Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries Part 31

Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries Part 31

[48] _Ibid._ p. 96.

[49] _Ibid._ pp. 4, 5, 6, 18-19.

[50] _Discourse_, pp. 67 and 77.

[51] _Rise, Race and Royalty_, Preface, p. b 2. See also pp. 362 and 512-513.

[52] _Discourse_, Preface, pp. a and c 6, and _Rise, Race and Royalty_, p. 101.

[53] _Rise, Race and Royalty_, p. 78.

[54] _Ibid._ p. 68.

[55] _Ibid._ pp. 95 and 184. Also _Appearance of G.o.d_, pp. 239 and 251.

[56] _Rise, Race and Royalty_, p. 73.

[57] _Ibid._ pp. 16-18 and 141, and _Discourse_, pp. 141-142.

[58] _Appearance of G.o.d_, p. 91.

[59] _Rise, Race and Royalty_, p. 359.

[60] _Rise, Race and Royalty_, pp. 2, 23, and 466.

[61] See especially _Appearance of G.o.d_, pp. 74-75 and 480.

[62] _Rise, Race and Royalty_, pp. 107-109.

[63] _Rise, Race and Royalty_, pp. 46-47 and 467.

[64] _Ibid._ pp. 56-60.

[65] _Ibid._ pp. 63-67.

[66] _Appearance of G.o.d_, pp. 130-131.

[67] _Discourse_, Preface, p. a 6.

[68] _Rise, Race and Royalty_, p. 39.

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CHAPTER XV

BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE, THE FIRST OF THE "LAt.i.tUDE-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 n.o.blest expression in the group of men, sometimes called "Cambridge Platonists," and sometimes "Lat.i.tude-Men," or simply "Lat.i.tudinarians." 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 G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l 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 trans.m.u.te 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 n.o.bler 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 G.o.d, 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 compa.s.s of learning."[6]

These "Lat.i.tude-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 s.l.u.ttery 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 a.s.sertion that nothing is more intrinsically rational than religion, and they focus all their energies to make this point clear and evident.

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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 G.o.d 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 n.o.ble 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 a.s.sociated 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 "emanc.i.p.ated" 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 G.o.d, but on us' is Divinity [theology] that my heart riseth against. . . . To say that the ground of G.o.d's reconciliation is from anything in us; and not from His free grace, freely justifying the unG.o.dly, 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 G.o.d, by what He hath done for us _within_ us. . . . With G.o.d there cannot be reconciliation without our becoming G.o.d-like. . . . They deceeve and flatter themselves extreamly; who think of reconciliation with G.o.d by means of a Saviour acting upon G.o.d in their behalfe and _not also working in or upon them to make them G.o.d-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 h.e.l.l."[15]

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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 G.o.d 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 b.u.t.t 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d," "something that comes immediately from G.o.d," 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 G.o.d, "the centre of immortal souls," as it is for heavy things to tend toward their centre.[26] "G.o.d," he elsewhere says, "is more inward to us than our own souls," and we are more closely "related to G.o.d than to anything in the world."[27] The soul is to G.o.d 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, G.o.d 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 const.i.tute 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 ill.u.s.trate:

"Were it not for light we should not know we had such a sense as sight: Were it not for G.o.d we should not know the Powers of our souls which have an appropriation to G.o.d."[30]

"G.o.d'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]