Thomas Woolston
English theologian
1668 CE to 1733 CE
Thomas Woolston (baptized November 1668 – January 27, 1733) is an English theologian.
Although he is often classed as a deist, his biographer William H. Trapnell regards him as an Anglican who held unorthodox theological views.
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Thomas Woolston—who, in addition to questioning prophecies and the Resurrection of Christ, insists on an allegorical interpretation of biblical miracles—applies his principles in particular in A Discourse on Our Saviour's Miraculous Power of Healing (1730), which reportedly sells thirty thousand copies.
A Deiest, Woolston has thus played a pivotal role in the denial of the miracles in the Gospel.
Woolston had been arrested in 1729, and tried for publishing the series, sentenced to a year's imprisonment, and ordered to pay a fine, with imprisonment until the fine was paid.
Unable to raise funds to pay the penalty, he will die in 1733 in confinement.
Woolston had become a fellow at the University of Cambridge in 1691 and, after studying the work of Origen, a third-century theologian of Alexandria who in his allegorical interpretation of Scripture stressed the spiritual qualities of creation over the material, also began to interpret Scripture allegorically rather than literally.
He soon came into conflict with the government, and, when it was reported that his mind had become defective, he was deprived of his fellowship, and in 1721 went to live in London.
He had formally entered into the Deist controversy with his book The Moderator Between an Infidel and an Apostate (1725).