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Home  »  Volume VIII: English THE AGE OF DRYDEN  »  § 6. Henry More

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume VIII. The Age of Dryden.

XI. Platonists and Latitudinarians

§ 6. Henry More

The above quotations may be said both to indicate the point beyond which Whichcote and his followers are to be regarded as making a distinct advance upon the Baconian philosophy, by the recognition of Christian doctrine as in harmony with the voice of nature; and, further, by the acceptance of pagan philosophy as lending additional force to both; while the author’s references to Aristotle, as maintaining the theory of the immortality of the soul (p. 75), and his belief in the indebtedness of “Pythagoras, Trismegist and Plato” to Scripture (p. 30), afford almost equally strong presumption of an intimacy with Henry More. The title of Sherman’s volume, A Greek in the Temple, suffices to indicate that his appeal is from the traditions of the Latin church to that pagan philosophy from which he, and those with whom he was in sympathy, derived much of their inspiration; and it is at least open to question, as he was slightly Whichcote’s senior in academic status, whether his published Commonplaces may not have contributed, to a far greater degree than is on record, to promote the movement the origin of which has been generally attributed, almost exclusively, to the (as yet unprinted) discourses of the provost of King’s.