Abstract
Ralph Cudworth was just thirty years old when, in March 1647/48, he travelled down from Cambridge to London to preach before the House of Commons. At first sight this would seem to be a case of a young and unworldly academic entering into the arena of this-worldly politics at a time of great political and religious turmoil. Was it a case of the innocent venturing where others more experienced in the ways of the world would have feared to tread? Or was it that he, and perhaps others of the Cambridge school, knew, if not fully well, at least well enough, what they were about?
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Notes
In the Introduction to Moral and Religious Aphorisms of Benjamin Whichcot. (London, 1930), pp. iii & iv.
Cf. The Life of the Learned and Pious Dr Henry More…by Richard Ward….171., edited with an Introduction and Notes by M. F. Howard (London, 1911), pp. 33–34.
Ibid.
The Platonic Renaissance in Englan. (London, 1953), pp. 49–50. This is a translation of the original 1932 German edition.
A. Rupert Hall: Henry More: Magic, Religion and Experimen. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990) p. 88.
Cf. Frederick Powicke: “Whichcote and his fellows certainly read Plato, but they read Plotinus far more”, The Cambridge Platonist. (London, 1926, p. 18). Coleridge said of them that they were “Plotinists rather than Platonists” (cf. John H. Muirhead: The Platonic Tradition in Anglo-Saxon Philosoph. (London, 1931, p. 27).
Ward’s Life, op. cit., p. 64.
See especially More’s Enchiridion Ethicum. The point is one I briefly discuss in “Hobbes’s hidden Influence” in G. A. J. Rogers and Alan Ryan: Perspectives on Thomas Hobbe. (Oxford, 1988) pp. 189–205, esp. pp. 200–202.
T.I.S. U., with the Notes and Dissertations of Dr J. L. Mosheim, in 3 vols. (London, 1845), Vol. 1, pp. 94–5.
Ibid., p. 95.
Benjamin Whichcote: Moral and Religious Aphorisms Collected from the Manuscript Papers…published… with very large Additions by Samuel Salte. (London, 1753) Aphorism no. 460.
Ibid., Aphorisms nos. 886, 889.
Ibid., Aphorism No. 457.
More’s family in Grantham was one that suffered badly in the war. Cudworth was apparently in financial difficulties, almost certainly as a result of the war, for some time. Worthington was another who was subject to considerable personal distress as a result of the war.
Cf. Ward’s Lif., p. 86.
See especially John W. Yolton’s Thinking Matter. Materialism in Eighteenth-Century Britai. (Oxford and Minneapolis, 1983) and Locke and French Materialis. (Oxford, 1991).
Richard Ashcraft: “Latitudinarianism and Toleration” in Philosophy, Science, and Religion in England, 1640–170., edited by Richard Kroll, Richard Ashcraft and Perez Zagorin (Cambridge, 1992) p. 163.
Ashcraft, op. cit., p. 162.
Ibid.
Op. cit., p. 113.
For an account of Cambridge in the Civil War see J. B. Mullinger: The University of Cambridg., Vol. 3 (Cambridge, 1911), Ch. 3.
Alan Gabbey, “Cudworth, More, and Mechanical Analogy”, in Richard Kroll, Richard Ashcraft and Perez Zagorin (eds), op. cit., p. 115.
For the background see Gabbey and the references cited there.
A Sermon Preached before the House of Commons March 31 164., pp. 13–14.
Ibid., p. 14.
Ibid., p. 15.
On this see John Spurr: The Restoration Church of England, 1646–168. (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1991), especially Chapter 6, and Spurr’s judgement on Richard Allestree’s (if he was indeed the author) The Whole Duty of Ma. (1658) that it “epitomized the commonsensical, noncontroversial, brand of theology on offer in the Restoration Church of England. It was typical of a certain practical ethos which had emerged in reaction to the speculative and ‘experimental’ religion of the Interregnum” (pp. 283–84).
Cf. Mullinger, op. cit., pp. 213–15.
Ibid., p. 214, fn. 2.
See especially Thomas Birch, “An Account of the Life and Writings of Ralph Cudworth” in T.I.S.U., ed. cit., Vol. 1, pp. x—xii.
The whole episode is well covered in Marjorie Nicolson’s classic paper “Christ’s College and the Latitude-Men”, Modern Philolog., 27, Part 1 (1929) pp. 35–53.
For Newton and Cudworth see especially Danton B. Sailor: “Newton’s Debt to Cudworth”, Journal of the History of Idea., 49, no. 3, 1988, pp. 511–538;
Richard Popkin: “The Crisis of Polytheism and the Answers of Vossius, Cudworth, and Newton”, in James E. Force and Richard Popkin: Essays on theContext, Nature, and Influence of Isaac Newton’s Theolog. (Dordrecht, 1990) pp. 9–25; and
Richard Popkin: The Third Force in Seventeenth Century Though. (Leiden, 1992), ch. XXI.
Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Tim. (London, 1850), p. 128.
Ibid., p. 128.
T. E.I.M., p. 82.
Ibid., pp. 86 and 87.
Ibid., p. 287.
T.F., ((London, 1838) reprinted, together with W. R. Scott: An Introduction to Cudworth’s Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Moralit. (London, 1891) Routledge/Thoemmes Press, London, 1992).
Ibid., p. 3.
Cf. The Conway Letter., edited by Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Revised Edition with an Introduction and New Material by Sarah Hutton (Oxford, 1992) pp. 298–99, 414, 415, 419, 423. The Deanery of Christ Church is given as a position offered to More in the article in the Dictionary of National Biography. know of no independent evidence for its truth.
Cf. Nicolson: “Christ’s College and the Latitude-men” p. 38, and More’s Preface to Tetractys AntiAstrologi. (1681) p. iii: “My nearest relations were deep sufferers for the King, and myself exposed (by constantly denying the Covenant) to the loss of that little preferment I had before those times, as I never received any employment or preferment in them” (cited by Nicolson).
Alan Gabbey quotes the relevant letter from More to Hartlib of December 30 (o.s.) 1649 in which More says that the book Hartlib has just sent him “came to my handes just immediately after I had taken the engagement”. Cf. Gabbey: “Cudworth, More, and Mechanical Analogy”, p. 113.
On this see Quentin Skinner: “Conquest and Consent: Thomas Hobbes and the Engagement Controversy”, The Interregnu., edited by G. E. Aylmer (London, 1972) pp. 79–98, esp. p. 80.
Gabbey, op. cit., p. 114.
The Apology of Dr Henry More… (London, 1664) p. 514.
Op. cit., p. 516.
For More’s account of this see Ward, op. cit., pp. 58–60.
Apology, p. 516.
“More, Locke and the Issue of Liberty” in Henry More (1614–1687). Tercentenary Studie., edited by Sarah Hutton (Dordrecht, 1990), p. 195.
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Rogers, G.A.J. (1997). The Other-Worldly Philosophers and the Real World: the Cambridge Platonists, Theology and Politics. In: Rogers, G.A.J., Vienne, J.M., Zarka, Y.C. (eds) The Cambridge Platonists in Philosophical Context. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idées, vol 150. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8933-8_1
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