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.

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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 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]

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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 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]

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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.