Daniel Whitby

After attending school at Caster, Lincolnshire, he became in 1653 a commoner of Trinity College, Oxford, matriculating on 23 July, when his name is written Whitbie.

[2] Whitby's reputation suffered by his anonymous publication, late in 1682, of The Protestant Reconciler, a plea for concessions to nonconformists, with a view to their comprehension.

In contemporary pamphlets Whitby, nicknamed Whigby, was unfavourably contrasted with Titus Oates; ironical letters of thanks were addressed to him, purporting to come from Anabaptists and others.

Seth Ward extorted from Whitby a retraction (9 October 1683); and he issued a second part of the Protestant Reconciler, urging dissenters to conformity.

[2] Whitby suffered in his later years from failing sight, and employed an amanuensis; otherwise he retained his faculties, including a tenacious memory.

On the doctrine of our Lord's deity, which he had defended in 1691 and had upheld throughout his New Testament commentary (1703), he was affected by the treatise (1712) of Samuel Clarke, as shown by his later criticisms of George Bull and Daniel Waterland.

[2] A later Latin dissertation (1714) rejects the authority of the fathers as interpreters of Scripture, or as entitled to determine controversies respecting the Trinity.

[2] The extent of his departure from conventional opinion was not revealed till the posthumous publication in April 1727 of his Last Thoughts, which he calls his 'retractation,' and which 'clearly shows his unitarianism'.

[8] At least from 1699 until 1702, Whitby was also a close friend and an epistolary correspondent of John Locke (1632 – 28 October 1704), which a short time before was returned from Netherlands to the Lady Masham's country house in Essex.

"His 'New Hypothesis' was that by the preaching of the Gospel Mohammedanism would be overthrown, the Jews converted, the Papal Church with the Pope (Antichrist) would be destroyed, and there would follow a 1000 years of righteousness and peace known as the Millennium; at the close of which there would be a short period of Apostasy, ending in the return of Christ."