Although the laws of motion and universal gravitation became Newton's best-known discoveries, he warned against using them to view the universe as a mere machine, as if akin to a great clock. He said, "Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who set the planets in motion. God governs all things and knows all that is or can be done."
His scientific fame notwithstanding, Newton's study of the Bible was among his greatest passions. He devoted more time to the study of the Scriptures, Alchemy, and the Christian faith than to science, and said, "I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily." Newton himself wrote several books about the Bible, based on his knowledge of Hebrew grammar. Newton also placed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ at 3 April, AD 33, which is now the accepted traditional date. His ability to calculate this date so accurately was due to careful cross-referencing between events in Roman history, events in the New Testament, and careful astronomical observations. Despite his focus on theology and alchemy, Newton tested and investigated these ideas with the scientific method, observing, hypothesising, and testing his theories. To Newton, his scientific and religious experiments were one and the same, observing and understanding how the world functioned.
Newton may have rejected the church's version doctrine of the Trinity. His studies of Hebrew texts may have led him to a different understanding of the nature of God's personalities.
In his own lifetime, Newton wrote more on religion than he did on natural science. He believed in a rationally immanent world. Thus, the ordered and dynamically informed universe could be understood, and must be understood, by an active reason, but this universe, to be perfect and ordained, had to be regular.
Newton and Robert Boyle’s mechanical philosophy was promoted by rationalist pamphleteers, and was accepted hesitantly by orthodox preachers as well as dissident preachers. Thus, the clarity and simplicity of science was seen as a way to combat the emotional and metaphysical superlatives of atheism, and, at the same time, to demonstrate the possibility of a "natural religion." The idea of a "natural religion" is a religion which can be understood inductively from experience, a religion which is reasoned deductively from general principles of human knowledge. A "natural religion" is usually contrasted with a "revealed religion", which is based upon the careful study of a text. Newton seems to have engaged in both types of religion, and his books had the effect in England of encouraging both types, even though they sometimes competed with each other.
Boyle, who worked to ensure that the Bible would be accurately translated into different Asian languages by competent linguistic scientists, developed a mechanical conception of the universe, most famously with his "ideal gas" law. Newton gave Boyle’s ideas their completion through mathematical proofs and, perhaps more important, was very successful in popularizing them. Newton refashioned the universe into a world crafted by a God that designs along rational and universal principles. These principles were available for all people to discover, allowed man to pursue his own aims fruitfully, and to improve, but not perfect, himself with his own rational powers.
Newton saw God as the master creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation. The laws of physics are the God's thoughts, which He imposes on the world. In the Resurrection, Newton saw an absolutely "unique event" - a phrase which carries special importance in physics, because most events are not unique, being in principle reproducible by the re-application of the laws which produced them the first time.
The law of gravity became Sir Isaac Newton's best-known discovery. Newton warned against using it to view the universe as a mere machine, like a great clock.
Though he is better known for his love of science, the Bible was Sir Isaac Newton's greatest passion. He devoted more time to the study of Scripture than to science; he wrote more books about religion than about math or physics.
Newton’s conception of the physical world provided a stable model of the natural world that would reinforce stability and harmony in the civic world. Thus there is a social and political aspect to Newton's thought, but he did not write much about it.
Both Newton and Robert Boyle wrote substantial books about their faith, and worked to ensure that Bibles were distributed among the poor. Boyle's "ideal gas law" was for him a symbol of the perfect organization of the universe, which he said could only arise from a logical intelligent design.
