 Section 1 of Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the 17th century, Volume 2, The Cambridge Platonists. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy, Volume 2, by John Tulloch. Chapter 1. Rational Position of the Cambridge School, Philosophy and Christianity, Part 1. With the advance of the 17th century, the rational spirit broadened and took to itself larger intellectual elements. It extended beyond the sphere of the church into the whole region of spiritual thought and philosophy. There remains to us, in this volume, the task of sketching this further stage in the intellectual and theological development of the English mind. The ideas of religious authority and the constitution of the church were the centers round which the preceding movement revolved. What makes the church, or in other words, what are the essential terms of Christian communion and the conditions of natural Christian organization, were the great questions of the time to which the spirit of religious inquiry sought an answer. All other questions were subordinate, even those arising out of the Synod of Dort and the progress of Arminianism. These helped to quicken the national consciousness, but the mainsprings of its action were the stirring ecclesiastical difficulties. Two parties stood opposed, each professing a theory of the church which admitted of no compromise. Inheriting alike the medieval idea of theological and ritual uniformity, which the Reformation had failed to destroy, they interpreted this idea in diverse directions, and so stood face to face in hopeless discord. Really exclusive, and claiming each to absorb the national life, it was inevitable that they should clash in a violent trial of strength. The intensity of the conflict was proportioned to the intensity of the division betwixt parties, sundered not only by political differences, but by rival ideals of religious government and worship which they interpreted respectively as of divine authority. It was the merit of Hales and Chillingworth and Taylor, attached as they were personally to one side in this struggle, that they penetrated beneath the theoretical narrowness which enslaved both sides and grasped the idea of the church more profoundly and comprehensively. They saw the inconsistency of a formal use divinum with the essential spirit of Protestantism imperfectly as this spirit had been developed in England or indeed elsewhere. According to this spirit the true idea of the church is moral and not ritual. It consists in certain verities of faith and worship rather than in any formal unities of creed or order. The genuine basis of Christian communion is to be found in a common recognition of the great realities of Christian thought and life and not in any outward adhesion to a definite ecclesiastical or theological system. All who profess the apostles creed are members of the church and the national worship should be so ordered as to admit of all who make this profession. The purpose of these churchmen, in short, was comprehension and not exclusion. While they held that no single type of church government and worship was absolutely divine, they acknowledged in different forms of church order an expression more or less of the divine ideas which lie at the root of all Christian society and which, and not any accident of external form, give to that society its essential character. In a word the church appeared to them the more divine, the more ample the spiritual activities it embraced and the less the circle of heresy or dissent it cut off. This breadth and toleration separated them alike from preletists and Puritans. Whatever we may think of the position and character of these men otherwise, they were the true authors of our modern religious liberty. To the Puritans we owe much. They've indicated the dignity of popular rights and the independence due to their religious conscience. If for the stern stand which they made in the 17th century, many of the elements which have grown into our national greatness and given robustness to our common national life would not have had free scope. But it argues a singular ignorance of the avowed aims of the Presbyterian party and the notorious principles of the Puritan theology to attribute to them the origin of the idea of religious liberty. As a party the Presbyterians expressly repudiated this idea. Their dogmatism was inflexible. Their church, according to them, was absolutely authoritative over religious opinion no less than religious practice. It could tolerate no differences of creed. The distinction of fundamental and non-fundamental articles of belief, elaborately maintained by Chillingworth and Taylor, was held to be dangerous heresy. And the principle of latitude, with all the essential ideas of free thought which have sprung out of it, was esteemed un-Christian. These ideas are to be found in the writings of the liberal churchmen of the 17th century and nowhere else in England at that time. At least nowhere else broadly and systematically expounded. It is necessary to vindicate the distinction of these men because history hitherto has hardly done justice to them. They have been forgotten amidst the more noisy parties of their time between whom they sought to mediate. As they fell aside personally unsupported by either preletists or Puritans so their influence has passed out of notice and remained un-honored in the pages of our popular historians. What they really did for the cause of religious thought has never been adequately appreciated. They worked with too little combination and consistency. But it is impossible in any real study of the age not to recognize the significance of their labors or to fail to see how much the higher movement of the national mind was due to them while others carried the religious and civil struggle forward to its sterner issues. But before this line of ecclesiastical liberalism had expended itself there had begun a new and deeper movement of religious thought in England. A movement like the former initiated and carried on by divines of the Church of England but distinguished from it by certain interesting contrasts. The inquiring spirit awakened by the religious contentions of the time took a bolder and broader turn as these contentions became more radical and sweeping. From church politics it passed into the general sphere of religious and philosophical discussion. Whereas the former movement was mainly ecclesiastical aiming at a wider extension of the Anglican Church system this movement was mainly philosophical and had to directly in view the interests of rational religion. To vindicate for the Church a more liberal constitution and a certain liberty of prophesying was the special problem with liberal thinkers in the first half of the 17th century. With the progress of the century this problem had by no means disappeared. On the contrary it emerged again in a distinctive political shape in the end of the century. But other and higher problems had in the meantime arisen. Questions affecting the nature of religion itself, the limits of theological dogmatism and the consequent value of orthodoxy and more than all questions touching the very essence of religious and moral principles in the face of a new spirit of speculation had come to the front. It is with such questions we shall find that our next group of divine's deals. Starting with many of the same thoughts as Hales and Chillingworth their liberalism takes a higher flight. They aim not only nor chiefly at ecclesiastical comprehension but to find a higher organon of Christian thought than any religious school had yet attempted and to vindicate the essential principles of Christian philosophy both against dogmatic excesses within the Church and philosophical extravagances without it. The superficial contrasts betwixt the two movements are curious and in one respect highly significant. While the former was mainly connected with Oxford and drew from this university its primary and special inspiration, the second is almost exclusively connected with Cambridge. Footnote. It will be remembered that even Taylor, although educated at Cambridge, was appointed very early by Lord to a fellowship at Oxford, namely to All Souls, 1636, just at the time that Chillingworth was engaged in his great work which appeared at the close of 1637. End of footnote. It is represented throughout by a succession of well-known Cambridge divines, sometimes spoken of as Latitudinarians and sometimes as Cambridge Platonists. The chief names in this illustrious succession are Benjamin Wichcote, John Smith, Ralph Cudworth, and Henry Moore. Apart from the affinities of thought which bind these men together into one of the most characteristic groups in the history of religious and philosophical thought in England, they were all closely united by personal and academic associations. In this respect they stand much more distinctively by themselves than our former group. They constitute a school of opinion in a far more real and effective sense. Another point of contrast is more noteworthy. While Hales and Chillingworth and Taylor came forth from the high church and royalist side in the great struggle of the century and were all of them personal friends of law, the Cambridge divines, on the contrary, sprang from the Puritan side. They were successors of the men displaced by the Puritan authorities in 1644. They owed their position, first of all, to the triumphant parliament, and they were secured and encouraged in it by the great protector. Moreover, with a single exception, Henry Moore, they were all educated at the famous Puritan College Emmanuel. This serves to throw light at once on their personal concert and the common springs of thought which moved them. It is far from accidental that in tracing the course of liberal religious thought in the seventeenth century, a comparatively narrow stream running betwixt high banks of authoritative dogmatism, we should have to turn in the progress of our research from one side to the other, from the sacerdotalism of Lod to the orthodoxy of the Westminster Assembly. The change is only a natural one arising out of the altered position of parties and the new balance of forces affecting the national mind. The spirit of inquiry in every age springs, by way of reaction, from the prevailing dogmatism with which it comes in contact. Reason is aroused in the face of the authority that is most urgent and dominant. It is only therefore what we might expect when we find the Cambridge movement connected in its beginning with certain discussions betwixt Wichcote and Tuckney, who was his old tutor at Emmanuel, and afterwards associated with him in the university. But we shall be better able to understand the effect of this spirit of reaction and also the special philosophical character of the movement by taking a glance at the religious circumstances which meet us about the middle of the century and the new speculative influences which had begun to move the higher minds of the time. The Cambridge Platonists, like every other group of thinkers, stand closely in connection with their age, at once interpreting its greater thoughts and carrying them onwards to new developments. They can only be understood as the product of the most active intellectual elements of the generation which they so prominently represented and adorned. 1. Towards the middle of the 17th century, an obvious turn can be traced in the religious spirit of England. The question of the church was no longer pressing. While fire from being settled, it seemed for the time indefinitely postponed under the strong rule of the military power which had risen to preeminence on the ruins of every other authority. But if ecclesiastical disputes no longer vexed the national temper in the same degree, theological polemics raged more fiercely than ever. Numerous sects had sprung up, each claiming to represent the divine mind and to expound a universal truth to a distracted people. These sects were obnoxious alike to both the old parties, to the Puritans even more than to the preletists. They are spoken of as anti-scripturists, familists, anti-nomians, anti-trinitarians, Aryans, and abaptists. Footnote. A testimony of the ministers in the province of Essex. Also, a testimony subscribed by the ministers within the province of London against the errors, heresies, and blasphemies of these times. London, 1647 and 1648. End of footnote. The tenets of many of them were no doubt at variance with all the theologies hitherto accepted, even should we receive with abatement the Puritan description that they were, quote, the very dregs and spawn of old accursed heresies which had been already condemned, dead, buried, and rotten in their graves long ago, close quote. But they served to raise fundamental questions which had not hitherto been discussed. If they revolted the sober-minded, they were yet promulgated by enthusiasts as truths from heaven and received by many as such. Their authors broached them expressly as new lights, new truths, and in doing so they alleged the same divine authority which the Puritans had been the first to evoke against the church. All classes of sectaries put themselves forward with the same pertinacity as the children of the Reformation and the true interpreters of a renovated Christianity. In the face of such conflicting pretensions, it was inevitable that religious inquiry should go deeper and take a more comprehensive range than hitherto. What was the real nature of religion thus diversely represented? How was religious truth to be discriminated? And what was the use of reason in relation to it? Such were the questions more or less directly suggested by the very atmosphere of discussion in which these sects lived and which they propagated far beyond their own circle. It may seem strange that so many wild opinions should have begun to spread during the very years that the Westminster Assembly was sitting. Within the Assembly itself it is well known there were little or no differences of doctrinal opinion. Its theology bears the special stamp of rigorous dogmatic uniformity. But the wave of religious excitement, in the flow of which Presbyterian Calvinism had triumphed and the Assembly had been convened, passed far beyond the bounds of its control. The enthusiasm which had been so powerfully called forth was not to be restrained on its spiritual any more than on its political side. In both respects it outran all calculation and proved too strong for the authority which had enlisted it. If the Westminster Divines had possessed the power they would have put a speedy check upon the up-springing fanaticisms which grieved and alarmed them. Footnote. Abominable errors, damnable heresies and hard blasphemies, the Purim testimonies already quoted say, to be lamented if it were possible with tears of blood. End of footnote. Their wish to do so is beyond dispute. They saw nothing but the devil's handiwork in the sectarian growths which appeared profusely around them. It was as if the enemy had come by night and sown tears among the fair wheat which they had planted. But the civil power began to fail them in the very hour of their triumph, and while able to carry through their dogmatic decrees with a singular unanimity and even to obtain parliamentary sanction for them, they yet had no means of enforcing them. The decrees remained a great monument of legislative theology but the legislature did not venture to impose them by external authority. They were left to tell by the weight of their own intrinsic credibility, and the times were too insurrectionary to defer to such an authority as this. There is even good reason to conclude that the ultra-dogmatic character of the Westminster Confession of Faith was itself among the chief reasons of the reaction to a more liberal theology. It was not merely that the theological mind, which had been so rigidly bent in one direction, had a natural tendency to swing back to a laxer curve, but there was evidently a strong necessity felt by some of the younger clergy trained in the traditions of the Puritan school to turn men's thoughts from the polemical details which had so much engrossed them to other and as they supposed higher aspects of religious truth. Two things seemed especially to have impressed them, the need of some broader and more conciliatory principles of theology to act as solvents of the interminable disputes which raged around them and the need of bringing into more direct prominence the practical and moral side of religion. These two things, it will be seen, became closely connected in their minds. The Puritan theology in the seventeenth century, with all its noble attainments, was both intolerant and theoretical in a high degree. It would admit of no rival near its throne. It was impatient of even the least variation from the language of orthodoxy. It emphasized all the transcendental and divine aspects of Christian truth, rendering them into theories highly definite and consistent, but in their very consistency, disregardful of moral facts and the complexities of practical life. Younger theologians of a reflective turn looked on the one hand at this compact mass of doctrinal divinity, measuring the whole circle of religious thought and carefully articulated in all its parts, and on the other hand at the state of the religious world and the church around them. The sense of schism between theory and practice, between divinity and morals, was painfully brought home to them. It was no wonder if they began to ask themselves whether there was not a more excellent way, and whether reason and morality were not essential elements of all religious dogma. Their minds were almost necessarily driven towards what was termed in reproach by the older Puritans a kind of moral divinity. Footnote. A phrase of Tuckneys in his second letter to witchcoat. End of footnote. Longing for peace and a higher and more beneficent action of Christian brotherhood, they naturally turned in a different direction from that which had been so little fruitful of either. They sought to soften down, instead of sharpening doctrinal distinctions, to bring out points of agreement instead of points of difference in the prevailing medley of religious opinions. Especially they tried to find a common center of thought and action in certain universal principles of religious sentiment rather than in the more abstruse conclusions of polemical theology. They became in short eclectics against the theological dogmatism and narrowness of their time very much as Hales and Chillingworth became advocates of comprehension against the ecclesiastical dogmatism and narrowness of theirs. Two. But there were other higher and perhaps more direct causes which contributed to the rise of the Cambridge movement and imparted to it its peculiar character. It was the outcome not merely of a new growth of religious sentiment but of a determinate series of speculative influences which distinguished the century not less than its religious agitations. It is this double feature which gives to the movement its chief significance and its best claims to historical commemoration. It not only carried forward the tide of religious liberality but it took up and molded into a definite form of its own all the nobler intellectual tendencies of the time. Without exception the Cambridge Latitudinarian divines may be termed religious philosophers. Some deserve this epithet more conspicuously than others but all deserve it more or less. In their writings we pass into a higher if not more bracing atmosphere than that in which we have been dwelling in the pages of Hales and Chillingworth. They discussed larger questions and principles of a more fundamental and far-reaching character. They sought in a word to marry philosophy to religion and to confirm the union on the indestructible basis of reason and the essential elements of our higher humanity. This was their special ambition and it was a grand ambition whatever we may think of its success. It was the first elaborate attempt to wed Christianity and philosophy made by any Protestant school and it may be even said to have been the first true attempt of the kind since the days of the great Alexandrian teachers. Footnote. The Florentine movement in the latter part of the 15th century is hardly an exception. Marcellius Ficinas and the two Pizzi of Mirandola, uncle and nephew, were not theologians although animated by a profound theological instinct. The Academy of the Medici of which they were the ornaments was in part at least literary and humanistic in its tendencies. End of footnote. For the Christian philosophies of the Middle Ages, noble as many of them were, did not originate in a free interchange of philosophic and religious affection. Philosophy, even in the hands of so vigorous and independent a thinker as Anselm, still more in the hands of his successors, the great school men of the 13th and 14th centuries, was the servitor rather than the handmaid of faith. It had no life of its own apart from the church and therefore could not enter into any free voluntary union with it. But with the revival of a new speculative spirit in Europe in the 17th century, the question of the relations of philosophy and religion once more became a vital interest, fruitful of good or evil to human progress. It is the glory of the Cambridge Divines that they welcomed this new spirit of speculation, gave it frank entertainment in their halls of learning, and while enriching it with a culture all their own, sought to fuse it by the spontaneous action of their own thoughtfulness into a philosophy of religion at once free and conservative in which the rights of faith and the claims of the speculative intellect should each have free scope and blend together for mutual elevation and strength. It is not easy to trace the distinct steps by which the new speculative spirit, which marks the rise of modern philosophy in the first half of the 17th century, passed to Cambridge, nor is it easy to determine the share which each of the great representatives of this spirit had in evoking our school of thought. The writings, both of Bacon and Descartes, exercised a definite influence in the university by the middle of the century. But we cannot clearly trace the growth of this influence, nor mark how far the one and how far the other contributed to awaken the speculative life of its teachers. As the Novum Organon had appeared as early as 1620, it might be supposed that the Baconian philosophy would have been the first to operate upon the academic mind of England and to give to it its special cast of philosophical culture. But the facts do not answer to this expectation. There are no indications that the writings of Bacon, for many years after their appearance, exercised any influence on the studies of either of the universities. On the contrary, we possess the most clear and satisfactory evidence that the old scholasticism held its ground at Cambridge for at least 20 years after the publication of the Novum Organon, as if no breath whatever of new life had stirred the speculative atmosphere. Not to speak of other sources, this is amply proved by all we know of Cambridge University studies in the interval. Jeremy Taylor, for example, was a student during the years 1626 to 33. And although imaginary pictures have been drawn of the stimulating effect of the new philosophy upon a richly susceptible mind like his, it is clear that he really knew nothing of this philosophy as he was certainly in no degree influenced by it. In the whole cast of his thought and his mode of treating moral and semi-speculative questions, Taylor belongs to the old medieval school. But we possess more definite evidence than this. During almost the same course of years as Taylor studied at Cambridge, there was a still greater student there, John Milton. And Milton's college exercises are preserved and have been published. They are a curious picture of the frivolities of the scholastic system and serve to show how entirely the system still dominated in the university. They discuss such questions as the music of the spheres, whether day or night is the more excellent, whether there are not partial forms in an animal in addition to the whole. The very statement of such questions carries the mind beyond bacon to that study of words rather than of things against which he protested. Students of Milton will also remember the poem written by him as a vacation exercise in the 19th year of his age or in the year 1627, in which ends as father of the predicaments, along with substance, quantity, quality, and relation, his sons, is represented as speaking. It is clear that the scholastic spirit, if degenerate in strength, had yet during these years lost nothing of its hold upon the plan of Cambridge education. The academic mind remained unmoved by anything higher, and there is little doubt that the poet was thinking of his own philosophic nurture in those years when he afterwards denounced the traditionary education as an asinine feast of saw-thistles and brambles. It was not till fully ten years later when both Jeremy Taylor and Milton were actively engaged in the religious struggle of their age that bacon and Descartes began to be studied at Cambridge. The latter appears then as the more powerful influence. At least his influence can be traced more directly. Henry Moore carried on an elaborate correspondence in Latin with Descartes in the years 1648 to 49, in which he expresses himself as an admiring student and implies that the Cartesian philosophy had already obtained a recognized footing in Cambridge in opposition to the expiring scholasticism. Footnote. Descartes' discourse on method appeared in 1637, his meditations in 1641, and principles of philosophy in 1644. End of footnote. It is easy to understand Moore's enthusiasm for a philosophy which, as he says, was, quote, not only delightful to read but especially useful in its bearing on that, which is the highest end of all philosophy, namely religion. Close quote. Descartes not only furnished a new method to the awakening speculative spirit, but he addressed himself to the same great questions concerning the existence of God and the nature of spirit and matter, which formed the philosophic summit to which all the lower inquiries of the Cambridge divines led up. It was only natural, therefore, that his writings should have called forth responsive enthusiasm at Cambridge. They did not awaken the speculative spirit there. It had already begun to stir under native impulses, but they met it and so far directed it. The Cambridge teachers, most of all, perhaps, Henry Moore himself, were men very different from Descartes. Their mode of thought presents a striking contrast to that of the calmly skeptical, direct, and geometric French thinker. In no special sense can they be called his pupils or followers, but they move with him under the same common force. They are so far inspired by the same common aim. Both sought to ground the highest truth on a clear and immutable basis of reason. Descartes working towards this end from the philosophical, Cudworth, and Moore from the theological side. The main thought of both was the same, although they approached it differently. For it is a mistake to represent Descartes as, no less than bacon, separating philosophy from religion and desiring to keep them asunder. He only separated the one as well as the other from tradition in order that he might reunite them in the great center of reason and plant them together on a sure foundation. And this, too, was the very aim of the Cambridge Platonists. Only they contemplated the problem as Christian theologians. Descartes contemplated it as a pure thinker and speculative enthusiast. The spirit of the Baconian philosophy has much less affinity with any of the writers of the Cambridge School. For, first of all, bacon openly proclaims a divorce betwixt philosophy and Christian theology. While the one is supposed by him to follow the light of nature, the other, he says, is grounded only upon the word and oracle of God. He shrinks, therefore, from applying any of the tests of his philosophical method to the investigation of Christian truth. Should he step out of the bark of human reason and pass into the ship of the church, it is only the divine compass which can rightly direct his course. Neither, he adds, quote, will the stars of philosophy which have hitherto conspicuously shown on us any more give their light so that on this subject it will be as well to keep silence. Close quote. He speaks also timidly and vaguely, although in some respects, finally, of the use of reason in religion. It has nothing to do with the primary principles or articles of religious truth. These are exempted from its examination and given upon authority not to be questioned. They are not only posita, but placita. Footnote, quote, the use of human reason in religion is of two sorts. The former, in the conception and apprehension of the mysteries of God to us revealed. The other, in the inferring and deriving of doctrine and direction thereupon. The former extendeth to the mysteries themselves. But how? By way of illustration and not by way of argument. The latter consists of indeed of probation and argument. In the former, we see God vouchsafeth to descend to our capacity in the expression of his mysteries in sort as may be sensible unto us, and doth graft his revelations and holy doctrine upon the notions of our reason and applyeth his inspirations to open our understanding as the form of the key to the ward of the lock. For the latter, there is allowed us a use of reason and argument, secondary and respective, although not original and absolute. For after the articles and principles of religion are placed and exempted from examination of reason, it is then permitted unto us to make derivations and inferences from, and according to the analogy of them, for our better direction. In nature, this holdeth not for both the principles are examinable by induction, though not by a medium of syllogism. And besides, those principles or first positions have not discordance with that reason which droth down and deduceth the inferior positions. But yet, it holdeth not in religion alone, but in many knowledges, both of greater and smaller nature, namely wherein there are not only posita, but placita. Close quote. Advancement of learning, book two. End of footnote. It is scarcely possible to avoid the suspicion that on such subjects Bacon does not speak his whole mind or at any rate that his mind was not directed to them with any clear and consistent energy. We seem to catch the tone of the courtier and politician rather than of the courageous and enlightened thinker. Footnote. The books of the De Augmentis are severally dedicated ad regem sum end of footnote. The Cambridge Platonists were not likely to borrow directly from such a scheme of thought as this, nor to feel much sympathy with the spirit of Baconian reserve and caution. Their temper and drift of mind were entirely different. Nor can it be said that there is any trace of the special study of Bacon in their writings, certainly not in the most characteristic of them. Yet, Baconianism was not without its influence upon the rising school of liberal divines as it was undoubtedly a powerful element of culture at Cambridge from about the middle of the century. Isaac Barrow, who took his degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1648, studied Bacon closely as well as Descartes, and John Ray, the celebrated naturalist, was the companion of his studies. These men are the direct and genuine representatives of the experimental philosophy. They adopted its method and carried forward the course of scientific research, which, half a century later, reached such grand results in the labors of Sir Isaac Newton, Barrow's illustrious successor in the mathematical chair. But Baconianism, like every other great movement of thought, extended far beyond its direct followers. It diffused itself as a general intellectual influence and became a part, in some respects, the most conspicuous part of the higher spirit of the age in which all active and forward minds shared. There was no school of thought in the second half of the century, which can be said to have been independent of it. And as the most prominent opponent of the old scholastic system, it was apt to receive the credit of the whole movement against it and to be taken as the type of the freer intellectual life which had everywhere begun to prevail. End of Chapter 1, Part 1. Section 2 of Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy, Volume 2 by John Tulloch. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 1, Historical Position of the Cambridge School, Philosophy and Christianity, Part 2. There can be no doubt that at the time of the Restoration, the Cambridge Divines were identified in public estimation with the progress of a new philosophy in opposition to that of Aristotle and the traditionary methods of inquiry. In a curious pamphlet of 1662, which professes to give a brief account of them under the name of the new sect of latitude men, the point chiefly emphasized is their supposed connection with this new or mechanical philosophy. Footnote. The pamphlet reports to be written by S.P. of Cambridge. S.P. has been supposed to be Simon Patrick afterwards Bishop of Ely, a friend of Tillotson, and, along with him, a pupil of the Cambridge Divines. But the evidence connecting him with its authorship is not conclusive. See, preface to a new edition of Patrick's Works, University Press Oxford, 1858 by the Reverend Alexander Taylor M.A., Michelle Fellow of Queens College, Oxford. A preface admirable both in point of thought and composition. The full title of the pamphlet is a brief account of the new sect of latitude men together with some reflections upon the new philosophy. In its original form, it is extremely rare, but it may be found in a collection of tracts well known under the name of The Phoenix to all students of the 17th century. End of footnote. The pamphlet is throughout a spirited composition, not without lively touches of description, which may afterwards engage us. But its chief interest for our present purpose is the attempt which it makes to depict, under a sort of allegory, the philosophical position of the Latitudinarian school. Religion or the church is represented under the figure of an ancient clock, the property of a certain husbandman in an old mansion house which had been a long while out of kelter order and needed to be repaired. A succession of persons supposed to denote the diverse sects of philosophy essay to mend it. A certain parapetetic artificer, something above the degree of a tinker, a clockmaker from the next town who thought himself well-read in clock philosophy. The farmer's son, newly come from the university, inept at understanding things but apt, parrot-like, to catch at words. All, however, fail to do the clock any good till the landlord of the farmer, an ingenious gentleman who had used to take in pieces his own watch and set it together again, takes the matter in hand, impatient of all the jargon he has heard, and explains to the owner the simple mechanical construction of the instrument and what was needed to put it right. There is a want of clearness and consistency in the representation. It is by no means evident what special systems beyond the scholastic the writer intends to ridicule. But there can be no doubt of his intention to exalt the new or mechanical philosophy and that the philosophy he has chiefly in view under this name is that of Descartes who hath proceeded farthest in attempts to explain that vast machine, the universe. To them that have once tasted of the mechanical philosophy, forms and qualities are likely to give as little satisfaction as the clockmaker did to the intelligent gentleman in the story. So far from being inimical to a sound divinity, the philosophy will prove its best support. It will be faithful to Christianity no less against the open violence of atheism than the secret treachery of enthusiasm and superstition. Nor will it be possible, the author concludes, otherwise to free religion from scorn and contempt if her priests be not as well skilled in nature as the people and her champions furnished with as good artillery as her enemies. Close quote. All this plainly implies that the latitude men were at least no enemies to naturalistic studies. It implies more than this. It is evident that the school of Cambridge theologians were in active sympathy with all that was really progressive and liberal in the scientific spirit of the time, that they had given a cordial welcome to the aspirations of the experimental philosophy and the new study of nature which had begun to inspire many and impart a new life and reality to their thoughts. They were so far in hearty affinity with this and all other forward tendencies of the time, although their own speculative impulse came from a different quarter and followed a different method. When we turn to their own writings, there is no difficulty in determining the main source of their speculative inspiration. As a philosophical school, they were formed by the study of the Platonic writings, the writings that is to say, not only of Plato himself, but of those Alexandrian teachers who followed out in a theological direction the Platonic course of thought. This was the positive influence which, more than any other, molded the minds of all the men we have mentioned and gave consistency and character, as it has given a name, to their speculative position. They brought the church back to her old loving nurse, the Platonic philosophy, and sought to raise the level of her thought again to that region of higher ideas in which she had once delighted to dwell. Within the bosom of Protestantism, they kindled for the first time the love of this nobler speculation and endeavored to carry up its dogmatic problems into an atmosphere of rational thinking which should explain and verify them. Platonists by nature, they were drawn to the study of Plato and his scholars above others. To the great classics of idealism, they abandoned themselves with an enthusiasm which tinctures all their writings and the constant outbreak of which, while it colors and emphasizes their style, also sometimes oppresses the freedom and marries the strength of their own thoughts. This Platonic revival was highly important for the interests of philosophy in England in the 17th century. It not only deepened in many minds the superficial tendencies of the Baconian system and served to link together for them the spheres of spiritual law and material fact, but it evoked the only force adequate to meet the development of naturalism in a direction which threatened the distinctive principles of religion and the church. Bacon had made natural science the basis of all other science. All real knowledge or philosophy, according to him, came from the investigation and classification of outward facts. Hobbes took up the method and applied it to the study, not of nature, but of society and the whole moral and spiritual order in which Man finds himself here. He sought the basis of this order in certain obvious facts of human nature and built up an elaborate hypothesis of social and political morality on the analysis and coordination of these facts. The hypothesis was one directly in the face of the Cambridge movement of thought and it served to call forth all the energies of the movement and give decision to them. While Platonism then may be said to have originated the movement, hubbism was the means of concentrating its thought and giving dogmatic direction to it. While the one was the positive, the other was the negative influence which formed the school. It had been the aim of the higher thought of the century to depreciate the principle of mere arbitrary rule both in politics and religion to carry men's minds away from traditional cannons and dogmas to the true sphere of authority in reason and conscience. The movement had been in search of some rational principle of certitude amidst the decay of ancient systems and of mere institutional and personal safeguards. It remained for the great genius of Hobbes to try and arrest this progress and reinstate on a philosophic basis the principle of arbitrary authority. To this task he brought rare powers and the most independent spirit of speculation. For Hobbes was a genuine child of his age and everything saved the conclusions of his philosophy. He was a radical in the service of reaction. His mind was revolutionary in its vigor and directness, its hardy-hood and self-assertion, its freedom from pedantry and contempt for the wisdom of the ancients. There is no one of all the thinkers of the century who has dealt to the old scholasticism such hearty and fatal blows. His clear and subtle if sometimes coarse analysis may be said to have laid the foundation of psychological science which has been so fruitful since his day and to his organizing conception political philosophy owes its creation whatever we may think of the character of the creation in his hands. But behind all his great gifts there was no spiritual insight, no eye for any truths deeper than those of the sense or the intellect. Not only had he no appreciation of such truths but apparently he had no perception of their existence. He was honestly ignorant of them. In the compass of his own keen and powerful mind he found no trace of them. Accordingly he judged human nature and human society as if they were not. All that he saw he saw with a rare clearness. But there was a side of human life which he did not see at all to which he turned an eye wholly blind. So it was that the civil and religious distractions of his age presented to him nothing but their obvious aspect of quarrelsomeness and misery. He detected nothing of the deeper spiritual and political influences which were moving the age and amidst all its confusion moving it towards a higher organization both of religious and civil well-being. Nothing of the underlying moral forces which were painfully growing into a better order a higher form of commonwealth. There were to him no such moral forces. Nothing he says is in itself either bad or good, ugly or beautiful. Everything gets its quality from without and is stamped by external authority. As words are merely the counters of wise men so actions are in themselves entirely indifferent. They get all their value or meaning from a sanction outside of them. Moral duties have their elementary basis in human nature but they derive all their social or organic effect from the supreme political power. In this sense if not primarily and absolutely morality is the creature of the state. So also is religion which has a natural foundation in human fear but the truths of which can only be defined and guaranteed by the supreme authority residing in the sovereign who only has the legislative power. It was impossible in fact for Hobbes starting as he did from a mere external view of human nature as a collection of selfish instincts at necessary war with one another to find any regulative principle within any law of the mind which could subdue the lower conflict of the passions. There was to him no sphere of human nature corresponding to the law of the mind and the principle of control therefore must come from without and not from within. Similarly he could find no rallying point for human society save in external law backed by a supreme power capable of enforcing it. This was to him at once the highest ethical and the highest political conception and within the control of this sovereign power whose verdicts admitted of no challenge and no division he sought to reduce all the movements of life, of society and the church. Never were nobler powers consecrated to lower service. Never was a bolder attempt made to contradict the very idea of moral progress and of rational liberty and religion and to enthrone in their stead a gigantic naturalism which might conserve society but only at the expense of the nobler aspirations for the excitement and development of which society is to be valued. The essentially un-Christian character of Hobbes' speculations shine through all the disguise of scriptural language and the framework of biblical conceptions which he delights to employ. He is not the more but the less a Christian for all his parade of Christian phraseology. His professions of respect for supernaturalism and his descriptive analysis of a Christian commonwealth may be honest or not. This does not alter the essential character of his thought which leaves no rational basis in human nature for either morality or religion. A system such as this was in every respect antagonistic to the platonic school at Cambridge. They had no doubts from the first of its meaning. They saw in it a living and formidable opponent to their most cherished convictions. They disliked both its political and speculative spirit and armed themselves to encounter it. Even before the publication of the Leviathan in 1651 when the first sketch of the hobby and philosophy had only been privately printed at Paris and circulated, Cudworth would seem to have discerned its purport and entered the lists against it in the theses which he delivered for his degree of B.D. at Cambridge in 1644. The great labors of his life were more or less directed by the same antagonism. Everywhere, the principles of the Leviathan crop out in the line of his thought and they influence no less conspicuously the argumentation of his colleague Henry Moore. Both writers are only to be understood in the light of Hobbes' theories. The platonic background of their speculations only comes into full prominence against the atomistic materialism which they believed to be the essential aim of his writings to propagate. It was the special merit of the school that they were able to meet this materialistic tendency, not merely as some others by polemical criticism and clever exposure but by a well-ordered scheme of thought whose principles had been already worked into unison with Christian philosophy. Footnote. Such as Clarendon and others. Clarendon wrote in his exile a survey of the Leviathan and dedicated it to Charles II. End of footnote. This was the glory of the school. It was also its weakness. It gave a systematic and elaborate plan to their arguments but it tempted them also, not infrequently, to substitute mere learning for reasoning and to call in ancient verdicts instead of working out difficulties by their own and kindled and living thoughtfulness. As mere writers, the Cambridge men were less original and advanced than Hobbes. They served the cause of progress but with weapons of less novelty and precision than those with which he opposed it. Their meaning was infinitely higher, their form by no means so perfect. While they led the cause of rational liberty and independent speculation in the highest subjects, they remained fettered by a literary traditionalism and bondage to the mere verbalism of ancient opinion which greatly impaired the value of their labors and have given them a far less living influence than they deserved in the history of opinion. There are but few contemporary notices of the Cambridge Latitudinarians and such as they are they do not greatly help us to a full or enlightened conception of their position and objects. Burnett alludes to them in a well-known passage characterizing them after his manner in a few graphic touches but he does not give any detailed description of their relation to the parties of the time. The passage, though well-known, is too significant to be omitted. Speaking generally of the clergy of the restoration, he says that, quote, they generally took more care of themselves than of the church. The men of merit and service were loaded with many livings and many dignities. With this great accession of wealth, there broke in upon the church a great deal of luxury and high living on the pretense of hospitality, while others made purchases and left great estates, most of which we have seen melt away. And with this overset of wealth and pomp that came on men in the decline of their parts and age, they, who were now growing into old age, became lazy and negligent in all the true concerns of the church. They left preaching and writing to others while they gave themselves up to ease and sloth. In all which, sad representation, some few exceptions are to be made, but so few that if a new set of men had not appeared of another stamp, the church had quite lost her esteem over the nation. These were generally of Cambridge, formed under some divines, the chief of whom were Doctors Wichcote, Cudworth, Wilkins, Moore, and Worthington. Wichcote was a man of a rare temper, very mild and obliging. He had great credit with some that had been eminent in the late times, but 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, systematical way of those times, he studied to raise those who conversed with him to a nobler set of thoughts and to consider religion as a seed of a deformed nature, to use one of his own phrases. In order to this he set young students much on reading the ancient philosophers, chiefly Plato, Tully, and Plotin, and on considering the Christian religion as a doctrine sent from God both to elevate and sweet and human nature in which he was a great example, as well as a wise and kind instructor. Cudworth carried this on with a great strength of genius and a vast compass of learning. He was a man of great conduct and prudence, upon which his enemies had very falsely accused him of craft and dissimulation. Wilkins was of Oxford but removed to Cambridge. His first rise was in the Elector Palatine's family when he was in England. Afterwards he married Cromwell's sister but made no other use of that alliance but to do good offices and to cover the university from the sourness of Owen and Goodwin. At Cambridge he joined with those who studied to propagate better thoughts, to take men off from being in parties or from narrow notions from superstitious conceits and a fierceness about opinions. He was also a great observer and promoter of experimental philosophy which was then a new thing and much looked after. He was naturally ambitious but was the wisest clergyman I ever knew. He was a lover of mankind and had a delight in doing good. Moore was an open-hearted and sincere Christian philosopher who studied to establish men in the great principles of religion against atheism that was then beginning to gain ground chiefly by reason of the hypocrisy of some and the fantastical conceits of the more sincere enthusiasts. Close quote. Interposing a brief description of the philosophy of Hobbes he proceeds, quote, he, Hobbes, thought interest and fear were the chief principles of society and he put all morality in the following that which was our private will or advantage. He thought religion had no other foundation than the laws of the land and he put all the law in the will of the prince or of the people for he read his book at first in favor of absolute monarchy but turned it afterwards to gratify the Republican Party. These were his true principles though he had disguised them for deceiving unwary readers and this set of motions came to spread much. The novelty and boldness of them set many on reading them. The impiety of them was acceptable to men of corrupt minds which were but too prepared to receive them by the extravagances of the late times. So this set of men at Cambridge studied to assert and examine the principles of religion and morality on clear grounds and in a philosophical method. In this way more led the way to many that came after him. Worthington was a man of eminent piety and great humility and practiced a most sublime way of self-denial and devotion. All these and those who were formed under them studied to examine further into the nature of things and had been done formerly. They declared against superstition on the one hand and enthusiasm on the other. They loved the constitution of the church and the liturgy and could well live under them but they did not think it unlawful to live under another form. They wished that things might have been carried with more moderation and they continued to keep a good correspondence with those who had differed from them in opinion and allowed a great freedom both in philosophy and in divinity. From whence they were called men of latitude. And upon this men of narrower thoughts and fiercer tempers fastened upon them the name of latitude and arians. They read Episcopious much and the making out the reasons of things being a main part of their studies their enemies called them Sosinians. They were all very zealous against popery and so they becoming soon very considerable the papists set themselves against them to decry them as atheists, deists or at best Sosinians. Close quote. Footnote. Burnett's history of his own times Volume 1 pages 339 to 342. End of footnote. In addition to Burnett there are two contemporary writers who give us a general description of the Cambridge Platonists or latitude and arians. SP of Cambridge to whose pamphlet we have already alluded and Edward Fowler who was subsequently Bishop of Gloucester. Fowler's publication is entitled Principles and Practices of Certain Moderate Divines of the Church of England abusively called latitude and arians, etc. in a free discourse between two intimate friends. The free discourse was published anonymously probably in 1670 the second edition bears the date of 1671 but it is well understood to have been the production of Fowler who is somewhat better known as the author of a treatise on the design of Christianity by which he sought to follow up the reasoning of the discourse and the spirit and principles of which were vigorously attacked by Bunyan. Fowler is a clever and ingenious writer not without some degree of thoughtfulness but his sketch of the opinions he so much admires is very desultory with a constant tendency to run into tedious and aimless discussion. We can gather, however, from his description general as it is and from the pamphlet of S.P. certain features which it may be worth selecting and setting before the reader. Footnote. There is also a pamphlet by Samuel Parker, A.M. Afterwards Bishop of Oxford and titled A Free and Impartial Senture of the Platonic Philosophy 1665 Parker we have already encountered as Hales's critic and it is probable that he may have intended in his general criticism of the Platonic philosophy an indirect censure of the Cambridge School with whose tendencies he had plainly no affinity. His pamphlet, however, contains no direct illusions to the school and its somewhat abstract polemics barely touch it. If somewhat free and coarse in its handling Parker's pamphlet is yet written with clearness, point and vigor and is in brief a very fair defense of Bikonian or inductive philosophy against Platonic or other idealism. And a footnote. Both writers witnessed strongly to the recognized position of the Cambridge Divines as a distinct school of religious thought in the decade following the restoration. In this respect they were objects of popular criticism, everywhere spoken about with the ignorant and vague apprehension with which new movements are apt to be regarded by the vulgar. I can come into no company of late, says the Oxford correspondent of SP, quote, but I find the chief discourse to be about a certain new sect of men called latitude men. But though the name be in every man's mouth, yet the explicit meaning of it or the heresy which they hold or the individual persons that are of it are as unknown for ought I can learn as the order of the Rosicrucians. On the one side I hear them represented as a party very dangerous to the King and Church as seeking to undermine them both. On the other side I cannot hear what their particular opinions or practices are that bear any such dangerous aspect. Close quote. The name of latitude men, SP admits in reply, quote, is daily exagitated amongst us both in taverns and pulpits and very tragical representations made of them. A latitude man, therefore, according to the best definition I can collect, is an image of clouts that men set up to encounter with for want of a real enemy. It is a convenient name to reproach a man that you owe a spite to. It is what you will and you may affix it upon whom you will. To something we'll serve to talk of when all other discourse fails. Close quote. In the discourse our divines appear much in the same light. I have often observed, says one of the two intimate friends who carry on the dialogue, quote, that the fierce men, as much at odds as they are among themselves, can too well agree in heaping calamities on these gentlemen and in giving them the worst of characters. I have heard them represented as a generation of people that have revived the abominable principles of the old Gnostics as a company of men that are prepared for the embracing of any religion and to renounce or subscribe to any doctrine rather than incur the hazard of persecution and that they esteem him the only heretic that refuses to be of that religion, the king or state professor, or at least the most dangerous heretic that suffering is to be preferred before sinning. They are characterized as people whose only religion it is to temporize and transform themselves into any shape for their secular interests and that judge no doctrine so saving as that which obligeth to so complying and condescending a humor as to become all things to all men that so by any means they may gain something. As I heard one once Jeer a most worthy person as he thought, no doubt, very wittily." Close quote. Again says one of the friends, quote, Have you not heard the choleric gentleman distinguish these persons by a long nickname which they have taught their tongues to pronounce as roundly as if it were shorter than it is by four or five syllables? Yes is the reply, oftener, I presume, than you have for though we are both countrymen and wanted more than most to a solitary life, yet my occasions call me abroad and into varieties of companies more frequently than yours do you, where I hear, ever and anon, the word of a foot and a half long sounded out with a great grace and that not only at fires and tables but sometimes from pulpits too. Nay, and it accompanied good store of other bombasts and little witticisms in seasoning not long since the stately oxonean theater. Close quote. The general position of the Cambridge Platonists is sufficiently evident from these remarks. They enjoyed the vague repute of thinkers in a frivolous and ignorant age. They were misunderstood alike by the fanatics of the church and of nonconformity. To both they were objects of dislike and yet in some degree of fear. To the rising generation, half fanatical and half epicurean, the generation which gave ten pounds for the paradise lost and left its author to die in obscurity and poverty, they seem mainly to have been objects of ridicule. The character of the age may be judged from the character of its jokes. It seemed to it a piece of humor to speak of a latitudinarian as a gentleman of a wide swallow. We do not learn anything very definite from the discourse any more than from the tractate of SP as to the philosophical principles of the Cambridge Divines, beyond the fact that they set themselves with zeal to oppose the hobby and philosophy which is described by the author of the discourse as consisting in such doctrines as the following viz, quote, that all moral righteousness is founded in the law of the civil magistrate, that the holy scriptures are obliging by virtue only of a civil sanction, that whatsoever magistrates command their subjects are bound to submit to, not withstanding contrarie to divine moral laws, close quote. Had they taught such doctrines, the author of the discourse argues, they might have deserved the censures which so many lavished upon them. But on the contrary, he says, such, quote, accursed principles, for I can give them no better epithet, were never more solidly confuted than by these men, close quote. Both writers speak with more distinctness and detail of the ecclesiastical and theological position of our divines. SP particularly vindicates their honest and devout attachment to the Church of England and their high approval of its virtuous mediocrity as distinguished alike from the meretricious godliness of the Church of Rome and the squalid sluttery of fanatic conventacles. They were earnestly in favor of a liturgy and preferred that of the Church of England to all others, admiring the solemnity, gravity, and primitive simplicity of it, its freedom from affected phrases or mixture of vain and doubtful opinions. In a word, they thought it so good that they were loath to adventure the mending of it for fear of marring it. In like manner they are said to have had a deep veneration for the government of the Anglican Church which they esteemed to be at once the best in itself and the most conformable to the apostolic times. They did always abhor, continues S.P., quote, both the usurpation of Scottish presbytery and the confusion of independent anarchy, and to do esteem it one of the methods which the Prince of Darkness useth to overthrow the Church and religion by bringing the clergy into contempt, which experience tells us will necessarily follow upon the removing of the several dignities and preeminence among them. For when the bishops are once leveled with ordinary presbyters, the presbyters will soon be trampled on by the meanest of the laity and when every preacher would needs be a bishop, every rustic and mechanic took upon him to be a preacher, close quote. Fowler does not emphasize so much their attachment to the Anglican form of Church government, but he says that they greatly preferred Episcopacy, esteeming it to be in its essentials the best type of Church government as well as that which is found prevailing presently after the Apostles' times. He identifies their views with irrational and moderate opinions of Chillingworth in his well-known statement on the subject. As to their theological views, both writers dwell upon the hearty subscription which the Cambridge Divines gave to the 39 Articles. Nor is there any article of doctrine continues, SP, quote, held by the Church, which they can justly be accused to depart from unless absolute reprobation be one which they do not think themselves bound to believe, close quote. Hartley, however, as they are said to subscribe to the 39 Articles of the Church, it is expressly stated by the author of the discourse that in doing so they took that liberty in the interpretation of them that is allowed by the Church herself. Subscription was held merely to imply the acceptance of the articles as instruments of peace, and in favor of this view Fowler quotes the authority of Archbishop Usher. The most significant passage cited by him is the following from Usher's schism guarded, quote, we do not suffer any man to reject the 39 Articles of the Church of England at his pleasure, yet neither do we look upon them as essentials of saving faith or legacies of Christ and his apostles, but in a mean as pious opinions fitted for the preservation of unity. Neither do we oblige any man to believe them but only not to contradict them, close quote. This was plainly the principle on which the Cambridge Divines adhered to the doctrines of the Church of England, a principle which they believed to be embodied in its constitution and of the highest value in itself. They were characteristically rational theologians. They sought to bring every truth or doctrine to the test of the Christian reason and to estimate it by a moral standard, in other words, by its tendency to exalt or degrade our conceptions of the divine. It was absurd, argues S.P., to accuse them of hearkening too much to their own reason. For reason, he adds, quote, is that faculty whereby a man must judge of everything, nor can a man believe anything except he have some reason for it, whether that reason be a deduction from the light of nature and those principles which are the candle of the Lord set up in the soul of every man that hath not willfully extinguished it, or a branch of divine revelation in the oracles of holy scripture, or the general interpretation of genuine antiquity or the proposal of our own Church, Constantinous there too, or, lastly, the result of some or all of these. For he that will rightly make use of his reason must take all that is reasonable into consideration. And it is admirable to consider how the same conclusions do naturally flow from all these several principles. Nor is there any point in divinity where that which is most ancient doth not prove the most rational and the most rational the ancientest. For there is an eternal consanguinity between all verity, and nothing is true in divinity which is false in philosophy or on the contrary. And therefore what God hath joined together let no man put asunder. Close quote. The author of the discourse ventures more definitely to define their theological position as a middle one betwixt the Calvinists and remonstrants. On the one hand he says they maintained, quote, that there is such a thing as distinguishing grace whereby some persons are absolutely elected by virtue whereof they shall be having potent and infallible means prepared for them irresistibly saved. Close quote. But on the other hand they hold, quote, that others not of the number of this special elect are not at all in a desperate condition but have sufficient means appointed for them to qualify them for greater or less of happiness and have sufficient grace offered to them some way or other and some time or other and are in a capacity of salvation either greater or less through the mercies of Jesus Christ and that none of them are damned but those that willfully refuse to cooperate with that grace of God and will not act in some moral suitableness to that power they have received. Close quote. This medium theology appeared to Fowler to present all the advantages of Calvinism without any of the disadvantages of Arminianism. It embraced at once an absolute decree and a universal salvability. Quote. Whatsoever good Arminianism pretends to concerning all men is exhibited to the part not absolutely elected and to the other part the goodness of God is greater than is allotted by Arminius and whatsoever good is pretended in Calvinism to that part that is absolutely elected the same goodness as here exhibited and besides that direful wizard pulled off that ignorance and melancholy had put upon divine providence and the lovely face of the gospel. Close quote. He is at a loss to conceive why either Calvinist or remonstrant should mislike so comprehensive and beautiful a system. He can only account for this by an obstinate idea on their part that there cannot be any improvements in theology. But to such an idea he himself strongly objects. Every age, sure enough, he says, quote, improveth in knowledge having the help still of those forgoing and as this is seen in other sciences so especially is it discernible in that of divinity as all but ignorant and extremely prejudiced persons must needs acknowledge. Close quote. Such are the main features of interest to be gathered from the contemporary notices of the Cambridge Divines which have come down to us. They are neither very copious nor very intelligent. They do not penetrate much below the surface nor help us to get close to the heart or higher meaning of the movement. But so far they are lively, interesting and characteristic. And if they do not go deep, they suggest a clear enough surface picture. It is seldom perhaps that the highest side of any religious movement is presented to contemporary onlookers and critics. But even the hasty impressions of contemporaries are always well worthy the attention of the historian. They serve to give life and reality to the aspects of a movement even where they fail to recognize all its meaning or to describe it in its fullness. End of chapter one, part two. Section three of Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy, volume two by John Tullock. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter two, Benjamin Whitchcote, Reason and Religion, part one. The name of Whitchcote is barely known in the history of English theology. Burnett's notice is quoted occasionally. Footnote. History of his own times, volume one, pages 339-340. End of footnote. But beyond this, little is understood either of the character or writings of one who was among the most influential preachers and theologians of his age. An age in which both preaching and theology still exercised a real influence on all the affairs of national life. Whitchcote not only possessed great credit with the most eminent statesmen of the Commonwealth, but he was probably during this important period the teacher who, more than any other at Cambridge, impressed his own mode of thought both upon his colleagues in the university and the rising generation of students. Tillotson, Patrick and Burnett all look back to him as a truly memorable man whose whole life and studies were devoted to the most elevating objects and who set the thoughts of the young in a new and higher direction. In a true sense, he may be said to have founded the new School of Philosophical Theology, although it is chiefly known by the more elaborate writings of others. Like many eminent teachers, his personality and the general force of his mental character were obviously greater than his intellectual productiveness. A few volumes of sermons are nearly all that survive of his labors to help us to understand them. Yet his sermons, comparatively neglected as they have been, are amongst the most thoughtful in the English language, pregnant with meaning, not only for his own, but for all time. It is strange that he should have been so little known and studied, but the obscurity which has overtaken him is not without some relation to his very greatness and the silent way in which he passed out of sight at the Restoration after he had done his work at Cambridge. There are some kinds of influence which perish in their very fruitfulness as the seed dies and wastes away at the root of the ripening grain, which Coates' influence was of this kind. He was careless of his own name, providing the higher thoughts for which he cared were found bearing fruit. He possessed that highest magnanimity of all, a magnanimity extremely rare, of forgetting himself in the cause which he loved and rejoicing that others entered into the results for which he labored. It is all the more necessary, therefore, that we should endeavor to do some degree of justice to his name and opinions, to bring before us as complete an image as we can of the man and of his academic and theological activity. Standing as he does at the fountain head of our School of Thinkers, it is especially important to catch the spirit of his teaching and to present it in its full historical and intellectual relations. Benjamin Wichcote was born of an ancient and honorable family in the county of Shropshire in the spring of 1609-10. The exact date of his birth is given as March 11. His father was apparently a country squire, the owner of Wichcote Hall. His mother was of the same rank of life, being the daughter of Edward Fox, Esquire of Greete, in the same county. Footnote. Preface by Dr. Salter, Probandary of Norwich, to Wichcote and Tuckney's Correspondence, published in 1753. To this preface and to Wichcote's own letters and, of course, Tillotson's and Burnett's notices, we are indebted for the facts of his life and the course of formation of his opinions. Tillotson preached Wichcote's funeral sermon in 1683. I do not know of any other sources of information beyond the biographical dictionaries. There is a story as to Wichcote's manuscripts and how they came into Dr. Salter's hands, which will be told in the sequel. End of footnote. He was sent to Emanuel College, Cambridge, in 1626. Of his previous life or the training of his boyhood, we know nothing. His tutor at Emanuel was Mr. Anthony Tuckney, the correspondent of his later years, of whom we shall learn more immediately. Tuckney was about 10 years older than himself and had passed a very distinguished academic career. He had been chosen as fellow of his college when only 20 years of age and after a brief interval of residence in a noble family had returned to Cambridge and acquired special distinction as a tutor at Emanuel. This well-known college owed its foundation to Sir Walter Mildmay in the reign of Elizabeth, 1584, and was designed for the special encouragement of Calvinistic theology. Sir Walter was Elizabeth's Chancellor of the Exchequer for a lengthened period from 1566 to 1589. He is described by Fuller as a statesman of rare integrity, zealous to advance the Queen's treasure and yet conscientibly without wronging the subject as a man of learning and deep and earnest convictions. Sympathizing with the more decided Protestantism of the time on which his mistress looked coldly, he devoted his means to its encouragement. The conversation betwixt the Queen and him on the subject related by Fuller is in all respects creditable to the Chancellor, to his wise tact, no less than to his zeal. The Queen is said to have addressed him one day, Sir Walter, I hear you have erected a Puritan foundation. No, Madam, was his reply, quote, far be it from me to countenance anything contrary to your established laws, but I have set an acorn, which, when it becomes an oak, God alone knows what will be the fruit thereof. Close quote. Whichcote took his degree of BA in 1629 and of MA in 1633, and in the latter year became fellow of his college. In 1636 he was ordained both deacon and priest by Williams, Bishop of Lincoln, and irregularity for which his biographer is unable to account. During the eventful years which followed, he appears to have busied himself with pupils at the university till 1643 when he was presented by his college to the living of North Cadbury in Somersetshire. There he is supposed to have married and begun to settle himself when in the following year he was recalled to Cambridge to succeed Dr. Collins, who had been ejected by the Parliament from the provost ship of King's College. It appears to have been a grave perplexity to whichcote whether or not he should accept this preferment. The idea of superseding a man whom he greatly respected and whom he must have held to be wrongfully deprived of his office was distasteful to his mind. He weighed anxiously the whole business and the reasons for and against it, and even drew them out in writing for his guidance, but at length consented to accept the office under condition of continuing to Dr. Collins one half of the salary payable to the provost from the college revenues. Footnote Salter, biographical preface, page 18, a schedule giving the heads of such reasons, pro and con, was found amongst his papers after his death. End of footnote. He acted wisely, but the step was one which he was not allowed to forget at the restoration, and even Tillotson remembers it apologetically in his funeral sermon. Tillotson adds at the same time that whichcoat did not stoop to do anything unworthy to obtain the place, for he never took the covenant. Not only so, but by the friendship and interest he had with some of the chief visitors, quote, he prevailed to have the greatest part of the Fellows of King's College exempted from that imposition and preserved them in their places. Close quote. It may be inferred from this promotion as also from his training at Emanuel College that whichcoat had grown up amongst Puritans and that his relatives and friends belonged to that party. Whether he himself had ever professed Puritan tenets, it is impossible to say. In his early years he probably fell in with the tone of his college. Nor is there any reason to believe that up to this time he had attracted notice by any singularity of opinion. In his first letter to Tuckney in 1651 he says, quote, I do not, I cannot, forget my four first years education in the university under you, and I think I have principles by me I then received from you. Close quote. In the same letter, however, he also indicates that some of the opinions to which Tuckney objected had been long entertained by him, so long back as when he disputed in the college chapel. The fact appears to be that whichcoat was from the first a thoughtful and independent student in religious matters. Whatever may have been his early associations or upbringing, his mind sought its own path. He was but little indebted to books, he distinctly asserts, when accused by Tuckney of borrowing his views from the Dutch Armenians and other special sources. Quote, You say you find me largely in their apologia. To my knowledge, I never saw nor heard of the book before. A singular enough confession. I shame myself to tell you how little I have been acquainted with books. While fellow at Emanuel College, employment with pupils took my time from me. I have not read many books, but I have studied a few. Meditation and invention hath been rather my life than reading." Close quote. Slowly forming his opinions in this manner and carefully testing them, rejecting whatever was not under-propped by convincing reason or satisfactory scripture, he would not be ready to break the ties of circumstance which bound him. The most thoughtful and meditative minds are often the most reluctant to separate from old associations and surroundings. Hales remained strongly attached to the High Church side in the civil struggle and Chillingworth also, long after they had unlearned every dogmatic principle on which High Churchism rests. And which, quote, doubtless remained among the Puritans and was reckoned on their side from similar accidents of personal connection and training, although he never imbibed their spirit and seems from the first to have rejected their doctrinal narrowness. The quick eye of Tuckany had seen the growing independence of his pupil and his tendency to freedom and originality. I loved you, he says, in allusion to their early connection at Emmanuel, quote, as finding you then studious and pious and very loving and observant of me. But I remember I then thought you somewhat cloudy and obscure in your expressions, close, quote. The mind of the pupil, notwithstanding his affectionate respect for his teacher, was evidently, even in these years, on a different track. He seems to have taken a larger and more philosophic view of religious questions and given them different terms of expression. And dogmatic Puritanism has always been jealous of new modes of expression. It tolerates fundamental opposition almost as readily as phraseological differences. Cloudiness and obscurity are, to this day, the favorite terms by which it designates all attempts to freshen or remold the language of theology. The date of Wichcote's appointment as provost of King's, 1644, may be said to mark the rise of the new philosophical and religious movement at Cambridge. Not for some while after this, indeed, did it attain significance in general intellectual interest. But from the time that he was placed in this position of authority, Wichcote seems to have become a power in the university, and gradually it was felt that there was a new life, other than Puritan or Anglo-Catholic, moving the academic mind. A nobler, freer, and more generous set of opinions began to prevail, especially among the young scholars of art, to the no small alarm of the older authorities, who remained fixed in their dogmatic opinions. The chief instrument of this new movement, as of the older religious spirit which had so stirred and changed the country, was preaching. It was as afternoon lecturer in Trinity Church that Wichcote spread his views and kindled that fervor for a rational Christianity which was destined to have such enduring effects. The correspondence with Tuckney helps us in some degree to understand the growth of the movement. Footnote. This correspondence, as will be afterwards explained, was first published in 1753, edited by Dr. Salter, Prebendary of Norwich. End of footnote. We could have wished further information, but at least we can trace in these letters the diverse forces at work and the odd mingling of personal and theological influences with the deeper currents of thought which were to leave their impression upon the mind of future generations. The aim of the Puritan authorities in 1644 was, of course, to promote the cause so dear to them and to remodel the universities after their own mind. Wichcote's appointment to be Provost of Kings was only one of numerous appointments which they made at the time with the same intention. And his position and the movement which he initiated will be best understood in relation to the men who surrounded him and with whom it was no doubt expected he would cordially cooperate. There are three names, especially associated with the formerly his tutor who was made Master of Emanuel and Aerosmith and Hill who were placed respectively at the head of St. John's and of Trinity. Thus says Dr. Salter, quote, four very intimate friends after a separation of some years, save that the three last met in the Assembly of Devines at Westminster, saw each other again in the several most honourable stations of the university to which their learning the oldest of the four had already acquired distinction as a tutor at Emanuel where he had many persons of rank and quality admitted under him. He was, quote, a man of great reading and much knowledge, a ready and elegant Latinist, but narrow, stiff and dogmatical, no enemy to the royal or Episcopal power as it should seem but above measure, zealous for church show of a somewhat extreme type, equally opposed to papists, Arminians, and independence, all of whom he attacks vigorously in the same breath. Some idea of his dogmatic fierceness may be gathered from his strong denunciation of Milton on the subject of divorce, whom he calls infamous et non uno la cue o dignus. He is said to have taken an active part in the dogmatic arguments in the larger catechism. Of his ability there seems no question, as he was unanimously chosen in Vito et Penaecoactus he himself says to fill the chair of Regius Professor of Divinity on the resignation of Arrowsmith in 1655. While stoutly dogmatical in his own views he seems to have been by no means a bigot practically. He voted in the assembly against subserving or swearing to the confession and in his presence to which he was promoted from Emmanuel quote when the president according to the Kant of the times would call upon him to have regard to the godly he would answer no one should have a greater regard to the godly than himself but he was determined to choose none but scholars adding very wisely they may deceive me in their godliness they cannot in their scholarship this story of him so much to his honor is still upon record in the college in 1753 and the story is one evidently characteristic and deserving of preservation Tuckney was plainly a man of shrewdness and insight as well as learning and zeal and no unworthy antagonist of his distinguished pupil his letters reveal very much the same qualities that Salter describes they are narrow and deficient in sympathy and elevation but they are terse well-reasoned and keep also a student at Emanuel where he was admitted in 1618 about the same time as Tuckney like him he had worked for some time with the famous Mr. John Cotton vicar of Boston a very zealous nonconformist who afterwards emigrated to New England he spent some good time with this puritan worthy as many other zealous young men of the time seem to have done for his further perfecting and the more happy seasoning of his spirit during the sitting of the Westminster assembly to preach often before the House of Commons on solemn occasions as public fast days and also chosen one of their morning weekday preachers at the Abbey on his promotion to the headship of Trinity College he set up two lectures in the town of Cambridge one of which he supplied himself altogether and was much resorted to he printed only a few and made fair progress says Tuckney who preached his funeral sermon quote in a learned computation of the great daring champion of the Armenian errors whom the abusive wits of the university with an impudent boldness would say none there durst adventure upon close quote the great daring champion of the Armenian errors was John Goodwin who had dedicated two years before his volume entitled Redemption John Arrowsmith was the only one of the four not educated at Emmanuel he was admitted at St. John's college in 1616 afterwards he was chosen fellow of Catherine Hall but seems to have retired early from the university and settled at Lynn in Norfolk where he continued very much esteemed some 10 or 12 years he preceded Tuckney in the Regious Professorship of Divinity the duties of his sweet and admirable temper he was says Salter quote like his friends Tuckney and Hill a very learned and able but a stiff and narrow divine was like them offended with the popularity and credit of Dr. Wichcote for though they all respected and loved his person they could none of them bear with his freedom close quote but disappears through all the sourness and severity of his opinions in his tactica sacra a book quote written in a clear style and with a lively fancy in which is displayed at once much weakness and stiffness but with all great reading and a very amiable candor to the persons and characters of those from whom he found himself obliged to differ close quote and stood in the relation of tutor to him at Emanuel quote but my friend of choice a companion of my special delight whom in my former years I have acquainted with all my heart I have told him all my thoughts and I have scarcely ever spoken or thought better of a man in respect of the sweetness of his spirit and the amiableness of his conversation close quote such were the four friends very dear to each other now in 1644 he was younger by about 10 years than any of them and while the others had been consolidating their early principles in the labors and ambitions of the Westminster Assembly he had been spending his time in comparative quietness and meditation either at the university or in summer such year where for a short while he held the living given him by his college his studies had been of a very different nature from theirs and gradually there had been forming and still able to comprehend we have seen already that Tuckney professed to have early detected in him the budding of new opinions or at least the use of a new language and in the same passage he says to his former pupil quote I have heard that when you came to be a lecturer in the college you in a great measure for the year laid aside other studies and we took yourself to philosophy and preaching close quote still not even Tuckney could appreciate the divergency of thought and feeling which had been growing up in which coats mind from the Westminster theological standard to men of the class of the Westminster Divines in whom the spirit of dogmatic affirmation is strong and the spirit of speculative insight weak if not utterly wanting few things are more accurate stretching widely beyond their doctrinal particularism and taking it up into a higher synthesis as of little or no account they are out of their reckoning before the advance of a new line of thought which overlooks rather than crosses or opposes their favorite dogmas and starts on a fresh career on the other hand a mind like which coats meditative rather than polemical speculative rather than dogmatic to the theological atmosphere and associations surrounding it he was far too wise and broad-minded to be intent merely on the assertion of his own views and not to feel that all changes of opinion which are really worth promoting must be gradual and spring organically from the natural decay of pre-existing modes of thought there is no evidence therefore that at first the four Divines did not work cordially together and seem to themselves to be pursuing gradually the change in which coat made itself felt the new tone of his preaching began to stir the University mind and to awaken distrust amongst his colleagues and old friends how long the fire smoldered before it burst forth we cannot tell but at length a commencement sermon preached by which coat as vice-chancellor in the autumn of 1651 drew from Tuckney acting evidently not only for himself but for the reference contained in his first letter the background of personal feeling is very noticeable in the letters and the air of the old tutor gives here and there a curious pecancy to the tone of discussion Tuckney opens with an allusion to the gossip and discussion which which coat's teaching had for some time excited it had been said that he and his friends dealt disingenuously with the provost of kings and speaking not fancy he says quote as some others that affected word ingenuous and I wish the thing itself were not idolized to the prejudice of saving grace yet if I must use the word truly sir I desire to be so ingenuous with you as out of that ancient and still continued love I bear you to have leave to tell you that my heart hath been much exercised today and with the big words sometimes of divinest reason and sometimes of more than mathematical demonstration that hath very much grieved me and I believe others with me and yesterday as much as any time I pass by many things in your sermon and crave leave to note three or four one your second position that all those things wherein good men differ may not be determined from scripture and that it in some places seems to be like to be unsafe and unsound two your first advice that we would be confined to scripture words and expressions in which all parties agree and not press other forms of words which are from fallible men and this would be for the peace of Christendom I look at as more dangerous and verily believe that Christ by his blood never intended to purchase such a piece in which the most orthodox for that word I must use of heretics must be all put into a bag together and let them hold and maintain their own though never so damnable heresies yet as long as they agree with us in scripture expressions they must be accorded with and yet three your second advice gives your ingenuous man liberty to propound his own different conceptions and it may be to brand the contrary opinion with the black mark of divinity taught in hell which will take away as much peace as your task profitandi in most that ever pressed it did Semper aliquide monstrie allere and when I discern whose footsteps appear in these two advices I am very sorry to see Dr. Hitchcoat whom I so much love and honour to tread in them of both these advices what ground there was from the text I leave indifferent men to judge sir your heart I believe it's about reconciliation that it does not operate on God but on us that a nobis nasi tour etc is divinity which my heart rises against to say that the ground of God's reconciliation is from anything in us and not from his free grace freely justifying the ungodly is to deny one of the fundamental truths of our gospel that derives from heaven which I bless God lieth near to my heart in this my bolder parecia and freeness in which if I have exceeded you will easily impute an oversight to the straights of an hour which I had to write this letter and a copy of it and sir although your speech and answers the last commencement were in the judgment of abler men than myself against my commencement position the former year and your first yesterday advice directly against my commencement for you in trinity pulpit yet in holy reverence I call God to witness that all this I have laid aside nor hath it put any quickness into my pen but zeal for God's glory and truth desire that young ones may not be tainted and that your name and repute may not be blemished and that myself with your other friends may not be grieved but comforted and edified by your ministry and so may have more encouragement to attend upon it close quote there is something delightful in the whiff of personal feeling that mingles with tuckney's orthodox zeal no doubt he was honestly distressed by witchcoat's opinions the footsteps which appear in them are too marked not to have alarmed a less sensitive Calvinistic conscience but moreover it is plain that he was personally aggrieved witchcoat's utterances had been flatly in contradiction of his own and this was more than the most tolerant orthodox you could stand who had assisted at the Westminster Assembly and who had probably given his earliest theological instructions to the intrepid preacher could not be expected to bear such an interference the human impatience of contradiction beyond question helps wonderfully at all times the divine sense of orthodoxy witchcoat's reply is marked by humility and yet he keeps to his point with dignity and force he thanks tuckney for his plain dealing he has always had his former tutor quote in very high esteem I have borne you reverence beyond what you do or can't imagine having in me a loving and gentle sense of my first relation to you and of all men alive I have least affected to differ from you or to call in question either what you have done or said or thought but your judgment I have regarded with reverence and respect I do not I cannot what I have done and yet at all I have borne whosoever he be that confutes that error. I heartily pray that no man may receive an opinion from me but only abide in the truth." First he defends the matter of his commencement speech as having been in his mind and duly considered long before Tuckney delivered his speech. Seven years before, he says, that is, at his very first settling at Cambridge, he had preached the same views concerning natural light or the use of reason, and therefore he had no intention of merely saying anything in opposition to Tuckney. Indeed he added, quote, I took not offense at your question but was well enough satisfied in your replication and defense of it, thinking, if we differed in some expression, yet we agreed in sense and meaning, close quote. As to his sermon, he explains fully the positions he had maintained as he finds them written in his notes. He is persuaded that truly all good men substantially agree in all things saving and that there are indeterminate questions in reference to which scripture seems to countenance the different views that may be taken of them. All, that is, ultra et citra scripturum, he says, must be pronounced fallible. This is to him the foundation of protestancy. All who agree in scripture forms of words, acknowledging that the meaning of the Holy Ghost in them is true, should forbear one another and not impose their own either sense or phrase. All Protestants hold he maintains that quilibert cristiano conceditor judicium discretionis against the pope's usurpation of eudex infalibilis visibilis in rebus fedae. He admits that his heart was full of these truths, for his head had been possessed with them many years, even so long back as when he had disputed in the college chapel at Emmanuel. On the subject of reconciliation he enters at length. The effect of his explanation being to show that he had no intention of undervaluing the free grace of God, but only sought to bring out the necessity of Christ's work being recognized as not only something without us, but also within us. For reconciliation betwixt God in us is not usually as betwixt parties mutually incensed, where a secret enmity may still remain, but real to the effect of taking away all our enmity and making us Godlike. For God's acts are not false, overly imperfect. God cannot make a vain show God being perfectly under the power of goodness cannot deny himself, because if he should he would depart from goodness which is impossible to God. Therefore we must yield, be subdued to the rules of goodness, receiving stamps and impressions from God, and God cannot be further pleased than when goodness takes place. They therefore deceive and flatter themselves extremely who think of reconciliation with God by means of a savior acting upon God in their behalf, and not also working in or upon them to make them Godlike. In reply, Tuckany sends a lengthened letter, entering into all the points betwixt them. Reciprocating the affection expressed towards him by his old pupil, he yet returns to the concern entertained by himself and others as to the general tone of which Coates preaching. They are grieved, he says, significantly, by a vein of doctrine which runs up and down in many of your discourses, and in those of some others a very great worth whom we very much honour and whom you head some think. Taking up once more the commencement speech, he expresses more fully his dislike of the manner in which the speaker, like so many others lately, had cried up reason and made use of the saying, the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, etc., a favourite expression of which Coates. This saying he holds has no relation to the truths of supernatural or evangelical theology, nor is the Protestant principle of private judgment, while true against the Pope's pretended claims, to be held as superior to the rule of scripture but in subordination to it. A true believer should have something above a Collier's faith, a proverbial phrase which seems to have been current amongst the theological disputants of the time. Fides Carbonaria. The phrase is used also by Wichcote and by Aerosmith in his Tactica Sacra. Yet faith is not to be resolved into reason, but held distinct, directed to its proper object, and governed by its proper authority, the divine mind in scripture. The question of good men agreeing on fundamentals in all things saving is rediscussed, but without any further light being thrown upon it. Tuckney could of course urge from his point of view that the value of such an agreement depended entirely upon the questions which it included, and it was easy to add with ironical effect, quote, I believe those fundamental saving things are in some men's judgments but very few, close quote. He cannot admit that men agreeing in scripture forms of words really do or can agree to any purpose so long as they hold contradictory assertions. He even goes the length of saying that men's Christianity must be judged by their opinions rather than by their lives, quote, when heretics of old and divers of late times have been sober and temperate, next Sine Larva Sume Pietatis, I think that we should look rather to their doctrines than their persons, close quote. In conclusion Tuckney makes a fuller confession of all the uneasiness he and others have been under as to which coat's mode of preaching, the philosophical rational style which he had introduced in contrast to the spiritual, plain, powerful ministry for which Cambridge had been distinguished. Some are ready to think, he adds, quote, that your great authors you steer your course by are Dr. Field, Dr. Jackson, Dr. Hammond, all three very learned men. The middle sufficiently obscure and both he and the last I must needs think too corrupt. Footnote. Dr. Thomas Jackson, who was for some time vicar of St. Nicholas Newcastle, then president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and who died Dean of Peterborough in 1638, is a significant name in the history of English theology. Coleridge classifies him with the latitudinary and divines of the 17th century, but he had no connection with the Cambridge School and cannot be said to have definitely influenced any of its members, not withstanding Tuckney's statements. There is at the same time much of the same mode of thought in Jackson and his writings are well deserving of attention, especially a treatise on justifying faith from my study in Corpus Christi College, April 1615, and a treatise of the divine essence and attributes in two parts from my study in Newcastle upon Tyne, November 20, 1627. Field and his valuable work of the Church, 1606 to 1610, are comparatively well known. Field is in many respects a liberal Churchman. His definitions of heresy and of schism are not greatly dissimilar from those of Hales and Jeremy Taylor, but he is of an earlier school of thought and does not seem to have influenced any of our divines. End of footnote. Whilst you were fellow here, you were cast into the company of very learned and ingenious men, who, I fear, at least some of them, studied other authors more than the scriptures, and Plato and his scholars above others, in whom I must needs acknowledge from the little insight I have into them I find many excellent and divine expressions, and as we are want more to listen to and wonder at a parrot speaking a few words than a man that speaks many more plainly and all intelligibly, so whilst we find such gems in such dung-hills where we less expected them, we have been too much drawn away with admiration of them, and hence in part hath run a vein of doctrine which divers very able and worthy men, whom from my heart I much honour, are, I fear, too much known by, the power of nature in morals too much advanced, reason hath too much given to it in the mysteries of faith, a recta ratio much talked of, which I cannot tell where to find. Mind and understanding is all, heart and will little spoken of. The decrees of God questioned and quarreled, because, according to our reason, we cannot comprehend how they stand with his goodness, which, according to your phrase, he is under the power of. Those are philosophers and other heathens, much fairer candidates for heaven than the scriptures seem to allow of, and they, in their virtues, preferred before Christians overtaken with weaknesses. A kind of moral divinity minted, only with a little tincture of Christ added. Nay, a platonic faith unites to God. Inherent righteousness so preached, as if not with the prejudice of imputed righteousness, which hath sometimes very unseemly language given it. Yet much said of the one, and very little or nothing of the other. This was not Paul's manner of preaching. We have quoted so far, because we could not have, from the Puritan view, a better, and in some respects more vivid account of which quotes theological position, and the points where it separated from the Westminster standard. We shall afterwards more fully consider this position, but it deserves to be noticed in the meantime how entirely new, or as would now be said, neological, it is considered by Tuckney. It is not merely special differences which he feels to separate him from some of his old friends at Cambridge, but the plane of thought is obviously different in the two cases. The whole view of the nature of religion and of its relation to philosophy and morals is in question betwixt the platonic party and himself. The Puritan divine sees this, and at the same time is unable to see any good in the forward movement of thought. He feels the theological ground on which he has been long standing failing him, and he has no courage to try the new ground. It offers to him no prospect of security. The old forms of the truth are to him the only possible truth of God, and therefore, he says in conclusion, he and his friends cannot desert it, though we are but little able to maintain it. He mourns over the growth of opinions which he cannot share, and which appear to him to have interrupted the good work to which he looked forward with encouragement when he settled at Cambridge. Great as was his hope of help from the company and assistance of friends whom he so much honoured and loved, so great, on the contrary, has been his trouble of spirit in such an unhappy disappointment.