THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS BEING SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE, JOHN SMITH AND NATHANAEL CULVERWEL WITH INTRODUCTION BY 675 E. T. CAMPAGNAC, M.A. SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1901 PREFACE I HAVE tried to gather from the works of Whichcote, Smith, and Culverwel extracts which should illustrate as fairly as possible the teaching and style of each, and the relation in which they stood to one another. The passages chosen are, most of them, quite complete, and the rest very nearly complete, in themselves; and, though they lose something no doubt by being detached from the books in which they were first printed, it is to be remembered that they formed separate lectures or sermons, and-with the exception of those taken from Culverwel-were not intended by their authors to be parts of a nicely articulated series of discourses, or of a connected treatise. For Introduction, I have set down summarily such few facts as have been preserved in the history of these writers, and have sketched their characters in outline. But I have essayed no criticism except what selection involves. That was a task for which I knew myself to be ill equipped; and it would have been superfluous to undertake it, since Principal Tulloch's chapters on the Cambridge Platonists in his Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century are as widely known as they are justly admired. There seemed to be a need for a fresh edition of some part at least of the writings of these long neglected men, and this I have attempted to supply. I have not thought it necessary to modernize the spelling, though here and there I have made slight changes for the sake of clearness: and I have sometimes substituted for a word which seemed certainly to be wrong another (enclosed in square brackets). Two corrections of the text which I saw were required I unfortunately passed over at the last moment :-on p. 94, line 18; and on p. 121, line 21, for Plato, Plotinus ought to be read. My thanks are due to the readers of the Clarendon Press, but for whose care many errors, which had escaped me, would have remained uncorrected; to Mr. Sutton, Chief Librarian of the City of Manchester, who has put at my service some old and rare books to which I could hardly have had access without his aid; to Mr. Charles Russell, who read through the proofs of the Introduction for me; and most of all, to one of my teachers at Oxford, whose lectures upon another writer of this school first led me to the study of these, and whose name, had my own part of this book been better done, I should have asked leave to put upon it; -to whom I will even now offer it, a stealthy gift, in token of my gratitude. CARDIFF, E. T. C. October 1, 1901. |