Cambridge Platonists

Cambridge Platonists, a group of Anglican divines who had close connections with Cambridge University and tried to promote a rational form of Christianity in the tradition of Hooker and Erasmus. The group included Benjamin Whichcote (1609–83), whose writings, mostly sermons and letters, were published posthumously; John Smith (1618–52), a pupil of Whichcote and author of Select Discourses (1660); Henry More (1614–87), whose early poetry Psychodia Platonica (1642) has some remarkable passages, and whose prose works are profound and complex; Ralph Cudworth (1617–88), whose major work, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678), must be regarded as the group's most detailed manifesto. Nathaniel Culverwell (d. 1651) is often included in the group, but his outlook differed from that of the rest, being more Calvinist and Aristotelian.

The aims of the group were to combat materialism, which was finding a forceful exponent in T. Hobbes, and to reform religion by freeing it from fanaticism and controversy. Drawing inspiration from Plato and Plotinus, they maintained that Sense reveals only appearances, Reality consists in ‘intelligible forms’ which are ‘ideas vitally protended or actively exerted from within itself’. They held furthermore that Revelation, the Rational Order of the Universe and human Reason were all in harmony, so that to search for Truth was to search for God. They rejected the Calvinist doctrine that human nature was deeply corrupt, capable of salvation only through the action of a Divine Grace granted to some and withheld from others, and saw Man as ‘deiform’, able to advance towards perfection through Reason and the imitation of Christ.

These doctrines were presented in a rhetorical, often verbose manner which has masked their revolutionary character, but it is evident that they prepared the way for the Deism of the 18th cent.