When he suggested to Craggs that honesty might be the best policy, Craggs replied that a statesman might be honest for a fortnight, but that it would not do for a month. Whiston asked him whether he had ever tried for a fortnight (Nichols, Lit. Anecd. i. 504). Whiston's absolute honesty was admitted by his contemporaries, whom he disarmed by his simplicity. He gives various anecdotes of the perplexities into which he brought other clergymen by insisting upon their taking notice of vice in high positions. In 1715 he started a society for promoting primitive Christianity, which held weekly meetings at his house in Cross Street, Hatton Garden, for two years. The chairmen were successively the baptist John Gale [q. v.], Arthur Onslow [q. v.] (afterwards speaker), and the unitarian Thomas Emlyn [q. v.] (see W. Clarke's Memoirs; and for an account of the subjects discussed, Whiston's Three Tracts, 1742). To this society he invited Clarke, Hoadly, and Hare, who, however, did not attend. Whiston was on particularly intimate terms with Clarke. Clarke probably introduced him to the Princess of Wales (afterwards Queen Caroline), who enjoyed Whiston's plainness of speech and took his reproofs good-humouredly. Among the members of Whiston's society was Thomas Rundle [q. v.] (afterwards bishop of Derry). Whiston was afterwards shocked by hearing that Rundle attributed the ‘Apostolical Constitutions’ to the fourth century, and said, ‘Make him dean of Durham, and they will not be written till the fifth.’ Another member was Thomas Chubb [q. v.], of whose first book he procured the publication. He had afterwards to attack Chubb's more developed deism. A more decided opponent was Anthony Collins [q. v.], whose two books on the ‘Grounds and Reasons,’ &c. (1724), and the ‘Scheme of Literal Prophecy’ (1727) are professedly directed against Whiston's view of the prophecies. In the first (p. 273) he gives ‘an account of Mr. Whiston himself,’ praising his integrity and zeal. Whiston, he says, visits persons of the highest rank and ‘frequents the most public coffee-houses,’ where the clergy fly before him. Whiston was rivalled in popular estimation by that ‘ecclesiastical mountebank’ John Henley [q. v.] the ‘orator.’ Whiston accused Henley of immorality, and proposed in vain that he should submit to a trial according to the rules of the primitive church. The bishop of London declared that there was no canon now in force for the purpose, and Henley retorted by reproaching Whiston for bowing his knee in the house of Rimmon, that is, attending the Anglican services (Whiston, Memoirs, pp. 215, 327, and his pamphlet Mr. Henley's Letters and Advertisements, with Notes by Mr. Whiston,’ 1727, which is not, as Lowndes says, ‘almost unreadable’ on account of its ‘scurrility’).
Whiston meanwhile kept up his mathematics. He made various attempts to devise means for discovering the longitude. A large reward for a successful attempt was offered by parliament. Whiston co-operated with Humphrey Ditton [q. v.] in a scheme published in 1714, which was obviously chimerical. In 1720 he published a new plan founded on the ‘dipping of the needle,’ improved in 1721, but afterwards found that his ‘labour had been in vain.’ A public subscription, however, was raised in 1721 to reward him and enable him to carry on his researches. The king gave 100l., and the total was 470l. 3s. 6d. Another sum of 500l. was raised for him about 1740, the whole of which, however, was spent in a survey of the coasts, for which he employed a Mr. Renshaw in 1744. A chart was issued, which he declares to be the most correct hitherto published. In 1720 a proposal to elect him a fellow of the Royal Society was defeated by Newton. Newton, according to Whiston, could not bear to be contradicted in his old age, and for the last thirteen years of his life was afraid of Whiston, who was always ready to contradict any one.
Whiston lectured upon various subjects, comprising meteors, eclipses, and earthquakes, which he connected more or less with the fulfilment of prophecies. In 1726 he had models made of the tabernacle of Moses and the temple of Jerusalem, and afterwards lectured upon them at London, Bristol, Bath, and Tunbridge Wells. These lectures and others preparatory to the restoration of the Jews to Palestine (an event which he regarded as rapidly approaching) were to be his ‘peculiar business’ henceforth. He continued, however, to publish a variety of pamphlets and treatises upon his favourite topics. His most successful work, the translation of Josephus, with several dissertations added, appeared in 1737, and has since, in spite of defective scholarship, been the established version. In 1739, on the death of his successor in the Cambridge professorship, Nicholas Saunderson [q. v.], he applied to be reinstated in his place, but received no answer. In his last years he took up a few more fancies, or, as he put it, made some new discoveries. He became convinced that anointing the sick with oil was a Christian duty. He found
