop of London had stopped Clarke's being made archbishop of Canterbury (on the death of Tenison in 1716) by telling the Queen, approvingly, that he thought Clarke was the best qualified man for the job, though he was not a Christian.

In his Boyle lectures, Samuel Clarke argued that "the being and attributes of God are not only possible or barely probably in themselves, but also strictly demonstrable to any unprejudiced mind from the most incontestable principles of right reason."

Note two key phrases here:

• "Unprejudiced mind" - if you reject these arguments, clearly you were prejudiced against the idea from the beginning
• "Incontestable principles of right reason" - I'm using my reason correctly; you are not.

One of the things I really like about writing from this period is how nasty they were to atheists. Clarke suggests that there are only three kinds of atheists:

• Atheists that are extremely stupid and ignorant, and have never made use of their natural reason to discover the plainest and most obvious truths
• Atheists that have had their reason corrupted by a vicious and degenerate life,
  
• "And instead of fairly and impartially enquiring into the rules and obligations of nature and the reasons and fitness of things, [they] have accustomed themselves only to mock and scoff at religion and, being under the power of evil habits and the slavery of unreasonable and indulged lusts, are resolved not to harken to any reasoning which would oblige them to forsake their beloved vices."
• Atheists who pretend that arguments against the being and attributes of God are strong and conclusive

Clarke claims that the third kind are the only ones who are capable of being reasoned with. And so he sets out to establish the existence and attributes of God by reason, but I won't go into all that because I'll be surprised if anyone has actually read this far! But I'll finish up with a quote from Clarke's conclusion (and when I get around to writing the Boyle Lecture chapter of my thesis next year, I might write more about this):

Yet the notices that God has bee pleased to give us of himself are so many and so obvious in the constitution, order, beauty, and harmony of the several parts of the world, in the frame and structure of our own bodies and the wonderful powers and faculties of our souls, in the unavoidable apprehensions of our own minds and the common consent of all other men, in everything within us and everything without us, that no man of the meanest capacity and greatest disadvantages whatsoever, with the slightest and most superficial observation of the works of God and the lowest and most obvious attendance to the reason of things, can be ignorant of him, but he must be utterly without excuse... [and God has provided] a clear and express revelation of himself in Christ suited to every capacity and understanding, [to] put to silence the ignorance of foolish and the vanity of sceptical and profane men... And so has infallibly furnished us with sufficient knowledge to enable us to perform our duty in this life, and to obtain our happiness in that which is to come.