Bentley, Richard (1662–1742)

A towering figure in the history of textual criticism, Bentley’s importance in the development of English philosophical thought rests on both public and private achievements. His great public contribution was made in the first Boyle lectures of 1692. In private, his correspondence with Newton sought the great man’s blessing on the arguments and opinions advanced in these lectures, persistently questioning him on the possibility of a natural origin for the universe and on the role and nature of gravity in physics in general. Bentley’s influence helped to establish the Newtonian consensus dominant in Europe until the end of the nineteenth century.