Abstract
When Henry More was about fifteen years old he had a dream. In his dream angels appeared, blowing trumpets through a mist, which gradually cleared before his eyes as the trumpets grew louder.2 As the sound from the trumptets increased, they pained his ears to such an extent that he awoke. On waking from his dream, he tells his readers, he remained for several days in an “unexpressable” state, “which if it were in my power to relate would seem to most men incredible”.3
Who seeks for pleasure in this mortall life
By diving deep into the body base
Shall lose true pleasure: But who gainly strive
Their sinking soul above this bulk to place
Enlarg’d delight they certainly shall find,
Unbounded joyes to fill their boundlesse mind.
When I my self from mine own self do quit
And each thing else; then an all-spreaden love
To the vast Universe my soul doth fit,
Makes me half equall to All-seeing Jove.
My mightie wings high stretch’d then clapping light
I brush the starres and make them shine more bright.
Then all the works of God with close embrace
I dearly hug in my enlarged arms,
All the hid paths of heavenly Love I trace
And boldly listen to his secret charms.
Then clearly view I where true light doth rise,
And where eternall Night low-pressed lies.1
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Notes
Henry More, Cupid’s Conflict, in Philosophicall Poems (Cambridge: Roger Daniel, 1647), pp. 302–3. In this paper all references to individual works by More are to book, chapter and section number (eg. I, xii, 4), and to book, canto and stanza number for the poems (e.g. I, iii, 54), except when to those works with no section numbers, where references are to page numbers only. For recent works relating to More’s illuminism, see notes 7 and 9 below; see also my “A Bibliography of Henry More”, in S. Hutton (ed), Henry More (1614–87) Tercentenary Studies (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990), pp. 219–47.
More, Mastix his Private Letter to a Friend, in Enthusiasmus Triumphatus (London: J. Flesher, 1656), p. 312ff.
Mastix his Private Letter, p. 315.
See Richard Ward, The Life of the Learned and Pious Dr Henry More (London, 1710), p. 39 ff.; More, Cupid’s Conflict in Philosophicall Poems, op. cit; Psychozoia, iii, 67 ff. in Psychodia Platonica, or a platonicall song of the soul (Cambridge: R. Daniel, 1642); Discourses on Several Texts of Scripture (London: for B. Aylmer, 1692), p. 54; and D.D., pp. 303–6 and below.
Ward, Life, op. cit., pp. 86, 94–5 and 147 and below.
Ibid., p. 42.
The main exceptions here are David Dockrill, “The Fathers and the Theology of the Cambridge Platonists”, Studia Patristica, 18 (1982), pp. 427–39;
George Panichas, “The Greek Spirit and the Mysticism of Henry More”, Greek Orthodox Theological Review, 2 (1956), pp. 41–61
C. A. Patrides, The Cambridge Platonists (Cambridge: CUP, 1969), pp. 16 ff., who all emphasize the revival in Cambridge Platonism of a kind of philosophical theology deriving from the early Greek Fathers. See the discussion below.
See More, Discourses, op. cit., pp. 52–3 and 101–3; R. Cudworth, A Sermon (1647), in Patrides, The Cambridge Platonists, op. cit., p. 102 ff.; and J. Smith, Select Discourses (London, 1660), p. 3.
The sources More cites, and especially the valuable notes he composed for the second edition of his Psychodia Platonica (1642), the Philosophical Poems of 1647, upholds Patrides’ contention that the Cambridge Platonists ‘inverted’ the more usual hierarchy of authority of their day, replacing Jerome with Origen and Aristotle with Plotinus and Plato, with the result that the little-known Greek concept of ‘deification’ assumed central importance. See Patrides, op. cit., pp. 3 ff., and especially pp. 19–22. On the particular and more contentious issue of the influence of Ficino, see C.A. Staudenbauer, “Galileo, Ficino, and Henry More’s Psychathanasia”, J.H.I., 29 (1968), pp. 565–78, who claims that the structure of More’s poem closely follows that of Ficino’s Theologia Platonica.
This is rightly denied and severely qualified by Alexander Jacob, “Henry More’s Psychodia Platonica and its relationship to Marsilio Ficino’s Theologia Platonica.”, J.H.I., 46 (1985), pp. 503–22.
Allison Coudert, “Henry More, the Kaballah end the Quakers”, in R. Kroll et al. (eds), Philosophy, Science and Religion in England, 1640–1700 (Cambridge, Cambridge U.P. 1992), pp. 31–67 argues that these influences made More simultaneously open to, and ambivalent towards Lurianic Kabbalism and Quakerism, both of which adhered to a similar perfectionism, or notion of the soul’s potential for a real union with God in this life. On this ambivalence to others More classified as ‘enthusiasts’, see my “Mysticism and Enthusiasm in Henry More”, in Sarah Hutton, (ed.) Henry More, op. cit., pp. 137–55, and the comments below.
More, Praefatio Generalissima, sections vii–xi, in Opera Omnia (3 vols., London, J. Maycock, 1679), vol. 2; and Ward, Life, op. cit., p. 5 ff.
Praefatio, vii, in Ward, ibid. pp. 5–7. See also J. Peile, A Biographical Register of Christ’s College (2 vols., Cambridge, CUP, 1910), vol. 2, p. 51.
C. C. Brown, “Henry More’s ‘Deep Retirement’: New Materials on the Early Years of the Cambridge Platonist”, Review of English Studies, 80 (1969), pp. 445–54.
Ward, ibid., p. 6 On Gabriel More, D. D., see Peile, ibid., vol. 1, pp. 238–9.
On Wotton and Hales at Eton, see DNB and also R. Birley, “Robert Boyle’s Head Master at Eton”, Notes and Records of the Royal Society (1958), pp. 104–14, which contains information on the books owned by Wotton and his friend John Harrison, now in Eton College Library.
More, Democritus Platonissans (Cambridge: R. Daniel, 1646) stanzas 47–51; Philosophicall Poems, op. cit., pp. 421–2; D.D., pp. 300–2 and 326–8; Enchiridium Ethicum (London: J. Flesher, 1667), I, iv.
See also George Rust, A Discourse of the Use of Reason (London, 1683), pp. 40–1.
See D. D. , Dialogue 3, sections xv–xvi.
Ward, Life, op. cit., p. 10, and Brown, “Deep Retirement”, art. cit., pp. 451–2.
See More’s later refutation of scholastic psychology (against Richard Baxter), An Answer to a Learned Psychopyrist, in Joseph Glanvil (ed More) Saducismus Triumphatus (London, 1682), and the discussion in J. C. Henry, “Medicine and Pneumatology: Henry More, Richard Baxter and Francis Glisson’s Treatise on the Energetic Nature of Substance”, Medical History, 31 (1987), pp. 15–40.
Praefatio, op. cit., viii, ommitted in Ward, Life, op. cit. More is referring here to the followers of Averroes. I cannot accept C. A. Staudenbaur’s contention, “Galileo, Ficino and Henry More’s Psychathanasia”, JHI, 29 (1968), p. 575, that More included an attack on monopsychism in Psychodia Platonica, op. cit. only because Ficino had done so in his Theologia Platonica. The parallel between the structure of More’s poems and Ficino’s work are striking, as Staudenbaur observes, but there is no evidence of any direct intellectual dependence. See More, ‘Preface’ to Antipsychopannychia, Philosophicall Poems, op. cit., p. 216, and below.
More, Psychathanasia, in Psychodia Platonica, op. cit., I, i, 10–18; D.D., op. cit., pp. 222–24; “Digression”, in Annotations upon (Rust’s) Discourse of Truth, in (Henry More), Two Choice and Useful Treatises (London: for J. Collins and S. Loundes, 1682), p. 208 ff.; and Fundamenta Philosophiae, in Opera Omnia, op. cit. (vol. 2, 1679), pp. 523–8. See also A. Coudert, “A Cambridge Platonist’s Kabbalist Nightmare”, JHI, 36 (1975), pp. 633–652; and her “Henry More, the Kaballah, and the Quakers”, art. cit. pp. 31–67.
M. H. Nicolson (ed S. Hutton), The Conway Letters (Oxford: OUP, 1992), p. 299, and Ward, Life, op. cit., p. 11.
Praefatio, op. cit., ix, translated by Ward, ibid, p. 12.
Ward, Life, op. cit., p. 13. See S. Winkworth (ed. and trans), Theologia Germanica (London, Longman, 1854); and also R. F. Jones, Spiritual Reformers (London: Macmillan, 1928), pp. xxvi and 4.
Ward, ibid., p. 15, More, Praefatio, op. cit., x. See also Brown, “Deep Retirement”, art. cit., pp. 451–2.
Ward, Ibid.
Ward, Life, p. 16. These poems were never translated and so are not in More’s Opera Omnia.
Ibid.
Brown, “Deep Retirement”, art. cit., pp. 449–51.
On Gell, see Peile, Biographical Register, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 301, and Robert Gell, Remaines (2 vols, ed. N. Bacon, London, 1676). It should be emphasized here that Gell, not William Chappell, was More’s tutor, and there is little evidence to suppose that More was ‘advised’ by Joseph Mede—versus the errorprone A.R. Hall, Henry More: Magic, Religion and Experiment (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), p. 83.
Robert Gell, Remaines , vol. 1, pp. 148 and 155–80.
For the charge of ‘familism’ against Gell, see J. Etherington, A Brief Discovery of Familisme (London, 1645), p. 10; Richard Baxter’s view of Gell as a ‘sectmaker’, in M. Sylvester (ed.), Reliquae Baxterianae (2 vols, London, 1696), vol. 1, p. 78. See also Jeremy Taylor to John Evelyn (April, 1659) seeking information on Gell and his congregation of ‘perfectionists’, cited in Nicolson (ed. Hutton), Conway Letters, op. cit., p. 155, note 3. Gell was also, a lecturer to the society of Astrologers, which perhaps accounts for More’s exceptional knowledge of astrology and astronomy. See his refutation of astrology in his Mystery of Godliness (1660), VII, XVII-XX, and his later response to John Butler’s attack on it, Tetractys Anti-Astrologica (1681), which includes the original offending chapters.
Jeremy Taylor, in Nicolson, ibid.; see Sebastian Castellio, Concerning Heretics (ed. R. Bainton: New York, 1935), p. 10 ff.; and Castellio, Of Obedience and A Conference of Faith, (London, 1679); and Gell’s Remaines, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 148, and 155–80.
More’s Psychodia Platonica makes it clear that the ‘degree’ of moral and spiritual perfection he envisaged is the result of a personal spiritual effort, as well as the action of divine grace in a believer. See Psychozoia, ii, 122–5 and ff. (1647 edition). See Patrides, op. cit., pp. 21–2, and below.
See G. Bullough, (ed.), The Poems of Henry More (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1931), pp. li and lvi.
Psychozoia, op. cit., iii, 67 ff.; see also More, Discourses, op. cit., p. 54, and D.D., op. cit., pp. 303–6. The philosophical background is the neoplatonic doctrine of procession (proodos) and reversion (epistrophe): see Plotinus (ed. and trans. S. MacKenna), Enneads (5 vols., London: Medici Society, 1917–30), V, 3, 9; Proclus (ed. and trans. E. R. Dodds), The Elements of Theology (Oxford: OUP, 1963), props 16,17 and 25–39.
Psychozoia, op. cit., ii, 42 ff.; compare Smith, Select Discourses, op. cit., pp. 466–7 and B. Whichcote, Aphorisms (London, 1753), # 388.
Psychozoia, only in Philosophicall Poems, op. cit. ii, 57–125.
Ibid, ii, 89–92, 99.
Ibid, ii, 58; and see my “Mysticism and Enthusiasm in Henry More”, loc. cit., pp. 141–4.
Psychozoia, only in Philosophicall Poems, op. cit., ii, 141; and see ibid, pp. 359–60; More, Discourses, op. cit. p. 79; and Conjectura Cabbalistica, Philosophical Cabbala, (London: J. Flesher, 1653) iii, 3; compare Cudworth, in Patrides The Cambridge Platonists, op. cit., p. 112; and Smith, Select Discourses, op. cit., pp. 15–6, and pp. 469–74.
Psychozoia, ii, 139 ff. only in Philosophicall Poems, op. cit.
Psychozoia iii, 10–22; compare Spenser, Fairie Queene, VI, i, 9–22, in J. C. Smith and E. de Selincourt (eds), The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser (Oxford: OUP, 1970); Smith, Select Discourses, op. cit., pp. 353–9 and 472–4; see also More’s notes on this, Philosophicall Poems, op. cit., pp. 364–6.
Psychozoia, op. cit, iii, 22.
Psychozoia, op. cit., iii, 55–62; compare Spenser, Fairie Queene, op. cit., VI, viii; Theologia Germanica, op. cit., xix; and Castellio, Conference, op. cit., p. 54.
See St Paul, Romans, vii, 23-viii, 2; and H. Hallywell, Deus Justificatus (London, 1668), pp. 177–83, which expands on this theme, probably after More.
See Psychozoia, op. cit., ii, 9; and Insomnium Philosophicum, in Philosophical Poems, op. cit., pp. 324–8, esp. 326; Conjectura Cabbalistica, Moral Cabbala, op. cit., i, 1; and below.
See More, Cupid Conflict, cited above, note 1; Philosophical Poems, op. cit., “To the Reader upon this Second Edition”, B2; Psychozoia, in ibid., ii, 91–93; and Moral Cabbala, op. cit., i, 2.
Psychozoia, op. cit., i, 12–39; and “To the Reader upon the First Canto of Psychozoia”. Compare Plotinus, Enneads, op. cit., I, i, 4; V, ix, 6–7; and see also J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (London, Black, 1977), pp. 127–30.
Psychozoia, ibid., i, 40 ff. The Ogdoas probably derives via the neoplatonists and neopythagoreans from Plato, Republic, 616d ff. (on the 8 whorls of the spindle of the Fates) and the Pythagorean harmonic diaspason. See S. K. Heninger, Touches of Sweet Harmony (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington, 1974), pp. 91, ff.
Psychozoia, ibid., ii, 7–11. Plotinus, Enneads, op. cit, IV, iii, 9, III,vi, 7 and I, viii, 4.
Psychozoia, ibid., i, 7; and D.D., op. cit, pp. 301–2.
See Psychozoia, ibid., ii, 23 ff., and Discourses, op. cit., pp. 123ff.
Psychozoia, op. cit, ii,9, and see Psychathanasia, op. cit., III, i, 18–22, and Discourses, op. cit, p. 188.
Plotinus, Enneads, op. cit., III, vi, 7 and I, viii, 4 and 14–15.
See below, and Discourses, op. cit., p. 188., Philosophicall Poems, op. cit., p. 347, and the discussion in D. P. Walker, “Medical Spirits, God and the Soul”, in M. Fattori and M. Bianchi (eds) Spiritus (Rome, 1984), especially, pp. 225 and 237–9.
Cited in Ward, Life, op. cit., pp. 39–40. Versus Coudert, “Henry More, the Kabbalah, and the Quakers”, art. cit., pp. 50–1, who interprets this and related passages from More’s writings against Vaughan as indicative of an initial adherence to a hermetic, ‘physicalist’ view of spiritual perfection, later to be abandoned when More came to realize that his ‘neoplatonism and Christian theology were not compatible’. This is not substantiated in her account.
Psychathanasia, op. cit., III, ii, 58. See also the two orbs of good and evil beings described in the early poem, Insomnium Philosophicum, in Philosophicall Poems, op. cit., pp. 325–28.
Antipsychopannychia, ii,15 in Psychodia Platonica, op. cit. Compare also Smith, Select Discourses, op. cit., pp. 385 ff., and Whichcote, Aphorisms, op. cit., #294.
Psychozoia, op. cit., iii, 20–22, and 112–114.
Psychathanasia, op. cit., I, i, 9–17.
Psychathanasia, op. cit., III, iii, and the notes on this canto, in Philosophicall Poems, op. cit., pp. 385–408.
Psychathanasia, ibid., I, i, 10–17; and below.
Alazonomastix Philalethes (ie. Henry More), Observations upon Anthroposophia Theomagica and Anima Magica Abscondita (London, J. Flesher, 1650). For a fuller discussion of this dispute, see my “Mysticism and Enthusiasm in Henry More”, art. cit., pp. 145–8; and also A. Rudrum (ed), The Works of Thomas Vaughan (Oxford, 1984), pp. 7–12.
See (More), The Second Lash of Alazonomastix Philalethes (originally London: J. Flesher, 1651), in More, Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, op. cit., pp. 174–5.
E. Philalethes (Vaughan), The Second Wash, or the Moore Scour’d Once More (London, 1651), p. 10, versus More, Philosophicall Poems, op. cit., pp. 353–4 (referring to Plotinus, Enneads, op. cit., IV, ii, 9.)
See E. Philalethes (Vaughan), Lumen de Lumine (London, 1651), especially pp. 13–5; and idem, Anthroposophia Theomagia (London, 1650), p. 5.
See my “Mysticism and Enthusiasm in Henry More”, art. cit. p. 145.
(More), Second Lash, in Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, op. cit., pp. 177–84, and Vaughan’s response, Second Wash, op. cit., pp. 10 ff. See also More’s apologetic comments, An Antidote against Atheism (London: J. Flesher, 1653), ‘To the Reader’, and Mastix his Letter, in Enthusiasmus Triumphatus, op. cit., pp. 296–8.
More, Antidote, ibid., ‘To the Reader’, and I,ii,5; and the earlier statement, preferring a sincere doubt to a false certainty, Philosophicall Poems, op. cit., ‘Preface to the Reader upon this Second Edition’, sig B4.
Antidote, ibid., and see also Conjectura Cabbalistica, op. cit.. Preface.
Philosophicall Poems, op. cit, ‘Preface to the Reader upon this Second Edition’, sig. B3; and Democritus Platonissans, op. cit., ‘To the Reader’; and see Alan Gabbey, “Philosophia Cartesiana Triumphata: Henry More, 1646–71”, in T. M. Lennon, J. M. Nicholas, J. W. Davis (eds), Problems in Cartesianism (Kingston and Montreal, 1982), pp. 171–249, especially pp. 173–5.
More to Descartes, Dec. 11, 1648, in C. Adam and P. Tannery, (eds), Oeuvres de Descartes (11 vols, Paris: Vrin, 1964–74) vol. 5, pp. 238–40, and 242–3. See also More, Epistola H. Mori ad V.C (London: J. Flesher, 1664), sect. 5; and Gabbey, “Philosophia Cartesiana Triumphata”, art. cit., pp. 191–2.
More, C.S.P.W., Preface General, p. xi–xii.
Gabbey, “Philosophia Cartesiana Triumphata”, art. cit., pp. 173–5.
Philosophicall Poems, op. cit., “Preface to the Reader on this Second Edition”, sig.B.3.
Democritus Platonissans, op. cit., ‘To the Reader’.
For example, Philosophick Cabbala, op. cit., i, 6 and i, 8; and see also Appendix to Defense of the Philosophick Cabbala, i, 8, in Collection of Philosophical Writings, op. cit.
See for example the ‘physico-theology’ contained in Antidote against Atheism, op. cit., II.
Antidote against Atheism (3rd edition), II, ii, 7–15, C.S.P.W., using Boyle, New Experiments Physico-Mechanical (London, 1660), and More, I. S., III, xii, 4–5, using Helmont on sympathetic cures and Harvey on the generation of the foetus. Judging by a letter to Hartlib (c.1561) (Sheffield University Library, Hartlib Papers, 18/1/42a-43b), More had begun his collection of ‘verified’ tales of witchcraft and other paranormal phenomenon about this time as experimental proofs for the existence and life of spirits. This was used in a number of More’s works, culminating in the Collection he attached to Joseph Glanvil’s Saducismus Triumphatus (1681).
Antidote, op. cit., I, iv, and Appendix to idem, iv, in second edition (London, 1655), Immortality of the Soul, op. cit., I, iii–vii, and II, xviii, 1; and the fuller treatment of this in More, The Easie, True Notion of a Spirit, in Glanvil, Saducismus Triumphatus, op. cit., a translation of More, E. M., xxvii–xxviii.
See above and Psychathanasia, op. cit., III, i.
Antidote, Preface.
Cupids Conflict, in Philosophical Poems, op. cit, p. 303, cited above, note 1.
D.D., pp. 247–53.
Ibid., 250.
Ibid.
Psychathanasia, op. cit., III, iii, 74.
D.D., op. cit., p. 252. This motto inspired the work of the same title by More’s admiring disciple, Edmund Elys, Amor Dei Lux Animae (London, 1670).
See More, Immortality of the Soul, op. cit., III, xi, 6; and D.D., dialogue II, xxii, and IV, vii, and also (Henry Hallywell), Deus Justificatus, op. cit., p. 269. Similar necessitarian theologies, usually associated with a defence of the ‘hypothesis’ of preexistence, can be found in the works of More’s friends and disciples, Joseph Glanvil, Henry Hallywell, George Rust, F. M. van Helmont, Anne Conway and Christian Knorr von Rosenroth. See D. P. Walker, The Decline of Hell (London: Routledge, 1964), pp. 122–55.
D.D., p. 252–3.
D.D., p. 253. See Richard Roach’s interpretation of this, that the asses represent “the Clamour of Narrow and Ignorant Spirits”, in J. White, The Restoration of all Things (London, 1712), Sig A.2.
D.D., p. 255.
Ibid., p. 255–6.
Ibid., p. 256.
Roach, in White, Restoration of All Things, op. cit.
More refers to the doctrine as a ‘stoic dream’ in the Immortality of the Soul, III,xviii,11–12. See also More’s early letter to Anne Conway (c.1652), where he warns his friend against the doctrine of universal salvation, despite its apparent harmony with his own emphasis on the power of Christ to save all men, printed in Ward, Life, op. cit., pp. 303 ff. However, Coudert, “Henry More, the Kabbalah, and the Quakers”, p. 45, suggests (perhaps after Roach’s statement) that More really ‘leaned’ towards the doctrine.
D.D., p. 253.
See above, and Philosophicall Poems, op. cit., “Preface to the Reader upon this Second Edition”, sig.B4, and Antidote, op. cit., I, ii, 5.
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Crocker, R. (1997). The Role of Illuminism in the Thought of Henry More. In: Rogers, G.A.J., Vienne, J.M., Zarka, Y.C. (eds) The Cambridge Platonists in Philosophical Context. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idées, vol 150. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8933-8_9
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