No More Learning

It is not necessary to analyse the contents of so well known a
book as the Gramont Memoirs. They will always be consulted
with interest, for they turn a searchlight upon the inner history
of a period, which, indeed, owes the bad reputation it bears largely
to their revelations.
The Memoirs of Sir John Reresby are the work of an accom-
plished man who united in himself the qualities of a courtier and
those of a country squire. The book contains a pleasing record of
the chief events, some of them of very great importance, which
came under his notice, as well as of other matters founded on the
mere gossip of court circles. The author writes with distinction,
and the reader cannot well follow his adventures without a feeling
of esteem and sympathy, although it must be confessed that he was
somewhat of a self-seeker-indeed, he has been styled 'a cautious
time-serving politician. ' To those who read his pleasant narrative
with interest, this must, however, appear a hard saying. He lived
in a difficult period, and, although he was whole-heartedly loyal to
Charles II, he does not appear to have approved of the next
sovereign, and his protestant feelings prevented him from being
troubled with much regret when the revolution was completed; so
that he had not any difficulty in deciding to swear allegiance to
William III.
a
1 Miss Hobart is made to say 'Alas! poor Mrs Blague! I saw her go away about
this time twelve month in a coach with such lean horses that I cannot believe she
is half way to her miserable little castle' (chap. IX).
In the Dictionary of National Biography.


## p. 265 (#287) ############################################

Reresby's Memoirs and Travels
265
Reresby had really small reason for gratitude to Charles II,
since, although the king was glad to enjoy his agreeable conversa-
tion, and to make use of him generally, all that the courtier
obtained from his long attendance at court was
an appointment to be high sheriff of his county, to which his rank alone
entitled him, the government of a city that had no garrison, and the command
of a fort, which never appears to have been built1.
Reresby was only 55 years of age when he died in 1689; and it was
not until 1734 that his Memoirs were first published, the manu-
script having, in the interval, passed through several hands. The
book was popular, and several editions of it? were called for;
among which, that of 1813 for the first time printed the author's
Travels, while that of 1875 printed some of his letters, together
with passages of the diary previously omitted. It is well that the
diary and the travels—both of them short works-should be united,
as, together, they form a connected whole, and the chronology of
Reresby's life is thus completed. The scheme of his writings has a
certain likeness to that of Evelyn's diary. The same circumstances
in the history of the country caused these two men to begin their
lives with the experience of foreign travel. Reresby, like Evelyn,
felt that to live at home was worse than banishment, and begins
his journeyings with these words:
I left England in that unhappy time when honesty was reputed a crime,
religion superstition, loyalty treason; when subjects were governors, servants
masters, and no gentleman assured of anything he possessed; the least
jealousy of disaffection to the late erected commonwealth being offence
sufficient to endanger the forfeiture of his estate, the only laws in force being
those of the sword.
He took his departure in 1654, and made an extensive tour
through Europe. His descriptions of France, Italy, Germany and
the Netherlands are valuable, and contain much information of in-
terest as to the state of these countries in the seventeenth century.
Reresby spent some time at Saumur (in Anjou), where there was a
protestant university. Here, he was able to study the French
language, which he found the great resort of my countrymen to
Paris prevented me from doing satisfactorily there. ' After staying
again in Paris, which he considered the finest city of Europe (not
excepting London), he returned to England, in May 1658, after
four years' absence.
He opens his memoirs with a notice of the death of Cromwell,
which, he thought, paved the way for the return of the king. This
1 Retrospective Review, vol. vin, p. 346.
2 As to these and other editions, see bibliography.


## p. 266 (#288) ############################################

266
Memoir and Letter Writers
was on 23 September 1658, and, in October of the same year, he
was back in Paris, where he made himself known to the queen
mother, who kept her court at the Palais Royal. He was well
received and became very friendly with the charming princess
Henrietta (then fifteen years of age), who was the queen's only
child living with her. In 1660, hopes arose of the restoration of
Charles II, and we are told that now there was a greater resort
to the Palais Royal than to the French court. On 2 August,
Reresby returned to England, and he took with him a particular
recommendation of the queen mother to the king. On 10 August
1669, the queen died, and Reresby describes her as a great
princess and my very good mistress. ' It is interesting to learn
'
that, at one time, he was attracted by la belle Hamilton, and
there was a chance of his marrying her, although she was a
catholic; but, after he had seen mistress Frances Browne (to
whom he was married in 1665), he had no inclination for any other
choice. He had probably a fortunate escape; but, on the other
hand, one feels that, as Lady Reresby, Elizabeth Hamilton would
have had a happier life than she was fated to live as the partner of
Philibert de Gramont.
Reresby was not a man of letters; but there is a distinction
about his writings, which give us pleasure from their liveliness and
freshness, indicating the insight and impartiality of a man of the
world. By a careful selection of subjects, he manages to furnish
a good idea of the period from the restoration to the revolution.
He allots much space to his notes on the popish plot, which shows
his appreciation of the dangers to be apprehended from the rapid
progress of the supposed design, although we see that he was early
convinced of the villainy of Oates'.
The author carefully narrates the transactions which preceded
the revolution; but he saw little of the new régime, for he died on
12 May 1689.
B.
6
Among the memoir- and letter-writers of this period should,
also, be mentioned Sir Richard Bulstrode, though, born in 1630, he
1 He relates an interesting meeting with James II, after the arch-conspirator was
convicted of perjury. It was proved that he was at St Omer the 24th of April 1678
when he swore he was at the White Horse tavern in the Strand, where Pickering,
Groves, and other Jesuits signed the death of King Charles the second. ' Reresby was
told by James that it was fortunate for him that Oates was ignorant of the place of
meeting, for it actually took place in the duke of York's rooms at St James's. The
king added 'that Oates being thus convicted, the popish plot was now dead'; to which
Reresby answered that it had long been dead, and now it would be buried.


## p. 267 (#289) ############################################

Sir Richard Bulstrode. Henry Sidney 267
6
survived till 1711, when he is stated to have died ‘not of old age. '
He served in arms in the civil war, and, as agent and envoy at the
court of Brussels, under Charles II and James II, whom he followed
to St Germain. His prose-writings, all of which were published
posthumously, include, besides Original Letters written to the
Earl of Arlington, in 1674, which narrate the principal events in
the Low Countries and the adjoining parts of France in that year,
Memoirs and Reflections upon the Reign and Government of
King Charles the 1st and King Charles the 2d, besides a Life of
James II, stated to have been printed at Rome shortly after the
author's death. The earlier of these works, which announces
itself as 'a vindication of the characters of both Charles I and
Charles II from Fanatical Aspersions,' displays judgment and
insight, as well as loyalty. If Charles I is designated 'the best of
kings,' while of Oliver Cromwell it is asserted that there was
certainly never a more wicked man,' the former is shown to have
erred in not depending on his own judgment, and the latter is
credited not only with self-reliance, but with 'prodigious Address. '
The memoir of Charles II is badly constructed, and, after a long
account of the popish plot agitation, ends with a series of diplo-
matic letters of secondary importance.
The Diary of Henry Sidney (afterwards earl of Romney and
lord-lieutenant of Ireland), which extends from June 1679 to
January 1682, during which period the writer held the post of
ambassador at the Hague and had in his hand the threads of
much important negotiation, public and private, with William III
of Orange, possesses no literary qualities; but interspersed with it
are a number of letters to and from Sidney which add considerably
to its general interest. Foremost among these are the sprightly
communications, partly in a very necessary cipher, of the countess
of Sunderland, with whom, though her husband's doings and
prospects are among her most frequent themes, he was on the
very friendliest of terms. They also include letters from the
dowager countess, a charming old lady whom, in her younger days,
Waller had celebrated as Sacharissa, and from Sir William Temple
1 See the edition by Blencowe, R. W. , 2 vols. 1843. The Sydney Papers: Letters
and Memorials of State (from the reign of queen Mary to that of Charles II), ed. Collins,
A. , 2 vols. 1746, consist only to a small extent of letters so late as those of lord Lisle and
Algernon Sidney. Those written by the latter from abroad (under the commonwealth,
he was ambassador to Denmark and Sweden) are full of interest, especially his letters
from Rome in 1660/1, in one of which he gives, in the style of the time, a series of
characters of cardinals, identified by numerals corresponding to those in a previous
letter.


## p. 268 (#290) ############################################

268
Memoir and Letter Writers
and others? The author of Gramont's Memoirs is severe on the
difference between Henry Sidney's gifts of intellect and of 'figure';
but, both he and his favourite correspondent played an important
part in drawing closer the relations which resulted in seating
William of Orange on the English throne; and she deserves a
place among the letter-writers of her age, if only for her graphic
vignettes of Whitehall and the doings of 'that jade' (in cipher),
the double-faced duchess of Portsmouth.
Lady Warwick, the wife of the fourth earl (Charles, who died
in 1673), represents, among the 'good women’ of the restoration
age, the puritan type proper, though, at the same time, she had
a very distinct individuality of her own. Lady Mary Boyle was
a daughter of the first, sometimes called the great,' earl of
Cork, and sister of Robert Boyle the natural philosopher and
Roger Boyle lord Broghill (earl of Orrery). Her father's ambitious
nature had been much vexed by her secret match with an 'insig-
nificant younger son'; but the death of his elder brother made
Charles Rich heir to the earldom of Warwick, to which he suc-
ceeded in 1659, twenty years after his marriage, so that she
became a peeress like six out of her seven sisters. Much of her
married life was spent at Little Leighs park in Essex ('delicious
Leez,'as her brother Robert called it, in his dedication to her of his
treatise entitled Seraphic Love, written in 1648). She came from
a family accustomed both to think and to write; the religious
frame of mind which she maintained during the whole of her
later life was, no doubt, largely due to the hospitality extended
by her father-in-law (the parliamentary general) to most of the
puritan ministers in England, and she ascribes her conversion to
a devout life partly to the counsels of one of them, Anthony
Walker, partly to archbishop Ussher's preaching against plays, of
which she ‘saw not two' after her marriage? Her husband seems
to have been a warm-hearted man, much attached to his wife and
children (on the death of his only son, he sent forth loud cries of
grief, though declaring that ‘his chief sorrow was that the trouble
would kill his wife, who was more to him than a hundred sons'), but
very passionate, and addicted to the habit of cursing and swearing,
1 As to Sir William Temple, see post, chap. xv. Concerning Dorothy Sidney, see
Cartwright, Julia, Sacharissa: some Account of Dorothy Sidney, Countess of Sunderland
her Family and Friends, 1693. Other correspondents of her brother Henry were her
son the celebrated Robert earl of Sunderland (minister in succession under three
kings), Halifax and Lawrence Hyde (earl of Rochester), and there is a letter, in the
grand style, from William Penn.
2 Autobiography, p. 22.


## p. 269 (#291) ############################################

Diary of the Countess of Warwick 269
6
very often at his wife. Altogether, his treatment of her seems,
notwithstanding his affection, to have been wanting in kindness.
Her consciousness that she did not remonstrate with him
about his sins with sufficient faithfulness' was one of the great
troubles of her life; a house, she felt, should be 'perfumed
with prayers, not profaned by oaths. ' As to herself, solemn
thoughts were never far from her: in the midst of a 'great
show' in the banqueting-house at Whitehall, a blast of trumpets
aroused in her the thought, “What if the trump of God should
now sound,' with a remembrance of the 'glory' of which, in the
days of the late king, she had been a witness in the very place
whence he was to go forth to his death? Other passages in her
Diary show that religious feeling, at times, overcame her with
mystic force; in a prayer after an outburst with her husband, her
'soul did but breathe after God’; on another page, she records
how she had 'all that day great pleasure in thinking upon those
happy hours she enjoyed with God in the morning. '
Lady Warwick's Diary reaches from July 1666 to April 1672;
a further portion, extending to 1677, is now lost, though it existed
about the close of the eighteenth century. The whole of it was
accessible to Anthony Walker, who preached a long biographical
sermon at her funeral at Felsted, and published it later under the
title Eépnka Eópnka. The Virtuous Woman Found, her Loss
Bewailed and Character Exemplified (1686). It was annotated
by lady Warwick's own domestic chaplain Thomas Woodroffe, who
resided with her till the time of her death (1678). Besides this
Diary, she composed, in the course of three days in February
1671, a short autobiography, to which she subsequently made a
few additions bringing down the memoir to 16748. She also left
behind her a series of Occasional Meditations—the fruit of her
solitary hours in the 'Wilderness' at Leighs park, or in her chamber
there or at Chelsea. “Meditation,' says Walker, 'was her master-
piece’: and her 'short returns to God,' as she calls her hours of
pious thought, were to her the luminous points in her life. But,
1 It is significant of the quality of her puritanism that, to the end of her life, she
never failed to keep 30 January as a solemn fast.
? Author of A true Account of the Author of a Book called Elkwy Baoilikh (1692).
Walker was John Gauden's curate at Bocking, and they were both int tes in the house
of lady Warwick's father-in-law, to whom, as well as to his son, Walker was chaplain.
3 It was edited by Croker, T. Crofton, for the Percy Society in 1848. The Diary
and Occasional Meditations, together with some simple Rules for a Holy Life in a letter
written to George Earl Berkeley were published in 1847. The whole of this material is
utilised with much skill in Miss Charlotte Fell Smith's Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick
(1625—1678): her Family and Friends (1901).
6


## p. 270 (#292) ############################################

270
Memoir and Letter Writers
a
from an early date, she was also in the habit of expressing her
thoughts in the form of apophthegms intended to have an effect
upon others, and formulating what might be called witty religious
sayings, with which she fell into the habit of winding up her discourse.
They were something in the manner of the Pensées of Pascal and
similar collections, chiefly by French writers, with none of which
she can have been acquainted when she set about this style of
composition; moreover, Miss Fell Smith has discovered that the
example actually followed by lady Warwick was the Occasional
Meditations of bishop Joseph Hall, of which a third edition appeared
in 1633. Altogether, her epigrammatic thoughts number nearly two
centuries (182), being unevenly distributed over the years in which
they were set down (1663–78). "The true measure of loving God
is loving him without measure' is one of them; another (scarcely
original): “Why are we so fond of that life which begins with a cry
and ends with a groan ? Many are suggested by the experiences
-even the trivial incidents—of every day life: ‘upon feeding the
poor at the gate'; ‘upon children playing,' and then quarrelling,
‘in the streets'; 'upon my looking in a looking-glass in the morning
to dress myself'; 'upon my taking a great deal of pains to make a
fire'; others arise out of events of deep personal interest, such as
her husband's death, and her own impending farewell to her loved
country home. But all are characterised by the combination of
spiritual depth and literary ingenuity which was her note.
Though the Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe remained unpublished
in full till 1829/30, they challenge comparison both as to the
interest of their matter and as to the high spirit informing them,
and also as to clearness and vivacity of style, with any memoirs of
the age to which they belong—including, as has been justly said,
even those of Mrs Hutchinson. Unlike Lucy Apsley, Ann Harrison
was, according to her own account, 'a hoyting girl in her youth,'
though we may well believe her asseveration that she was 'never
immodest but skipping. Her mother's death awakened the serious
side of her nature, which, henceforth, in the great crises of her life,
showed itself forth in words of almost impassioned prayer-ordi-
narily, however, in deeds rather than in words. The first sixteen
years of her married life (from 1644) were a period of incessant
struggle and sacrifice, through which she passed with unfailing and,
at times, heroic courage. Sacrifice for the sake of the royal cause
might have been called the badge of her husband's as well as of
her father's family, which were closely connected with one another;
she reckoned their revenues 'engaged and sequestered for the


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Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe 271
6
crown in the time of the late rebellion' at near eighty thousand
pounds a year. Nothing could be more stirring than the personal
courage which she displayed by her husband's side—as when she
crept to his side on deck, disguised in a cabin-boy's 'thrum-cap
and tarred coat, while their ship was facing the approach of a
Turk's man of war'; or when, night after night, she stood beneath
his prison window on the bowling green at Whitehall. Nor could
any devotion have surpassed that which she showed to him during
his long absences in the king's service—including the perpetration
of a most ingenious forgery of a pass to Calais for herself and
her children. All these things she tells in a style of delightful
directness and freshness; and the interest of the narrative (which
is diversified by one or two thrilling ghost stories) only slackens
(as is common in biographies) when prosperous times at last came
to her husband and herself with the restoration. It was, to be
sure, a modified prosperity, owing to the king's way of keeping his
promises (of which she says very little) and to Clarendon's real or
supposed malice (of which she says a good deal). After serving as
ambassador in both Portugal and Spain, concerning which country
his lady has many favourable particulars to relate, Sir Richard
Fanshawe died at Madrid, shortly after receiving his recall (1666);
his widow had to bring his body to England and there live for
the survivors among her many children, as she had lived for him
whose story she set down for the benefit of his heir
In this great distress I had no remedy but patience. . . . Neither did these
circumstances following prevail to mend my condition; much less found I
that compassion I expected upon the view of myself, that had lost at once my
husband and fortune in him, with my son of but twelve months old in my
arms, four daughters, the eldest but thirteen years of age, with the body of
my dear husband daily in my sight for near six months together, and a dis-
tressed family, all to be by me in honour and honesty provided for; and to
add to my afflictions, neither person sent to conduct me, neither pass or ship
or money to carry me a thousand miles, but some few letters of compliment
from the chief ministers bidding God help me as they do to beggars-and
they might have added 'they had nothing for me,' with great truth. But
God did hear and see and help me, and brought my soul out of trouble. . . .
6
1 The circumstances of Sir Richard Fanshawe’s recall from Spain are discussed
at length in the voluminous and valuable notes to the edition of the Memoirs of Ann
Lady Fanshawe published in 1907 by a descendant. Lady Fanshawe was offered
a very large sum of money if she would remain in Spain and become a catholio. -
Sir Richard Fanshawe, it may be noted, was a man of strong literary tastes, to some
extent inherited. In 1647, he printed a translation of Guarini's Pastor Fido (which,
thirty years later, Elkanah Settle adapted for the stage, apparently without acknow.
ledgment); in 1652, translations from Horace; and, in 1655, a version of the Lusiads
of Camoëns, composed in Yorkshire during an interval of rest. His last publication
was a Latin translation, entitled La Fida Pastora, of Fletcher's Faithfull Shepheardesse.


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272
Memoir and Letter Writers -
a
The Letters of Rachel Lady Russell, the devoted widow, as she
had been the faithful wife, of William lord Russell, virtually begin
with the death of her husband (of whose last paper, delivered to
the sheriffs on the scaffold, a letter to king Charles II vindicates
the genuineness) and with that of her only son, Wriothesley duke
of Bedford. She survived him and her daughter the duchess of
Rutland (who died a few months later) for twelve years, retaining
to the last the clearness of mind and serenity of spirit which are
characteristic of all her writing. Through all her troubles, she
preserved a keen interest in public affairs, as well as in the
extensive business of her private estate. Her chief correspond-
ents were divines, more especially her father's chaplain and her
own tutor John Fitzwilliam, whom she consulted on all subjects,
together with Burnet and Tillotson; but she was also in frequent
correspondence with leading statesmen and ladies of high rank.
Her tone throughout is that of a self-possession at the same time
devout and reasonable, to which the even calm of her style
corresponds. She is not, however, without moments of wrath as
well as of tenderness—the former being, on occasion, directed
against the archfoe of civil and religious liberty both within and
beyond his dominions-Louis XIV. She died in 1723, in her
eighty-seventh year. Her Letters were first published in 1773.
Although small in bulk, the Memoirs of Queen Mary II,
published in 1886 from the Hanover archives, and extending from
nearly the beginning of her reign to the year before that of her
death, should not be overlooked. No reasonable doubt as to their
genuineness can remain, if they are compared with the autobio-
graphical fragments given to the world by countess Bentinck in
1880, and with the indisputably genuine letters of the good queen.
Written in English, while the fragment of 1880 was in French (she
possessed both languages, as well as Dutch), they were guarded
with great care by the writer, who, in 1691, burnt nearly the whole
of the 'meditations' which, according to the custom of her day,
she also indited. Her record of often trying experiences attests
her innate modesty and her sense of duty, upheld by a deep piety,
which was at all times ready to translate itself into good works.
The story of the anxious years of her reign, which is further
illustrated by a short series of letters from her hand, is full of
interest-partly of a pathetic kind.


## p. 273 (#295) ############################################

CHAPTER XI
PLATONISTS AND LATITUDINARIANS
a
It was, apparently, after a short visit to Cambridge, in 1863,
that Gilbert Burnet, in his History of my Own Times—after
describing the degeneracy of the episcopal order which followed
upon the failure of the Savoy conference-proceeded to declare
that the English church herself would have 'quite lost her esteem
over the nation, had it not been for the appearance of a new set
of men of another stamp' at that crisis. "These,' he goes on to
say, 'were generally of Cambridge, formed under some divines
the chief of whom were Drs Whitchcote, Cudworth, Wilkins, More
and Worthington. ' And, passing on to a brief characterisation of
each, he describes Whichcote as 'much for liberty of conscience,'
and one who, 'being disgusted with the dry systematical ways
of those times,' studied to raise those who conversed with him
to a nobler set of thoughts,' and, with this aim, ‘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 sweeten human nature. ' This
passage, while it supplies additional evidence of Burnet's habitual
sympathy with whatever was enlightened in conception and
generous in sentiment, affords, at the same time, another instance
of what Macaulay, in his shrewd estimate of his distinguished
countryman, describes as his 'propensity to blunder. ' The Cam-
bridge Platonists, as they are often termed, although generally
inclined to latitudinarianism, appear to have had their origin
independently of the latter movement, and Whichcote's claim to
rank as one of their number must be pronounced as at least
doubtful; but of latitudinarianism itself he is one of the earliest
examples and, certainly, the most conspicuous. As regards his
philosophy, if such it may be termed, it was that of Bacon, while
his distinctive religious belief was largely the outcome of his own
observation and personal convictions, and continued to survive
18
E. L. VIII.
CH. XI.


## p. 274 (#296) ############################################

274
Platonists and Latitudinarians
6
long after the Platonic school with which his name is associated
had ceased to exert any perceptible influence.
A member of a good Shropshire family, Benjamin Whichcote
entered as a pensioner at Emmanuel college in October 1626 ; but
where he received his previous education is not recorded. In
1634, he was elected a tutor of the society, where, as his biographer
informs us, ‘he was famous for the number, rank, and character of
his pupils, and the care he took of them. ' Two years later, he was
appointed afternoon lecturer at Trinity church, Cambridge, an
office which he continued to hold for twenty years from the
time, that is to say, when Laud's administration of ecclesiastical
affairs was at its height to that of Cromwell's Proclamation,
whereby equal and complete religious freedom was established
throughout the realm-those malcontents alone being excepted
whose opinions were avowedly and manifestly prejudicial to the
maintenance of law and order. In the preparation of this great
measure, Whichcote, together with Cudworth and others of his
party, was especially consulted by Cromwell as to the expediency
of extending toleration to the Jews. In his discourses at Trinity
church, he had made it his chief object, his biographer tells us, to
counteract the 'fanatic enthusiasm and senseless canting' then in
vogue-an expression in which the term 'enthusiasm' must be
understood in its original sense, as implying the assumption by
any individual, whether educated or uneducated, of the right to
interpret, at his own discretion, not merely the meaning of
Scripture, but, also, to decide upon its applicability to existing
social and religious conditions, in short, to be himself inspired.
In 1644, Whichcote was installed by Manchester in the provost-
ship of King's college, where he was able to exercise a marked
influence over a community differing considerably from Emmanuel,
and, at the same time, himself to assume a more independent tone.
In the academic year 1650—1, he was elected to the office of
vice-chancellor, and his commencement oration, delivered in that
capacity, was marked by a freedom and significance of expression
which involved him in a noteworthy correspondence with Tuckney,
his former tutor at Emmanuel. Tuckney, with other seniors of
the university, had been in the habit of attending the afternoon
lectures at Trinity church, and their apprehensions were already
excited by what they had there heard. Whichcote, as Tuckney
understood him, had said that all those things wherein good
men differ, may not be determined from Scripture,' inasmuch as
Scripture itself 'in some places seems to be for the one part
)
6


## p. 275 (#297) ############################################

Benjamin Whichcote
275
6
a
and in some other places for the other,' which, says his critic,
'I take to be unsafe and unsound. ' Still ‘more dangerous,' as
it appeared to him, had been the advice given by the preacher,
that Christians, when seeking a common ground of agreement,
should be willing to restrict the language of belief solely to
'Scripture words and expressions,' and 'not press other forms
of words, which are from fallible men. ' 'Christ by his blood,'
wrote Tuckney, who discerned the drift of such a limitation, 'never
intended to purchase such a peace, in which the most orthodox,
with Papists, Arians, Socinians, and all the worst of heretiques,
must be all put in a bag together. ' To this, Whichcote's rejoinder
(had he thereupon expressed his whole mind) would, doubtless,
have been, that, as he himself lays it down in his Aphorisms,
Determinations beyond Scripture have indeed enlarged faith,
but lessened charity and multiplied divisions. In the first instance,
however, he contented himself with a purely defensive affirmation
of his view-namely, that the devout Christian was entitled to
advance as his own individual conviction, whatever 'upon search
he finds cause to believe, and whereon he will venture his own
soul. ' In his next letter, however, he made bold to assert his
position in the following pregnant terms: "Truth is truth, who-
soever has spoken it, or howsoever it hath been abused: but if
this liberty may not be allowed to the university, wherefore do we
study? We have nothing to do, but to get good memories, and to
learn by heart. '
There can be little doubt that his equable nature was at this
time being roused to unwonted indignation, as he marked the
unsparing severity with which, in 1651, the Engagement was being
pressed home throughout the university, and especially at King's
college, by the presbyterian party; and, before his correspondence
with Tuckney closed, we find him roundly denouncing those who
indeed profess some zeal,' for that 'happie point,' of justification
by faith, but 'yet are sensiblie degenerated into the devilish nature
of malice, spite, furie, envie, revenge. ' His final words to Tuckney,
contained in a short letter, written in the after-part of the day on
which he laid down his office of vice-chancellor, are as follows:
'Sir, wherein I fall short of your expectation, I fail for truth's
sake, whereto alone I acknowledge myself addicted. '
The difficulties in which the broadminded provost of King's
thus found himself involved were precisely those which Bacon,
to some extent, had succeeded in evading, by his candid avowal,
that he considered all articles of faith to lie beyond the province
18-2


## p. 276 (#298) ############################################

276 Platonists and Latitudinarians
6
of his new method of induction-although, indeed, his personal
sentiments were so far surmised by others that he did not escape
the unenviable imputation of being the real author of the notorious
Christian Paradoxes. Whichcote, however, determined otherwise.
Firmly convinced of the truth of Christianity, and fully persuaded
in his own mind that its principles—wherever accepted in their
spirit rather than subscribed to in the letter-were capable of
conferring priceless benefits on mankind, he argued that the more
clearly they were understood, the greater would be the mental
assurance they would carry with them. And, towards the bringing
about of such an understanding, he held the inductive method to be
eminently favourable, and calculated to prove as effectual in allaying
theological contention as it had been, in the hands of Galileo, in
proving beyond dispute the rotation of the earth on its own axis,
or, in the hands of Harvey, in demonstrating the circulation of the
blood. But, in those cases where there were differences of opinion
with respect to interpretation, he advised the suspension of
dogmatism. “We must not,' he was heard to say, 'put Truth
into the place of a Means, but into the place of an End? '-
holding that, even if the ‘end' seemed unattainable, the path
pursued was not necessarily the wrong one.
Another passage in the above-mentioned correspondence,
which occurs in Tuckney's second letter, must not be left un-
noticed. He had been discussing Whichcote's discourses with other
seniors of the university, and writes to the following effect:
"Some are readie to think that your great authors, you stear 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. Whilst you were fellow here, you were cast into the companie of
very learned men, who, I fear,—at least some of them,--studied other authors
more than the Scriptures, and Plato and his schollars, above others: in
whom, I must needs acknowledge, from the little insight I have into them, I
finde manie excellent and divine expressions; and as we are wont more to
listen to and wonder at a parrot, speaking a few words, than a man, that
speaks manie more and more plainlie; so, whilest we find such gemmes in such
dunghills (where we least expected them), and hear some such divine things
from them, we have been too much drawn away with admiration of them.
And hence, in part, hath run a veine of doctrine which divers very able and
worthy men, whom from my heart I much honour, are, I fear, too much
knowen by,—the power of Nature in morals, too much advanced, reason, too
much given to it, in the mysteries of Faith,-a recta ratio much talked of,
which I cannot tell where to find 2. !
The drift of the above passage is unmistakable. Tuckney
believed that whichcote, when at Emmanuel, had come under
Aphorisms, cent. VIII, no. 795.
Eight Letters, p. 38.
3


## p. 277 (#299) ############################################

Benjamin Whichcote.
John Wilkins 277
the influence of certain students and admirers of Plato, not that
he had influenced them; had he done so, indeed, it is difficult
to understand how the fact could have failed to attract the notice
of his former tutor, and the latter have omitted to make any
reference to the same in the above controversy. As it is, his
conjectures may be said to be fairly disposed of by Whichcote's
reply, in which he complains that Tuckney is under a complete
misapprehension ; it was true, indeed, he admits, that he had once
read the treatise, Of the Church, by Richard Field (an Oxford
divine much admired by James I), but that was ten years ago;
while, as regarded Thomas Jackson, a former president of Corpus
Christi college, and Henry Hammond of Magdalen college, in
the same university, a former chaplain of Charles I, chiefly known
as the author of A Practical Catechism, he says, 'I have a little
looked into them here and there, a good while since, but have not
read the hundredth part of either of them. '
"Trulie,' he goes on to say, 'I shame myselfe to tell you, how little I have
been acquainted with bookes; while fellow of Emmanuel Colledge, employ-
ment with pupils took my time from me. I have not read manie books, but I
have studied a fewe; meditation and invention hath bin rather my life than
reading, and trulie I have more read Calvin, Perkins, and Beza, than all the
bookes, authors, or names you mention. I have alwaies expected reason, for
what men saye; less valuing persons or authoritie, in the stating and resolving
of truth; and therefore have read them most where I have found it1!
If, to this explicit statement, we add the internal evidence
supplied by Whichcote's own manuscript notes of the Aphorisms
and the Sermons (neither of which was published until after his
death), the theory which numbers him among the Platonists, and
would even recognise him as their leader, would seem to be
altogether inadmissible. Neither Plato nor Plotinus finds a place
among his cited authorities, while the latter is not even mentioned
-although, in addition to the Greek text of the New Testament,
he quotes both Aristotle and Origen; and, among Latin writers,
Lucretius and Marcus Antoninus. But mysticism and recondite
philosophy were foreign to his genius ; and the divine with whom
he was in fullest sympathy, after the restoration, was, probably,
John Wilkins of Oxford, who, after acquiring eminence by his
labours as a teacher at Wadham college, was, also, for rather
less than a twelvemonth, master of Trinity college, Cambridge.
Wilkins was further distinguished by the interest with which he
regarded the scientific investigations of the Royal Society, and his
toleration in dealing with dissenters. The evidence, accordingly,
1 Eight Letters, p. 54.


## p. 278 (#300) ############################################

278
Platonists and Latitudinarians
would lead us to conclude that the statement of Burnet, in his
History-which, it is to be borne in mind, was not published until
eight years after his death-was simply the inaccurate impression
derived by a young man of twenty during a hurried visit to the
university, and not placed on record until long after ; while it is
certain that what he says about Plato, Tully, and Plotin,' is
perfectly applicable to Henry More of Christ's college, who was
Whichcote's junior by only four years and, about the time of
Burnet's visit, at the height of his reputation.
It would seem, however, that even More is not to be regarded
as the originator of the Platonist movement at Cambridge. So
early as the year 1641, there had appeared, printed at the
University Press, a collection of Commonplaces', delivered in the
chapel of Trinity college, by John Sherman, a fellow of the society
and bachelor of divinity, in which the following noteworthy
sentences occur :
Nature's light is a subcelestiall star in the orb of the microcosme; God's
Voice, man's usher in the school of the world. As truths supernaturall are
not contradicted by reason, so neither surely is that contradicted by Scripture
which is dictated by right reasona.
I know not how it cometh to pass, but too many Christians have too much
of heathen talk; and so also, in a reciprocation, some heathen have very much
of that which seemeth correspondent unto sacred Scripture3.
The teacher of the Gentiles instructeth us Christians not to disembrace
goodnesse in any, nor truth in any. Plato's rule is good, -Oů rls, and Tl. Let
us not so much consider who saith, as what is said; who doeth, as what is
done 4.
>
8
The above quotations may be said both to indicate the point
beyond which Whichcote and his followers are to be regarded
as making a distinct advance upon the Baconian philosophy, by
the recognition of Christian doctrine as in harmony with the voice
of nature; and, further, by the acceptance of pagan philosophy as
lending additional force to both; while the author's references
to Aristotle, as maintaining the theory of the immortality of the
soul (p. 75), and his belief in the indebtedness of 'Pythagoras,
Trismegist and Plato' to Scripture (p. 30), afford almost equally
strong presumption of an intimacy with Henry More. The title
of Sherman's volume, A Greek in the Temple, suffices to indicate
that his appeal is from the traditions of the Latin church to that
pagan philosophy from which he, and those with whom he was in
· The term 'Commonplace,' as there used, is defined in Samuel Clarke's Lives,
p. 115, as 'a college-exercise in divinity, not different from a sermon, but in length. '
% p. 1.
* p. 21.
2
3
p. 25.


## p. 279 (#301) ############################################

Henry More
279
sympathy, derived much of their inspiration; and it is at least
open to question, as he was slightly Whichcote's senior in academic
status, whether his published Commonplaces may not have con-
tributed, to a far greater degree than is on record, to promote
the movement the origin of which has been generally attributed,
almost exclusively, to the (as yet unprinted) discourses of the
provost of King's.
The second son of a gentleman of fair estate at Grantham,
the genius of Henry More ran counter alike to parental admonitions
and to the bias which his home education was designed to impart,
for his father was a rigid Calvinist. He tells us, however, that
the latter would often in winter evenings read aloud Spenser's
Faerie Queene to his elder brother and himself; while, in his
conversations with the two lads, he frequently ‘commended philo-
sophy and learning. At the age of 14, Henry was sent to
Eton— for the perfecting of the Greek and Latin tongue, as
Richard Ward, his biographer, tells us; who also states that the
boy's master would, at times, be in admiration at his exercises. '
Such language, in relation to the Eton of the seventeenth century,
can only be interpreted as implying a special facility in Latin
verse composition, varied, occasionally, by translations from Latin
authors, and may be regarded as affording an explanation of the
fact of More's superiority as a classical scholar over the rest of
the ‘Platonists'; when in advanced years, he turned this to ac-
count by translating his English treatises into Latin, fondly anti-
cipating that they were destined to as wide a popularity on the
continent as they had met with in England. From Eton, he went
up to Cambridge, where, in his seventeenth year, he was admitted
a pensioner of Christ's college. This was in December 1631 ; and
it was in the following July, that John Milton, having proceeded
M. A. , finally quitted Cambridge. Brief as was the period of their
joint residence in college, More can hardly fail to have heard
a good deal of his illustrious compeer, as one of the most notable
students of the society, and already famed as the writer of some
exceptionally clever occasional verses; but whether they became
personally acquainted must be considered doubtful. During the
next quarter of a century, however, Christ's college became
distinguished by the enthusiasm with which some of its fellows
embraced the doctrines of Descartes; and, in 1654, the celebrated
Ralph Cudworth was elected master of the society. More himself,
who was three years Cudworth's senior, succeeded, in due course,
both to a fellowship and a tutorship, and continued to reside in


## p. 280 (#302) ############################################

280
Platonists and Latitudinarians
6
college to his death. ‘His pupils,' says Ward, 'much admired the
excellent lectures he would deliver to them, of Piety and Instruction,
from the chapter that was read on nights in his chamber'; his
seniors recognised the value of the example he set, by his
regular attendance at chapel and at 'the publick ordinances' of
the church ; while the persistent refusals with which he put aside
all offers of preferment disarmed the criticism of those who might
otherwise have been his rivals in the unceasing pursuit of pelf or
place in the wider world without. Ultimately, however, he became
essentially a recluse and an ascetic, although he fully understood
“the benefit of exercise and the fresh air,' and paid particular
attention to his diet; and, as a fish diet did not suit his con-
stitution, he, during Lent, often dined in his own chamber. When
no longer occupied as a tutor, the monotony of his life was re-
lieved, to some extent, by visits to the country seat of one of his
former pupils, Edward, viscount Conway. Ragley, retired from
the ordinary haunts of men, with its woods and shady walks, was
an ideal retreat for one of More's highly imaginative temperament;
and in its recesses, he tells us, 'the choicest theories' of one of his
most noteworthy treatises, that entitled The Immortality of the
Soul, were conceived. Lady Conway also became his pupil, of
whom his biographer gives us the following account:
She was of incomparable parts and endowments,. . . and between this
excellent person and the Doctor there was, from first to last, a very high
friendship; and I have heard him say, that he scarce ever met with any
person (man or woman) of better natural parts than the lady Conway. She
was mistress of the highest theories, whether of philosophy or religion, and
had, on all accounts, an extraordinary value and respect for the Doctor,-1
have seen abundance of letters that are testimonies of it. . . . And as she
always wrote a very clear style, so would she argue sometimes, or put to
him the deepest and noblest queries imaginablel,
On his father's death, More found himself in fairly affluent
circumstances, and, when writing to lady Conway, on one oc-
casion, he observes, that it is 'the best result of riches,' that,
'finding ourselves already well provided for, we may be fully
masters of our own time. ' Notwithstanding, however, his ample
leisure, it is undeniable that a certain precipitancy in pronouncing
judgment was one of his most serious defects, and one which offers
a marked contrast to the habitual deliberation of Cudworth, which
was itself, in turn, perhaps carried to excess. Another point of
.
difference between the master of Christ's and its distinguished
fellow is to be noted in the fact that the former was not a public
1 Life of Dr Henry More, p. 193.
a


## p. 281 (#303) ############################################

Ralph Cudworth
281
school man.
Cudworth had been educated at home by his
father-in-law, Dr Stoughton, and had been admitted a pensioner
of Emmanuel at the age of thirteen. It is probable, therefore,
that he never attained to the facility in Latin, either collo-
quially or in composition, which More appears to have acquired
at Eton; and he consequently preferred to write in English.
Throughout his life, moreover, he was much busied with official
duties. In 1645, when only twenty-eight years of age, he had
been elected master of Clare, besides being appointed to fill the
chair of Hebrew in the university; and, on migrating, in 1654,
from Clare to assume the mastership of Christ's college, he found
himself called upon to undertake the office of bursar; he was also
a frequent preacher. Notwithstanding, therefore, his reputation
both for learning and ability, his leisure was scanty and mainly
bestowed on Hebrew and cognate studies. But Cudworth was
intimate with Whichcote, and, in their frequent conversations,
could hardly fail to become familiar with the views of the latter
on the subject of morality. "The moral part of religion,' Whichcote
was wont to say, 'is the knowledge of the Divine Nature, and it
never alters. Moral laws are laws of themselves, without sanction
of will, for the necessity of them arises from the things themselves? '
Cudworth, in the course of his varied reading, and especially in
connection with the literature of the Cabala, had met with
evidence which appeared to him strongly corroborative of such
a theory, and he had intimated to his friends his design of
publishing, before long, a treatise entitled Moral Good or Evil,
or Natural Ethics. It was a subject, however, which demanded
not only very wide research, but, also, that careful suspension of
judgment which he was wont to exercise in arriving at his
conclusions ; and his friends were already beginning to entertain
misgivings whether his profound speculations would ever result
in actual accomplishment, when he was himself taken by surprise,
and not a little ruffled, on learning that Henry More, living within
the precincts of Christ's college, was about to publish a manual on
the same subject, and this, too, in Latin, thereby appealing to
a wider circle of readers than any English philosophical treatise
could possibly command! The master was naturally inclined to
surmise that some, at least, of the views which he had formed
on the subject and had often talked over with his friends had
been appropriated by More. He protested warmly against such
apparently disingenuous conduct, in a letter to Worthington-
1 Aphorisms, cent. 1, no. 99; cent. III, no. 221.
a


## p. 282 (#304) ############################################

282
Platonists and Latitudinarians
formerly master of Jesus college and their common friend--and,
through his intervention, More was induced to profess his per-
fect willingness to wait until Cudworth should have put forth
his own elaborate disquisitions. But publication, so far as the
master was concerned, was still remote; and, eventually, More's
Enchiridion Ethicum made its appearance in 1667. It was in
Latin; and (as described by the author himself) merely ‘a portable
little volume,' designed ‘for the instruction of beginners,' and
setting forth in lucid and connected fashion the elements of
Ethics, so as to render the methods of the recognised teachers
on the subject more easily intelligible. ' Cudworth's profound
Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, on the
other hand, remained in manuscript for another sixty-four years,
when—long after the author's death-it at last appeared, under
the editorship of Edward Chandler, the learned bishop of
Durham.
But, long before Enchiridion Ethicum appeared, More was
already a voluminous author, and as conspicuous for his daring
as was the master for his caution. Taking for his maxim the
heroic sentiment of Cicero-rationem quo ea me cunque ducet,
sequar-he proposed that, in order to counteract alike the
scepticism hatched in Paris and the enthusiasm' rampant in
Rotterdam, the Christian teacher should call in the aid both of
the pagan philosopher of the past and of the scientific philosopher
of the present. But nothing, he held, could be of worse augury
for the Christian faith than that its recognised expounders should
be seen rallying to the support of what the voice of reason had
demonstrated to be untrue. So early, accordingly, as 1647, in
his Song of the Soul, he had openly confessed himself the disciple
of Plato and Plotinus, as restorers of oriental traditions of a remote
and probably inspired philosophy, boldly proclaiming that
. . . if what's consonant to Plato's school
(Which well agrees with learned Pythagore,
Egyptian Trismegist, and th' antique roll
Of Chaldee wisdome, all which time hath tore
But Plato and deep Plotin do restore)
Which is my scope, I sing out lustily;
If any twitten me for such strange lore,
And me, all blamelesse, brand with infamy,
God purge that man from fault of foul malignity!
Although, consequently, the fate of Galileo was still a warning
to the scientific world, the poet's conviction that the Ptolemaic
· Philosophicall Poems, p. 155.
6
>
1


## p. 283 (#305) ############################################

More's Song of the Soul
283
theory was destined ultimately to give place to the Copernican
was no less candidly expressed. After apostrophising those
Blest souls first authours of Astronomie!
Who clomb the heavens with your high reaching mind,
Scaled the high battlements of the lofty skie,
To whom compard this earth a point you find,
he proceeds to compare their assailants to those 'fabled Giants,
who, piling Pelion upon Ossa, themselves, in turn, strove, 'with
raging wind,''to clamber up to heaven. '
But all in vain, they want the inward skill.
What comes from heaven only can there ascend.
Not rage nor tempest that this bulk doth fill
Can profit aught; but gently to attend
The soul's still working, patiently to bend
Our mind to sifting reason, and clear light
That strangely figurd in our soul doth wend,
Shifting its forms, still playing in our sight,
Till something it present that we shall take for right.
And, finally, the following rebuke of the persecutors of Galileo
probably went home to the consciences of not a few readers who
were still, perhaps, hesitating to express their open assent:
,
O you stiff-standers for ag'd Ptolemee,
I heartily praise your humble reverence
If willingly given to Antiquitie;
But when of him1 in whom's your confidence,
Or your own reason and experience
In those same arts, you find those things are true
That utterly oppugne our outward sense,
Then are you forc'd to sense to bid adieu,
Not what your sense gainsayes to holden straight untrue3.
The Song of the Soul (the poem from which the above extracts
are taken) is in five books, each prefaced by an 'Address to the
Reader,' wherein the author discusses, in plainer prose, that phase
of his subject with which the book itself is especially concerned,
thus successively dealing, though very briefly, with those several
problems which suggest themselves in connection with the theory
of the soul's independent existence—its life, immortality, sleep,
unity and (in opposition to the theory of the fabled Lethe) its
memory after death.
Taken as a whole, More's poem is entitled to the praise of
being a highly ingenious series of arguments, adorned by fancy
and clothed in poetic diction, in support of his several theories.
When compared with the Psyche of Joseph Beaumont, which
i Galileo.
2 Philosophicall Poems, pp. 155—6.


## p. 284 (#306) ############################################

284
Platonists and Latituainarians
6
appeared in the following year, it must be pronounced altogether
superior; and, in fact, the difference between the two compo-
sitions is such that a comparison is almost impossible. Beaumont
was a native of Hadleigh in Suffolk and had received his education
at the grammar school in that town. He subsequently entered at
Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he gained a fellowship, from which
he was ejected in 1644. On his ejection, he retired to Hadleigh,
where, 'for the avoiding of mere idleness,' and being without the
society of books,' as he himself tells us, he began the composition
of his poems—an endeavour to represent 'a soule led by Divine
Grace and her Guardian Angel through the assaults of lust, pride,
heresie, and persecution. ' This singular production, conceived in
imitation of Spenser, but written in the six-line stanza, extends to
twenty cantos, or some thirty thousand lines, and, although it is said
to have been commended by Pope, produces in the modern reader
little else than wonderment. Even the author's son (himself a
fellow of Peterhouse), when re-editing it for the press in 1702,
deemed it so far capable of improvement that he left hardly a
stanza unaltered. Genius itself, indeed, in essaying to depict the
career of a pure and devout nature, assailed at every stage by
temptations designed to effect the ruin alike of its earthly and of
its spiritual happiness, might well fail in the attempt to impart
variety to the incessant recurrence of doleful circumstance or
impending peril. But Beaumont was neither an Edmund Spenser
nor a John Bunyan; and the latter, when, a quarter of a century
later, he wrote The Pilgrim's Progress, may unhesitatingly be
acquitted of having borrowed anything from the pages of Psyche.
Few readers have ever felt disposed to nod over Bunyan's master-
piece, while Beaumont's poem belongs very much to that order of
literature which induces the slumber not infelicitously described
by its author in the following stanza:
In this soft calm, when all alone the Heart
Walks through the shades of its own silent Breast,
Heaven takes delight to meet it, and impart
Those blessed Visions, which pose the best
Of waking eyes, whose beams turn all to night,
Before the looks of a spiritual sight1.
If, however, Beaumont cannot be numbered among those poets of
whom Cambridge is proud, he was a master to whom Peterhouse
has reason to be grateful. He was not only a ‘painful' regius pro-
fessor of divinity, but he also approved himself an industrious and
i Cant. viii, 11.


## p. 285 (#307) ############################################

More's Later Works
285
careful guardian of the college archives, which he reduced to
order, indexing the register of admissions, and compiling a volume
of personal memoranda useful as illustrating the college life of the
period.
In the meantime, Henry More was acquiring a brilliant reputa-
tion by his untiring literary activity, and, in 1652, brought out his
Antidote against Atheism. In the following year appeared his
Conjectura Cabbalistica, and, in 1656, bis Enthusiasmus Trium-
phatus, a skilful exposure of the pretensions of the enthusiasm’
which was then at its apogee. In 1659, he re-wrote, in an ex-
panded and connected form, the dissertations prefixed to the
several books of his Song of the Soul, and, along with the argu-
ment of The Song itself, reduced to plainer prose, published
his treatise entitled The Immortality of the Soul. In 1660
appeared his Grand Mystery of Godliness, which Beaumont was
imprudent enough to take upon himself to criticise. The prosaic
poet was incapable of appreciating the poetic philosopher, and
blundered sadly. The underlying design of More's treatise would
appear, indeed, to have been unintelligible to him, and his attack
recoiled disastrously on himself. In 1662, More published a
collected edition of his prose works up to that date, including his
,
correspondence with Descartes. It is in the preface to this volume
that More appears at his best, still adhering to his original stand-
point, when he asks, 'what greater satisfaction can there be to a
rational spirit than to find himself able to appeal to the strictest
rules of reason and philosophy? '
'I conceive,' he goes on to say, 'the Christian religion rational throughout,
. . . and every priest should endeavour, according to his opportunity and
capacity, to be also, as much as he can, a rational man or philosopher, for
which reason, certainly, Universities were first erected, and are still continued
to this very day,. . . for take away reason, and all religions are alike true; as,
the light being removed, all things are of one colourl'
It is here, also, that he refers to the service which he had rendered
in 'interweaving' Platonism and Cartesianism— making use of
these Hypotheses as invincible bulwarks against the most cunning
and most mischievous efforts of Atheism? '—this, it is to be noted,
being the last occasion on which he alludes with complacency to
the doctrines of Descartes.
After the collapse of the Savoy conference, however, his avowed
sentiments and whole tone (in common with those of not a few
other writers) underwent a radical change. Worthington suggested
pp. iv, v.
2 p. vi.
1


## p. 286 (#308) ############################################

286
Platonists and Latitudinarians
to him to throw over Cartesianism, and he did so-his Enchiridion
Metaphysicum, which appeared in 1668, being especially designed
as an exposition of a science of spiritualism, in opposition to the
Cartesian doctrines.
In 1664, his Mystery of Iniquity aroused afresh the public
interest in past history by its denunciation of the claims of popery,
while it also excited gloomy forebodings as regarded the future,
by its discussions on the fulfilments of prophecy under the reign
of anti-Christ. The interest aroused by these arbitrary interpreta-
tions of past historical events was further stimulated by his
returning to the subject in his Divine Dialogues, published in
1668, the most popular of all his works. Here, in the fifth
Dialogue, he took upon himself to point out that the occurrence
of the calamities which the soundings of the six trumpets in The
Revelation were successively to usher in was clearly to be dis-
cerned in certain recognised historic epochs, from the fall of the
Roman empire to the invasion of the Turks. Such, indeed, was his
confidence in the interpretation of past church history which he
thus put forward that he ventured to assert that its outlines, before
long, would become as 'common and ordinary' a subject of instruc-
tion in Christian schools as the children's catechism itself. The
appearance, in 1665, of two portly folios--the Works of Joseph
Mede, edited by Worthington, a task on which that eminent
scholar, now resident in London, had expended an amount of
labour and research which excited high encomiums-proved a
further incentive to such studies; while Clavis Apocalyptica,
more especially, attracted fresh attention. The popular interest,
accordingly, rose almost to a fever of expectancy, when one Israel
Tongue of Oxford, the associate of Titus Oates and a notorious
charlatan, proclaimed that he had ready for the press certain
'Apocalyptical Expositions' which would supersede all that had
hitherto been written on that absorbing theme. As, however, his
lucubrations never saw the light, More continued to take rank as
the most advanced and authoritative writer on a subject in con-
nection with which his fervid imagination might find scope for its
employment almost without a check; although, in other relations,
it is evident that he was already beginning to incline to a more
guarded declaration of his opinions. In common with Cudworth
and other leading theologians at Cambridge, he had become, since
the restoration, an avowed supporter of the doctrines of the
church of England, and he regarded with undisguised alarm the
growing progress of infidelity, especially as represented by Hobbes.
a


## p. 287 (#309) ############################################

More and Cudworth compared
287
In other respects, the points of contrast between the master and
the fellow of Christ's college are strong and marked, for Cudworth’s
reputation as an author was almost entirely posthumous, the chief
noteworthy exception being a sermon preached before parliament
in 1647, when he was only in his thirtieth year. In this remarkable
discourse, he had given distinct evidence of his sympathy with the
party of academic reform by a candid avowal of his dissatis-
faction with the prevailing dialectics, on the one hand, and of his
sense of the advantages to be derived from the study of nature, on
the other. In the endeavour to arrive at a clearer understanding
of natural laws, he urged that man was really only discharging
a universal religious duty, the neglect of which was, in itself, a
violation of the homage due from mankind to its Creator.
Naturally disposed to weigh evidence and carefully to ponder
over each conclusion, Cudworth was as deliberate as More was
unquestionably precipitate in his judgments; and, at his death,
a pile of unpublished manuscripts mostly unfinished, gave evidence
of a vast amount of patient toil, the results of which were not
destined ever to be given to the world. His great masterpiece,
The true Intellectual System of the Universe, was not published
until 1678, when it was fated to meet with a reception, for
the most part, unsympathetic, and, in some quarters, distinctly
hostile, according as it ran counter to the prevailing scientific
cynicism or to the growing religious formalism; while, to quote the
language of Martineau, 'it laid itself open to the rebuke of scholars,
for reading the author's favourite ideas, without adequate warrant,
into the Greek text of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus. ' The whole
treatise, indeed, according to the same eminent critic,
conceded too much to the Pagan philosophers, recognizing among them the
essence of Christian wisdom, to suit the assumptions of either the rising
High Churchmen or the retiring Puritans. It placed too little value on the
instituted observances of religion for the former, and on its niceties of dogma
for the latter.
With regard, however, both to More and Cudworth, there is
evidence, other than that afforded by their writings, which must
not be overlooked. If we revert to the aspect of affairs a quarter
of a century before The Intellectual System appeared—the time,
that is to say, when More published his Antidote to Atheism
(1652)—we find our attention arrested by the appearance from
among the number of their disciples of two remarkable writers,
who, like two genii responding to their call, had risen and vanished
with equal suddenness. In 1651 died Nathaniel Culverwel, to be


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288
Platonists and Latitudinarians
followed, the next year, by John Smith of Queens'; in the latter
year appeared Culverwel's Light of Nature, and, in 1660, Smith's
Select Discourses, edited by Worthington. These two writers were
both natives of Northamptonshire, who entered at Emmanuel
college during the period of Whichcote's tutorship—the former in
1633 (when he was probably about sixteen), the latter in 1636,
when already eighteen years of age. In 1642, Culverwel was
elected to a fellowship at Emmanuel ; but the restrictions then
existing in the college with regard to counties made it necessary
for Smith to migrate to Queens', in order to obtain like preferment,
although not before he had become well known both to Whichcote
and to Worthington. The former, discerning Culverwels genius,
gave him not only valuable advice, but, also, pecuniary aid ; while
.
the latter, whose age was the same as Smith's, but who had entered
at Emmanuel four years earlier, lived to be his lifelong friend, and
wrote the notice of him in the 1660 edition of his Discourses.
According to Worthington, Smith “studied himself into a con-
sumption, and the extraordinary attainments of which the
Discourses give evidence lend support to the statement especially
if we consider that he had to discharge the duties of dean and also
to lecture on Hebrew in his college and on mathematics in the
schools. The testimony of Simon Patrick, afterwards president of
Queens' college and bishop of Ely, is to the same effect, as he bore
witness to the merits of his departed friend in the same chapel
in which the latter had often discoursed—his sharp and piercing
understanding,' ‘his Herculean labours day and night from his
first coming to the University' and, especially, his communica-
tiveness with respect to what he knew and the clearness of his
language when imparting it,
wherein he seems to have excelled the famous philosopher, Plotin, of whom
Porphyry tells us, that he was something careless of his words, árld Jóvov Toû
voll éxóuevos, but was wholly taken up into his mind.
As Smith, like More, wrote on the immortality of the soul, their
merits, as authors, admit of a certain comparison, although the
former, when he wrote, was not yet thirty, and directs his argument
mainly against the scepticism of the ancients, such as Epicurus and
Lucretius, while the latter was in his fifty-fifth year and concerns
himself mainly with the philosophy of Hobbes. Notwithstanding,
however, the ingenuity of More's speculations and the remarkable
range of reading displayed throughout his pages, his readers can
hardly fail to experience a certain disappointment at finding that,
after a variety of questions have been mooted, with rather vague


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More and Smith contrasted
289
conclusions, the author is firm in his opinion that the belief in the
soul's immortality necessarily involves a recognition of the existence
of ghosts, and that all that can with certainty be predicated
respecting its condition in a future state, is that it will be an
entity not needing food and not casting a shadow.
Very different is the impression left upon the mind by John
Smith's less discursive treatment of his subject and skilful com-
pression of his well reasoned generalisations. To him, it appears
that the main argument in support of the soul's immortality is that
derived from the universality of the belief--a certain consensus
gentium, discernible throughout pagan times, fondly cherished by
the multitude, and no less firmly maintained by philosophers such
as Plotinus, Proclus and Aristotle. And this belief, he points out,
is, in turn, clearly involved in a yet grander conception, revealing
itself to the sanctified human intellect as an inevitable corollary
from the belief in the Divine beneficence. Over and above
'the Epicurean herd,' he distinguishes four grades of spiritual
existence on earth, of which the av@pwrtos Dewpntinós, the true
metaphysical and contemplative man, represents the final and the
highest-in whom the soul has already attained to communion
with the Divine Nature, and regards its confinement in this material
body as but the period of its infancy.
In order to realise the conditions under which Culverwel's
Light of Nature was conceived, we must bear in mind that,
although not published until 1652, it had been written six years
before, when the author was probably less than thirty years of age.
As regards general literary excellence, he may be said to divide
with John Smith the claim to rank foremost among Platonists.
It is evident, from his opening chapter, that he did not conceal
from himself the magnitude of the task upon which he had
embarked, and which he defines as that of 'giving to reason the
things that are reason's and unto faith the things that are faith's';
it requires, he adds,‘our choicest thoughts, the exactest discussion
that can be, to give faith her full scope and latitude, and to give
reason also her just bounds and limits. ' 'Reason is the first-born, ,
but the other has the blessing. ' Such is the assumption which
underlies the whole treatment of his subject, namely, that the
function of faith is superior to that of reason. “Reason discerns
the existence of a God, the eye of faith, a Trinity of Persons; the
former recognises the immortality of the soul, faith spies out the
resurrection of the body. “Revealed truths are never against
reason, they will always be above reason. '
19
6
>
E. L. VIII.
сн. XI.


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Platonists and Latitudinarians
It was Culverwel's design to embody in a second treatise the
evidence and the arguments whereby he proposed to prove, first,
that all moral law is founded in natural and common light-i. e.
in the light of reason; and, secondly, that there is nothing in the
mysteries of the Gospel contrary to reason, nothing repugnant to
the light that shines from the candle of the Lord. ' But he was
never able to carry into effect this great design, which would have
admirably supplemented the vast researches of Cudworth. So
far, indeed, as it is possible to discern the facts, it would appear
that, for at least five years before his death, Culverwel's labours
were altogether suspended ; while a singular mystery involves his
life during that time. It may, perhaps, be conjectured, that bis
outspoken language in his college Commonplaces, together with
his generally independent attitude as a thinker, brought upon him
the disfavour of certain seniors at Emmanuel (where Whichcote
was no longer fellow), and, under the combined effects of anxiety
with respect to his future prospects and the strain involved
in his literary labours, his health, mental as well as physical,
completely gave way. He died in 1651, when, probably, not more
than thirty-two years of age.
With regard to both Smith and Culverwel, it is also not a little
remarkable that, although none of their contemporaries can have
possessed a closer personal knowledge of them than More or
Cudworth, in the pages of neither of these do we find any reference
either to them or to their writings. It is possible, indeed, that
Culverwel's depreciatory language as to Descartes may have
offended More at the time when he was still in the first flush of
his admiration for the great French philosopher; but, on the whole,
it seems most probable that both the newly installed master of
Christ's and its most distinguished fellow were alarmed by the
confidence with which these new theories were advanced,
especially when viewed in connection with the widespread ten-
dency (already apparent at this time) to repudiate all dogmatic
teaching, of whatever school. It was certainly no reassuring
note that was sounded in 1655, when George Rust, another
member of the same society—who had been elected to a fellowship
from St Catharine's, in 1649—deemed it incumbent on him to
call attention to the impending peril.