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Born prematurely on Christmas Day 1642, the year of Galileo's death, Isaac Newton was sickly and not expected to live. He spent the first few days of his life in a shoebox behind the woodstove. His father had died a few months earlier, and while little Isaac survived the sicknesses of infancy, he endured a series of childhood traumas, including abandonment by his mother to his grandparents, that left him withdrawn and solitary. Eventually he came to believe that thinking about nature was of far more importance than social distractions like marriage, children, or even friends.

As a young man, Isaac proved incompetent on the farm, once leading a bridle to the barn, unaware that the horse had escaped. Fences he was in charge of were always falling down, and court records chronicle numerous fines he received for allowing livestock to trample the neighbors' property.

More at home in the world of books, Isaac ended up in 1661 at Cambridge University, where the field hands on his farm had long said he belonged. He graduated without fanfare in 1665.

To escape the plague, he returned home for two remarkable years. Out of this brief seclusion came what was essentially a set of blueprints for changing the world: his theory of universal gravity and a number of major contribution to optics. But no one knew, yet, what the daydreamy young man was up to.

Newton returned to Cambridge University in 1667 and was soon, at age 26, Lucasian Professor of Mathematics. His star continued to rise as he made important scientific contributions, explaining everything from the motion of the planets, to the swing of a pendulum, to the formation of rainbows. Or at least explaining such things to himself, as the lectures he was required to give were often delivered to an empty hall.

After the publication of his notoriously difficult book known as the Principia, a Cambridge student pointed at him and said, "There goes the man that wrote a book that neither he nor anyone else understands."

Despite his general disinterest in explaining his ideas to the public, Newton's work greatly impressed his fellow members of the Royal Society, and by mid-career he became very famous. But he harbored a dark secret that had the potential to bring his rising star plummeting to earth.

Shortly after his widely acclaimed invention of both a remarkable telescope to collect light and an even more remarkable theory to explain light, Newton embarked upon a curious voyage of theological inquiry. The reasons remain hidden but were probably motivated by his impending need to be ordained in the Church of England, if he were to continue to hold the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics.

Whatever the reasons, Newton began a sustained reflection on the Christian doctrines and decided that the Anglican status quo was a thorough corruption of the true, original Christianity. These considerations led him to write over a million words on theology and biblical studies—more than he wrote on any other subject. Newton's theological investigations convinced him that the doctrine of the Trinity was bogus, a successful deception by St. Athanasius in the fourth century. Newton argued that the Scriptures had been altered and early Christian writers had been misquoted to make it appear that Trinitarianism had been the original faith.

He became repelled by what he perceived as the false religion that surrounded him—an idolatrous faith that worshiped Christ as God, when he was but a mediator between God and man. Newton became convinced that the Roman Catholic Church, which had perpetrated the fraud, was the great whore of Babylon. To accept ordination into the Anglican Church would be to "worship the Beast and his image and receive his mark."

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