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Thomas Woolston
The King's bench sentenced Thomas Woolston to prison in 1729 on a conviction for blasphemy according to an erroneous commonlaw precedent. The decision comforted his fellow clergymen who were answering his attacks on clerical privilege and literal exegesis by vengeful polemic. In the Discourses on the Miracles of our Saviour (1727-1729) and other works, he insists on a figurative exegesis and professes a spiritual Christianity which he attributes to the Church Fathers and the early Christians. His criticism implies a commitment to the verification of all alleged facts by the same criteria regardless of the theological consequences. His doctrine had raised a scandal at Cambridge where the Sidney fellow preached sermons and published a treatise in defence of it. A depression over the hostile reaction to these works may have been a pretext for allegations of madness and his temporary confinement. His alienation remains unsubstantiated and his writings refute the traditional charge of deism.
Six Discourses on the Miracles of Our Saviour, and Defences of His Discourses
The discourses written in this book were penned by Thomas Woolston, an English theologian who died in prison after being convicted for the views that he authored here. The book begins with the first discourse: The Moderator between an Infidel and an Apostate. 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; the apostate was the clergy who had forsaken the allegorical method of the fathers. Woolston 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.
