HENRY MORE, 1614-1687 ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES

INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HIS TORY OF IDEAS 185

HENRY MORE, 1614-1687

A Biography of the Cambridge Platonist

by Robert Crocker

Founding Directors: P. Dibont (Paris) and R.H. Popkin (Washington University, St. Louis & UeLA) Director: Sarah Hutton (Middlesex University, United Kingdom) Associate-Directors: J.E. Force (Lexington); J.c. Laursen (Riverside) Editorial Board: M.J.B. Allen (Los Angeles); J.R. Armogathe (Paris); A. Gabbey (New York); T. Gregory (Rome); J. Henry (Edinburgh); J.D. North (Oxford); J. Popkin (Lexington); G.A.J. Rogers (Keele); Tb. Verbeek (Utrecht) HENRY MORE, 1614-1687

A BIOGRAPHY OF THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONIST

by ROBERT CROCKER University of Australia

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ISBN 978-90-481-6373-1 ISBN 978-94-017-0217-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-0217-1

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All Rights Reserved © 2003 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2003 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exc1usive use by the purchaser of the work. Dedicated to the memory of my parents, Sir Walter Crocker (1902-2002) and Claire Crocker (1919-2000) Henry More: Frontispiecefrom The Theological Works (London, 1708) CONTENTS

Acknowledgements xiii

Abbreviations xv

Introduction xvii

Chapter 1: Early Life and Education 1 1. Grantham, Eton and Cambridge 1 2. Conversion to 4 3. Early Influences: Gell and Castellio 8

Chapter 2: Psychozoia and the Life ofthe Soul 17 1. The 'Divine Life' and its Goal 17 2. The Allegory ofthe Spiritual Journey 20

Chapter 3: Metaphysics, Psychology and Natural Philosophy in the Psychodia Platonica 29 1. The 'Ogdoas' or Chain ofBeing 29 2. The Psychology of Illumination 34 3. Arguing from Nature 37

Chapter 4: Enthusiasm and the Light Within 45 1. 'A Full but False Persuasion' 45 2. 'Philosophical Enthusiasm' 48 3. 'Political Enthusiasm' 54 X CONTENTS

Chapter 5: Democritans: the Ancient Cabbala Revived 63 1. Some Ear1y Discip1es and Friends 63 2. P1atonism and Cartesianism 66 3. Innate Ideas and Incorporea1 Things 70

Chapter 6: The Cupri-Cosmits and the Latitude-Men 79 1. 'The Cupri-Cosmits' 79 2. The Restoration in Cambridge 84 3. Some 'Ru1es to Judge Opinions by' 86

Chapter 7: The Apology ofDr Henry More 93 1. The Grounds for Authority 93 2. The Intelligibi1ity of Doctrine 99 3. The Coherence of Prophecy 104

Chapter 8: The Preexistence of the Soul 111 1. 'A Most Like1y Hypothesis' 111 2. The Reaction against Preexistence 115 3. Preexistence and Providence 119

Chapter 9: A Natural History of the World of Spirits 127 1. A 'True History ofSpirits' 127 2. The Webster-More Debate 133

Chapter 10: The Limits ofMechanism and the Experimental Philosophy of the Royal Society 143 1. The Two Keys ofProvidence 143 2. The Threat of "Nullibism" 145 3. Henry Stubbe and the Royal Society 151 4. Robert Boy1e and the Spirit ofNature 157

Chapter 11: Hylozoism and the Nature ofMaterial Substance 167 1. G1isson's 'Energetic Substance' 167 2. The 'Psychopyrism' of Richard Baxter 170 3. Errant Discip1e: John Finch and his Treatise 176 CONTENTS XI

Chapter 12: The Kabbalah and the : F.M. van Helmont, Anne Conway, van Helmont, and Knorr von Rosenroth 183 1. The Jewish and 'Greek' Cabbalas 183 2. More, Anne Conway and the Quakers 190

Conclusion 199

Bibliography 205 1. Primary Sources 205 2. Secondary Sources 221

Appendix: The Correspondence of Henry More 239

Index 269 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have been very fortunate to have benefited from the knowledge and advice of some remarkable scholars during the course of my research for this book. Firstly, I owe much to the many kindnesses, wealth of understanding and exemplary scholarship of my former supervisor at Oxford, Charles Webster. It was he who first introduced me to More, and supervised the doctoral thesis out of which this book has developed. I also owe much to the work and friendship of another remarkable scholar, Sarah Hutton. Her kind and persistent encouragement as editor of this series, International Archives of the History of Ideas, led me to pick up, further deve10p and complete this project after several lengthy interruptions. Her growing body of work relating to Anne Conway and the , much of it cited here, has greatly contributed to my understanding of More. To these two long-term influences, I should add my thanks to the following friends and fellow travellers, whose generous conversation and friendship, scholarship and knowledge I have benefited from at various stages along the way, and who have themselves all worked on various projects related to the subject of this book: Stuart Brown, David Dockrill, James Force, Alan Gabbey, John Henry, Scott Mandelbrote, Maggie Pelling, John Rogers, Luisa Simonutti and John Spurr. I must also acknowledge my friends and colleagues in the University of South Australia, who generously funded a sabbatical in 2000, so that I might bring the project to completion. To these names I would also like to thank my wonderful family, and particularly my wife, Meredith, whose love and support has sustained me and given me the confidence to complete what I had begun. ABBREVIATIONS

Works by More or his Contemporarie!

AA More, An Antidote against Atheisme (1652) Adam & Tannery Adam, Tannery (eds) Oeuvres de Descartes (1964-1974) Apology More, The Apologie of Dr Henry More (1664) Bullough G. Bullough (ed), The Poems of Henry More (1931) CC More, Conjectura Cabbalistica (1653) CSPW More, A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings (1662) Discourses More, Discourses on Several Texts 0/ Scripture (1692) DD More, Divine Dialogues ... (1713: 2 vols in 1) DP More, Democritus Platonissans (1646) EE More, An Account 0/ Virtue ... (1690: trans of EE, 1667) EM More, Enchiridion Metaphysicum (1671) ET More, Enthusiasmus Triumphatus (1656) GMG More, An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness (1660) Grosart A. Grosart (ed), The Complete Poems of Dr Henry More (1876) IS More, Immortality ofthe Soul (1659) PG More, Praefatio Generalissima, in Opera Omnia (tom.2, 1679) Psychodia More, Psychodia Platonica (1642) pp More, Philosophical Poems (1647) XVI HENRY MORE

Nicolson Nicolson (ed), The Conway Letters (ed, S. Hutton, Oxford, 1992) OpOm More, Opera Omnia (3 vols, London, 1675-1679) Smith John Smith, Select Discourses .. . (1655) ST , Saducismus Triumphatus, (ed More, 1681) TIS , True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678) Two Treatises More (ed), Two Choice and Useful Treatises ... (1682) TW More, Theological Works (1708) Ward Hutton et al. (eds), Richard Ward: The Life of Henry More (2000) Worthington Diary and Correspondence. (3 vols, Manchester, 1847-86)

Other Items

AS Annals of Science BJHP British Journal ofthe History of Philosophy BJHS British Journal for the History of Science DNB Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 1997-) DSB Dictionary ofScientific Biography (New York, 1981) Hutton S. Hutton (ed), Henry More ... Tercentenary Studies (1990) JHI Journal ofthe History of Ideas JHP Journal ofthe History of Philosophy JWCI Journal ofthe Warburg and Courtauld Institutes NRRS Notes and Records ofthe Royal Society (new series) Peile J. Peile, Biographical Register of Christ's College (2 vols, 1910) PR Philosophical Review Rogers Cambridge Platonism in Philosophical Context (1997)

1 For full titles and publication details, see the Bibliography. INTRODUCTION

'Cambridge Platonism' is not a precise term in intellectual and religious his tory , referring to a broad set of religious and philosophical pre• occupations, all more or less shared by a loose coalition of thinkers and divines based in seventeenth-century Cambridge. 1 The membership of this group, although never to be fixed with complete confidence, has usually been restricted to the well-known moralist and anti-dogmatic preacher, Benjamin Whichcote,2 his pupils, lohn Smith and Ralph Cudworth, Fellow and Master of Christ's College,3 and Henry More, also a Fellow of Christ's College for most of his life. To this very short and rather unsatisfactory list, with the benefit of hindsight, we might also add with some confidence More's pupil, , also a Fellow of Christ's and later Bishop of Dromore, and Rust's pupil, Henry Hallywell, a still rather neglected younger 'Platonist' from Christ's College, whose publications closely followed the spirit and ideas of his teachers, Rust and More.4 Further out from this narrowly defined centre were others who shared most, if not all of the ideas and interests of Whichcote, Cudworth, Smith and More. Probably because More alone has left us a fairly comprehensive sampie of his correspondence, we know of at least three men, all his close friends, colleagues and admirers, who shared much of his religious and intellectual disposition, that is lohn Worthington, Thomas Standish and William Outram, 5 whereas we know very little of those who might have played a similar role in the lives of Whichcote, Smith and even Cudworth. To the group we have named, we might also add some younger men, perhaps more profoundly influenced by Henry More himself as a teacher and spiritual mentor; namely, his two former pupils, Edward Fowler and lohn Sharp, who later attained important posts in the Church, and three younger XVIII INTRODUCTION

Oxford men, Joseph Glanvill, a popular preacher who became a great admirer and confidant of More, and who wrote the first collective biography of the Cambridge Platonists, and the rather eccentric poet and contro• versialist, Edmund Elys, and his friend, John Davies, who like Elys regarded the older More not only as amentor but as aspiritual master.6 As the diversity and uncertain unity of the figures we have identified suggests, Cambridge Platonism was probably a much wider phenomena than the rather narrow list of individuals we have inherited from nineteenth century studies. This is suggested by the nature of its birth: without excep• tion, every one of the Platonists named so far were from 'Puritan' or orthodox Calvinist backgrounds, 'Church Puritans ' as it were, and each, influenced by the turbulent religious wars and conflicts of the first thirty years of the seventeenth century and the subsequent English Civil War, had taken the conscious step of rejecting the dogmatism of their upbringing or education.7 The first Cambridge Platonists, Whichcote, Cudworth, Smith and More, all shared a public notoriety in the University of Cambridge in the 1640s for roundly rejecting the dominant orthodoxies of scholasticism and dogmatic . They emphasised instead a few 'saving fundamentals' common to all reformed Christians, and contrasted these with those 'things indifferent' that, in their view, should not have become the focal point of differences between Protestants as they had - a position they shared with many irenical, anti-dogmatic thinkers in this period.8 What earned them the appellation 'Platonists', however, was the way in which they skilfully presented their version of these 'fundamentals' within a pointedly moral, rational theological framework that made explicit but pragmatic use of the c1assical and Christian Platonists, most notably and his followers, and those early Greek Fathers most c10sely associated with Platonism.9 For example, reacting against Calvinist predestinarianism they emphasised, particularly after the Alexandrine Fathers, Clement and , the pre• eminent beneficence of the deity in his dealings with mankind, and thus the rational and moral coherence of a personal divine providence. They viewed the pessimism and voluntarism of orthodox Calvinism as mistaken, and of grave spiritual, moral, and also - in the light of the radical sectarianism of the 1640s - political and social consequence. Similarly, in their rejection of scholasticism, they criticised its lack of rational symmetry with Christian teachings, and chose instead to embrace the new natural philosophy of Galileo and Descartes as a more promising natural philosophy than that imprisoned by the 'c1oudy' notions of the Schools. 10 Scholarly interest in the Cambridge Platonists has been continuous since the eighteenth century, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge being one of the first major British intellects to 'rediscover' and appreciate the Cambridge men.II INTRODUCTION XIX

Nineteenth century historians added considerably to this interest by discovering in the Platonists exemplars of an intellectual Anglican 'via media' tradition, forerunners of tolerance in religion and idealism in philosophy, but one that did not betray the spiritual roots of Protestant theology.12 In the early twentieth century this interest was broadened initially by scholars interested in the history of literature and science, who linked the ideas and works of the Platonists to some of the larger cultural and intellectual movements affecting the period, such as the spread and reception of Cartesianism. 13 Building upon this earlier work, more recently, there has been something of a renaissance of scholarly interest in the Platonists, inspired in part by a quest to understand in more detail the interaction between religion, philosophy and science, or more properly, 'natural philosophy' in the period.14 Much of this scholarly effort seems to have focused on Henry More, probably because he was the most prolific and controversial writer amongst the Platonists. His vigorous, combative style, and the large number of topical works he published during a long literary career (1642-87), makes hirn a useful reference point or illustrative figure in many kinds of historical investigation. Unfortunately, this in itself has created some difficulties for his biographers. Part of the problem is one of scale: More was a prolific author, even by seventeenth century standards. 15 By 1687, the year of his death, he had published over 40 works, with many of these being expanded or amended versions of the same work. More was also a controversial figure amongst his contemporaries, involved in aseries of highly visible public controversies, on topics of widespread intellectual and religious interest. His literary presence was feIt up to and well after his death, with a biography, new collections and edited Ietters and works reissued into the earIy eighteenth century. 16 There are also some interesting manuscripts that relate directly to More's life and works, and with the exception of the many important letters collected in Marjorie Nicolson's fine edited compilation, The Conway Letters (1930)17, none of these have been studied or discussed, even in the more recent biographies of More. 18 Secondly, by our standards, and possibly also by the standards of his day, More was a stubbomly contradictory figure. He was a deeply religious man with self-dec1ared 'mystical' proc1ivities, and certainly illuminist aspirations, who privately c1aimed to his friends to want to 'retire' from the world to contemplate the divinity. But at the same time he was a scholar and teacher of renown, socially adept and well connected to some powerful and important political and c1erical figures, and he expended large amounts of ink in philosophical-religious apologetics and vigorous controversy, defending what he believed in with a very forthright pen. This contrast xx INTRODUCTION

appears a contradiction to modem sensibilities, and is not easy to understand, even in the terms of the seventeenth century, without a careful reading ofthe whole corpus of More's works, taking into account their polemical and apologetic intentions, and taking the spiritual or devotional preoccupations that inspire them seriously. This is no easy task, and with few exceptions, modem studies of More have not attempted this. Most have been based upon a fairly restricted sampie of his better known philosophical works or works of natural theology (mostly those produced in the 1650s), and a handful of texts that have already been discussed at length in the context of the thought of other, more canonical contemporaries, such as Descartes, Boyle, Spinoza, Leibniz or Newton. 19 Depending upon this limited range of sources, and marshalling More's thought into preexisting corrals created by the canonical works of more famous seventeenth-century philosophers or scientific 'greats', has made of More a fascinating but still baffling foil to other better known figures and movements, an interesting and rather eccentric voice in a 'grand narrative' that is incapable of fully addressing his main apologetic intentions or intellectual concems. At a risk of bypassing some of these figures and the larger themes usually associated with them, in this book I have tried to start from More's intentions themselves. So I begin here not with an examination of More's Platonic intellectual sources, but with a discussion of the perfectionism and illuminism that inspired his adoption of a supporting Platonic metaphysic and psychology. By 'perfectionism' and 'illuminism' here I am referring to the central belief that More held that astate of spiritual perfection or illumination had been promised in the Gospel to every believer, and that this, rather than only salvation after death, was the true goal of the religious life, or the 'divine life', as More termed it. For More this state of perfection was made possible by the 'divine seed' or image that God had planted in each soul at its creation. This implied for More that through a process of spiritual and moral 'purgation' involving self-denial and an ever-cIoser identification with this inner principle, the believer through faith could attain to astate of perfection in this life. As this implies, More rejected the characteristic Calvinist view of the soul as inherently sinful, and replaced it with a more optimistic view that emphasised the presence of an 'inherent righteousness' that had been only partly obscured by the Fall into sin and embodiment (Chapter 1). At the risk of confusing students of philosophy who might be accustomed to the word 'necessitarian' in very different intellectual contexts, I have used this word 'necessitarian' here in its purely theological sense, as referring to a type of 'optimistic' theology that emphasises God's necessary beneficence INTRODUCTION XXI

to mankind, and his being thus 'constrained' (or se1f-constrained) to act according to bis pre-eminently beneficent nature. Returning to the conditions that enable the soul to acbieve astate of spiritual perfection or 'deification' , I then examine More' s insistence on the soul' s prior intellectual and moral requirement to distinguish between the 'light' of the spirit, or the inner light of Christ, that assists the soul on its journey towards God, and the darkness or 'evil' consequent upon our embodiment, and the self-will that characterises our 'exile' from this original status. In More's early poems we can see this fundamental devotional requirement for a dualistic vision of the Christian life translated into pbilosophical terms and, most significantly, into a sbift away from the tendency apparent in Renaissance Platonism to reify the spiritual realm. The result was a more radical intellectual dualism, and this was expressed through More's elose re• reading of Plotinus and the Christian and elassical Platonists (Chapters 2-3). As this suggests, there is something quite distinct about Cambridge Platonism, and wbile we cannot pretend that there is anything modern in More's reading of Plato or Plotinus, bis intellectualism and broad inelusion of Cartesian physics under the umbrella of his Platonism, led to a vocal rejection of the magical, monistic tendencies of Renaissance Platonism and hermeticism as irrational 'enthusiasm'. More considered that this view of the world, like contemporary scholasticism and much contemporary a1chemical and medical theory, involved a fundamental confusion between the two realms of intelligent spirit and 'stupid' matter, of grave consequence to religion (Chapter 3-4). This adequately explains, I argue, More's readiness to embrace the new physics of Galileo and Descartes, as a better means of tbinking elearly about the material realm, as distinct from, and yet dependent upon and subordinate to the intellectual and the spiritual realm, and to argue so consistently against any systems of thought or belief that seemed to undermine this distinction (Chapter 5). Fundamental to the argument developed here is an explicit acknowledge• ment of the different apologetic contexts revealed by a study of both More's larger body of published works and manuscript remains, and also the earliest works written about hirn, most notably that part of Joseph Glanvill's early manuscript essay on the Cambridge Platonists. Tbis devotes several pages to eulogising More's life and achievements and this part of it was reissued in another separate manuscript as an obituary immediately after his death. Taken together with Richard Ward's better known Life of Dr Henry More (1710) and its recently published manuscript continuation, it becomes easier to understand the changing contexts in which More was writing, and how he was perceived by his friends and allies. 20 These works, taken with the short autobiograpbical preface ineluded with his Opera Omnia of 1679,21 also XXII INTRODUCTION shed light on the changing political and religious contexts affecting More's work, especially after the Restoration, and again in the years leading up to the 'Glorious' Revolution that occurred the year following his death (Chapter 6). As I try to show, during the Interregnum, in the works of 'natural theology' he is justly famed for, More had wanted to define and distinguish a moderate and tolerant theological and philosophical stance faithful to Anglicanism that was distinct from dogmatic Calvinism and contemporary radical sectarianism, and also from academic scholasticism.22 His polemical targets were 'enthusiasts' and 'atheists', although it is clear these slippery terms were intended to snipe at Presbyterians and other divisive groups as at least the doctrinal 'parents' of the radical sectarian enthusiasts, just as the Aristotelian scholastic's alleged confusion between the spiritual and material realms implied for More various kinds of (possible) atheism. At the Restoration, the broad mildly sceptical anti-dogmatism and rational providentialism that informed this natural theology, was fiercely opposed by the more conservative returning clergy, who regarded his large and popular theological manual, An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness (1660) as scandalously inadequate in the way it presented and defended both the Anglican Church and its key doctrines (Chapters 6-7). To his opponents More was too tolerant of the moderate dissent to be found within or on the borders of the re-established Church, and too ready to use Origenism, Platonism and Cartesianism in dogmatic fields that required, in their view, a strict return to systematic theology and a narrower sacramental ecclesiology. Much of More's efforts in the 1660s were therefore concentrated on attempting to justify bis rational, providential philosophical theology, with its bold use of Origenism, Platonism and Cartesianism, to a sceptical and theologically conservative clerical audience, now armed with the authority to publicly 'correct' the errant Platonist and his friends, and even to expel them from Cambridge. Although More suffered several years of abusive polemic from these reinstated conservatives, he was also appealing over the heads of these enemies to a more broadly tolerant, intellectually responsive elite lay culture, that was clearly fascinated by the new natural philosophy and its potential role in a more rational and universal explication of Christian doctrine (Chapters 6_10).23 This audience is symbolised by More's friendly relations with the Conway and Finch families and many of their relatives and dependents.24 More was clearly protected from his enemies in this period largely because of the discreet intervention of friends and patrons like the Conways amongst this powerfullay elite. This period also saw the publication of his popular works of synthesis, such as his 'little book of morals', Enchiridion Ethicum (1667)25 and his lNTRODUCTION XXIII

Divine Dialogues (1668), which attempted to distil in the traditional Platonic form of a conversation between friends some of the key principles that had inspired and shaped his thought up until that time. His main polemical targets in these works are consistent with those to be found in his poems, twenty five years earlier: the pessimism and voluntarism of Calvinism and its denial of the spiritual perfection and illumination that for More lay at the heart of the Christian dispensation, and the various forms of implicit 'atheism' created by the conceptual confusion between spiritual and material spheres apparent in contemporary scholasticism and medical philosophy (Chapters 10-11), as weIl as the intellectual tyranny of Roman Catholicism, which subjected the believer to the manipulation and wiles of human agency and the institutional terror of enforcement. However, More's rational, providential theology, with its bold anti• voluntarist emphasis on the beneficence of God and a personal divine providence, was nevertheless still offensive to those Puritan intellectuals and natural philosophers like Robert Boyle, who did not share his scarcely orthodox Origenist theology, or want their own pious experimental activities linked with More's Platonic metaphysics or worse, his promotion of heterodox doctrines such as the preexistence of the soul (Chapter 8). So from the second half of the 1660s, there were an increasing number of attacks on More and his fellow Platonists from a moderate, voluntarist perspective, c10sely associated with the leading virtuosi of the Royal Society. More responded to this with an increasing emphasis on the unifying principles of the 'Spirit of Nature' and the notion that spiritual substances must occupy an intemallocus or space that he began to link explicitly to the divine nature, and to God's omnipresence. (Chapter 9-10). From the early 1670s until his death More seems to have been concemed with many minor controversies punctuating the larger effort of translating his own works into Latin for a continental audience. But in several exemplary controversies from this period, we can see that More's main interest was to defend a rational 'middle way', between the potential atheism of the materialism and monism he thought to be implicit in the major schools of contemporary natural philosophy. On the one hand, More feared an unbridgeable Cartesian dualism that seemed implicit in the experimental philosophy of Boyle and his fellow virtuosi, and one that might, he considered, be interpreted in a Hobbesian light (Chapter 10). On the other, he feared the monistic vitalism implicit in the work of medical writers and scholastic thinkers, who spoke of matter as containing within itself a primitive 'spark of life' (Chapter 11). This seemed to imply that matter itself was capable of generating or evolving into intelligent life without any divine agency. A third and final danger More discovered in the more XXN INTRODUCTION extreme monistic vitalism of the Jewish Kabbalah, where body itself was regarded as an illusory temporary manifestation of spiritual substances that were constantly changing and evolving into 'higher' forms (Chapter 12). That More's own difficult 'middle' position between these extremes came under increasing pressure towards the end of his life, and was perhaps practically indefensible, was not as obvious or self-apparent in the late seventeenth and even the early eighteenth centuries as even some more recent scholarship has pretended.26 That it was difficult for More to maintain his ground against an increasing array of sophisticated opponents is perhaps indicated by his failure to complete the grandiose scheme of his Enchiridion Metaphysicum during the 1670s, when his efforts were diverted into the massive task of translating his works into Latin, or completing even the devotional manual requested by several of his dose friends in the 1670s. But the continuing relevance of his work in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, I would suggest, owes as much to their grounding in his necessitarian theology and illuminism, and the generosity and tolerance implicit in his mildly sceptical epistemology and the spiritual perfectionism that shaped it, as in his somewhat problematic ideas about the fundamental distinction between spiritual and material substances. This is apparent in the way More's works could still be read and appreciated by men as different as Dr Johnson, John Wesleyand Samuel Taylor Coleridge weH into the next century. More was by all accounts a 'religious' philosopher or 'philosophical' theologian, a category of thinker that tends to defy our post• secular expectations in a thinker. So while More may not have been a 'great philosopher' in our terms, what he has to say still needs to be read carefuHy on its own terms, in the context of his times, and in the light of his intentions.

NOTES

1 The literature on the Cambridge Platonists is very large, starting in the nineteenth century with, pre• eminently, Principal J.H. Tulloch's fine study, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century (2 vols, Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1872), and Emest Cassirer's The Platonic Renaissance in England (trans. J.P. Pettegrove, Edinburgh: Nelson, 1953). A good modem introduction is stilllacking, but see C.A. Patrides' edited volume of some of their characteristic works, The Cambridge Platonists (rev. ed, Cambridge University Press, 1980), and especially his 'Introduction' , and the essays contained in G.AJ. Rogers, J.M. Vienne, and Y.c. Zarka (eds), The Cambridge Platonists in Philosophical Context: Politics, Metaphysics and Religion (Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1997: hereafter Rogers). See also below, and the Bibliography in this volume. 2 On Whichcote (1609-1683), see DNB, and J.D. Roberts, From Puritanism to Platonism in Seventeenth Century England. (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1968). Some early studies have included amongst the Cambridge Platonists Nathaniel Culverwell (d. 1651 ?), author of An Elegant and Leamed Discourse 01 the Light 01 Nature (1652), and Peter Sterry (d.1672), the admittedly more clearly mystical and Platonie author of A Discourse 01 the Freedom 01 the Will (1675). But as Patrides remarks in the introduction to his edited volurne, The Cambridge Platonists (1980): xxvi, both are poorly related to INTRODUCTION xxv

the other Cambridge Platonists, the first because he remained a Calvinist, and the second because he denied the freedom of the will. 3 On Cudworth (1617-1688), see DNB, and I.A Passmore, Ralph Cudworth: An Interpretation. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), and the essays in Hutton (1990) and Rogers (1997), and also the Bibliography below; on Smith (1618-1652), see DNB, and M. Micheletti, 11 pensiero religioso di John smith platonico di Cambridge (Padova: Ed. 'La Garangola', 1976) and below. 4 On Rust (d.1670) and Hallywell, see lohn Peile, The Biographical Register of Christ's College, Cambridge: 1505-1905. (2 vols, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910, hereafter Peile) and below. 5 On Worthington (1618-1671) see below, on Standish, who translated More's IS into Latin and also wrote against Enthusiasm, and Outram (1626-1679), author of De Sacrificiis (1677), see Peile, and for Worthington and Outram (under Owtram) also DNB, and below. 6 On Glanvill (1636-1680), see DNB, and J.I. Cope, Joseph Glanvill: Anglican Apologist (St Louis: Washington University Studies, 1956), and below; on Fowler (1632-1714), later Bishop of Gloucester, and Sharp (1645-1714), later Archbishop of York, see Peile, DNB, and lohn Spurr, The Restoration Church of England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991); on Elys (f!. 1707) see DNB, and on Elys and Davies, see below. On Glanvill's little 'biography', see below, Chapter 6. 7 See RL. Colie, Light and Enlightenment (Cambridge: CUP, 1957), chapter 1, and Charles Webster, Great Instauration (London: Duckworth, 1979): Chapter 1, and below. 8 See below, Chapter 1. 9 See C.A Patrides, The Cambridge Platonists (Cambridge: CUP, 1980): Introduction. 10 See below, Chapters 1 and 2. U See RF. Brinkley, Coleridge on the Seventeenth Century (Durham, NC: 1955), and especially Douglas Hedley, Coleridge, Philosophy and Religion (Cambridge: CUP,2000): 18 ff.. 12 See for example I.H. Tulloch's fine study, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century. (2 vols, 2nd ed., Edinburgh, 1874), and more recently, H.R McAdoo, The Spirit ofAnglicanism: A Survey ofAnglican Method in the Seventeenth Century (1965). 13 See M.H. Nicolson, ''The Early Stages of Cartesianism in England" Studies in Philology 26 (1929): 356-74, A Koyre, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe. (Baltimore: lohns Hopkins University Press, 1957), especially chapters 5 and 6, and AE. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modem Physical Science (New York, 1924), especially chapter 5 on More. 14 See especially those works produced over the last fifteen years, mainly on More and Cudworth, notably Alexander Iacob (ed), Henry More: The Immortality ofthe Soul (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987); Sarah Hutton (ed), Henry More (1614-87): Tercentenary Studies (Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1990: hereafter Hutton); A. Rupert Hall, Henry More: Magic Religion and Experiment (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990); Alexander Iacob (ed), Henry More's Refutation of Spinoza (Hildescheim, Georg Olms, 1993); Alexander Iacob (ed), Henry More's Manual of Metaphysics (in 2 parts: Hildescheim: George Olms, 1995); Maria Luisa Baldi (ed), 'Mind Senior to the World': Stoicismo e origenismo nella filosofia platnica dei seicento inglese (Milan: Francoangeli, 1996); G.AJ. Rogers, I.M. Vienne, and Y.C. Zarka (eds), The Cambridge Platonists in Philosophical Context: Politics, Metaphysics and Religion (Dordrecht, Kluwer, 1997: hereafter Rogers); Daniel Fouke, The Enthusiastical Concerns of Dr Henry More (Leiden: BrilI, 1997); Sarah Hutton, Cecil Courtney, Michelle Courtuey, Robert Crocker and Rupert Hall (eds), Richard Ward: The Life of Henry More Parts 1 and 2 (Dordrecht, Kluwer, 2000: hereafter Ward); . and see also the essays by Alison Coudert, David W. Dockrill, Alan Gabbey, lohn Henry, Sarah Hutton, Alexander Iacob, Richard H. Popkin and G.AJ. Rogers listed in the Bibliography below. 15 See for example, Hall, Henry More (1990), which concentrates to a great extent on More's relationship with Descartes and Newton, Fouke, Enthusiastical Concems (1997), which concentrates largely on his quarret with Thomas Vaughan. See also the earlier study by A. Lichtenstein, Henry More: The Rational Theology of a Cambridge Platonist (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), that is devoted to a rather retrospective discussion of his theology. 16 Notably, Richard Ward's Life (1710), TW (1708), CSPW (1712), and DD (1713), and the other works listed in the Bibliography. 17 New Haven: Yale, 1930; reissued with additions, notes and a new introduction by Sarah Hutton, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992 (hereafter Nicolson). XXVI INTRODUCTION

18 See Bibliography, Chapters 6 and ll and the Appendix below. 19 For More and Descartes and Newton, see the older studies by M.H. Nicolson, "The Early Stages of Cartesianism in England", SP 26 (1929): 356-74; A. Koyre, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (trans, Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1957); and the valuable survey on More and Descartes, Gabbey (1982), and on More and Newton the discussion in A.R. Hall's Henry More (1990); on More and Boyle, the studies by R.A. Greene, "Henry More and Robert Boyle and the Spirit of Nature" JHI 23 (1962): 451-74; John Henry, "Henry More versus Robert Boyle: the spirit of nature and the nature of providence", in Hutton (1990): 55-76; on More and Spinoza, see R.L. Colie, Light and Enlightenment (Cambridge: CUP, 1957); Sarah Hutton, "Reason and Relevation in the Cambridge Platonists, and their reception of Spinoza", in Spinoza in der Frühzeit seiner Religiösen Wirkung (ed. K. Gründer and W. Schmidt-Biggemann, Wolfenbütteler Studien zur Aufklärung, 12. Heidelburg: Lambert Schneider, 1984): 181-99; and A. Jacob (ed), Henry More's Refutation of Spinoza (Hildescheim, Georg Olms, 1993); and for More and Leibniz, see S. Hutin, "Leizniz a-t-il subi l'infulence d'Henry More?" Studia Leibnitiana 2 (1979); C. Merchant, "The Vitalism of Anne Conway: its impact on Leibniz's concept of the Monad" JHP 7 (1979): 255-69; and S. Brown, "Leibniz and More's Cabbalistic circle", in Hutton (1990): 77-96. 20 'A kind tho' vaine attempt, in speaking the Ineffable Doctor Harry More, Late of Christ's College in Cambridge ... ' (ms, 1688, Amsterdam, Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica), a copy of part of Glanvil's 'Bensalem, being aDescription of A Catholick & Free Spirit both in Religion & Leaming. In a Continuation of the story of the Lord Bacon's New Atlantis' (ms, Chicago University Library); and Richard Ward, The Life ofthe Leamed and Pious Dr Henry More (London 1710), and Richard Ward's ms continuation of this work, 'Some Account of Dr More's Works' (Cambridge, Christ's College Library, ms 20), published together in Sarah Hutton et al (eds), Richard Ward: Life of Henry More, Parts 1 and 2 (2000, hereafter Ward). See my Introduction to this work, pp. xiii-xxvi. 21 Praefatio Generalissima included in the Op Om (1679 - hereafter PG). Large sections, but not all of this, were translated by Ward. See below, Chapter 1. 22 Most notably his Antidote against Atheism (1653, hereafter AA), Enthusiasmus Triumphatus (1656, hereafter ED, and Immortality ofthe Soul (1659, hereafter IS). 23 See D.W. Dockrill and J.M. Lee, "Reflections on an Episode in Cambridge Latitudinarianism: Henry More's Epistle Dedicatroy to Gilbert Sheldon of his Echiridion Metaphyscium" Prudentia Supplement (1994): 207-23. See also below, Chapters 6-7. 24 See below, and also Nicolson: especially the Introduction by Sarah Hutton. 25Without intending to upset any reader' s preferences for Latin, I have retained More' snow rather eccentric use for the latinised Greek word, 'Enchiridion' which appears on the title pages and in his works, rather than the more usual 'Enchiridium'. 26 For example, John Henry, "A Cambridge Platonist' s Materialism: Henry More and the Concept of the Soul." JWCI49 (1986): 172-95; idem, "Medicine and Pneumatology: Henry More, Richard Baxter and Francis Glisson's Treatise on the Energetic Nature of Substance." Medical History, 31 (1987): 15-40; and idem, "Henry More versus Robert Boyle: the Spirit of Nature and the Nature of Providence." In Hutton (1990): 55-76. See below, Chapter 11.