Abstract
The seventeenth reaction against enthusiasm has excited considerable interest amongst scholars in recent years. Perceived as a more visible aspect of the elite’s gradual disenchantment with the world of the supernatural, the reaction against enthusiasm has been approached in a variety of ways.1 While social and political historians have generally perceived the phenomenon in terms of the enthusiasts’ challenge to theological and social orthodoxy,2 literary historians have concentrated on its more notable literary and cultural effects, particularly on the appearance of a plainer style of English, and the emergence of the social comedies and satire characteristic of the post-Restoration period.3
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References
The literature on enthusiasm, both as a term and as a phenomenon, is vast. For a summary, see M. Heyd, “The Reaction to Enthusiasm in the Seventeenth Century.”
See for instance K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978), 156–78.
See G. Williamson, “The Restoration Revolt against Enthusiasm;” C.M. Williamson, “The Satiric Background of the Attack on the Puritans in Swift’s Tale of a Tub.”
See for example B. J. Shapiro, Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth Century England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 82–3.
The brother of the poet, Henry Vaughan. See F.E. Hutchinson, Henry Vaughan (Oxford, 1947), 144–55, and
A. Rudrum (ed.), Works of Thomas Vaughan (Oxford, 1984), 7–12. For discussions of More’s debate with Vaughan, see the articles by A. Miller Guinsburg, F.L. Burn-ham, N. L. Brann, and L. Mulligan, cited in the bibliography.
See C. Webster, From Paracelsus to Newton: Magic and the Making of Modern Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
See M. H. Nicolson, Conway Letters, p. 379, Miller Guinsberg, “Henry More, Thomas Vaughan,” and Mulligan, “‘Reason’, ‘Right Reason’, and ‘Revelation’.”
On the history of the term, see Heyd, “Reaction to Enthusiasm.” The origin of most contemporary theories appears to have been pseudo-Aristotle, Problemata, xxx, 1 ff. See for example, Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy (Oxford, 1621), part I, I, iii, 1–4; and More, ET, 11 and 17.
More, ibid., p.2.
Meric Casaubon, “On Learning,” in M. R. G. Spiller, Meric Casaubon and the Royal Society (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1980), 70–2.
Meric Casaubon, and A Treatise concerning Enthusiasme (London, 1655), 130. See also his attack on Plato and the Neoplatonists and their ‘mystical theology’ as an important historical source of enthusiasm and its pretensions, ibid., 52–4, 110–119 and 125–130.
More, ET, 48–9, and Observations on Anthroposophia Theomagica and Anima Magica Abscondita, 7–8.
More, Quaestiones et Considerationes, in Opera, 2:448–9. See also More’s ‘Pythagorean’ sephirothic tree in Trium Tablarum Cabbalisticarum, in Opera, 2:440.
Casaubon, Treatise, 110–2 and 118.
More, Ward, Life, 39–40.
More, ET, 1–2. See also his Observations, 71–7.
See for example Joseph Sedgwick, An Essay to the Discovery of the Spirit of Enthusiasme and Pretended Inspiration (London, 1653), sig. A2v.: T seemed to apprehend a great nearness between the False-Teachers of old and this Spirit that now comes forth with the highest and most raised Pretences.’ Sedgwick was a fellow of Christ’s and might have been influenced by More. See also Casaubon, Treatise, 125.
More, AA, Preface, sig A2.
More, MG, bk.4, chaps. 9–12; bk. 5, chaps. 7–10; bk.6, chaps. 12–18. and ET, 22 ff. See also Heyd, “The Reaction to Enthusiasm,” 261–5.
See pseudo-Aristotle, Problemata, xxx, 1 ff. Burton, Anatomy, part 1, I,iii,l-4; Casaubon, Treatise, 39 (citing Aristotle), and 95–7; More, The Second Lash of Alazonomastix, in ET, 283–4 (on Vaughan as a melancholist). See also S.W. Jackson, “Melancholia and the Waning of the Humoral Theory” Journal of the History of Medicine 33 (1978): 367–76.
G. Rosen, “Enthusiasm ’a dark lanthorn of the spirit’,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 42 (1968): 393–42.
More, Mastix his Letter to a Friend, in ET 294, and see also ibid., 5–8.
Hartlib Papers, xviii, Sheffield University Library. The letter is dated Febuary 2nd (probably 1652).
Ward, quoting one of More’s letters, Life, 39–40. See also More, DD, 293–5; and EE, bk. 3, chap. 5, sect. 10.
See for example More, IS and the lengthy discussions of levels of spirit and their connection to the body in Psychathanasia, for example, bk.2, cantol, stanzal4 ff., and the discussion of the spiritual ‘Ogdoas’ in the notes to Psychozoia, Poems, 345 ff.
D.P. Walker, “Medical Spirits, God and the Soul,” 225 and 237–9. Also More, IS bk.3, 15, sect. 7 ff.
On Hales, see DNB and J.H. Elson, John Hales (New York: Kings Crown Press, 1948); on Harrison, .
see R. Birley, “Robert Boyle’s Headmaster at Eton”, N &R,U (1958): 104–14, which also lists Harrison’s books in Eton College Library. For a fuller account of More’s life see my Biographical Essay in this volume, and the references cited there.
Notably the influence of his tutor, Robert Gell (see below) and that of Joseph Mede, the most outstanding of the fellows at this time.
More, Opera, Praefatio Generalissima, sect. 12 (omitted in Ward’s account).
More in Ward, Life, 12, translated from the Praefatio Generalissima, sect. 9.
More, in Ward, Life, 12–15.
On Gell, see Peile, Biographical Register, 1:301.
In Ward’s Life, 8–9.
John Evelyn to Jeremy Taylor, April, 1659, in Taylor, (ed. R. Heber), The Whole Works, 15 vols. (London, 1828), I: lxxxv and lxxxviii. Baxter’s corroboration of Gell’s supposed heterodoxy, one of three important ‘sectmakers’, can be found in Reliquae Baxterianae, 1: 78. The Calvinist, John Etherington, attacked Gell as a ‘Familiste’, a common derogatory name for proponents of a spiritualistic theology. See Etherington, A Brief Discovery of the Blasphemous Doctrine of Familisme (London, 1645), 10; Etherington’s other targets here were John Everard and ‘John Randoll’ — perhaps Giles Randall. On Castellio, see F. Buisson, Sebastien Castellion, 2 vols. (Paris, 1892).
Castellio, Concerning Heretics (‘De Haereticiis’), ed. R. Bainton, (New York: Octagon, 1935), p. 10 ff., and
R. H. Popkin, History of Scepticism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 10–14
See Castellio, Of Obedience, and His Modest Apology, or Defense of Himself [against Calvin] (English translation, London, 1679); and Gell. Gell’s Remains, 2 vols. (London, 1676), I: 148, 155–80.
Evelyn to Taylor, April, letter cited at note 32 above.
Using the nom de plume ‘Joannes Theophilus’, Theologia Mystica (Basle?, 1580). More probably used the popular English translation by Giles Randall in 1648 (see below, note 37), Theologia Germanica. Libellus aureus hoc est, brevis et praegnans (Basle?, 1632).
More, in Ward, Life, 13, summarizes the message of this book thus: ‘That we should throughly put off, and extinguish our own Proper Will; that being thus dead to our selves, we may live alone unto God, and do all things by his Instinct, or plenary Permission.’ On the history of the work, see R. M. Jones, Spiritual Reformers (London: MacMillan, 1928), xxvi and 4; and also M. Windstosser, Études sur la Théologie Germanique (Paris: Alcan, 1911). The edition used here is S. Winkworth’s translation of F. Pfeiffer’s edition, Theologia Germanica: Which setteth forth many fair lineaments of divine Truth, and saith very lofty and lovely things touching a perfect Life (1854).
Jones, Spiritual Reformers, 103n., and Alastair Hamilton, Family of Love (Cambridge: J. Clarke, 1981), 6–8; and also (Giles Randall, trans.) Theologia Germanica, or, Mysticall Divinitie: a little golden manuall (London, 1648).
See C. C. Brown, “Henry More’s ‘Deep Retirement’.”
More, in Ward, Life, 13–5.
Ibid., 15, translated from Opera, Praefatio Generalissima, sect. 10.
Unless otherwise indicated, references to the Poems that follow are from the 1647 edition.
See G. Bullough, ed., Philosophical Poems of Henry More (hereafter cited as Bullough) and C. C. Brown, “The Early Works of Henry More.”
See the notes More added to the 1647 edition, e.g. p. 336. See also CA. Patrides, Cambridge Platonists, 17–8 on the importance of Plotinus to the Cambridge Platonists, and especially to More and Smith.
Psychozoia, canto 1, stanzas 5–20.
“To the Reader upon the first Canto of Psychozoia”, before Psychozoia.
Ibid., and see also CC, Preface.
More, Poems, 371. See also More’s Discourses on Several Texts of Scripture, 19.
See Bullough, pp.li and lvi.
Psychozoia, canto 2, 126–134.
Ibid., 141–148.
Ibid., canto 3, stanzas 38–42.
Poems, 368, and see Psychozoia, canto 3, stanzas 38–42.
Psychozoia, canto 3, stanzas 12–22.
Ibid., 56–61.
Ibid., 67–69.
Ibid.
Ward, Life, 39–42; More, Cupids Conflict, in Poems, 302–5, Psychozoia, canto 2, stanzas 147, and DD (1713), 304–7.
See especially More in Ward, Life, 39–40: ‘That there is a holy Art of Living, or certain sacred Method of attaining unto great and Experimental Praegustations of the Highest Happiness that our Nature is capable of...’
See for example Psychozoia, canto 3, stanza 39. The nearest contemporary continental parallels to this theology exist in the Dutch Remonstrants and in Collegiants like Adam Boreel. See R. L. Colie, Light and Enlightenment.
See Castellio, A Conference of Faith (1679), 46–9, and Of Obedience (1679), 82; and Gell, Remains, 1: 147–8. See also More, DD (1713), 306–7.
See More, Disourses (1692), 66; Cupids Conflict, in Poems, 302–5; and Theologia Germanica (London, 1854), chaps, xxxix–xl.
See for instance The Easie, True and Genuine Notion and Explication of a Spirit in Glanvill, Saducismus Triumphatus a translation of chapters 27 and 28 of the EM; and the early discussion of the relationship between Christianity and Platonism in To the Reader, upon the first Canto of Psychozoia’, in Psychodia Platonica. See also CC, The Moral Cabbala, bk.l, sect.l.
Antipsychopannychia, canto 3, stanzas 23–5. See also the dualism of the early poem, Cupids Conflict, in Poems, especially pp. 302–3.
Psychozoia, canto 3, stanzas 57–125.
Ibid., 58. See also Bullough, pp.liv-lv; and M. H. Nicolson, “More’s Psychozoia.”
This is a common theme in Puritan literature — the unregenerate, because ignorant of the truth, are inevitably hypocritical. Bunyan’s Atheist, for example, reads the world as reality rather than emblem. Bunyan, ed. R. Sharrock, Pilgrim’s Progress (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965), 174.
Psychozoia, canto 2, stanzas 77–80. See also Bullough, p.lviii.
Psychozoia, canto 2, stanzas 89–92 and 99. Compare John Smith, Select Discourses (London, 1660), 426–7.
Psychozoia, canto 2, stanza 90: Corvino straight foam’d like his champing jade And said I was a very silly wight, And how through melancholy I was mad And unto private spirits all holy truth betray’d.
Ibid., 107–120.
Ibid., 112.
Ibid., 113.
Ibid., 116.
Ibid., 114.
Theologia Germanica (1854), chap, xl, and see Psychozoia, canto 2, stanzas 112–116 and ET, sig. A5.
The two tracts by Vaughan are Anthroposophia Theomagica, and Anima Magica Abscondita. See n. 5 above.
On More’s debate with Vaughan, see articles by Miller Guinsburg, Burnham, Brann and Mulligan cited in note 5 above.
More, Second Lash, in ET 174–5. More in this passage is referring to his Poems.
As D. P. Walker points out, Spiritual and Demonic Magic, 52 and 75 ff., there were significant tensions within Renaissance Platonism between a fascination for theurgy and magical practices, whether for specific cures or for illumination, and a denial of the necessity or legality of such practices. In Agrippa, Vaughan’s avowed master, this tension can be clearly seen (ibid., 54–5, and 90–1). While More is unequivocally anti-magical, Vaughan follows his master a little later by apologizing for his earlier magical concerns, in Euphrates or the Waters of the East (London, 1655), “To the Reader”.
More, CSPW, Preface, and Vaughan, Euphrates, “To the Reader”.
More Poems, 302, and see also ET, bk. 2, chaps. 3,sect. 3; 4, sect. 6; 5, sects. 4–7; and 9, sects. 14–16.
See Vaughan, Second Wash, 10; and also C. H. Josten, “A Translation of John Dee’s Monas Heiroglyphica (Antwerp, 1564), with an Introduction and Annotations,” Ambix 12 (1964): 100–4; and Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 225–7.
Vaughan, Euphrates, 17.
More, ET, 48–51.
More, Psychozoia, canto 2, stanzas 9–12, and the “Interpretation Generali” in Poems under ‘Hyle’; and see Plotinus, Enneads 4, 2,9, which More interprets, Poems, 353–4.
[Vaughan], Second Wash, 79; and see also idem, Euphrates, 23.
[Vaughan], Lumen de Lumine, 21 and 68 ff.; and Eliade, Forge, 154.
More, Second Lash, in ET, 218. More explicitly rejects a real primal Matter, but it is clear that he accepted the idea of an abstract principle representing the potentiality of material existence, which pre-existed the real ‘atomic’ matter from which bodies were formed (by the ‘Spirit of Nature’). See More, Psychozoia, canto 2, stanza 9; Psychathanasia, bk. 1, canto 2, stanza 54; Democritus Platonissans, 12–16; and The Philosophick Cabbala, bk.l, sects. 1–3, in CC.
See More, Psychozoia, canto 2, stanzas 7–9, Philosophick Cabbala, bk. 1, chaps. 11–12; IS bk. 3, chap. 12, sects. 1–6. See also Poems, 345–6; and compare Plotinus Enneads 3, 2, 2.
[Vaughan], Man-Mouse, 104–6; Second Wash, 180–2; and Euphrates, 18, 67–8 and 93.
[Vaughan], Man-Mouse, 16–1 and Lumen de Lumine, 251–3. See also ibid., the engraved plate facing p.22.
More, ET, 54–5.
More is never very consistent with his use of the term ‘reason’. For he considers it to be the expression of a ‘middle life’ in the soul, which must choose between becoming ‘immersed’ in the ‘animal’ or ‘divine Life’. It appears from this that he means two things by the word, depending on its context — a divine intellectual principle in man, and a discursive faculty, which he places with the imagination in the ‘middle part’ of the soul. Compare for example the definition in MG, bk. 2, chap.l 1, sect. 1 with the treatment of ‘Right Reason’ (as a successive copy of the Logos) in EE, bk. 2, chaps. 3, sect. 3; 4, sect. 6; 5, sects. 4–7; and 9, sects. 14–6.
More, Mastix his Letter, in ET 313, and 54–5. See also IS, bk. 2, chap.15.
See More’s defence of Descartes in his Second Lash in ET 178–9.
More, ibid., 177–9.
[Vaughan], Second Wash, dedicatory poem ‘by H. M., Oxon.,’ and “To the Reader” by Vaughan, and p. 10.
See More, AA, “To the Reader”, sig.A4. and especially Mastix his Letter, in ET, 296–7.
By M. H. Nicolson, “Early Stages of Cartesianism in England” and A. Lichtenstein, More, 34; J. Hoyles, Waning of the Renaissance, 50.
Gabbey, “Philosophia Cartesiana Triumphata,” 188, 201–6.
More, ET, 5–8, and Mastix his Letter, ibid., 294.
Ibid., 310; and see also Psychozoia, canto 1, stanzas 57–60.
More, ET, 5 ff.
Ibid., On the ‘middle’ role of the imagination, see Psychozoia, canto 1, stanzas 57–60.
More, Philosophiae Teutonicae Censura. On its date of publication, see the Bibliography and the article by Sarah Hutton in this volume.
Ibid., Preface, sect. 22, in Opera, 2: 535. See also DD, (1713), 465–470. The quote is from Mastix his Letter in ET, 275.
Boehme, Censura, Quaestio 1, especially sects. 13–15, Opera, 2:538–40; and ET, 42–3 and 48. See also More on Boehme’s claim to understand the language of Nature, DD, (1713), 461–3.
Boehme, Censura, especially Qaestio 2, sect. 4–5; Quaestio 3, sect.2 ff. in Opera, 2: 541–3.
See More, MG, bk. 8, chap. 12, sects. 1–2. This passage could serve as a commentary on More’s description of Glaucis in Psychozoia, (1647), II, 87 ff. See also MG, bk. 6, chaps. 12–13.
See Hamilton, Family of Love. The works of Niclaes were all translated into English, though by the time More was writing the sect had practically disappeared in England, the name ‘Familist’ being then mainly applied to the Quakers. See for example, More’s disciple, Henry Hallywell, An Account of Familism as it is Revived and Propagated by the Quakers (London, 1673). After 1668 More was particularly concerned with denouncing Niclaes because of his apparent popularity with Anne Conway and her companion, Elizabeth Foxcroft. See More in, Conway Letters, p. 304.
ET, 30.
More to Elizabeth Foxcroft, 10th June 1669, in Conway Letters, p. 297; and MG, bk. 5,chap. 7, sect. 6; and bk. 6, chap. 12, sects. 1–3.
Conway Letters, p. 297.
More, MG, bk. 6, chaps. 14–17; and DD (1713), 565 ff.
Conway Letters, pp. 378 ff.
Mastix his Letter, in ET, 307.
M.H. Nicolson, “George Keith and the Cambridge Platonists,” 49–55; and A. Coudert Gottesman, “F.M. Van Helmont,” 582 ff.
Keith, Immediate Revelation, 233.
Ibid., 248.
Ibid., 258.
Keith’s place in the Ragley circle is traced by Allison Coudert in “F.M. van Helmont,”587–602, and in “A Quaker-Kabbalist Controversy,”and is outlined in Conway Letters. For More on Keith, ibid., 415–6.
More, Observations, “To Eugenius Philalethes”, 1; ET, “To the Reader”, sig. A5v.; and Vaughan’s mocking reply to More’s pretensions, Man-Mouse, 7:’you have observed an Epidemicall Disease, and you will be an Epidemicall Physician; you will cure a nation by Indignation.’
See for example [Vaughan], Second Wash, 85; and the more serious charges made by Joseph Beaumont after the Restoration, to which More replied in his Apology.
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Crocker, R. (1990). Mysticism and Enthusiasm in Henry More. In: Hutton, S. (eds) Henry More (1614–1687) Tercentenary Studies. International Archives of the History of Ideas/Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idées, vol 127. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2267-9_8
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