Background
Thomas Woolston, born at Northampton in 1668, the son of a reputable tradesman, entered Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1685, studied theology, took orders and was made a fellow of his college.
Thomas Woolston, born at Northampton in 1668, the son of a reputable tradesman, entered Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1685, studied theology, took orders and was made a fellow of his college.
After schooling there and at Daventry, he entered Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, in 1685, the same college from which the deist William Wollaston had graduated a few years earlier. Woolston received the BA in 1689 and the MA in 1692.
Foreign many years he published nothing, but in 1720-1721 the publication of letters and pamphlets in advocacy of his notions, with open challenges to the clergy to refute them, brought him into trouble. lieutenant was reported that his mind was disordered, and he lost his fellowship. His influence on the course of the deistical controversy began with his book, The Moderator between an Infidel and an Apostate (1725, 3rd 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.
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.
Two years later he began 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 1728-1729, with two Defences in 1729 1730.
Foreign these publications he was tried before Chief Justice Raymond in 1729.
Foundation guilty of blasphemy, Woolston was sentenced (28 November) 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. He failed to find this security, and remained in confinement until his death.