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ARCHIBALD PITCAIRNE AND SCOTTISH HETERODOXY, c. 1688–1713*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2016

ALASDAIR RAFFE
ALASDAIR RAFFE*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
*
School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, Teviot Place, Edinburgh, eh8 9agalasdair.raffe@ed.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article argues that the Edinburgh physician Archibald Pitcairne made a significant and original contribution to European religious heterodoxy around 1700. Though Pitcairne has been studied by historians of medicine and scholars of literary culture, his heterodox writings have not been analysed in any detail. This is partly because of their publication in Latin, their relative rarity, and their considerable obscurity. The article provides a full examination of two works by Pitcairne: his Solutio problematis de historicis; seu, inventoribus (‘Solution of the problem concerning historians or inventors’) (1688); and the Epistola Archimedis ad Regem Gelonem (‘Letter of Archimedes to King Gelo’) (1706). As well as untangling their bibliographical and textual difficulties, the article places these tracts in the context of Pitcairne's medical, mathematical, and religious interests. A range of readers deplored the sceptical implications of the pamphlets, but others, particularly in free-thinking circles in the Netherlands, admired Pitcairne's work. And yet Pitcairne himself was no atheist. He doubted a priori proofs of God's existence, but had been convinced by a version of the argument from ‘design’. The article concludes by relating Pitcairne's complex religious attitudes to his background in late seventeenth-century Scotland.

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Articles
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The Historical Journal , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , September 2017 , pp. 633 - 657
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Davide Antonio Secci for translating Pitcairne's Epistola, Juan Lewis for translating Halyburton's inaugural lecture, and Calum Maciver for commenting on my own translations. I am especially grateful to Michael Hunter for many conversations about Pitcairne, and for reading a draft of the article. I benefited from discussions with members of the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology research group at the University of Edinburgh. I also thank the journal's referees for their suggestions.

References

1 T. B. Howell and T. J. Howell, eds., Cobbett's complete collection of state trials (34 vols., London, 1809–1928), xiii, cols. 917–40, quotations at col. 919.

2 Michael Hunter, ‘“Aikenhead the atheist”: the context and consequences of articulate irreligion in the late seventeenth century’, in Michael Hunter and David Wootton, eds., Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment (Oxford, 1992), pp. 221–54; Michael F. Graham, The blasphemies of Thomas Aikenhead: boundaries of belief on the eve of the Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 2008); idem, ‘Kirk in danger: presbyterian political divinity in two eras’, in Bridget Heal and Ole Peter Grell, eds., The impact of the European Reformation: princes, clergy and people (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 167–88.

3 Useful starting points include Arnold Thackray, Atoms and powers: an essay on Newtonian matter-theory and the development of chemistry (Cambridge, MA, 1970), pp. 45–9; Robert E. Schofield, Mechanism and materialism: British natural philosophy in an age of reason (Princeton, NJ, 1970), pp. 40–62; Brown, Theodore M., ‘Medicine in the shadow of the Principia ’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 48 (1987), pp. 629–48CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Guerrini, Anita, ‘The tory Newtonians: Gregory, Pitcairne, and their circle’, Journal of British Studies, 25 (1986), pp. 288–311 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; eadem, ‘Archibald Pitcairne and Newtonian medicine’, Medical History, 31 (1987), pp. 70–83 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; eadem, ‘The varieties of mechanical medicine: Borelli, Malpighi, Bellini, and Pitcairne’, in Domenico Bertoloni Meli, ed., Marcello Malpighi: anatomist and physician (Florence, 1997), pp. 111–28; Suzuki, Akihito, ‘Psychiatry without mind in the eighteenth century: the case of British iatro-mathematicians’, Archives Internationales d'Histoire des Sciences, 48 (1998), pp. 119–46Google ScholarPubMed; Friesen, John, ‘Archibald Pitcairne, David Gregory and the Scottish origins of English tory Newtonianism, 1688–1715’, History of Science, 41 (2003), pp. 163–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other works are cited below.

4 See esp. Douglas Duncan, Thomas Ruddiman: a study in Scottish scholarship of the early eighteenth century (Edinburgh, 1965), esp. pp. 15–21; John MacQueen, The Enlightenment and Scottish literature, i: Progress and poetry (Edinburgh, 1982), pp. 1–6; Appleby, John H. and Cunningham, Andrew, ‘Robert Erskine and Archibald Pitcairne – two Scottish physicians’ outstanding libraries’, Bibliotheck, 11 (1982–3), pp. 3–16 Google Scholar; Reid, David, ‘Rule and misrule in Lindsay's Thrie estaitis and Pitcairne's Assembly ’, Scottish Literary Journal, 11 (1984), pp. 5–24 Google Scholar; D. K. Money, The English Horace: Anthony Alsop and the tradition of British Latin verse (Oxford, 1998), pp. 142–8.

5 Archibald Pitcairne, The Latin poems, ed. and trans. John and Winifred MacQueen (Assen, 2009); Archibald Pitcairne, The phanaticks, ed. John MacQueen (Scottish Text Society, Fifth Series, vol. 10, Woodbridge, 2012); MacQueen, John, ‘ Tollerators and con-tollerators (1703) and Archibald Pitcairne: text, background and authorship’, Studies in Scottish Literature, 40 (2014), pp. 76–104 Google Scholar, http://scholarcommons.sc.edu/ssl/vol40/iss1/10.

6 Fuller biographies include John MacQueen and Winifred MacQueen, ‘Introduction’, in Pitcairne, Latin poems, pp. 1–47, at pp. 5–34; Anita Guerrini, ‘Pitcairne, Archibald (1652–1713)’, Oxford dictionary of national biography (ODNB); Charles Webster, An account of the life and writings of the celebrated Dr Archibald Pitcairne (Edinburgh, 1781).

7 Lindeboom, G. A., ‘Pitcairne's Leyden interlude described from the documents’, Annals of Science, 19 (1963), pp. 273–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Archibald Pitcairne, Archibaldi Pitcarnii Scoti dissertationes medicae (Edinburgh, 1713), pp. 1–13; in English translation in The works of Dr Archibald Pitcairn (London, 1715), pp. 7–24.

9 Theodore Brown, The mechanical philosophy and the ‘animal oeconomy’ (New York, NY, 1981), chs. 4–5.

10 See the works cited in n. 5 (The assembly was given the title The phanaticks by John MacQueen) and Archibald Pitcairne, Babell; a satirical poem, on the proceedings of the general assembly in the year M.DC.XCII, ed. G. R. Kinloch (Maitland Club, vol. 6, Edinburgh, 1830).

11 Privy council acta, 13 July 1699 – 5 May 1703, National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh, PC1/52, pp. 61–4, 66–8, quotations at p. 63; W. T. Johnston, ed., The best of our owne: letters of Archibald Pitcairne, 1652–1713 (Edinburgh, 1979), pp. 25–32.

12 John MacQueen, ‘Introduction’, in Pitcairne, Phanaticks, pp. xxxii–xxxiii; Thomas M'Crie, ed., The correspondence of the Rev. Robert Wodrow (3 vols., Wodrow Society, Edinburgh, 1842–3), i, p. 437; Robert Wodrow, Analecta: or, materials for a history of remarkable providences (4 vols., Maitland Club, vol. 60, Edinburgh, 1842–3), ii, pp. 47–8, 255, 379, iii, pp. 520–2.

13 [Alexander Monro,] Presbyterian inquisition; as it was lately practised against the professors of the colledge of Edinburgh (London, 1691), pp. 28, 39.

14 Thomas Halyburton, ‘Oratio inauguralis’, in Natural religion insufficient; and reveal'd necessary to man's happiness in his present state (Edinburgh, 1714), first pagination sequence, pp. 1–24.

15 John Lauder, The decisions of the lords of council and session, from June 6th, 1678, to July 30th, 1712 (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1759–61), ii, pp. 756–7; Robert Chambers, Traditions of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1996), pp. 160–1. The case is discussed in David E. Shuttleton, ‘Bantering with scripture: Dr Archibald Pitcairne and articulate irreligion in late seventeenth-century Edinburgh’, in Claire Jowitt and Diane Watt, eds., The arts of 17th-century science: representations of the natural world in European and North American culture (Aldershot, 2002), pp. 58–73, at pp. 68–9.

16 Wodrow, Analecta, i, pp. 322–3, ii, p. 255 (quotation).

17 Michael Hunter, ‘Pitcairneana: an atheist text by Archibald Pitcairne’, Historical Journal, 59 (2016), pp. 595–621.

18 Robert E. Sullivan, John Toland and the deist controversy: a study in adaptations (Cambridge, MA, 1982), p. 232 (quotation); Frederick C. Beiser, The sovereignty of reason: the defense of rationality in the early English Enlightenment (Princeton, NJ, 1996), esp. pp. 243, 246–8; Isabel Rivers, Reason, grace, and sentiment: a study of the language of religion and ethics in England, 1660–1780, ii: Shaftesbury to Hume (Cambridge, 2000), ch. 1; Wayne Hudson, The English deists: studies in early Enlightenment (London, 2009).

19 Archibald Pitcairne, Archibaldi Pitcarnii solutio problematis de historicis; seu, inventoribus (Edinburgh, 1688), p. 3.

20 Archibald Pitcairne, Archibaldi Pitcairnii dissertationes medicae (Rotterdam, 1701), pp. 82–101; idem, Dissertationes medicae (1713), pp. 96–117; Works of Pitcairn, pp. 135–63. The unnumbered contents pages of the 1701 and 1713 Dissertationes indicate that an edition of the Solutio ‘rursus & auctior’ was published at Leiden in 1693. No copy has been found. The English translation of Pitcairne's Works was republished in 1727 and 1740.

21 George Hepburn, Tarrugo unmasked, or an answer to a late pamphlet intituled, Apollo mathematicus (Edinburgh, 1695), p. [iv].

22 MacQueen and MacQueen, ‘Introduction’, p. 9; Guerrini, ‘Pitcairne, Archibald’; eadem, ‘Pitcairne and Newtonian medicine’, p. 72. In both articles, Guerrini argues that Pitcairne was responding to Dacier. But Dacier's edition seems to have been first published in 1697: [André Dacier, ed.,] Les oeuvres d'Hippocrate, traduites en François, avec des remarques (2 vols., Paris, 1697), i, sigs. eeiiij r–[eev]v, pp. 315–16.

23 J[ames] J[ohnston], A short answer to a late pamphlet against Doctor Pitcairn's dissertations (Edinburgh, 1702), pp. 19–20. See Johannes Antonides van der Linden, ed., Magni Hippocratis Coi opera omnia. Graece & Latine edita (2 vols., Leiden, 1665). On Van der Linden and Drelincourt, see Tijs Huisman, ‘The finger of God: anatomical practice in seventeenth-century Leiden’ (Ph.D. thesis, Leiden, 2008), esp. pp. 88–95; G. A. Lindeboom, Herman Boerhaave: the man and his work (London, 1968), pp. 29–33; idem, ‘Pitcairne's Leyden interlude’, p. 280.

24 William Wotton, Reflections upon ancient and modern learning (London, 1694), pp. 206–18, which cited Van der Linden's edition of Hippocrates at p. 208.

25 On the debates in England and France, see esp. Levine, Joseph M., ‘Ancients and moderns reconsidered’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 15 (1981), pp. 72–89 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, The battle of the books: history and literature in the Augustan age (Ithaca, NY, 1991); Larry F. Norman, The shock of the ancient: literature & history in early modern France (Chicago, IL, 2011).

26 Pitcairne, Solutio problematis, pp. 3–4 (‘Vel enim auctoritas inventoris seu historici Problematis conditiones non ingreditur vel eas ingreditur’).

27 Ibid., pp. 12–13.

28 Ibid., pp. 4–8.

29 Ibid., pp. 8–11. On Gregory, in addition to the works cited in n. 3, see Eagles, Christina, ‘David Gregory and Newtonian science’, British Journal for the History of Science, 10 (1977), pp. 216–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lawrence, P. D. and Molland, A. G., ‘David Gregory's inaugural lecture at Oxford’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 25 (1970), pp. 143–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 J[ohnston], Short answer, p. 20.

31 H. W. Turnbull, J. F. Scott, A. Rupert Hall, and Laura Tilling, eds., The correspondence of Isaac Newton (7 vols., Cambridge, 1959–77), ii, pp. 115, 134, 153, iii, pp. 8, 9 (quotation); Richard S. Westfall, Never at rest: a biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 513–14; Richard Nash, John Craige's Mathematical principles of Christian theology (Carbondale, IL, 1991), pp. 8–10. See also Niccolò Guicciardini, The development of Newtonian calculus in Britain, 1700–1800 (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 12–13.

32 Correspondence of Newton, iii, pp. 170–9, 181–3.

33 Ibid., iii, pp. 205–14; Schaffer, Simon, ‘The glorious revolution and medicine in Britain and the Netherlands’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 43 (1989), pp. 167–90CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, at pp. 174–5.

34 On the fever dispute, see Cunningham, Andrew, ‘Sydenham versus Newton: the Edinburgh fever dispute of the 1690s between Andrew Brown and Archibald Pitcairne’, Medical History, supplement 1 (1981), pp. 71–98 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Anita Guerrini, ‘“A club of little villains”: rhetoric, professional identity and medical pamphlet wars’, in Marie Mulvey Roberts and Roy Porter, eds., Literature and medicine during the eighteenth century (London, 1993), pp. 226–44; Eric Grier Casteel, ‘Entrepot and backwater: a cultural history of the transfer of medical knowledge from Leiden to Edinburgh, 1690–1740’ (Ph.D. thesis, Los Angeles, 2007), pp. 73–8.

35 Hepburn, Tarrugo unmasked, p. [iii]; A modest examination of a late pamphlet entituled Apollo mathematicus ([Edinburgh,] 1696), esp. p. 8.

36 W. S. Craig, History of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (Oxford, 1976), pp. 410–18; Casteel, ‘Entrepot and backwater’, pp. 116–24.

37 [Edward Eizat,] Apollo mathematicus: or the art of curing diseases by the mathematicks, according to the principles of Dr Pitcairn ([Edinburgh,] 1695), esp. pp. 32–4, 42–3.

38 Ibid., pp. 15–17, 32, 49 (quotation), 96; Hepburn, Tarrugo unmasked, pp. 7–9.

39 [Eizat,] Apollo mathematicus, pp. 34, 35.

40 Barbara J. Shapiro, Probability and certainty in seventeenth-century England: a study of the relationships between natural science, religion, history, law, and literature (Princeton, NJ, 1983), esp. pp. 139–52, 156–8; John Locke, An essay concerning human understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford, 1975), p. 656 (iv.xv.4). For other perspectives on the epistemology of the latitudinarians and their contemporaries, see Spurr, John, ‘“Rational religion” in Restoration England’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 49 (1988), pp. 563–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Serjeantson, R. W., ‘Testimony and proof in early modern England’, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 30 (1999), pp. 195–236 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Pitcairne, Solutio problematis, pp. 12–13. The dependence of Roman Catholic doctrine on oral tradition was a key target of latitudinarian polemic: see e.g. John Tillotson, The rule of faith: or an answer to the treatise of Mr I. S. entituled, Sure-footing (London, 1666).

42 [Edward Eizat,] A discourse of certainty: wherein you have a further proof of the power of the mathematicks, and of the profound knowledge of A. P. M. D. ([Edinburgh,] 1695), pp. 11–13, quotation at p. 13. The work was published with Apollo mathematicus, with a continuous register, but a separate title page and pagination sequence. See also Suzuki, ‘Psychiatry without mind’, p. 130.

43 Pitcairne, Solutio problematis, p. 13 (‘certiores nos esse de demonstratis, quam de ulla re ab historiae fide desumpta’).

44 [Eizat,] Discourse of certainty, p. 14; Shuttleton, ‘Bantering with scripture’, pp. 67–8.

45 Hepburn, Tarrugo unmasked, pp. [iii]–[iv]; Pitcairne, Solutio problematis, p. 14 (‘si Aristoteles & Hippocrates concedatur fuisse infallibiles, certiores esse poterimus de iis, quae illi tradidere, quam de aliis, quae aliorum historicorum fidei acceptum referimus’).

46 Hepburn, Tarrugo unmasked, p. [iv].

47 Pitcairne, Solutio problematis, p. 14 (‘semper certiores nos esse posse de veritate earum observationum, quae pro libitu rursus institui, quam quae olim peractae rursus institui non possunt’).

48 See Ian Hacking, The emergence of probability: a philosophical study of early ideas about probability, induction and statistical inference (2nd edn, Cambridge, 2006); Douglas Lane Patey, Probability and literary form: philosophic theory and literary practice in the Augustan age (Cambridge, 1984), chs. 1–2; Lorraine Daston, Classical probability in the Enlightenment (Princeton, NJ, 1988), esp. ch. 1; Nash, John Craige's Mathematical principles, ch. 3.

49 [John Arbuthnot,] Of the laws of chance, or, a method of calculation of the hazards of game (London, 1692). On Arbuthnot's links to Gregory and Pitcairne, see Shuttleton, David E., ‘“A modest examination”: John Arbuthnot and the Scottish Newtonians’, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 18 (1995), pp. 47–62 Google Scholar. On the significance of Arbuthnot's later work in probability, see now Kemp, Catherine, ‘The real “Letter to Arbuthnot”? A motive for Hume's probability theory in an early modern design argument’, British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 22 (2014), pp. 468–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Stigler, Stephen M., ‘Apollo mathematicus: a story of resistance to quantification in the seventeenth century’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 136 (1992), pp. 93–126 Google ScholarPubMed, at pp. 105–9.

51 [Hooper, George,] ‘A calculation of the credibility of human testimony’, Philosophical Transactions, 21 (1699), pp. 359–65Google Scholar, quotation at p. 363. Hooper's authorship is asserted in Nash, John Craige's Mathematical principles, p. 3.

52 Nash, John Craige's Mathematical principles, pp. 11, 53–71, quotation at p. 70. See also Andrew I. Dale, ‘Craig, John (c. 1663–1731)’, ODNB. In addition to Nash's analysis of the Theologiae Christianae principia mathematica, see Stigler, Stephen M., ‘John Craig and the probability of history: from the death of Christ to the birth of Laplace’, Journal of the American Statistical Association, 81 (1986), pp. 879–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 John Edwards, Some new discoveries of the uncertainty, deficiency, and corruptions of human knowledge and learning (London, 1714), p. 86.

54 Humphry Ditton, A discourse concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ (2nd edn, London, 1714), p. 164.

55 [Archibald Pitcairne,] Epistola Archimedis ad Regem Gelonem, Albae Graecae reperta. Anno aerae Christianae 1688 (n.p., n.d.), p. 3; Archimedes, The sand-reckoner, in T. L. Heath, ed., The works of Archimedes (Cambridge, 1897), pp. 221–32. Pitcairne owned editions of Archimedes's works: volume containing the printed catalogue of Pitcairne's library, Edinburgh University Library (EUL), La. iii. 629, pp. 10, 23. Information about the historical King Gelo can be gleaned from Diodorus of Sicily (12 vols., London, 1933–67), xi, pp. 188–9 (xxvi. 15); Polybius: the histories, ed. and trans. W. R. Paton (6 vols., London, 1922–7), iii, pp. 418–21 (vii. 8); Livy (14 vols., London, 1919–59), vi, pp. 102–3 (xxiii. 30), pp. 188–9 (xxiv. 5).

56 Letters of Pitcairne, p. 18.

57 Ibid., p. 40.

58 See esp. Guerrini, ‘Pitcairne, Archibald’; eadem, ‘Pitcairne and Newtonian medicine’, p. 73; MacQueen and MacQueen, ‘Introduction’, p. 7.

59 Laes, Christian, ‘Forging Petronius: François Nodot and the fake Petronian fragments’, Humanistica Lovaniensia, 47 (1998), pp. 358–402 Google Scholar, at pp. 360–1. I owe this reference to Donncha O'Rourke. Pitcairne owned the edition with the discovered fragments: Pitcairne's library catalogue, EUL, La. iii. 629, p. 31.

60 [Pitcairne,] Epistola Archimedis, ESTC 006354815, British Library (BL), 531.b.1(2). This copy is available through Eighteenth-Century Collections Online (ECCO). Another copy of this edition is in Harris Manchester College Library, Oxford, Y1705/4 (5).

61 Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, SN 3.16, additions and alterations at pp. 11–15, 34–44. Isaac Newton had a copy of this version: Trinity College Library, Cambridge, NQ.16.99 (1). I am grateful to Michael Hunter for this information.

62 ESTC 006354816, reset at pp. 34, 47; addition and alteration at pp. 47–8; errata page after p. 48; BL, 531.b.1(1), a copy of this edition, is available through ECCO.

63 [Archibald Pitcairne,] Epistola Archimedis ad Regem Gelonem, Albae Graecae reperta. Anno aerae Christianae 1688. Qua plurima notatu digna de animae origine, de religionum institutione atque de superstitione, de prodigiis & vaticinationibus, continentur (n.p., n.d.). Copies are held by Leiden University Library (LUL), Utrecht University Library, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

64 Papers by Archibald Pitcairne, EUL, MS Dc.4.101 [part of a large collection of unrelated manuscripts organized alphabetically by author]. This is cited by Simpson, S. M., ‘An anonymous and undated Edinburgh tract’, Book Collector, 15 (1966), p. 67 Google Scholar.

65 W. G. Hiscock, ed., David Gregory, Isaac Newton and their circle: extracts from David Gregory's memoranda (Oxford, 1937), pp. 35–6. In April 1706, Gregory noted that John Drummond was in Amsterdam (ibid., p. 34). It is unclear whether this referred to Pitcairne's friend and fellow physician John Drummond: see Pitcairne, Latin poems, esp. p. 372.

66 LUL, 546 F 17. There is no reference to Pitcairne's Epistola in the discussion and lists of works translated and published by Furly in William I. Hull, Benjamin Furly and Quakerism in Rotterdam (Swarthmore, PA, 1941), pp. 68–76. Nor is the Epistola listed in Bibliotheca Furliana; sive catalogus librorum…doctiss. viri. Benjamin Furly (Rotterdam, 1714).

67 Letters of Pitcairne, 67.

68 Christiane Berkvens-Stevelinck, Prosper Marchand: la vie et l'ouevre (1678–1756) (Leiden, 1987), pp. 3–5.

69 Archibaldi Pitcarnii, Scoto-Britanni, dissertationes medicae: quibus subjunguntur Epistola Archimedis, et Poemata selecta, ejusdem auctoris (The Hague, 1722). The Epistola was again published with Pitcairne's medical dissertations in Leiden by Johan Arnold Langerak (1737).

70 Unless otherwise indicated, subsequent references cite the forty-eight-page edition (ESTC 006354816).

71 [Pitcairne,] Epistola Archimedis, pp. 3–4, quotations at pp. 3 (‘in omnis rei cognitionem deducat’), 3–4 (‘possit ipsas divinas Naturas atque vires omnium potentes nobis patefacere’).

72 Ibid., pp. 8–12 (including a passage not in ESTC 006354815). Pitcairne was said to provide treatment without charge: ‘Some account of Dr Pitcairn’, in Works of Pitcairn, pp. x–xi. The MacQueens think that Archias represented Pitcairne: ‘Introduction’, p. 31.

73 [Pitcairne,] Epistola Archimedis, pp. 17–20, 21 (‘sectae illi propria privataque sunt’).

74 Ibid., pp. 21 (‘alteri non esse faciendum quod ipsi tibi nolles factum’), 22 (‘apud omnes Gentes eadem existunt’).

75 Ibid., pp. 22–3.

76 Ibid., pp. 23, 27.

77 Ibid., pp. 25–7, quotation at p. 26 (‘ille qui sola auctoritate Numae vel Pontificis parricidia credit illicita, eidem Numae paricidia [sic] licere confirmanti credet ac obsequetur’).

78 Ibid., p. 36 (‘Haec…Effata mentibus hominum sunt a Jove Optimo Maximo indita, uti indita est ea vis, qua scimus Duo & Duo esse Quator’).

79 See esp. J. A. I. Champion, The pillars of priestcraft shaken: the Church of England and its enemies, 1660–1730 (Cambridge, 1992); Mark Goldie, ‘Priestcraft and the birth of whiggism’, in Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner, eds., Political discourse in early modern Britain (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 209–31; East, Katherine A., ‘ Superstitionis Malleus: John Toland, Cicero, and the war on priestcraft in early Enlightenment England’, History of European Ideas, 40 (2014), pp. 965–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

80 [Pitcairne,] Epistola Archimedis, pp. 35–6.

81 Alastair J. Mann, The Scottish book trade, 1500–1720: print commerce and print control in early modern Scotland (East Linton, 2000), chs. 5–6.

82 See Vermij, Rienk, ‘The formation of the Newtonian philosophy: the case of the Amsterdam mathematical amateurs’, British Journal for the History of Science, 36 (2003), pp. 183–200 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

83 Rienk H. Vermij, ‘The English deists and the Traité’, in Silvia Berti, Françoise Charles-Daubert, and Richard H. Popkin, eds., Heterodoxy, Spinozism, and free thought in early eighteenth-century Europe: studies on the Traité des trois imposteurs (Dordrecht, 1996), pp. 241–54, at pp. 244–5.

84 See e.g. Mark Goldie, ‘The civil religion of James Harrington’, in Anthony Pagden, ed., The languages of political theory in early modern Europe (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 197–222; Justin A. I. Champion, ‘Legislators, impostors, and the politic origins of religion: English theories of “imposture” from Stubbe to Toland’, in Berti, Charles-Daubert, and Popkin, eds., Heterodoxy, Spinozism, and free thought, pp. 333–56; Jeffrey R. Collins, The allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford, 2005), esp. pp. 37–52.

85 Silk, Mark, ‘Numa Pompilius and the idea of civil religion in the west’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 72 (2004), pp. 863–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago, IL, 1996), pp. 34–6; Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (rev. edn, Cambridge, 1996), pp. 82–3; Silvia Berti, ed., Trattato dei tre impostori: la vita e lo spirito del Signor Benedetto de Spinoza (Turin, 1994), pp. 116, 280.

86 [Pitcairne,] Epistola Archimedis, p. 25 (‘Romanos justi atque honesti sanctiores non exstitisse cultores post Aegeriae Deae recepta per Numam precepta’).

87 Ibid., pp. 19–20. Pitcairne's account followed Cicero, De divinatione, ii. 23: Cicero, De senectute De amicitia De divinatione, ed. William Armistead Falconer (London, 1923), pp. 426–9.

88 [Pitcairne,] Epistola Archimedis, pp. 39–40, quotation at p. 39 (‘Si rustici tres…faeminis administrantibus permisti…affirmaverint vidisse se Amilcarem…ad vivos redeuntem’).

89 Ibid., pp. 32–4.

90 LUL, 546 F 17, flyleaf annotations. Quoted in Vermij, ‘Formation of the Newtonian philosophy’, p. 192 n. 42.

91 Halyburton, ‘Oratio inauguralis’, p. 23; [Pitcairne,] Epistola Archimedis, pp. 31–2.

92 [?William Cockburn,] A letter from Sir R- S-, to Dr Archibald Pitcairn (Edinburgh, 1709), p. 27. On the attribution of this pamphlet, apparently not the work of Sir Robert Sibbald, see MacQueen and MacQueen, ‘Introduction’, p. 22.

93 Papers by Archibald Pitcairne, EUL, MS Dc.4.101. Quoted in MacQueen and MacQueen, ‘Introduction’, p. 31.

94 Halyburton, ‘Oratio inauguralis’, pp. 14–18.

95 Ibid., pp. 18–20; [Pitcairne,] Epistola Archimedis, pp. 30–1.

96 Halyburton, ‘Oratio inauguralis’, pp. 21–3, quotation at pp. 22–3 (‘Fidem Religionis cujuslibet solo Hominum Testimonio niti, & illud etiam Testimonium Fallaciae merito suspicari posse’).

97 George Mackenzie, earl of Cromarty, Synopsis apocalyptica: or, a short plain explication and application of Daniel's prophecy and of St John's revelation (Edinburgh, 1708), third pagination sequence, pp. iv–v, quotation at p. v.

98 Letters of Pitcairne, p. 43.

99 Archibald Pitcairne to Adriaan Verwer, June 1706, Royal Society Library, London (RSL), MS 247, fo. 73v. I am grateful to Michael Hunter for a transcription. The letter is cited in Vermij, ‘Formation of the Newtonian philosophy’, p. 195.

100 Dahm, John J., ‘Science and apologetics in the early Boyle lectures’, Church History, 39 (1970), pp. 172–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 183–6; Margaret C. Jacob, The Newtonians and the English revolution, 1689–1720 (Brighton, 1976), chs. 4–5, esp. pp. 191–2. Compare Thomson, Ann, ‘Les premières “Boyle lectures” et les verités au-dessus de la raison’, Revue de la Société d'Études Anglo-Américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe Siècles, 68 (2011), pp. 97–111 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101 [Pitcairne,] Epistola Archimedis, pp. 4, 6–8; Archimedes, The sand-reckoner, pp. 221–2. See also Thomas Heath, Aristarchus of Samos: the ancient Copernicus (Oxford, 1913), pp. 301–10. Pitcairne owned Aristarchus's surviving work: Pitcairne's library catalogue, EUL, La. iii. 629, p. 38.

102 Letters of Pitcairne, pp. 19, 20, 22, 43.

103 Hepburn, Tarrugo unmasked, p. [iii].

104 Pitcairne to Verwer, June 1706, RSL, MS 247, fo. 73v (‘Deumque…esse demonstravi Circulatione Sanguinis intellecta’). Vermij, ‘Formation of the Newtonian philosophy’, p. 195.

105 Papers by Archibald Pitcairne, EUL, MS Dc.4.101 (‘Quod Illam Demonstrationem (antea tamen ostensam Lugduni Batavorum Anno 1693, in Dissertatione mea De Circulatione Sanguinis in Animalibus genitis et non genitis) plenius ostendat, Que Fanaticos docui Esse Deum Optimum Maximum’).

106 Archibald Pitcairne, Dissertatio de circulatione sanguinis in animalibus genitis & non genitis (Leiden, 1693). The dissertation was included in the English Works of Pitcairn, pp. 164–87.

107 Works of Pitcairn, pp. 164–7, quotations at pp. 166–7. The Latin dissertation included, in the ‘respondent's annexes’, a statement reiterating this interpretation: Pitcairne, Dissertatio de circulatione sanguinis, sig. D3v. On the preformation theory, see Elizabeth B. Gasking, Investigations into generation, 1651–1828 (London, 1967), chs. 3–4; Clara Pinto-Correia, The ovary of Eve: egg and sperm and preformation (Chicago, IL, 1997).

108 [Pitcairne,] Epistola Archimedis, p. 11.

109 Pitcairne, Latin poems, pp. 254–5.

110 Papers by Archibald Pitcairne, EUL, MS Dc.4.101.

111 Guerrini, ‘The tory Newtonians’, p. 289.

112 Friesen, ‘Archibald Pitcairne’, esp. pp. 166–9.

113 Guerrini, ‘Pitcairne, Archibald’; see also MacQueen and MacQueen, ‘Introduction’, pp. 29–30.

114 Roger L. Emerson, ‘The religious, the secular and the worldly: Scotland, 1680–1800’, in James E. Crimmins, ed., Religion, secularization and political thought: Thomas Hobbes to J. S. Mill (London, 1990), pp. 68–89, at p. 73.

115 Raffe, Alasdair, ‘Presbyterians and episcopalians: the formation of confessional cultures in Scotland, 1660–1715’, English Historical Review, 125 (2010), pp. 570–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 580–3.

116 Bruce Lenman, ‘Physicians and politics in the Jacobite era’, in Eveline Cruickshanks and Jeremy Black, eds., The Jacobite challenge (Edinburgh, 1988), pp. 74–91, at p. 78; Julia Buckroyd, ‘Anti-clericalism in Scotland during the Restoration’, in Norman Macdougall, ed., Church, politics and society: Scotland, 1408–1929 (Edinburgh, 1983), pp. 167–85.

117 Raffe, ‘Presbyterians and episcopalians’, pp. 574–80.

118 This would explain why Pitcairne was less sympathetic towards the episcopalians in his Tollerators and con-tollerators (1703) than in his satires of the early 1690s: MacQueen, ‘Tollerators and con-tollerators (1703)’, p. 89.