Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/704

Rh o o w o o 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, &quot; the clamour against him running so high.&quot; In the &quot; Life &quot; prefixed to the collected edition of his works, his non-residence is de scribed as only &quot; a pretence for depriving him.&quot; 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 letiveen 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 &quot;infidel&quot; 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 contro versy 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 ques tion 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 pub lication 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 interces sion. 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 &quot;simple golden religion of nature.&quot; 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 emblem atic character, of which he is such a fanatical advocate. Whiston remarks, probably with truth, &quot;When Woolston died he hardly knew himself whether he believed the Christian religion or not.&quot; 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 Tryalofthc Witnesses oj 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 prose cution 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, 173&quot;: Memoirs of Life and Writings of William Whiston, London, 1749, pp. 231-35 ; Appendix to A Vindication of the Miracles of our Saviour, &c., by J. Kay, 2d ed. 1731; Lechlev s Geschichte des Englischen Deismus, 1841; Leland s View of the. Principal Deistical Writers, 1734 ; Leslie Stephen s History of English Thought in ISth Century, ch. iv.; Cairns s Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century, 1880; Sayons s Les Deistes Anglais, 1882. WOOLWICH, a parliamentary borough and garrison town of Kent, England, is situated chiefly on the south bank of the Thames, on the declivity of Shooter s Hill, which slopes downwards to the river, 10 miles from Charing Cross by rail and 12 by steamer. The town is irregularly built, with narrow streets, and for the most part mean-looking houses. The spacious level at the summit of the hill is known as Woolwich Common. The feature of Woolwich is the Royal Arsenal, at which the number of men usually employed is about 10,000. It occupies an area of 333 acres, and includes four depart ments : the royal gun factories, employed in the manu facture of rifled wrought-iron and steel ordnance, the principal divisions being the rolling and puddling furnaces, the coiling mills, the boring mills, the tanneries, and the steam-hammers, including one of 40 tons ; the royal carriage department, for the manufacture of gun carriages, pontoon trains, baggage and store waggons, and ambulances for the sick and wounded ; the royal laboratory department, for the manufacture of shot and shell, caps, fuzes, &c. ; and the ordnance store department of the army, for the supply of every kind of military equipment. Separated from the other portions of the arsenal are the laboratories for the manufacture of rockets and cannon cartridges. The Royal Artillery Barracks, facing the Common, originally erected in 1775, has been greatly extended at different times, and now consists of six ranges of brick building, each over 400 feet in length. It includes a church in the Italian Gothic style erected in 1863, a theatre, and a library of 40,000 volumes in connexion with the officers mess room. Opposite the barracks is the memorial to the officers and men of the royal artillery who fell in the Crimean War, a bronze figure of Victory cast out of cannon cap tured in the Crimea. Near the barracks is the Royal Artillery Institution, with a fine museum and a lecture hall. On the western side of the barrack field is the Royal Military Repository, where all officers of artillery pass a term of instruction. Within the Repository enclosure is the Rotunda, originally erected in St James s Park for the reception of the allied sovereigns in 1814, and shortly afterwards transferred to its present site. It contains models of the principal dockyards and fortifications of the British empire, naval models of all dates, and numerous specimens of weapons of war from the remotest times to the present day. On the Common is the Royal Military Academy, where cadets are trained for the artillery and engineering services, erected in the castellated style from the design of Sir R. Wyatville in 1801. Within the grounds is a memorial erected to the prince imperial of France, for two years a student in the academy ; while near the Rotunda is a monument erected in 1882 to the memory