WOOLSTON, Thomas (1669—1731), English deist, born at Northampton in 1669, was the son of a “reputable tradesman,” entered Sidney College, Cambridge, in 1685, studied theology, and was made a fellow of his college. Whiston states that he “was in his younger days a clergyman of very good reputation, a scholar, and well esteemed as a preacher, charitable to the poor, and beloved by all good men that knew him.” After a time, by the study of Origen, he became possessed, to fanaticism bordering on insanity, with the notion of the importance of an allegorical interpretation of Scripture, and advocated its use in the defence of Christianity both in his sermons and in his first book, The Old Apology for the Truth of the Christian Religion against the Jews and Gentiles Revived (1705). For many years he published nothing, and was left to pursue his allegorical fancies in peace. But in 1720-21 the publication of letters and pamphlets in advocacy of his notions, with open challenges to the clergy to refute them, brought him into trouble. It was reported that his mind was disordered, and Whiston states that his college allowed him his fellowship, though not in residence, on account of his illness, but that when he appeared at college to prove that he was well he was ordered to go into residence. On his refusing to do this his fellowship was taken from him (1721). Whiston interceded for him in vain, “the clamour against him running so high.” In the “Life” prefixed to the collected edition of his works, his non-residence is described as only “a pretence for depriving him.” From 1721 he lived for the most part in London, on an allowance of £30 a year from his brother and other presents. He continued to publish bitter and scurrilous pamphlets against the clergy and ...the advocates of the literal sense of Scripture. His influence on the course of the deistical controversy commenced with his book, The Moderator between an Infidel and an Apostate, or the Controversy between the Author of the Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion and his Reverend Ecclesiastical Opponents Set in a Clear Light (1725, 3d ed. 1729). The “infidel” intended was Anthony Collins, who had maintained in his book alluded to that the New Testament is based on the Old, and that not the literal but only the allegorical sense of the prophecies can be quoted in proof of the Messiahship of Jesus. Woolston interposed as umpire in the controversy thus started, and, passing from the evidence from prophecy, which alone he allowed, opened the great debate on the evidential value of the miracles of Christ. He denied absolutely the proof from miracles, called in question the fact of the resurrection of Christ and other miracles of the New Testament, and maintained that they must be interpreted allegorically, or as types of spiritual things. Two years later he commenced a series of Discourses on the same subject, in which he applied the principles of his Moderator to the miracles of the Gospels in detail. The Discourses, 30,000 copies of which were said to have been sold, were six in number, the first appearing in 1727, the next five 1728-29, with two Defences in 1729-30. The publication of the Moderator drew upon him a prosecution by the attorney-general in 1726 for blasphemy and profaneness, which was suspended in consequence of Whiston’s intercession. But the appearance of the first four of his Discourses caused the renewal of the prosecution, and on March 4,1729, the trial ended in his being found guilty of the alleged crime. He was sentenced (Nov. 28) to pay a fine of £25 for each of the first four Discourses, with imprisonment till paid, and also to a year’s imprisonment and to give security for his good behaviour during life, namely, to be bound himself in a recognizance of £2000 and two securities of £1000 each, or four of £500 each. He failed to find this security, and remained in confinement until his death, though he mitigated its severity by purchasing the liberty of the rules of the King’s Bench. Dr Samuel Clarke solicited at court for his release, but Woolston’s death anticipated any results of his efforts. He died in prison January 21, 1731.
In his attack on the miracles Woolston does not raise the general philosophical question of their possibility, but confines himself to the task of seeking to prove that the accounts of them as given in the Gospels are, when taken literally, full of contradictions, absurdities, and incredibilities, and that they must therefore be interpreted as allegory, and emblems of Christ’s more mysterious work. In his view, however, that work of Christ appears to be nothing more than to teach the mystical sense of the Old Testament, the best part of which is the “simple golden religion of nature.” He evidently had formed to himself no clear theory of the origin of the accounts, of the miracles, sometimes ascribing them to the fancy of the writers, sometimes to deliberate invention, and he does not seek to harmonize any such view of them with their emblematic character, of which he is such a fanatical advocate. Whiston remarks, probably with truth, “When Woolston died he hardly knew himself whether he believed the Christian religion or not.” Though it cannot be denied that he anticipated, in some of his criticisms of the details of the miraculous narratives, many points since urged by Reimarus, Strauss, and others, he nowhere exhibits the least soundness of judgment, historical sense, or consistency of thought, while his language and illustrations are coarse and offensive in the extreme.
Upwards of sixty more or less weighty pamphlets appeared in the next few years in reply to his Moderator and Discourses. As amongst the abler and most popular of them may be mentioned Dr Z. Pearce’s The Miracles of Jesus Vindicated, 1729; Sherlock’s The Tryalofthe Witnesses of the Resurrection of Jesus, 1729, 13th ed. 1755; and Lardner’s Vindication of Three of Our Saviour's Miracles, 1729, Lardner being one of those who did not approve of the prosecution of Woolston (see Lardner’s Life by Kippis, in Lardner’s Works, vol. i.).
see Life of woolston prefixed to his Works in five volumes, London, 1733; Memoirs of Life and Writings of William Whiston, London, 1749, pp. 231-35; Appendix to Α Vindication of the Miracles of our Saviour, <tc., by J. Ray, 2d ed. 1731; Lechler's Geschichte des Englischen Deismus, 1841; Leland’s View of the Principal Deistical Writers, 1734; Leslie Stephen’s History of English Thought in 18th Century, ch. iv.; Cairns's Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, 1880; Say one’s Les Déistes Anglais, 1882.
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