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and Navy are behind him.
    So I’m afraid that, our little lady notwithstanding, I must refuse to interfere in this matter.

    CAROLUS II REX

    19 March 1667
    Whitehall

    Newton:
    No! That is my final word!

    C II R

    21 May 1667
    Cambridge

    My dear Isaac,
    Please accept the humble apologies of an old friend; I have erred, and I beg you, in your Christian charity, to forgive me. I did not realise at the time I wrote my last letter that you were ill and overwrought, and I have not written since then because of your condition.
    As a matter of fact, when your dear mother wrote and told me of your unbalanced state of mind, I wanted desperately to say something to you, but the blessed woman assured me that you were in no condition for communication.
    Believe me, my dear boy, had I had any inkling at all of how ill you really were, I would have shown greater forbearance than to address you in such an uncharitable manner. Forgive me for an ungoverned tongue and a hasty pen.
    I see now that the error was mine, and it has preyed on my mind for these many weeks. I should have recognised instantly that your letters to me were the work of a feverish mind and a disordered imagination. I shall never forgive myself for not understanding it at the time.
    As to your returning to the College for further study, please rest assured that you are most certainly welcome to return. I have spoken to the proper authorities, and, after an explanation of the nature of your illness, all barriers to your re-entrance have been dropped. Let me assure you that they are well aware of what such an unhappy affliction can do to unsettle a man temporarily, and they understand and sympathise.
    I can well understand your decision not to continue your studies in mathematics; I feel that overwork in attempting something that was a bit beyond one of your tender years was as much responsible for your condition as that blow on the head from that apple. 11 is probably that which accounts for the fact that serious symptoms did not appear until late in March.
    I feel that you will do well in whatever new field you may choose, but please do not work so hard at it.
    Again, my apologies.
    Isaac Barrow

    3 April 1687
    York

    To His Grace,
The Most Reverend Dr. Isaac Newton,
By Divine Providence the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury

    My Lord Archbishop,
    May I take this opportunity to give you my earnest and heartfelt thanks for the copy of your great work which you so graciously sent; I shall treasure it always.
    May I say, your Grace, that, once I had begun the book, I found it almost impossible to lay it down again. In truth, I could not rest until I had completed it, and now I feel that I shall have to read it again and again.
    In my humble opinion, your Grace is the greatest theological logician since the Angelic Doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas. And as for beauty and lucidity of writing, it ranks easily with “ De Civitate Deo” of St. Augustine of Hippo, and “De Imitatione Christi” of St. Thomas a Kempis.
    I was most especially impressed by your reasoning on the mystical levitation of the soul, in which you show clearly that the closer a human soul approaches the perfection of God, the greater the attraction between that soul and the Spirit of God,
    Surely it must be clear to anyone that the more saintly a man becomes, the greater his love for God, and the greater God’s love for His servant; and yet, you have put it so clearly and concisely, with such beautifully worded theological reasoning, that it becomes infinitely more clear. It is almost as though one could, in some mystical way, measure the distance between an individual soul and the Holy Presence of God by the measure of the mutual love and attraction between the soul and the Blessed Trinity.
    Your masterful analysis of the relative worthiness of those who have come to the Kingdom of Heaven on the Day of Judgement is almost awe-inspiring in its beauty. Even those souls which have been cleansed as white as snow by