The Cambridge Platonists

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A

LIBRARY OF PROTESTANT THOUGHT

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LIBRARY OF PROTESTANT THOUGHT + +

EDITORIAL BOARD

JOHN DILLENBERGER,

Chairman

Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley

SYDNEY

AHLSTROM

E.

Yale University

GERRISH

B. A.

University of Chicago

ROBERT

HANDY

T.

Union Theological Seminary

WINTHROP

S.

HUDSON

Colgate Rochester Divinity School

LEHMANN

PAUL

L. Union Theological Seminary

JAMES

NICHOLS

H.

Princeton Theological Seminary

OUTLER

ALBERT

C. Southern Methodist University

JAROSLAV

J.

PELIKAN

Yale University

LEONARD

J.

TRINTERUD

San Francisco Theological Seminary

CLAUDE WELCH University of Pennsylvania

+

+

+

THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS Edited by

GERALD

New

R.

CRAGG

York

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1968

Copyright

©

1968

by Oxford University Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Catalogue Card

boston PUBLIC

Number

68-858

UBW**

Printed in the United States of America

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1 he Cambridge Platonists have long suffered from an unmerited neglect. Most of the histories of philosophy written in English dismiss them with a few perfunctory and inexact remarks. Continental scholars, with the notable exception of Ernst Cassirer, have virtually ignored them.

Even

own age they received far less attention than they deserved. This may be regretted; it is not entirely surprising. Their style impeded their influence. They reflect some of the worst faults

in

their

seventeenth-century prose: sionally tedious.

the neglect

has

of

they are often prolix and they are occa-

But there are other and more fundamental reasons for

from which they have

suffered. In a fiercely partisan era they

refused to repeat the shibboleths of any party.

They were

critical

of the

Calvinism that was dominant before 1660; they were equally opposed to the type of

Arminianism that triumphed

convictions cut across

They

all

pared to accept.

the prevailing orthodoxies of a dogmatic age.

freedom that few of

They

lived at a time

suspicious of reason, and little

when

when

parties

were pre-

the “spiritually-minded”

were

the rationalists increasingly allowed scope

By

except the powers of man’s mind.

legitimate claims, the

by advocating

their contemporaries

spirituality that transcended the limits of reason

and

the Restoration. Their

aggravated their divergence from accepted patterns

a kind of religious

for

at

Cambridge

urging the claims of

but never repudiated

Platonists antagonized

all

a its

the dominant

and forfeited the support of any appreciable group. Arminians

Calvinists,

Anglicans and

dissenters,

rejected the cooperation of such dubious

rationalists

and

mystics,

all

allies.

Actually the message of the Cambridge Platonists was peculiarly vant to the needs of the seventeenth century.

It

rele-

can be argued that the

problems of that age were not entirely dissimilar to those of the

late

twentieth century. Certainly the central concerns of the Platonists speak

more

persuasively to the

modern temper than

either the Puritanism or the

Laudianism which originally combined to obscure what they had to

More than providing

a

body of

teaching, they represent a certain

vu

sav.

method

PREFACE

Vlll

of approaching perennial theological problems. is

An

groping amid the ruins of previous systems for

with theological

issues,

age

new way

a

might profitably examine the

which

like ours,

of dealing

the temper

spirit,

and the teachings of these men. It is

however, an easy task to make the works of the Cambridge

not,

more readily accessible. It is notoriously difficult to extract from most seventeenth-century writers, and the Cambridge

Platonists

passages

Platonists are

no exception. This

to an even greater extent of their

nor on

When

demonstration.

is

method. They necessary

enough, but their aim was to foster

works their

relied neither

they

like a

argue

analysis

cogently

They do

Their

not marshal

phalanx through their opponents’

position. It

would be more appropriate

movement

of currents through an ocean

as the tide

could

on

insight, not to establish proof.

are not tightly knit or closely articulated.

arguments and march them

of their style, but

a result partly

compare

to

their dialectic to the

inlet, shifting this

way

or that

ebbs or flows. This method followed naturally from their

A

good example may be found in Henry More’s Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness a work that extends to nearly four hundred large folio pages. The distinctive quality of the book is in the leisurely, meandering course Platonic outlook and their understanding of the soul.

—

of the discussion, and this

My

hope to capture.

something which no selection of extracts can

is

by simple consuch as this. Those

choice has often been determined

what could be included in an edition well acquainted with the Cambridge Platonists will miss many favorite passages. I cannot hope that my selection will satisfy all whose familiarity with these men qualifies them to judge it. I cannot even claim that I have satisfied myself. With many a regretful glance at sections which I could siderations of

not use, tion,

I

have attempted to select such passages

as

would, in combina-

fundamental convictions of the Cambridge

faithfully reflect the

Platonists.

There are other difficulties inseparable from an undertaking of this kind; I must also explain my method with regard to them. The aim of this edition

at

once

is

to present a representative selection in a

faithful to the intention of the authors

reader of today. the

the

leading,

I

that will be

intelligible to the

have modernized the spelling. Very occasionally,

word has changed slightly original would be pointlessly

form of

when

I

and

way

a

have changed

it

in the intervening centuries

though

this

and

archaic or even positively mis-

to correspond to

to simplify the punctuation,

when

is

modern

a process

usage.

I

have tried

which, in view of

PREFACE

IX

the complexities of seventeenth-century style, cannot be pushed too far,

nor even

be consistently applied.

(I fear)

The most

baffling

The Cambridge

classical quotations.

when

in an age

a

problems have been posed by the hundreds of

parade of

classical

scholarly discussion. For the spattered with tion.

I

by

troubled

modern

Greek quotations

was relieved

reader, however, a page liberally

is first

hindrance and then an exaspera-

a

am not the and who has tried

to notice that

these quotations

were university teachers learning was a part of the idiom of Platonists

I

first

who

person

has been

problem

to reduce the

to

manageable proportions. John Worthington, the friend and editor of John Smith, mentions his difficulties in a preface to the Select Discourses:

“As for some short

allusions

and expressions borrowed out of ancient

authors, serving rather for ornament than support of the matter in hand,

there seemed to be

less

need of being solicitous about

all

of them.”

judge from the problem that remains, Worthington exercised prerogative on a modest scale.

The Cambridge

I

have dealt with

Platonists often

his editorial

this situation as follows:

quoted extensive passages from

authors, and then immediately provided a translation.

have simply deleted the original

text.

Latin phrase and immediately added

classical

In such cases

Sometimes they cited its

To

English equivalent.

I

Greek or Here I have a

by no means always, deleted the classical words. Where the removal of the original would require a revision, I have, of course, left the sentence as the author wrote it. The difficulty is obvious: the flavor often, but

of these works

is

due

in part to the

way

of the classical world, and the flavor

is

the writers invoked the authority best

conveyed by the recurrence

which the ancients wrote. I have tried to preserve the quality of the works without allowing the mannerisms to become too great an irritation to the modern reader. I am acutely aware that this somewhat flexible method is as difficult to justify as it has been to apply. The textual purist may well feel that I have gone too far; the advocate of intelligibility may complain that I have not gone far enough. of the languages in

I

have sometimes substituted a translation for

author himself did not render into English. is

a

Where

used and then paraphrased or freely interpreted,

quotation which the a classical I

expression

have not offered

a

translation either in the text or in a note.

Many

of the classical quotations are taken from relatively obscure

have identified the sources where possible (and in

authors.

I

received

much

have baffled

all

help from others).

my

efforts to pin

To my

regret

them down.

this

I

have

some of the quotations

PREFACE

X I

am

grateful to

many

people

who

generously placed their resources

Hudson and

have lightened

at

my

disposal.

my

labors. Librarians

Professor

Professor William Morris read the manuscript and offered

helpful suggestions. Professor Albert Outler subjected the to a its

Winthrop

whole work

most detailed and searching scrutiny and delivered the book and

editor

from many

editorial assistance.

a pitfall.

My

Miss

Amy

Clampitt provided invaluable

daughter Betty helped with the typing of

drafts of various sections.

My

wife helped in innumerable ways

initial

— typing

material, checking extracts, correcting proofs, compiling the index.

1

1

Table of Contents

PREFACE,

vii

Introduction Part

Anticipatory:

I

A

Letters of Benjamin

Pattern of

Whichcote

Thought Emerges

to

Antony Tuckney,

35

First Letter, 37

Second

Third Part

The

IT

Letter, 40

Letter, 44

Place of Reason in the

Nathanael Culverwel,

An

Realm

of Faith

Elegant and Learned Discourse of the

Light of Nature, 53

Benjamin Whichcote, The

Work

of Reason, 61

Benjamin Whichcote, Whatsoever Things are True (From Discourse

II), 73

John Smith, Discourses, 75 Concerning the True Way or Method of Attaining Divine

Knowledge, 76

The Excellency and Nobleness Henry More, A

of

Brief Discourse of the

True

Religion, 91

True Grounds

of the

Certainty of Faith in Points of Religion, 14

John Norris,

On

An Account

Faith and Reason, 15

of Reason and Faith: In relation to the Mysteries

of Christianity, 152

Reason and Religion, or the Grounds and Measures of Devotion Considered from the Nature of

Man, Part

III

God

and the Nature of

156

'The Nature of Reality and

Our Knowledge

Henry More, An Antidote Against Atheism,

163

of

It

1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Xll

Ralph Cudworth, The Existence of

God

and the Nature of

Knowledge, 194 Ralph Cudworth,

On

Providence and God’s Direction of

On

the Indefensible

Human

Destiny, 204

Ralph Cudworth,

Arguments of the

Atheists, 218

God

Is

Incomprehensible and Eternal, Yet not

Inconceivable, 219

That God

Is

Ralph Cudworth,

Part

IV

Ethical

Fart

V

Plastic

Nature, 234

259

the Nature and Principles of Ethics, 261

Account of Virtue (Enchiridion Ethicum),

Ralph Cudworth,

A

On

Theory

Henry More, On

An

not a Fiction Inspired by Fear, 224

On

262

the Essentials of Ethics, 270

Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, 271

The Freedom

of the Will

291

Ralph Cudworth, Of Free Will, 295

John Smith, Of Free Will, 298

Henry More, Of Free

Will, 300

John Norris, Summary of His Correspondence with Henry More

on Free Will, 306

Fart

VI

Liberty of Conscience

The

Plea for Toleration, 31

Henry More, On Liberty Fart VII

The Immortality

John Smith,

A

309

of Conscience, 313

of the Soul

323

Discourse Demonstrating the Immortality of the

Soul, 327

Henry More, The Immortality

Fart VIII

On

Political

of the Soul, 337

Sovereignty

Ralph Cudworth, Civil Authority and Religious

347 Belief, 34Q

TABLE OF CONTENTS Fart

IX

Xlll

Homiletical

367

Ralph Cudworth, Sermon Preached Before the Honorable House of

Commons

at

Westminster, March

31,

1647, 3^9

Benjamin Whichcote, Whatsoever Things Are True (Discourse I),

Fart

X

408

Epilogue

419

Benjamin Whichcote, Moral and Religious Aphorisms, 421 Benjamin Whichcote,

A

Prayer for Morning or Evening, 434

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY, 437 INDEX, 445

0

Introduction

T

he Cambridge platonists occupied a distinctive and significant place in the intellectual world of the seventeenth century. They were a J J

by

small group, knit together

concerns and convictions.

acknowledged

common

personal

ties

They had no

and united by certain basic

formal leader, though they

Benjamin Whichcote. They had

their indebtedness to

—the

term usually implies

a

more

relationship

formal and explicit than that which actually bound them together. a

simple matter even to delimit the membership of the group.

center was at Cambridge

its

initially

a

point of view, though they can be described as a “school” only

with certain reservations not

all

belonged to

—indeed,

a single college,

of the inner circle,

Emmanuel

—

all

a couple of

It is

Though

except one

Oxford men

might be included, and on the fringes there were other writers

who

had

attended neither university.

i.

Who Were The

senior

the Cambridge Flatonists?

member

to be considered

founder, was Benjamin Whichcote.

its

middle-class family of life.

He

entered

due course, the

of the group, and the one with the strongest claim

some means, but we know very

Emmanuel

and

a

about

his early

very successful tutor. In 1642

Long Parliament convened. The following

come Provost

little

of a

College, Cambridge, in 1628, and became, in

a fellow of the college

a college living in Somerset,

He came

but

in

Whichcote accepted 1644 he returned to Cambridge to be-

of King’s College, succeeding a

year,

man who had been

ejected

during the recent parliamentary visitation of the university. This fact significant of the political

and

is

which even retiring scholars man of pronounced party loyalties.

social turmoil in

were involved. Whichcote was not a He insisted on sharing his stipend with his predecessor, and he avoided taking the National Covenant one of the oaths imposed by the triumphant

—

parliamentary party. Restoration of 1660.

Though not

He

a

partisan,

he

lost

his

office

at the

took the oaths required by the Act of Uniformity

(1662), and until his death in 1683 he officiated as an Anglican clergyman 3

INTRODUCTION

4 in

London. As

his pupils,

Whichcote had

a university teacher

but he made

and (apart from some notable

pulpit;

profound influence on

permanent contribution through the

chief

his

a

letters) his surviving

works

consist

entirely of sermons.

The form

biographical details about

a

Whichcote may be meager, but we can

man

very clear picture of the

Tuckney

reveals

him

as a

man

himself. His correspondence

with

of broad outlook, convinced of his

own

position but courteous in maintaining leave the impression of a person to listened

whom

with profit and with

it

against his critics. His sermons

whom

parishioners must have

his friends doubtless

The most

vivid

Whichcote, given us by Bishop Burnet

in his

pleasure beside his hearth.

his

conversed with

contemporary account of History of

confirms this impression, and deserves to be quoted in

My Own

Time,

full.

of a rare temper, very mild and obliging. He had great credit with some that had been eminent in the late times [i.e., during the Interregnum] and made all the use he could of it to protect good men of all persuasions. He was much for liberty of conscience: and being disgusted with the dry systematic way of those times, he studied to raise those that conversed with him to a nobler set of thoughts, and to consider religion as the seed of a deiform nature (to use one of his own phrases). In order to this he set young students much on reading Plato, Tully [Cicero] and Plotin[us], and on considering the Christian doctrine as a religion sent from God both to elevate and sweeten human nature; in which he was a great example, as well as a wise and kind instructor. 1

Whichcote was

Among

a

man

Whichcote’s pupils

contemporaries, both of

at

Emmanuel were two young men,

whom should

be

classified as

Of Nathanael Culverwel (1618-51) we know

Cambridge

close

Platonists.

almost nothing except that

Emmanuel, was elected a fellow of the college, and died young. His most important work, A?i Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature, was published posthumously in 1652. John Smith (1616-52) came from a humble background (his father was “a small farmer” in Northamptonshire), profited from his studies under Whichcote, and in due course was elected a fellow of Queens’ College. Here he spent the remainder of his brief career. As dean and catechist he was responsible for certain kinds of religious instruction in the college; in discharging his duties he wrote the Discourses which conhe was under Whichcote’s tuition

stitute his principal 1.

at

claim to fame. Like Culverwel, he died young.

G. Burnet, History of

My Own

Time

,

ed.

O. Airy (Oxford, 1897), h

33

1

-

We

,

INTRODUCTION

5

know

considerably more about him than

friend

John Worthington included

in the

we do

about Culverwel. His

volume of Discourses which he

edited and published, the tribute delivered at Smith’s funeral

by Simon

Patrick (also a fellow of Queens’ and subsequently bishop of Chichester

and of Ely). Even

if

one discounts the extravagant language of

this

eulogy,

commanded the affection as well as the respect of his colleagues. He was a young man of great promise, learned and devout. Ralph Cudworth (1617-88) was successively a fellow and tutor of Emmanuel College, Master of Clare Hall, Regius Professor of Hebrew in it is

obvious that Smith

the university, and Master of Christ’s College. His father was a minister of

pronounced Puritan sympathies. The son himself was consulted by the leaders of the parliamentary cause, 2 and was invited to preach before the

House of Commons; but he was not a man of partisan spirit, and at the Restoration he was left in undisturbed possession of his mastership at Christ’s. Cudworth was a scholar of vast but undisciplined learning. He was apparently unable to resist the temptation to pursue every inviting bypath, and his True Intellectual System of the Universe is a fragment (though on an enormous scale) of his projected work. Nor was he more successful with his treatise

on

ethics;

he restated the principles of

his

thought, but he neither fully expounded his moral theory nor even finished the

work. Yet Cudworth was obviously

power; had he controlled

his material

projected writings, he would have

a thinker

of unusual

with greater rigor and completed

made

a

his

major contribution to English

philosophy.

Henry More (1614-87) was the only major member of the group not associated with Emmanuel College. We know that he came from a background where Puritan influences were strong. From Eton he went to Christ’s College,

Cambridge; he became

a fellow, refused

high preferment

home for the rest of his life. Even by seventeenth-century standards, More was a prolific writer. Whereas Cudworth completed almost nothing, More poured forth an impressive in the

Church, and made the college

stream of works

—poems, dialogues,

his

treatises

on philosophy and theology,

excursions into Cabbalistic literature, exercises in exegesis, and investigations

of spiritualistic phenomena.

Nor was More’s

range and versatility

played only in the forms he used. There are two distinct tendencies in thought.

On

dishis

the one hand he exalts the importance of intellectual effort;

Thurloe (Cromwell’s secretary of State) in A Collection of the State Papers of John Thurloe, Esq., ed. Thomas Birch, 7 vols. (London, 2.

Cf. Cudworth’s letters to

1724).

INTRODUCTION

6

on the other, he

insists

upon

its limits.

He

3

expresses

other of the Platonists the mystical element which

He

characteristic ingredient in their thought.

which many scholars never he has,

enter.

is

any

fully than

an intermittent but

explores with delight the

prophetic and apocalyptical strains in Scripture. In are conscious of an exhilaration of thought,

more

much

of his writing

sweeping him into

A less attractive writer than

we

realm

a

John Smith,

him, the elusive but unmistakable quality of spiritual genius.

like

John Norris of All Souls College, Oxford, represents the later developments of the “school.” Though a considerably younger man, he made contact with More, corresponded with him at considerable length, and

was obviously deeply influenced by him. Norris’s work is clearly an extension of certain elements in the thought of the Cambridge men, but he also introduced novel elements.

He was

clearly indebted to Nicholas Alale-

branche, the French philosopher whose system combined the thought of

When

both Augustine and Descartes.

Upon

Human

the

tive critique

Cambridge

—he

John Locke published

Understanding Norris responded with

—an event that brings into focus the

Platonists.

There

is

no disputing

their

frankly admits his indebtedness to them

between

differences

reconciliation

a

,

his

between

system and

his

theirs.

Essay

his

very percep-

Locke to the influence on his thought relation of

—but

there are significant

Ultimately there can be no

“empiricism” and their “idealism.” Norris was

not content merely to complain that the whole temper of the Essay was variance with the

mode

of thought in which he had been trained.

He

at

sub-

jected Locke’s treatment of ideas to a searching examination, and put his finger

on many of the weaknesses inherent

more than and

a

shrewd

Intelligible

critic; in his

World

theory about the world Several other Platonists.

of the Afore.

(Vol.

I,

men have some

Locke’s system. Norris was

Essay Towards the Theory of the Ideal

1701; Vol.

we know

in

and

its

II,

1704) he advanced his

own

relation to our understanding.

claim to be included

among

Joseph Glanvill (1638-80), an Oxford graduate

the Cambridge

who was

rector

Abbey Church at Bath, was an admirer and correspondent of Henry One of his chief contributions to the thought of the age was his

claim that skepticism can be an adjunct rather than a threat to

faith.

His

Vanity of Dogmatizing reflects the conviction, shared by all the Platonists, that there is a non-dogmatic way of exploring and expressing religious truths.

This

is

so fundamental to the

Cambridge

Platonists,

and so im-

portant an aspect of their contribution to Protestant thought, that Glanvill is

properly associated with them. But 3.

Cf. A. Lichtenstein,

his

Henry More (Cambridge,

primary concerns were with Alass., 1962), passim.

)

INTRODUCTION science and

7

its

Platonists, his

relation to religion,

approach here was

he can be regarded Sterry (1613-72),

gam

a

and though

this

too occupied the

and

it is

debatable whether

distinctive,

more than a marginal member of graduate of Emmanuel, produced an as

which they ments in affinities

all

his

grounded

sprang, but he

thought and by

in Christian love.

his friends to the

was united

to

Richard Cumberland (1632-1718) had strong his

major work

Gale and John Worthington might

more shadowy

they should be included in the

For

this edition,

I

and three from Norris. be the

men whose

The

The

also

(

De

Legibus Naturae

George Rust, Thcoph-

be considered Platonists, but

figures,

and

it is

doubtful whether

classification.

have drawn mainly on the works of Whichcote,

Cudworth and More.

Smith,

ele-

a strong belief in the necessity of tolerance

with the Platonists, but

theologically they are

Puritanism from

them both by the main

really represents a transition to a different position.

11.

interesting amal-

of Calvinism and Neo-Platonism. Both theologically and politically he

remained more deeply committed than

ilus

the group. Peter

I

have included one extract from Culverwel

When much

had to be excluded, these seemed to

claims could not be denied.

Intellectual

Background of the Cambridge

historical context of the

Cambridge

Platonists

Platonists

is

particularly im-

portant for an appreciation of their work.

Both

politically

and intellectually the seventeenth century was an age

of fierce tensions and of revolutionary changes. in the quiet

might be supposed that

refuge of their Cambridge courts, scholars were safely isolated

from the turmoils of the

The

It

issues at stake

time.

Nothing could be farther from the

truth.

invaded every man’s study and challenged the very

foundations of his daily

kind of portent. In the

Emmanuel College must be thought of as a latter part of Elizabeth’s reign, when Puritanism life.

was struggling to promote the further reformation of the Church of England, Sir Walter Mildmay, the Queen’s treasurer, founded the college as a nursery for godly ministers. When Elizabeth chided him for establishing a Puritan foundation, he neither admitted the charge

“Madam,” he

said, “far

be

it

from me

nor denied

it.

to countenance anything contrary

your established laws, but I have set an acorn, which when it becomes an oak, God knows what will be the fruit thereof.” Neither the nature nor the quantity of that fruit was to remain long in doubt. The first two to

masters of Emmanuel, Lawrence Chaderton and John Preston, were

INTRODUCTION

8

among

the most distinguished Puritan divines of the early seventeenth

century, and from its

its

earliest

founder by producing

World and

a

days the college

pious hopes of

mighty host of Puritan preachers. In the Old

New, Emmanuel

in the

fulfilled the

played a notable

eleven years from 1629 to 1640, thirty-three of

role:

during the

graduates emigrated to

its

Massachusetts Bay. 4 Puritanism established debate.

The

itself in

Cambridge

atmosphere of intense

struggle between Whitgift and Cartwright soon passed into

history, but other controversies supervened.

moved

in an

against the Puritans,

many men

at

When

Archbishop Bancroft

Cambridge were

affected.

Archbishop Laud was pressing for conformity, he silenced even

When so dis-

tinguished a Cambridge preacher as Richard Sibbes, lecturer at

Holv

The atmosphere was one of eager discussion and incessant With the meeting of the Long Parliament and the outbreak

Trinity Church. controversy.

War, Cambridge was engulfed by the upheavals of the time. The town saw the coming and going of Cromwell and his troops; the of the Civil

university experienced the “visitations” designed to purge

it

of royalist

was perhaps inevitable that our earliest significant record of the Cambridge Platonists should be the products of a controversy in which one of their number was engaged. Whichcote’s preaching had atsympathizers.

It

tracted notice. In his sermons a distinguished Puritan leader, Dr.

Tuckney,

Master of Emmanuel, had detected traces of unsound theology. In those days religious differences were not merely the subject matter of theoretical

were matters of passionate concern, inseparable from the great debates then raging in church and state. With scarcely an exception, the Cambridge Platonists came out of a discussion; they

Puritan background. For the most part they were educated in the very citadel of Puritan zeal.

tained

some of the

for example

—but

But they cannot be classed

finest qualities of

they abandoned

its

Puritanism

—

as Puritans. its

They

re-

moral earnestness,

theology. Nevertheless,

it

did not

follow that, having shed their Calvinism, they accepted the principal alternative then available. as

much

as

They

disliked the rigidity of

they did the dogmatism of the Puritans. In periods of intense

debate, most people can recognize only Platonists

different

were

in the

awkward

alternatives.

from both the others then current, but

E. Morison,

Appendix

two

B.

The Founding

The Cambridge

position of advocating a third position,

the careless with the one or the other. 4. S.

Archbishop Laud

of

When

likely to

be confused by

the Restoration of 1660

Harvard College (Cambridge, Mass.,

1935),

INTRODUCTION

9

brought back the House of Stuart and the Church of England, the Cambridge Platonists were senters,

in

still

though occasionally

standing.

They

an ambiguous position. their Puritan

They were

dis-

background invited misunder-

accepted the established church, but they had

pathy with the resurgent Anglicanism of

not

men

like

little

sym-

Archbishop Sheldon

They came to be designated “Latitudinarians,” but the term led as much to confusion as it did to clarification. They were liberals, but of a distinctive kind. A new breed of thinkers was emergor Herbert Thorndike.

ing

—calmly

these

men

reasonable in tone, strongly ethical in

emphasis

—and

to

the term “Latitudinarian” appropriately applies. But Tillotson,

Burnet and Patrick, though they were deeply influenced by

Stillingfleet,

the Platonists, reflected a different

mood. These younger men lacked the

subtle sense of spiritual truth, the mystical awareness of an eternal order,

which marked the older generation of Cambridge men. They walked in the light, but the light of the new day was hard and cold as well as clear. So once again the

Platonists occupied an intermediate position, slightly

apart from, and liable to misunderstanding by,

That they were often ignored tragic.

They

the contending parties.

hardly surprising, but none the

less

represented a position peculiarly relevant to the needs of that

turbulent and distracted period. of an age

is

all

when mounting

They were concerned with

the problems

sectarianism seemed the only alternative to the

impasse at which wrangling ideologies had arrived. Tragically enough, the strife and turmoil in

which

their

contemporaries were embroiled

largely obscured the fact.

In short, the against

Cambridge

Platonists

which they found themselves

predestination

—to

came from

in

The

vigorous reaction.

doctrine of

thoughtful people the very essence of the dogmatic

Calvinism so prevalent in Puritan circles

Henry More

background

a Puritan

—was especially repellent to them.

early discovered that he could not “swallow

down

that hard

doctrine concerning fate.” In a fragment of autobiography he has a vivid picture of the inner struggles of a lad revolted

orthodoxy.

He

tells

and earnestly for nation as

it is

us that even as a schoolboy he “did

my years

called.”

He

by .

.

left

us

the prevailing .

very stoutly

dispute against this fate or Calvinistic predesti-

had, he adds,

such a deep aversion in my temper to this opinion, and so firm and unshaken a persuasion of the divine justice and goodness, that on a certain day, in a ground belonging to Eton College where the boys used to play and exercise themselves, musing concerning these things with myself and recalling to my mind this doctrine of Calvin, I did

INTRODUCTION

IO

thus seriously and deliberately conclude with myself,

viz., “If I

am

one of those that are predestined unto Hell, where all things are full of nothing but cursing and blasphemy, yet will I behave myself there patiently and submissively towards God; and if there be any one acceptable to him, that will I set myself to do with a sincere heart and to the utmost of my power”; being certainly persuaded that if I thus demeaned myself, he would hardly keep me long in that place 5 thing

more than another

that

is

.

What

began

as

an emotional revulsion from predestination became

considered attack on

its

intellectual

implications.

To Cud worth,

a

pre-

was chiefly abhorrent because it was one form of determinism. Admittedly, it was different from the variety expounded by Hobbes, but it was no less pernicious. Cudworth called the one “divine fatalism arbidestination

the

trary,”

other “divine fatalism natural,” and vehemently attacked

them both. In his sermon before the House of Commons, he defined with care and denounced with courage the doctrine of election. It had done, he declared, incalculable damage to the cause of true religion. Predestination, when argued theoretically, was likely to appear a rather abstruse doctrine; 6 other aspects of Calvinism had more immediately practical implications. The elect were summoned to “walk worthy of their calling;” therefore ethical theory was necessarily involved. What is “the right” and how

—

is

it

wills

established? it

to be so.

The

On

Calvinists insisted that right

is

right because

God

the contrary, replied the Platonists, the distinction

between right and wrong

is

eternal

Platonists valued the strain of high

and immutable. The Cambridge

moral seriousness

they attacked was the theoretical foundation on which

in Calvinism; it

what

rested.

Another disconcerting aspect of Calvinism was its uncompromising denigration of man. Yet man had been made in the image of God. He had been endowed with reason. “The

spirit

of a man,” as

Whichcote delighted

by God and lighting us to the divine endowment must not be

to repeat, “is the candle of the Lord, lighted

God.”

7

Even

in

its

tarnished state

despised. Calvinism tended to obliterate reason in deference to faith; to

Whichcote

this

seemed

to jeopardize man’s fairest prospect of appro-

Richard Ward, The Life of the Learned and Pious Dr. Henry More (London, 1710), 6-7. Professor William Morris has pointed out that More’s attitude here is 5.

similar to the willingness to be

New

damned

for the glory of

God which we

find in

some

England theologians. 6. Many Puritans, who were perhaps unable to repeat all the arguments for or against predestination, were satisfied that they grasped its essential meaning, and from it they derived a strong sense of meaning and purpose in life. 7. Whichcote, Moral and Religious Aphorisms (London, 1753), No. 916. He is

of the early

quoting Proverbs 20:27.

INTRODUCTION

I

priating the truth.

The

Platonists,

it is

clear,

opposed certain

I

specific doc-

by Calvinism. They disliked even more intensely the temper and spirit which dogmatism fostered. For a hundred years men trines inculcated

had been debating the abstruse refinements of theology, and the most conspicuous result had been an increase of contention and bitterness.

Bad

fruit implied a

ligion, the

more

corrupt source. “The more

and furious

fierce

more imposing.” 8 Calvinism was not the only

in

false

maintaining

it;

any one the

is

in his re-

more mistaken,

the

tained in an inflexible

spirit.

which had recently been mainThe Cambridge Platonists had been deeply position

Dutch Arminians 9 but in England those who were popularly known as Arminians had shown no less exclusive a temper than

influenced

by

the

,

The Laudians had been as much at fault as the Calvinists. The Cambridge men were eager to show that there was a mediating positheir opponents.

tion

between the two extremes. According to

a

pamphleteer

who

signed

himself “S. P.” (probably Simon Patrick), they advocated a “virtuous

Rome

mediocrity” between “the meretricious gaudiness of the Church of

and the squalid sluttery of fanatic conventicles,” prove that

to

in

thought

as

10

and they were anxious

well as in ritual and church order there was a

middle way. Against the Laudians they declared that morality was more important than polity; against the Calvinists they insisted that reason must not be fettered; against both they maintained that the legitimate seat of authority in religion was the individual conscience, governed by reason

and illuminated by reason

itself

.

a revelation

which could not be

inconsistent with

11

Other, more purely intellectual influences powerfully affected the bridge Platonists. These

men were

scholars, steeped in the

(and sometimes undiscriminating) learning that was Renaissance. But they were also well aware of

them.

The

scientists

Cam-

comprehensive

a heritage

from the

what was happening around

contents of Cudworth’s personal library are revealing. Recent

represented on his shelves were Harvey, Boyle,

Tycho

Brahe,

Copernicus, Galileo and Newton; modern philosophers included Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Gassendi and Spinoza

12 .

In his response to these

men

Whichcote, Aphorisms, No. 499. 9. For the relations between the Dutch Arminians and the Cambridge Platonists, cf. Rosalie L. Colie, Light and Enlightenment (Cambridge, England, 1957), passim. 10. “S. P.,” A Brief Account of the Ne-w Sect of Latitude Men (London, 1662), 11. 11. Cf. G. R. Cragg, From Puritanism to the Age of Reason (Cambridge, England, 8.

1950), 41 12.

.

Bibliotheca Cudworthiana, a catalogue of the sale of books at Roll’s Coffee-

House, London,

1690. Cf. J.

A. Passmore, Ralph Cudworth (Cambridge, 1951),

3.

INTRODUCTION

12

Cudworth was sometimes cautiously sympathetic, often critically Like Whichcote and Smith, he referred to Bacon’s “idols” of the

hostile.

theater

and of the cave, but he had serious doubts concerning Bacon’s general

The rejection of final causes seemed to him “the very atheism.” The Platonists believed that philosophy should have a position.

spirit of

religious

foundation; Bacon was careful to isolate theology from scientific and philosophical concerns. 13 This difference,

other, explains

which Cudworth and More regarded Bacon’s pro-

the reservations with

gram. Their aim was to unify

omy

more than any

knowledge;

all

to safeguard the auton-

his,

by protecting it against the impact of theology. Descartes’ influence was at once stronger than Bacon’s and more ambiguous. Initially the Cambridge men gave his thought a cordial welcome. John Smith, it was asserted, introduced the study of Descartes to Cambridge. Henry More corresponded with the French philosopher, and the of science

deferential tone of his letters

is

unmistakable. Cartesianism seemed to

provide exactly the kind of foundation which the intellectual

new

saw the material world as subject to the of mechanical laws, yet at the same time it acknowledged the the spiritual world. It was wide in the range of its interests yet age demanded.

demand

its

It

for exact observation and experiment;

synthesis in

which science and

twenty years More remained

life

strict rule

reality of explicit in

provided a

it

of the

skillful

had an honored place. For

religion both

some degree a disciple of Descartes. By 1665 (in his Divine Dialogues) his uneasiness was becoming apparent. Two years later (in Enchiridion Ethicum) his disenchantment with Descartes was shown his

in

to be complete. After a further lapse of four years he published

—one of the

Enchiridion Metaphysicum

attacks

on Cartesianism

change of view are

most vigorous and searching

that the age produced.

clear.

Initially

The

reasons for Alore’s

he was dazzled by the brilliance of

Descartes’ achievement and delighted with the up.

The

new

possibilities

it

opened

implications of Descartes’ separation of the material and the

spiritual, the

body and

the soul,

became increasingly evident and seemed

increasingly grave; and Descartes' definition of matter as extension ap-

peared to

More

a philosophical aberration of the

most dangerous conse-

quence.

Cudworth’s response than More’s.

He saw

to Descartes,

that Descartes

though

was

similar,

was more complex

really reviving

one of the ancient

of Learning, Bk II, xxv, 1, §§ 3-5. For a careful assessment of Bacon’s intentions in separating theology and science, see Christopher Hill, The Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (Oxford, 1965), esp. 91-96. 13.

Cf. F. Bacon,

The Advancement

INTRODUCTION

*3

forms of atomic philosophy but one which

in itself,

mechanism.

He was

—

development not necessarily dangerous

a

Descartes he regarded as

in

a

trend towards pure

disturbed at the inference that the universe could

function independently of testations of orthodoxy,

Creator. In spite of Descartes’ sincere pro-

its

it

was becoming

thickly strewn with anti-Christian elements.

occupied so important

a

clear

that Cartcsianism

The God who

was

(or which?)

place in the system of Descartes was not really the

God at all 14 Dualism seemed to be inherent in Cartcsianism; and Cudworth, who was not necessarily opposed to dualism as such, never-

Christian

.

believed that the pattern implicit in Descartes was dangerous.

theless

Cudworth, however, never denounced Descartes in such unmeasured terms as those finally employed by More. He was prepared to accept much of the French philosopher’s method, and always spoke of

him with obvious

respect.

The Cambridge

Platonists

may

have been slightly ambivalent

response to Descartes; in their reaction to Spinoza and explicit

and emphatic.

men, and

this

They

in their

Hobbes they were

detected the influence of Descartes in both

confirmed their suspicions about the former’s system. Both

modern manifestation of ancient forms of atheism and materialism. iMore, in particular, was well acquainted with Spinoza’s works; he attacked them repeatedly and with

Cudworth and More regarded Spinoza

vigor

.

as

a

15

Cambridge Platonists found the most convincing proof of the dangers lurking in contemporary trends of thought. He was a threat precisely because he epitomized so much that was already current. Though In

Hobbes

Smith’s

work

the

antedated the recognition that Hobbes menaced

had been valued

as true,

and though Whichcote showed no

cern with Hobbes, both

men

much

that

explicit con-

attacked exactly the tendencies in con-

temporary thought which Cudworth and More regarded as the distinguishing features of Hobbes’s system. In certain respects, it is true,

Hobbes and

his critics

seemed to occupy

common

ground.

They

de-

fended the use of reason in the life of faith; so did he. “In religion,” he wrote, “we are not to renounce our senses and experience; nor (that

which

is

the undoubted

the talents

word

which he hath put

of

God) our

natural reason.

into our hands to negotiate

For they are

till

the

coming

again of our blessed Savior; and therefore not to be folded up in the napkin 14. 15.

A

Treatise of Free Will (London, 1838), 49. See R. L. Colie, Light and Enlightenment , Chapter v, for a valuable study of

See Cudworth,

More’s attitude to Spinoza.

INTRODUCTION

*4

of an implicit faith, but employed in the purchase of justice, peace and true religion.”

16

But Hobbes,

it

appeared, intended to use reason for ends

abhorrent to the Cambridge scholars. Moreover, society threatened almost to conserve.

atheism

17

To them

all

which the

His occasional professions of belief

.

view of man and of

were anxious be the aggressive advocate of modern

the values

he seemed to

his

Platonists

God

in

had

all

the appear-

ance of calculated hypocrisy, since the main ingredients of his thought threatened the very foundations of theism. His materialism was particularly offensive to thinkers

who

supremacy of spiritual thus he opened the door

asserted the priority and

Hobbes denied the freedom of the will; to determinism. Combined with this was an ethical relativism which presupposed that right and wrong could be determined bv political expediency and imposed by political power: nothing, that is, was inherently good or bad, and in the final analysis, might was right. Hobbes’s view of man realities.

seemed to imply lieved that

pronounced individualism, whereas the

a

man was

to find his fulfillment in

could be understood only

may

teaching

More

in

Platonists be-

community, and that society

organic terms. Their account of Hobbes’s

appear extreme and one-sided. Certainly Cudworth and

reacted violently to his methodology and to the content of his

thought

18 .

But contrary to appearances, he did not inspire

in

them

a purely

negative response. Rather, he served as a kind of catalyst, and at one point after another he helped to crystallize the distinctive doctrines of the

Cam-

bridge Platonists.

These men were

were

alert to

movements of thought

also scholars, steeped in classical learning,

Greek philosophy. not entirely exact. Plato’s dialogues,

The role

It

was natural

They

to call

them

in their

own

day.

They

and they drew heavily on Platonists,

but the term

is

were, of course, intimately acquainted with

and their deep indebtedness to

his

thought

is

obvious.

of ideas, the nature of the soul, the place of reason, the eternity of

—

came to them from Plato. Cudworth’s theory of knowledge was derived from the Theaetetus; the germ of his moral moral concepts

all

of these

Hobbes, Leviathan Part III, Ch. xliii. 17. For a helpful discussion of the reaction of the Cambridge Platonists to Hobbes, see S. I. Mintz, The Hunting of Leviathan (Cambridge, 1962), especially chapters v and vi. 18. Though Hobbes’s stvle is clear and vigorous, there has been a good deal of disagreement about his actual beliefs. For a rather different interpretation, cf. F. C. Hood, The Divine Politics of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford, 1964). But Professor Mintz has shown that bv seventeenth-century standards the reaction of the Cambridge Platonists was neither extreme nor exceptional. 1

6.

,

INTRODUCTION

1

theory can be found

in

true that

It is

criticism, at a time

tween

Plato’s

Cambridge men drew upon well. They quoted Plotinus even more freely they lived before the advent of modern literary

the Euthyphro. But the

other classical sources as

than Plato.

when

scholarship did not accurately distinguish be-

thought and the modifications

of his successors.

It is

5

now

it

had received

at the

hands

sometimes assumed that Plotinus was responsible

for a confused and corrupt version of Platonism. But the

Cambridge men

believed that Plotinus had carried Plato’s thought forward and had sharp-

ened

its

implications in a particularly valuable way. This attitude

was not

acumen but to their primary intellectual aims. Their attitude towards their sources was closely related to their concern for a spiritual interpretation of reality. To them Platonism was the entire tradition of metaphysics inaugurated by Plato, and continued and expanded by his successors. This “Platonism,” of course, had reached them due to

a failure of critical

through interpreters

who

had modified

scholars, particularly Marsilio Ficino

its

The

character.

and Pico

Renaissance

put their

della Mirandola,

own

imprint on the subsequent understanding of Greek thought

must

we

first

forget that in the pages of the Schoolmen the

much

encountered

Nor Cambridge men 19

.

that affected their interpretation of Plato 20 .

from whatever sources they drew were certainly not content merely

their material, the

Cambridge

But

Platonists

to repeat the concepts of ancient

philosophy. Plato’s debate with Pythagoras, they believed, had

Greek

first

ex-

which were involved in their own controversy with Hobbes. If the problems were identical, were not the same insights required to solve those problems? For this reason, Platonism seemed to them

posed the very

totally

To

issues

contemporary with the major struggle of a

modern

classical

scholar,

it

their

own

day.

might appear that the Cambridge

Platonists treated their sources with considerable freedom.

No

one can

suggest that they allowed their eclectic tendencies to confuse or obscure their

primary emphasis. They welcomed Plato

as a

partner because the

him as a valuable ally in its task of interpreting the faith. A sympathetic contemporary observer remarked that it was the purpose of the Cambridge men to bring the Church back to “her old loving nurse, the Platonic philosophy.” 21 The Cambridge Platonists knew the patristic surmise that Plato had drawn upon the wisdom of Moses.

Church had always

treated

Concerning the influence of Renaissance Platonism on the Cambridge Platonists, see P. O. Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (New York, 1943), 19. 20. Smith, More and Cudworth all acknowledged their debt to Aquinas. 19.

21. “S. P.,”

A

Brief

Account of the

New Sect

of Latitude

Men,

9.

INTRODUCTION

16

They

delighted in setting forth the parallels between the Platonic and the

Christian Trinities

.

22

They quoted Clement

of Alexandria and Origen

because these Fathers represented an alliance between Greek philosophy

and Christian theology such

was never

as

they were eager to perpetuate. But there

a trace of uncertainty in their

minds

as to

which was the senior

partner in this association.

More] conceal from whence

of Christ; but yet acknowledging that God hath not left the heathen, Plato especially, without witness of himself. Whose doctrine might strike our adulterate Christian professors with shame and astonishment; their lives falling so exceeding short of the better heathen. far short are they of that admirable and transcendent high mystery of true Christianism? To which Plato is a very good subservient minister; whose philosophy, I singing here in a full heat, why may it not be free for me to break out into a higher strain, and under it to touch upon some points of Christianity? 23 cannot, [said

I

I

am,

viz.,

How

As Professor Willey has aptly said, “The Alexandrian Fathers grafted Christianity on to a recognized philosophy; the Cambridge Platonists grafted philosophy on to a recognized Christianity .”

24

the Platonists found their primary source, and

is

it

In the Scriptures

obvious that the

Johannine strain proved particularly congenial to them. biblical passages cited in the

establishes

two

things:

A

glance at the

sermons of Whichcote, Smith and Cudworth

the catholicity of their references and the in-

dubitably Christian character of their writings.

hi.

The

The

Basic Teachings of the

Cambridge

Blatonists

was an exceptionally important issue in the seventeenth century. As we have already seen, there were forces at work in the intellectual world which insisted that the two be kept apart. The Cambridge Platonists, on the other hand, were determined that they should be kept together. This was not an attitude inspired by a desire to relation of faith to reason

find a theoretical

answer to an important

intellectual

problem. These

Cudworth, The True Intellectual System, Ch. iv; More, “To the Reader, upon second edition”; and “Psychozoia, or the first part of the Song of the Soul, con-

22.

this

taining a Christiano-Platonical display of life;

(Cambridge, 1647). 23.

More, “Psychozoia;

24. B.

Willey,

The

To

To

the Reader,” in Philosophical

the Reader.”

English Moralists (London, 1964), 172.

Poems

INTRODUCTION scholars

>7

were men of deep

religious experience.

the wholeness of the abundant

They were convinced

could be preserved only

life

if its

unity were maintained. But to set faith and reason in opposition

allow them to drift apart

harmony could be Tuckney,

“I

tional.” 25

The

—would be to

established.

faith that religion

Whichcote wrote spiritual,

evokes

is

—even to

to

for spiritual

his is

friend

most

ra-

not the repudiation of our in-

but their highest fulfillment.

tellectual faculties,

essential

destroy the only basis on which

“Sir,”

oppose not rational to

that

A

which

blind faith,

will

not submit to examination by the mind nor accept justification by

becomes

a contradiction in terms.

This

is

it,

not to suggest that our unaided

reason can attain to divine truth without the assistance of grace. But the

theology from revealed religion;

Platonists refused to divorce natural this,

they

insisted,

would be

what God had joined

to divorce

together.

Their awareness of the unity of the different kinds of truth was not novel discovery. Even pre-Christian thinkers had seen that to let

knowledge and

insight drift apart. “It was,” said

generate and unworthy spirit in that philosophy which

made such

distances

whereas the deed

first

truth, as perfect in

what God

gives.

John Smith, “a defirst

separated and

and most ancient wisdom amongst the heathens was

in various patterns;

reach that truth

dangerous

between metaphysical truths and the truths of nature,

a philosophical divinity or a divine

thought

it is

is

a

its

behind

unity as in

all its

philosophy.”

26

Men

these partial systems

arrange their lies

an eternal

comprehensiveness and beauty.

the goal of man’s intellectual quest, and

in-

what he

To

seeks

is

Truth, said Whichcote,

much

the very image and form of it, that it may be said of truth, that as the soul is by derivation from God, so truth is by communication. No sooner doth the truth of God come into the soul’s si