BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE, THE FIRST OF THE "LATITUDE-MEN"[1]
The type of Christianity which I have been calling "spiritual religion,"
that is, religion grounded in the nature of Reason, finds, at least in
England, its noblest expression in the group of men, sometimes called
"Cambridge Platonists," and sometimes "Latitude-Men," or simply
"Latitudinarians." These labels were all given them by their critics and
opponents, and were used to give the impression that the members of this
group or school were introducing and advancing a type of Christianity too
broad and humanistic to be safe, and one grounded on Greek philosophy
rather than on Scripture and historical Revelation.[2]
They were, however, undertaking to do in their generation precisely what
the long line of spiritual interpreters had for more than a century been
endeavouring, through pain and suffering, misunderstanding and fierce
persecution, to work out for humanity--a religion of life and reality, a
religion rooted in the eternal nature of the Spirit of God and the spirit
of man, a religion as authoritative and unescapable "as mathematical
demonstration."[3]
It is not possible to establish direct connection between the leaders of
this school and the writings of the successive {289} spiritual Reformers
on the Continent whom we have been studying in this volume, though the
parallelism of ideas and of spirit is very striking. Both groups were
powerfully influenced by the humanistic movement, both groups drew upon
that profound searching of the soul which they found in the works of
Plato and Plotinus, and both groups read the same mystical writers.
These things would partly account for the similarities, but there was
almost certainly a closer and more direct connection, though we cannot
trace it in the case of Whichcote as we can in that of John Everard of
Clare College. There has been a tendency to explain Whichcote's views
through the influence of Arminius and Arminians; but he himself denied
that he had been influenced by Arminius,[4] while his disciple, Nathaniel
Culverwel, speaks disapprovingly of Arminianism.[5] There are no
distinct allusions in Whichcote to Jacob Boehme, and the former's
conception of the Universe is vastly different from the latter's, but
their vital and ethical view of the way of salvation is almost exactly
the same, and the constant insistence of Whichcote and his disciples that
Heaven and Hell are primarily conditions of life in the person himself
has, as we know, a perfect parallel in Boehme.
The Cambridge scholars were much better equipped for their task than any
of the men whom we have so far studied, their gravest difficulty being an
overweighting of learning which they sometimes failed to fuse with their
spiritual vision and to transmute into power. But with all their
propension to learning and their love of philosophy, they were primarily
and fundamentally _religious_--they were disciples of Christ rather than
disciples of Plato and Plotinus. Bishop Burnet's testimony to the
positive spiritual contribution of this movement, now under
consideration, and to the genuineness of the religious life of these men
is well worth quoting. After describing the arid condition of his time,
the prevailing tendency of ministers to seek pomp and luxury, and the
apparent thinness of the preaching of the day, he adds: "Some {290} few
exceptions are to be made; but so few, that if _a new set of men had not
appeared of another stamp_, the Church had quite lost her esteem over the
nation." He then designates this group of Cambridge scholars. Speaking
particularly of Whichcote, he says: "Being disgusted with the dry
systematical way of those times, he studied to raise those who conversed
with him to a nobler set of thoughts, and to consider religion as _a seed
of a deiform nature_ (to use one of his own phrases). In order to this,
he set young students much on reading the ancient philosophers, chiefly
Plato, Tully and Plotin, and on considering the Christian religion as a
doctrine sent from God, both to elevate and sweeten human nature, in
which he was a great example, as well as a wise and kind instructor.
Cudworth carried this on with a great strength of genius and a vast
compass of learning."[6]
These "Latitude-Men" were Puritan in temper and in intensity of
conviction; they were all trained in the great nursery of Puritan faith,
Emmanuel College, and they were on intimate terms with many of the men
who were the creators of the outer and inner life of the Commonwealth,
but in their intellectual sympathies they went neither with the sectaries
of the time--"the squalid sluttery of fanatic conventicles," as S. P.
puts it--nor with the prevailing Puritan theology. They read Calvin and
Beza with diligence, at least Whichcote did, but their thought did not
move along the track which the great Genevan had constructed. They
discovered another way of approach which made the old way and the old
battles seem to them futile. Instead of beginning with the eternal
mysteries of the inscrutable divine Will, they began with the fundamental
nature of man, always deep and difficult to fathom, but for ever the
ground and basis of all that can be known in the field of religion.
Their interest was thus psychological rather than theological. It is
their constant assertion that nothing is more intrinsically rational than
religion, and they focus all their energies to make this point clear and
evident.
{291}
They came to their intellectual development in the period when Hobbes was
formulating one of the most powerful and subtle types of materialism that
has ever been presented. They were, too, contemporaries of Descartes,
and they followed with intense interest the attempt of the great
Frenchman to put philosophy in possession of a method as adequate for its
problems as the method of geometry was for the mathematical sciences.
None of the "Platonists" was possessed of the same rare quality of genius
as either of these two great philosophers, but they saw with clear
insight the full bearing of both systems. They heartily disapproved of
Hobbes' materialism and shuddered at its nakedness. They were too much
committed to the ideals of Humanism to be positive opponents of
Descartes' rational formulation of all things outer and inner, but they
never felt at home with the vast clock-like mechanism to which his system
reduced the universe, and they set themselves, in contrast, to produce a
religious philosophy which would guarantee freedom, would give wider
scope for the inner life, would show the kinship of God and man and put
morality and religion--to their mind for ever one and inseparable--on a
foundation as immovable as the pillars of the universe.
The first of this group, the pathbreaker of the movement, was Benjamin
Whichcote, though it must not be forgotten that he had noble forerunners
in John Hales, William Chillingworth, and Jeremy Taylor. The
biographical details which have survived him are very limited. A great
teacher's life is so largely interior and so devoid of outward events
that there is usually not much to record.[7] He was descended from "an
ancient and honourable family," and was born at Whichcote-Hall, in the
parish of Stoke, the 11th of March, 1609. He was admitted in 1626 to
Emmanuel College--"which was looked on from its first foundation as a
Seminary of Puritans"--and was there under the tutorship of two great
Puritan teachers. Dr. Anthony Tuckney and Thomas Hill, {292} both of
whom were for a time associated with John Cotton, afterwards the famous
preacher of colonial Boston. He was ordained both deacon and priest in
1636, was made Provost of King's College, Cambridge, in 1644, "went-out"
Doctor of Divinity in 1649, and for twenty years gave the afternoon
Lecture on Sundays at Trinity Church, Cambridge. At the Restoration he
was deprived of the Provostship by order of the King, which brought his
university career to an end. He was made curate of St. Anne's,
Blackfriars, in 1662, and later received from the Crown the vicarage of
St. Laurence Jewry, where he preached twice each week until his death in
1683.
He once said in one of his sermons: "Had we a man among us, that we could
produce, that did live an exact Gospel life; had we a man that was really
gospelized; were the Gospel a life, a soul, and a spirit to him . . . he
would be the most lovely and useful person under heaven. Christianity
would be recommended to the world by his spirit and conversation."[8]
Dr. Whichcote himself was, as far as one can judge from the impression
which he made on his contemporaries, such a "gospelized" man. He
"recommended religion," as Dr. Salter says, by his life and writings, and
showed it "in its fairest and truest light as the highest perfection of
human nature."[9] He seemed to be "emancipated" when he came back to
Cambridge as Provost of King's College, and he devoted himself to
"spreading and propagating a more generous sett of opinions" than those
which were generally proclaimed in the sermons of the time, and "the
young Masters of Arts soon cordially embraced" his message.[10]
This "new sett of opinions," proclaimed in Trinity Church with vision and
power, soon disturbed those who were of the older and sterner schools of
thought. "My heart hath bin much exercised about you," his old friend
and tutor, Dr. Tuckney, wrote to him in 1651, "especially since your
being Vice-Chancellour, I have seldom heard you preach, but that
something hath bin delivered {293} by you, and that so authoritatively
and with big words, sometimes of 'divinest reason' and sometimes of 'more
than mathematical demonstration,' that hath much grieved me."[11] The
novelty of Dr. Whichcote's "opinions" comes more clearly into view as the
letter proceeds: "Your Discourse about Reconciliation that 'it doth not
operate on God, but on us' is Divinity [theology] that my heart riseth
against. . . . To say that the ground of God's reconciliation is from
anything in us; and not from His free grace, freely justifying the
ungodly, is to deny one of the fundamental truths of the Gospel that
derives from heaven."[12]
The correspondence which followed this frank letter supplies us with the
clearest light we possess, or can possess, upon Whichcote's inner life
and type of religion. He replied to his old friend, whom he had always
held "in love, reverence and esteem," that he had noticed of late that
"our hearts have not seemed to be together when our persons have
bin,"[13] "but," he adds, "your letter meets with no guilt in my
conscience." "My head hath bin possessed with this truth [which I am
preaching] these manie years--I am not late nor newe in this
persuasion."[14] He then proceeds to quote from his notes exactly what
he had said on the subject of reconciliation in his recent Discourse. It
was as follows: "Christ doth not save us by onely doing for us _without_
us [_i.e._ historically]: yea, we come at that which Christ hath done for
us with God, by what He hath done for us _within_ us. . . . With God
there cannot be reconciliation without our becoming God-like. . . . They
deceeve and flatter themselves extreamly; who think of reconciliation
with God by means of a Saviour acting upon God in their behalfe and _not
also working in or upon them to make them God-like_," and he says that he
added in the spoken sermon, what was not in his notes, that a theology
which taught a salvation without inward moral transformation was
"Divinity minted in Hell."[15]
{294}
Dr. Tuckney in his second letter becomes still more specific. He admits
that Whichcote's "persuasion of truth" is not "late or newe"; he
remembers, on the latter's first coming to Cambridge, "I thought you then
somwhat cloudie and obscure in your expressions." What he now notices
with regret is the tendency in his old pupil to "cry-up reason rather
than faith"; to be "too much immersed in Philosophy and Metaphysics"; to
be devoted to "other authours more than Scripture, and Plato and his
schollars above others"; to be producing "a kinde of moral Divinitie,
onlie with a little tincture of Christ added"; to put "inherent
righteousness above imputed righteousness" and "love above faith," and to
use "some broad expressions as though in this life wee may be above
ordinances"; and finally he notices that since Whichcote has "cast his
sermons in this mould," they have become "less edifying" and "less
affecting the heart."[16] He thinks, too, that he has discovered the
foreign source of the infection: "Sir, those whose footsteppes I have
observed [in your sermons] were the Socinians and Arminians; the latter
whereof, I conceive, you have bin everie where reading in their workes
and most largely in their Apologie."[17]
"In a thousand guesses," Whichcote answers this last charge, in his
second letter, "you could not have bin farther off from the truth of the
thing." "What is added of Socinians and Arminians, in respect of mee, is
groundless. I may as well be called a Papist, or Mahometan; Pagan or
Atheist. And trulie, Sir, you are wholly mistaken in the whole course of
my studies. You say you find me largelie in their _Apologia_; to my
knowledge I never saw or heard of the book before! . . . I have not read
manie bookes; but I have studied a fewe: meditation and invention hath
bin my life rather than reading; and trulie I have more read Calvine and
Perkins and Beza than all the bookes, authors and names you mention. _I
have alwaies expected reason for what men say_, less valuing persons and
authorities in the stating and {295} resolving of truth, therefore have
read them most where I have found itt. I have not looked at anie thing
as more than an opinion which hath not bin underpropt by convincing
reason or plaine and satisfactorie Scripture."[18]
As to the charge that he has become immersed in philosophy, Whichcote
modestly replies: "I find the Philosophers that I read good as farre as
they go: and it makes me secretlie blush before God when I find eyther my
head, heart or life challenged by them, which I must confess, I often
find." To the criticism that he "cries-up reason," he answers that he
has always found in his own experience that "that preaching has most
commanded my heart which has most illuminated my head." "Everie
Christian," he insists, "must think and believe as he finds cause. Shall
he speak in religion otherwise than he thinks? Truth is truth, whoever
hath spoken itt or howsoever itt hath bin abused. If this libertie be
not allowed to the Universitie wherefore do wee study? We have nothing
to do butt to get good memories and to learn by heart."[19] Finally, to
the impression expressed by Dr. Tuckney that his sermons are less
edifying and heart-searching, he replies with dignity and evidently with
truth: "I am sure I have bin all along well understood by persons of
honest heartes, but of mean place and education: and I have had the
blessing of the soules of such at their departure out of this world. I
thanke God, my conscience tells me, that I have not herein affected
worldlie shewe, but the real service of truth."[20]
We need not follow further this voluminous correspondence in which two
high-minded and absolutely honest men reveal the two diverging lines of
their religious faith. To the man whose mind found its spiritual footing
alone on the solid ground of Calvin's unmodified system, the new
"persuasion" was sure to seem "cloudie and obscure"; and no number of
letters could convince him that the new message presented a safe way of
faith and life. And no amount of criticism or advice could change the
other man who found it necessary for him to have {296} reasonable cause
for what he was to believe and live by. Whichcote closes the friendly
debate with some very positive announcements that for him religion must
be, and must remain, something which guarantees its reality in the soul
itself: "Christ must be inwardlie felt as a principle of divine life
within us."[21] "What is there in man," again he says, "more
considerable than that which declares God's law to him, pleads for the
observation of it, accuseth for the breach and excuseth upon the
performance of it?"[22] And finally he informs his friend that each of
them must be left free to follow his own light: "If we differ there is no
help for it: Wee must forbear one another. . . . If you conceeve
otherwise of me than as a lover and pursuer after truth, you think
amisse. . . . Wherein I fall short of your expectation, I fail for
truth's sake."[23]
The central idea in Whichcote's teaching, which runs like a gulf-stream
through all his writings, is his absolute certainty that there is
something in the "very make of man"[24] which links the human spirit to
the Divine Spirit and which thus makes it as natural for man to be
religious as it is for him to seek food for his body. There is a
"seminal principle," "a seed of God," "something that comes immediately
from God," in the very structure of man's inner nature,[25] and this
structural possession makes it as natural and proper for man's mind to
tend toward God, "the centre of immortal souls," as it is for heavy
things to tend toward their centre.[26] "God," he elsewhere says, "is
more inward to us than our own souls," and we are more closely "related
to God than to anything in the world."[27] The soul is to God as the
flower is to the sun, which opens when the sun is there and shuts when
the sun is absent,[28] though this figure breaks down, because, in
Whichcote's view, God never withdraws and is never absent. This idea
that the spiritual life is absolutely rational--a normal function {297}
of man's truest nature--receives manifold expression in Whichcote's
_Aphorisms_, which constitute a sort of seventeenth-century Book of
Proverbs, or collection of Wisdom-sayings. He had absorbed one great
saying from the original Book of Proverbs, which he uses again and again,
and which became the sacred text for all the members of the school--"the
spirit of man is a candle of the Lord."[29] This Proverb is for
Whichcote a key that fits every door of life, and the truth which it
expresses is for him the basal truth of religion, as the following
Aphorisms will sufficiently illustrate:
"Were it not for light we should not know we had such a sense as sight:
Were it not for God we should not know the Powers of our souls which have
an appropriation to God."[30]
"God's image is in us and we belong to Him."[31]
"There is a capacity in man's soul, larger than can be answered by
anything of his own, or of any fellow-creature."[32]
"There is nothing so intrinsically rational as Religion is."[33]
"The Truths of God are connatural to the soul of man, and the soul of man
makes no more resistance to them than the air does to light."[34]
"Religion makes us live like men."[35]
"We worship God best when we resemble Him most."[36]
"Religion is intelligible, rational and accountable: It is not our burden
but our privilege."[37]
Something is always wrong, he thinks, if Religion becomes a burden: "It
is imperfection in Religion to _drudge_ in it, and every man drudges in
Religion if he takes it up as a task and carries it as a burden."[38]
The moment we follow "the divine frame and temper" of our inmost nature
we find our freedom, our health, our power, and our joy; as one of the
Aphorisms puts it: {298} "When we make nearer approaches to God, we have
more use of ourselves."[39]
This view is beautifully expressed in Whichcote's Prayer printed at the
end of the _Aphorisms_: "Most Blessed God, the Creator and Governor of
the World; the only true God, and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We
thy Creatures were made to seek and find, to know and reverence, to serve
and obey, to honour and glorify, to imitate and enjoy Thee; who art the
Original of our Beings, and the Centre of our Rest. Our Reasonable
Nature hath a peculiar Reservation for Thee; and our Happiness consists
in our Assimilation to, and Employment about, Thee. The nearer we
approach unto Thee, the more free we are from Error, Sin, and Misery; and
the farther off we are from Thee, the farther off we are from Truth,
Holiness, and Felicity. Without Thee, we are sure of nothing; we are not
sure of ourselves: but through Thee, there is Self-Enjoyment in the mind,
when there is nothing but Confusion, and no Enjoyment of the World."
Religion is thus thought of as the normal way of life, as the true
fulfilment of human nature and as complete inward health. "Holiness," he
says, "is our right constitution and temper, our inward health and
strength."[40] Sin and selfishness carry a man below the noble Creation
which God made in him, and Religion is the return to the true nature and
capacity of God's Creation in man: "The Gospel, inwardly received, dyes
and colours the soul, settles the Temper and Constitution of it and is
restorative of our Nature. . . . It is the restitution of us to the
state of our Creation, to the use of our Principles, to our healthful
Constitution and to Acts that are connatural to us."[41]
As soon as man returns to "his own healthful Constitution" and to "the
state of his Creation," he finds that Religion has its evidence and
assurance in itself. God made man for moral truths, "before He declared
{299} them on Sinai," or "writ them in the Bible,"[42] and so soon as the
soul comes into "conformity to its original,"[43] that is "into
conformity to God according to its inward measure and capacity,"[44] and
lives a kind of life that is "self-same with its own Reason,"[45] the
Divine Life manifests itself in that man and kindles his spirit into a
blazing candle of the Lord. Those who are spiritual "find and feel
within themselves Divine Suggestions, Motions and Inspirations; . . . a
light comes into the Mind, a still Voice."[46]
This direct and inward revelation is, however, for Whichcote never "a
revelation of new matter," never a way to the discovery of truths of a
private nature. The revelations which the guidance of the Divine Spirit
breathes forth within our souls are always truths of universal
significance, truths that are already implicitly revealed in the Bible,
truths that carry their own self-evidence to any rational mind. But
these revelations, these discoveries of what God means and what life may
become, are possible only to those who prepare themselves for inward
converse and who centre down to the deeper Roots of their being: "Unless
a man takes himself sometimes out of the world, by retirement and
self-reflection, he will be in danger of losing _himself_ in the
world."[47] Where God is not discovered, something is always at fault
with man. "As soon as he is abstracted from the noise of the world,
withdrawn from the call of the Body, having the doors of the senses shut,
the Divine Life readily enters and reveals Itself to the inward Eye that
is prepared for it."[48] "Things that are connatural in the way of
Religion," he once said, "the Illapses and Breakings in of God upon us,
require a mind that is not subject to Passion but is in a serene and
quiet Posture, where there is no tumult of Imagination. . . . There is
no genuine and proper effect of Religion where the Mind is not composed,
sedate and calm."[49]
{300}
There is no tendency in Whichcote to undervalue Scripture. Inward
revelations are for him not a substitute for the Bible nor an appendix to
it. Through the Divine Light in the soul and through Scripture, Divine
communications are imparted to men. These he calls respectively "truth
of first inscription" and "truth of after-revelation,"[50] and they no
more conflict than two luminaries in the physical world conflict.
"Morals," he says, "are inforced by Scripture, but they were before
Scripture: they were according to the nature of God,"[51] and, as he
always claims, according to the deiform nature in man's reason.[52] As
soon as a person interprets the Light within him--the candle of the Lord
in his own heart--by the Light of revelation his inward illumination
becomes clearer; and contrariwise, as soon as one brings an enlightened
spirit to the Bible its message becomes clarified--"the Spirit within
leads to a right apprehension of those things which God hath
declared."[53] But Truth is always vastly more than "Notions," or
conceptual formulation of doctrine. "Religion," as he says in his
wisdom-proverbs, "is not a System of Doctrine, an observance of Modes or
a Form of Words"--it is "a frame and temper of mind; it shows itself in a
Life and Action conformable to the Divine Will"; it is "our resemblance
to God."[54] Bare knowledge does not sanctify any man; "Men of holy
Hearts and Lives best understand holy Doctrines."[55] We always deceive
ourselves if we do not get beyond even such high-sounding words as
conversion, regeneration, divine illumination, and mortification; if we
do not get beyond names and notions of every sort, into a real holiness
of life that is a conformity of nature to our original. His most
important passage on this point is one which is found in his Sermon on
the text: "Of this man's seed hath God, according to His promise, raised
up unto {301} Israel a Saviour, Jesus" (Acts xiii. 23). "Religion," he
says in this passage, "is not satisfied in Notions; but doth, in deed and
in reality, come to nothing unless it be in us not only matter of
Knowledge and Speculation, but doth establish in us a Frame and Temper of
Mind and is productive of a holy and vertuous Life. Therefore let these
things take effect in us; in our Spirituality and Heavenly-mindedness; in
our Conformity to the Divine Nature and _Nativity from above_. For
whoever professes that he believes the Truth of these things and wants
the Operation of them upon his Spirit and Life doth, in fact, make void
and frustrate what he doth declare as his Belief. He doth receive the
Grace of God in vain unless this Principle and Belief doth descend in his
Heart and establish a good Frame and Temper of Mind and govern in all
Actions of his Life and Conversation."[56] This translation of Light and
Truth and Insight into the flesh and blood of action is a necessary law
of the spiritual life: "Good men spiritualize their bodies; bad men
incarnate their souls";[57] or, as he expresses it in one of his Sermons:
"To be [spiritually] well and unactive do not consist together. No man
is well without action."[58]
Religion is, thus, with him always a dynamic principle of Life, working
itself out in the frame and temper of the man and producing its
characteristic effects in his actions. It does not operate "like a charm
or spell"--it operates only as a vital principle[59] and we become
eternally the self which we ourselves form. "We naturalize ourselves,"
to use his striking phrase, "to the employment of eternity."[60] We are
lost, not by Adam's sin, but by our own; and we are saved, not by
Christ's historical death, but by our own obedience to the law of the
Spirit of Life revealed in Him and by our own death to sin;[61] and the
beginning of Heaven is one with the beginning of conformity to the will
of God and to our nativity from above. "Heaven is a temper of spirit,
before it is a place."[62] {302} There is a Heaven this side of Heaven
and there is as certainly a Hell this side of Hell. The most impressive
expression of this truth is given in one of his Sermons: "All misery
arises out of _ourselves_. It is a most gross mistake, and men are of
dull and stupid spirits who think that the state which we call Hell is an
incommodious place only; and that God by His sovereignty throws men
therein. Hell ariseth out of a man's self. And Hell's fewel is the
guilt of a man's conscience. It is impossible that any should be so
miserable as Hell makes a man and as there a man is miserable by his own
condemning of himself: And on the other side, when they think that Heaven
arises from any place, or any nearness to God or Angels, that is not
principally so; but Heaven lies in a refined Temper, in an inward
Reconciliation to the Nature of God. So that both Hell and Heaven have
their Foundation within Men."[63] The evil and punishment which follow
sin are "consequential" and inseparable from sin, and so, too, eternal
life is nothing but spiritual life fulfilling itself in ways that are
consequential and necessary in the deepest nature of things: "That which
is our best employment here will be our only employment in eternity."[64]
The good old Puritan, Tuckney, suspected that Whichcote was promulgating
a type of Christianity which could dispense with ordinances--"as though
in this life wee may be above ordinances,"--and it must be confessed that
there was some ground for this suspicion. He was no "enthusiast" and he
in no way shared the radical anti-sacramentarian spirit of the small
sects of the Commonwealth, but it belonged to the very essence of this
type of religion, as we have seen in every varied instance of it, to hold
lightly to externals. "The Spirit," as Whichcote once said, "makes men
consider the Inwards of things,"[65] and almost of necessity the grasp
slackens on outward {303} forms, as the vision focusses more intently
upon inward and eternal realities. It is one of his foundation
principles that "we worship God best when we resemble Him most,"[66] and
if that is true, then the whole energy of one's being should concentrate
upon the cultivation of "the deiform nature," "the nativity from Above."
The real matters of religion, as he keeps insisting, are matters of life
and inner being, the formation of disposition and the right set of will.
But these vital things have been notoriously slighted, and "men's zeal is
employed in usages, modes and rites of parties"; in matters that are
divisive and controversial rather than in "things that are lovely in the
eyes of all who have the Principles of Reason for their rule."[67] The
great differences in religion have never been over necessary and
indispensable Truth; on the contrary the disturbing differences have
always been and still are "either over Points of curious and nice
Speculation, or about arbitrary modes of worship."[68] Just as fast as
men see that religion is a way to fullness of life, a method of attaining
likeness to God, and just as soon as they realize that God can be truly
worshipped only by acts and attitudes that are moral and spiritual,
_i.e._ acts and attitudes that attach to the deliberate consent of the
inner spirit, Whichcote thinks that "rites and types and ceremonies,
which are all veils," will drop away and religion will become one with a
rich and intelligent life.[69]
We can well understand how this presentation of Christianity as "a
culture and discipline of the whole man--an education and consecration of
all his higher activities"[70]--would seem, to those accustomed to
dualistic theologies, "clowdie and obscure." It was, however, "no newe
persuasion." In all essential particulars it is four-square with the
type of religion with which the spiritual Reformers of Germany and
Holland had for more than a century made the world acquainted. But,
{304} in the words of the Epistle to the Hebrews, somewhat adapted: "all
these, having had the witness borne to them through their faith, received
not the promise in full, God having provided some better, _i.e._ fuller,
thing, that they should not be made complete, apart from those who
succeeded them and fulfilled their hopes."
[1] This interesting phrase occurs in _A Brief Account of the New Sect of
Latitude-Men_, by S. P. (probably Simon Patrick), 1662.
[2] S. P. in his _Sect of Latitude-Men_ says: "A Latitude-Man is an image
of Clouts [a man of straw] that men set up to encounter with, for want of
a real enemy; it is a convenient name to reproach a man that you owe a
spite to."
[3] Letters of Tuckney and Whichcote in the Appendix to Whichcote's
_Aphorisms_ (London, 1753), p. 2.
[4] _Aphorisms_, Appendix, p. 53.
[5] Culverwel, _Elegant Discourses_ (1654), p. 6.
[6] Burnet, _History of His Own Times_ (London, 1850), p. 127.
[7] We are dependent, for the few facts which we possess concerning
Whichcote's life, on the Sketch of him written by Dr. Samuel Salter, as a
Preface to his edition of Whichcote's _Aphorisms_, published in 1753.
[8] _Select Sermons_ (1698), p. 30.
[9] Salter's Preface, pp. xxii-xxiii.
[10] _Ibid._ p. xx.
[11] Appendix to _Aphorisms_ (1753), p. 2.
[12] Ibid. p. 4.
[13] Ibid. p. 7.
[14] Ibid. pp. 8 and 13.
[15] Ibid. pp. 13 and 14.
[16] Appendix to _Aphorisms_, pp. 37-38.
[17] _Ibid._ p. 27.
[18] Appendix to _Aphorisms_, pp. 53-54.
[19] _Ibid._ p. 57.
[20] _Ibid._ p. 60.
[21] Appendix to _Aphorisms_, p. 125.
[22] _Ibid._ p. 127.
[23] _Ibid._ pp. 133-134.
[24] _Select Sermons_ (1698), p. 149.
[25] _Ibid._ pp. 131-133.
[26] _Ibid._ p. 88.
[27] _Ibid._ p. 109.
[28] _Ibid._ p. 74.
[29] Proverbs xx. 27.
[30] _Aphorism_ 861.
[31] _Aphorism_ 934.
[32] _Aphorism_ 847.
[33] _Aphorism_ 457.
[34] _Aphorism_ 444.
[35] _Aphorism_ 87.
[36] _Aphorism_ 248.
[37] _Aphorism_ 220.
[38] _Several Discourses_ (1707), iv. p. 259.
[39] _Aphorism_ 709.
[40] _Several Discourses_, iv. p. 192.
[41] _Select Sermons_, pp. 55 and 62
[42] _Select Sermons_, p. 7.
[43] _Discourses_, iv. p. 191.
[44] _Ibid._ p. 171.
[45] _Ibid._ p. 259.
[46] _Select Sermons_, p. in
[47] _Aphorism_ 302.
[48] Quoted almost literally from _Select Sermons_, p. 72.
[49] _Ibid._ pp. 32-33.
[50] _Select Sermons_, p. 6. He also says in Aphorism No. 109, "God hath
set up two Lights to enlighten us in our Way: the Light of Reason, which
is the Light of His Creation; and the Light of Scripture which is
After-Revelation from Him."
[51] _Aphorism_ 587.
[52] See _Several Discourses_, iv. p. 173.
[53] _Ibid._ ii. p. 275.
[54] _Aphorisms_ 1127, 853, and 1028.
[55] _Select Sermons_, p. 79; and _Aphorism_ 285.
[56] _Select Sermons_, p. 350.
[57] _Aphorism_ 367.
[58] _Select Sermons_, p. 71.
[59] _Aphorisms_ 243 and 625.
[60] _Aphorism_ 290.
[61] _Aphorisms_ 525, 612.
[62] _Aphorism_ 464.
[63] _Select Sermons_, p. 86. This will be recognized as in perfect
parallelism with Jacob Boehme's teaching, and the parallel is even more
striking in the passage where Whichcote says that "Religion must inform
the Judgment with Truth and reform the Heart and Life by the _Tincture_
of it." (_Select Sermons_, p. 157).
[64] _Aphorism_ 51.
[65] _Select Sermons_, p. 42.
[66] _Aphorism_ 248.
[67] _Select Sermons_, p. 153.
[68] _Ibid._ p. 21.
[69] _Several Discourses_, ii. p. 329.
[70] John Tulloch's _Rational Theology in the Seventeenth Century_, ii.
p. 115.
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