Abstract
The philosophical battle of the seventeenth century is usually presented as a contest between two philosophies — Cartesian rationalism and British empiricism — each of which was set forth in order to justify “the new science.” Thinkers who do not fit in these categories are usually ignored or treated as strange, unrelated figures, as one finds in the discussion of Herbert of Cherbury, Gassendi, Hobbes, the Cambridge Platonists, Kenelm Digby, John Seargant, and Comenius, among others.
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Notes
Charles Webster, The Great Instauration (New York, 1975), Chap. II.
On Mede’s career and importance, see Katherine R. Firth, The Apocalyptic Tradition in Reformation Britain 1530–1645 (Oxford, 1979), Chap. VII;
Leroy Froom, The Prophetic Faith of our Fathers (Washington, 1948), Vol. II, pp. 542ff:
and Ernest Lee Tuveson, Millenium and Utopia (Gloucester, Mass., 1972), pp. 76–85.
Joseph Mede, The Works of Joseph Mede, B.D. (London, 1672), “The Author’s Life,” p.ii.
John Worthington, “The Life of the Reverand and most learned Joseph Mede,” in: The Works of the Pious and Profoundly-Learned Joseph Mede (London, 1664). On Worthington, who was Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge, and his role in seventeenth-century thought, see The Diary and Correspondence of John Worthington, in: Remains Historical and Literary connected with the Palatine Counties of Lancaster and Chester, ed. James Crossley, published by the Cheltham Society, Vols. XIII (1847), XXXVI (1855) and CXIV (1886).
Worthington, “Life of Mede,” in Works, 1664 ed., p. III.
Joseph Mede, Clavis Apocalyptica, (n.p., 1627) and (n.p., 1632).
A great deal of correspondence appears in Book IV of the Works, 1664 edition.
Richard Ward, The Life of the Learned and Pious Dr. Henry More (London, 1710), p. 10.
On Dury and his career, see J. Minton Batten, John Dury, Advocate of Christian Reunion (Chicago, 1944);
G.H. Turnbull, Hartlih, Dury and Comenius (London, 1947);
and Charles Webster, The Great Instauration.
Dury’s relations with Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel are discussed in Cecil Roth, A Life of Menasseh ben Israel (Philadelphia, 1934), pp. 181ff;
and in David S. Katz, Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England 1603–1655 (Oxford, 1982).
On Hartlib, see Turnbull, op. cit.;
Charles Webster, Introduction to Samuel Hartlib and the Advancement of Learning (Cambridge, 1970);
and H. Dircks, A Biographical Memoir of Samuel Hartlib, Milton’s Familiar Friend (London, 1865).
Batten, op. cit., p. 95.
This text is published in Turnbull, op. cit., p. 167.
It has also appeared in Cornells de Waard, “Un Entretien avec Descartes en 1634 ou 1635,” Archives internationales d’ Histoire des Sciences 6 (1953): 14–16.
Samuel Hartlib to Joseph Mede, March 6, 1634, Epistle XLIV, in Mede, Works, 1664 ed., p. 984.
Mede to Hartlib, Epistle XLV, Works, p. 985.
John Dury to Mede, March 4, 1634/5, Epistle XLVI, Works, p. 985.
Hartlib’s outline for Dury’s treatise on the infallible rules for scriptural interpretation is given in Turnbull, op. cit., p. 169.
John Dury, “An Epistolical discourse, from Mr. John Durie to Mr. Sam. Hartlib, concerning this Exposition of the Revelation, Nov. 28, 1650,” preface to Clavis Apocalyptica (London, 1651), pp. 12–17.
Margaret Lewis Bailey, Milton and Jakob Boehme (New York, 1914), esp. pp. 91–93.
See also Serge Hutin, Les Disciples anglais de Jacob Boehme (Paris, 1960).
On More, see Hutin, Henry More (Hildesheim, 1966);
and Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Conway Letters, The Correspondence of Anne, Viscountess Conway, Henry More and Their Friends 1642–1684 (New Haven, 1930), Chap. 2, pp. 39ff.
More, in his short work on Boehme, Philosophia Teutonicae Censura (London, 1679),
in More, Opera Philosophia (London, 1689), Vol. I, stated Question 1 as “Ultrum Jacobus Behmen infallibiter inspiratus esset?” and indicated that he had his doubts. See p. 536.
Henry More, Enthusiasmus Triumphatus; or a Brief Discourse on the Nature, Causes, Kinds and Cure of Enthusiasm (London, 1662).
John Smith, Selected Discourses (London, 1660), Discourse VI, “Of Prophesie,” p. 190.
Ibid., p. 193. In a paper given by Sarah Hutton at the 350th Anniversary of Spinoza’s birth, at Amsterdam, November 1982, she showed some striking resemblances between Smith’s discussion of prophecy and Spinoza’s in the beginning of the Tractatus-Theologico-Politicus.
Smith, op. cit., p. 197.
Benjamin Whichcote, The Works of the Learned Benjamin Whichcote, D.D. (London, 1761), Vol. II p. 7.
William Twisse, The Doubting Conscience Resolved. In Answer to a (pretended) perplexing Question, & Wherein it is evidently proved that the Holy Scripture (not the Pope) is the Foundation whereupon the Church is built, Or that a Christian may be infallibly certain of his Faith and Religion by the Holy Scripture (London, 1652). The Imprimatur by Edmund Calamy is dated May 3, 1652. This work was reprinted in the eighteenth century.
Twisse was the prolocutor of the Westminster Assembly. The article on him in the Dictionary of National Biography gives the details of his career.
These letters appear in Mede, Works, Book IV, pp. 927–1054. Prof. Mayir Vereté of The Hebrew University was the first to make me aware of Twisse’s importance in making Mede spell out his views and relate them to contemporary events.
See Twisse’s preface to Joseph Mede, The Key of the Revelation, searched and demonstrated out of the Naturall and proper Characters of the Visions (London, 1643), pp. A3–3v. (This is the English translation of Mede’s Clavis Apocalyptica.)
See Twisse’s preface to Mede’s Apostacy of the Latter Times (London, 1641), p. A2v. Twisse said he first came into contact with Mede when “a rumor spread of his opinion, concerning the glorious Kingdome of Christ here on earth, which many hundred yeares agoe was cryed downe as the Errour of the Millenaries.” Mede had explained to Twisse in a letter dated November 11, 1629, that people had to be silent about the Millennium while the Antichrist reigned.
Henry More, An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness (London, 1660), p. xvi. More was speaking of Cudworth’s lectures on the coming Millennium.
Twisse, The Doubting Conscience Resolved, pp. 1–15.
Ibid., p. 74. Twisse had said earlier that natural reason and natural instruction may be sufficient to understand a man’s writings, “yet onely supernaturall illumination is sufficient to inable a man to discern the things of God,” p. 32.
Ibid., pp. 89–90. Mede’s remark, which appears in his Apostacy of the Latter Times, p. a3, was included as a foreword to Potter’s book, The Number of the Beast.
Twisse, The Doubting Conscience Resolved, p. 91.
See Franz Hartmann, The Life and Doctrine of Jacob Boehme, the God-Taught Philosopher (Boston, 1891), p. 261. See the excellent study by Alexandre Koyré, La Philosophie de Jacob Boehme (Paris, 1929). The seventeenth-century English editions all make extravagant claims about the author.
Anthony Ashley Cooper, “A Letter concerning Enthusiasm,” Characteristicks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, 2nd edition (London, 1714), p. 54: “For to judg the Spirits whether they are of God, we must antecedently judg our own Spirit, whether it be of Reason and sound Sense, whether it be fit to judg at all, by being sedate, cool and impartial; free of every byassing Passion, every giddy Vapour, or melancoly Fume. This is the first knowledg and previous Judgment.”
See Samuel Fisher, The Rustic Alarm to the Rabbies (London, 1660). Christopher Hill, in his survey of the diversity of views in this period in The World Turned Upside Down (London, 1972), pp. 213–215, called Fisher the most radical Bible critic of the time. Fisher probably knew Spinoza. See R. H. Pop kin, “Spinoza, the Quakers and the Millenarians, 1656–1658,” Manuscrito, forthcoming.
Webster, The Great Instauration.
The precise debt the Royal Society owed to Dury, Hartlib, and Comenius has been a matter of debate for the last three centuries.
On Comenius’ career, see Matthew Spinka, John Amos Comenius, That Incomparable Moravian (Chicago, 1943).
On this part of Comenius’ career, see Webster, The Great Instauration;
and Turnbull, Hartlib, Dury and Comenius.
Johann Amos Comenius, Natural Philosophie Reformed by the Divine Light ... (London, 1651). The work is dedicated “To the truly studious of wisdome, from Christ the fountain of wisdome, greeting.”
Comenius, A Pattern of Universal Knowledge. In a plaine and true Draught: or a Diatyposis (London, 1651), translated by Jeremy Collier.
Comenius, A Pattern of Universal Knowledge. In a plaine and true Draught: or a Diatyposis (London, 1651), Ibid., pp. 144–145. The section following this presents a detailed account of how this is to be done.
Comenius, Naturall Philosophie Reformed by the Divine Light, preface. The quotations are on the 7th and 8th unnumbered pages.
Ibid., preface, 8th and 9th pages.
Ibid., preface, 26th–27th pages. The quotation is on the 27th page.
Ibid., text, pp. 5–8. The quotation is on p. 8.
This is the work Dury and Hartlib put out in an English translation, with the title, Clavis Apocalyptica. Hugh Trevor-Roper claimed that this work was by Abraham von Frankenburg, Boehme’s disciple, biographer and editor, who was a close friend of Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel. See Trevor-Roper, “Three Foreigners: the Philosophers of the Puritan Revolution,” in: Religion, the Reformation and Social Change (London, 1967), p. 292n.
On this see Webster, The Great Instauration, pp. 48–51;
and Trevor-Roper’s “Three Foreigners.”
See also Robert F. Young, Comenius in England (New York, 1971).
Turnbull, op.cit., p. 358.
Trevor-Roper, “Three Foreigners,” p. 240.
Turnbull, op. cit., pp. 359–370;
and Trevor-Roper, op. cit., pp. 262–274.
Cf. H.-J. De Vleeshchauer, “Descartes et Comenius,” Travaux du IXe Congrès International de Philosophie (Paris, 1937), pp. 109–114;
and C. Louise Thijssen-Schoute, Nederlands Cartesianisme (Amsterdam, 1954), pp. 615–618.
Young, op. cit., quotes Comenius’ description of the meeting, as does Thijssen-Schoute.
Marin Mersenne to Theodore Haak, 1 November 1639, in: Correspondance de Mersenne, ed. Cornelis de Waard (Paris, 1963), Tome VIII, p. 583.
Comenius described the meeting in his answer to Samuel Desmarets, Continuatio admonitionis fraternae de temperando charitate zelo ad S, Maresium (Amsterdam, 1669).
As cited by Young, op. cit., p. 50, Comenius said, “We exchanged speech for about four hours, he expounding to us the mysteries of his philosophy, I myself maintaining all human knowledge, such as derived from the senses alone and reasonings thereon to be imperfect and defective. We parted in friendly fashion: I begging him to publish the principles of his philosophy (which principles were published the year following), and he similarly urging me to mature my own thoughts, adding this maxim, ‘Beyond the things that appertain to philosophy I go not, mine therefore is that only in part, whereof yours is the whole.’”
Englands Thankfulnesse, or An Humble Remembrance presented to the Committee for Religion in the High Court of Parliament... (London, 1642). There is some question whether Hartlib or Dury wrote it. The work is very rare, and has been reprinted in Webster, Samuel Hartlib and the Advancement of Learning, pp. 96–97.
Webster, Samuel Hartlib, p. 95.1 have just finished a study of Dury’s plan for a college of Judaic studies.
See David S. Katz, Philosemitism and the Readmission of the Jews, references to Dury and Hartlib; and my forthcoming paper on Dury’s plan for a college of Judaic studies in London.
They were closely involved with Adam Boreel, the leader of the Collegiants in Amsterdam, and with Peter Serrarius, one of the leading Millenarians in Holland. Boreel knew Boyle and Oldenburg, Dury’s nephew and son-in-law respectively, and Serrarius was the actual contact between Spinoza and both Oldenburg and Boyle. See R. H. Popkin, “Spinoza and the Conversion of the Jews,” Proceedings of Spinoza’s 350th Anniversary, Amsterdam 1982, forthcoming.
See the letters of Henry Oldenburg to Spinoza in 1661–62 in A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall, The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, Vol. I (Madison and Milwaukee, 1965), esp. letter #245 of July 1662, pp. 470–473. There is an ongoing debate about whether the Royal Society grew out of the Invisible College, initiated by Comenius, Dury, and Hartlib. Some of the original group, such as Boyle and Wilkins, were leaders of the Royal Society, and Oldenburg and Boyle were close relatives of Dury. However, during the Restoration, the Royal Society tried to distance itself from the ardent Puritanism of Dury and Hartlib. Meric Casaubon’s attack on the Royal Society shows that, to a contemporary opponent, the scientific movement from Dury to Glanvill looked like a continuous development.
On this see Michael R. G. Spiller, Concerning Natural Experimental Philosophie, Meric Casaubon and the Royal Society (The Hague, 1980). Francis Yates saw both the Invisible College and the Royal Society as developing from the Rosicrucians. Cf. her Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London, 1972), Chap. XIII, pp. 171–191.
On this see Katz, op. cit., Chap. 4, esp. pp. 142–157;
Lucien Wolf, Menasseh ben Israel’s Mission to Oliver Cromwell (London, 1901), pp. xxiii–xxviii;
and Cecil Roth, Life of Menasseh ben Israel, pp. 182–186.
All that we know about Dury’s answer to Descartes appears in Turnbull, op. cit., pp. 168,
301. Dury’s “And an Essay of a Modell of said Body of Divinity” appears in his The Earnest Breathings of Foreign Protestants, Divines & Others: to the Ministers and other able Christians of these three Nations, for a Compleat Body of Practicall Divinity (London, 1658). Here he listed the metaphysical assumptions a rational person would have to accept to prove that there is a God.
See Hutin, Henry More, pp. 90–108; and Henry More, “The Preface General” to A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More (London, 1662); and An Antidote to Atheism, The Immortality of the Soul, and the Letters to Descartes that are contained in the Collection.
Cf. Brian P. Copenhaver, “Jewish Theologies of Space in the Scientific Revolution: Henry More, Joseph Raphson, Isaac Newton and their Predecessors,” Annals of Science 37 (1980): 515–516.
In More’s An Antidote to Atheism. Or, An Appeal to the Natural faculties of the Minde of Man whether there be not a God (London, 1655), he said that his argument for the existence of God can be doubted, just as mathematical proofs can be. “For it is possible that Mathematical evidence itself may be but a constant undiscoverable delusion, which our nature is necessarily and perpetually obnoxious unto,” Book I, Chap, ii, p. 3. However, if one accepts the hypothesis that our faculties are true, then one should be willing to accept More’s proofs of the existence of God. Cf. preface, pp. B3v-B4. Both Glanvill and Wilkins tried to defuse the extreme skepticism involved in More’s doubts about the reliability of our faculties. I intend to deal with More’s excessive skepticism in forthcoming study.
This letter was apparently written in 1646 to William Boswell. See C. Adam and P. Tannery, Oeuvres de Descartes, Vol. IV, pp. 694–701.
On More’s changing views about Descartes, see Alan Gabbey, “Philosophia Cartesiana triumphata: Henry More 1646–1671,” in: Problems of Cartesianism, eds. T. Lemmon, J. Nicholas and J. Davis (Montreal 1982). More criticized Descartes in “the preface general” to A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings for distorting “the true and natural idea of motion” when he heard about Galileo’s “ill hap.” Galileo’s imprisonment “frightened Des-Cartes into such a distorted description of Motion, that no mans Reason could make good sense of it,” p. xi. More had recently seen Descartes’ letters to Mersenne and realized how scared Descartes had been by Galileo’s case.
Henry More, Conjectura Cabbalistica, Or, a Conjectural Essay of Interpreting the minde of Moses, according to a Threefold Cabbala: viz Literal, Philosophical and Mystical, or Divinely Moral (London, 1653). The work is dedicated “to his eminently learned, and truly religious friend, Dr. Cudworth.”
See Copenhaver, op. cit., pp. 516ff., and the references given there. The quotation is on p. 518 n. 17. More’s “The Preface general” to A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings called his view “the most approvable Philosophical Interpretation of the three first Chapters of Genesis as ever was yet offered to the World since the loss of the ancient Judaicall Cabbala.”
More, Conjectura Cabbalistica, “Defense of the Threefold Cabbala,” pp. 94–98.
Henry More’s letter to Lady Anne Conway, July 4, 1653, in M. Nicolson, The Conway Letters, p. 82. See also More’s letter to Lady Conway of March 28, 1653, ibid., pp. 74–75.
The interpretations of Moses’ role as that of a politician, using a fable to convince the Israelites, plays an important role in Les Trois Imposteurs. The political interpretation of the roles of Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed was apparently formulated in the 1650s and was discussed by Oldenburg, Boreel, Spinoza, and others. I hope to trace the development of Les Trois Imposteurs in a future study.
Cf. Copenhaver, op. cit., pp. 522–523.
Ibid., pp. 540–547; and Hutin, Henry More, pp. 185–193.
Henry More to Dr. John Sharp, August 16, 1680, in Nicolson, Conway Letters, pp. 478–479.
The original claim was made by Boehme’s eighteenth-century English translator and editor, William Law. The supposed evidence is discussed in Stephen Hobhouse, Selected Mystical Writings of William Law (New York and London, 1948), Appendix Four, “Isaac Newton and Jacob Boehme. An Enquiry,” pp. 397–422. Hobhouse is quite skeptical on this matter. B.J. Dobbs, who has examined many of Newton’s alchemic papers, has told me she thinks Newton may well have been influenced by Boehme, but the papers described by Law do not seem to exist.
Professors B. J. Dobbs, Richard S. Westall and I are organizing the publication of Newton’s religious and alchemical papers. The Van Leer Foundation has encouraged us and launched us on this venture. We expect by the end of this century to have published all of the Newton manuscripts spread from Jerusalem to the west coast of America.
Isaac Newton, “Fragments from a Treatise on Revelation,” in Frank Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford, 1974), pp. 107–125.
On Anne Conway, see Marjorie Nicolson’s account throughout the Conway Letters, and the more recent presentation in Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (New York, 1979), pp. 253–268.
Anne Conway, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, Concerning God and Christ and the Creatures, viz of Spirit and Matter in general (London, 1692), Chap. IX. A new edition of this work has just been published with both the Latin and English texts, edited by Peter Loptson (The Hague, 1982).
See also Nicolson, Conway Letters, pp. 453–454;
and Merchant, op. cit., pp. 258–264.
See Leibniz’s letter to Thomas Burnet, 1697, cited in Nicolson, Conway Letters, p. 456.
On Leibniz’s debt to Lady Conway, see Nicolson, Conway Letters, pp. 454–456;
Merchant, op. cit., pp. 264–268; and Loptson edition, references to Leibniz.
An interesting indication of this appears in the extreme Millenarian work of the French Protestant leader, Pierre Jurieu, The Accomplishment of the Scripture Prophecies, or the Approaching Deliverance of the Church (London, 1687). In the “Advice to all Christians, concerning the approaching End of the Antichristian Empire of the Papacy, and of the coming of the Kingdom of Christ,” Jurieu claimed that the revival of sciences, of knowledge of Greek and Hebrew, and the rise of the new philosophy “doth help very much to scatter that darkness which the Philosophy of the Schools had cast upon the Doctrines of religion,” p. 6v. Jurieu saw the modern developments in science and navigation as part of the path to the Millennium. And he found the interpretation of what was happening best expressed by Dr. More in his commentary on the Apocalypse, which he said followed Mede’s views in most things. Jurieu’s great opponent, Pierre Bayle, mercilessly ridiculed various third-force characters like Comenius, Dury, and Serrarius.
Cudworth’s relations with Menasseh ben Israel are described in Richard Kidder, A Demonstration of the Messias. In which the Truth of the Christian Religion is proved especially against the Jews, 3 vols. (London, 1684–1700), Vol. II, pp. A4–A4v,
and Vol. III, pp. iii–iv. In the preface to the 1743 edition of Cud-worth’s True Intellectual System, a letter of Cudworth’s to Thurloe in 1658 described his reaction to the manuscripts he received from Menasseh, p. x. On p. xx, two unpublished writings by Cudworth are listed, one on the Seventy Weeks in Daniel, and the other “Of the Verity of the Christian Religion against the Jews.” The first is in the British Library, Addit. Mss, 4978–87, while the other has not been located. David Katz and I will prepare the first for publication in the near future.
J. A. Comenius, A General Table of Europe, Representing the Present and Future State thereof (n.p., 1670).
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Popkin, R. (1986). The Third Force in Seventeenth-Century Thought: Skepticism, Science and Millenarianism. In: Ullmann-Margalit, E. (eds) The Prism of Science. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 95. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4566-1_3
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