Newton considered ceasing his studies prior to completion to avoid the ordination made necessary by law of King Charles II. He was also required to take a vow of celibacy and recognize the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. In 1667, Newton became a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, making necessary his commitment to taking Holy Orders within seven years of completing his MA, which he did the following year. His maternal uncle, the rector serving the parish of Burton Coggles, was involved to some extent in the care of Isaac. Isaac apparently hated his step-father, and had nothing to do with Smith during his childhood. When Newton was three, his mother married the rector of the neighbouring parish of North Witham and went to live with her new husband, the Reverend Barnabus Smith, leaving her son in the care of his maternal grandmother, Margery Ayscough. Newton was born into an Anglican family three months after the death of his father, a prosperous farmer also named Isaac Newton. He may have been influenced by Socinian christology. Scholars now consider him a Nontrinitarian Arian. Although born into an Anglican family, and a devout but heterodox Christian, by his thirties Newton held a Christian faith that, had it been made public, would not have been considered orthodox by mainstream Christians. Newton saw a monotheistic God as the masterful creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation. Newton's conception of the physical world provided a model of the natural world that would reinforce stability and harmony in the civic world. He wrote many works that would now be classified as occult studies, and he wrote religious tracts that dealt with the literal interpretation of the Bible. Isaac Newton (4 January 1643 – 31 March 1727) was considered an insightful and erudite theologian by his Protestant contemporaries.
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