“From the nature of the subject,”[103] says he, “and from certain indications which Newton seems to give at the beginning of his dissertation, we may conjecture with probability that he composed it at the time when the errors of Whiston, and a work of Dr. Clarke on the same subject, drew upon them the attacks of all the theologians of England, which would place the date between the years 1712 and 1719. It would then be truly a prodigy to remark, that a man of from seventy-two to seventy-five years of age was able to compose, _rapidly_, as he leads us to believe, so extensive a piece of sacred criticism, of literary history, and even of bibliography, where an erudition the most vast, the most varied, and the most ready always supports an argument well arranged and powerfully combined. * * * At this epoch of the life of Newton the reading of religious books had become one of his most habitual occupations, and after he had performed the duties of his office, they formed, along with the conversation of his friends, his principal amusement. He had then almost ceased to care for the sciences, and, as we have already remarked, since the fatal epoch of 1693, he gave to the world only three really new scientific productions.” Notwithstanding the prodigy which it involves, M. Biot has adopted 1712–1719 as the date of this critical dissertation;—it is regarded as the composition of a man of seventy-two or seventy-five;—the reading of religious works is stated to have _become_ one of his most habitual occupations, and such reading is said to have been one of his principal amusements; and all this is associated with “the fatal epoch of 1693,” as if his illness at that time had been the cause of his abandoning science and betaking himself to theology. Carrying on the same views, M. Biot asks, in reference to Sir Isaac’s work on Prophecy, “How a mind of the character and force of Newton’s, so habituated to the severity of mathematical considerations, so exercised in the observation of real phenomena, and so well aware of the conditions by which truth is to be discovered, could put together such a number of conjectures without noticing the extreme improbability of his interpretations from the infinite number of arbitrary postulates on which he has founded them?” We would apply the same question to the reasoning by which M. Biot fixes the date of the critical dissertation; and we would ask how so eminent a philosopher could hazard such frivolous conjectures upon a subject on which he had not a single fact to guide his inquiries. The obvious tendency, though not the design, of the conclusion at which he arrives is injurious to the memory of Newton, as well as to the interests of religion; and these considerations might have checked the temerity of speculation, even if it had been founded on better data. The Newtonian interpretation of the Prophecies, and especially that part which M. Biot characterizes as unhappily stamped with the