Milton.-Anglican school of divines; Puritan sympathies of re- cent historians; Mr Masson's account.-Anglican school at Cambridge; Jeremy Taylor; his Apology for the Liturgy; sentiments of his school.-Joseph Mede; his system of tuition; his studies on prophecy.-Worthington.-John Smith of Queens'.-Rust; his Discourse of Truth.-Henry More.- Whichcot.-Nicholas Ferrar; his travels; his connection with the Virginia Company; elected Member of Parliament; his retirement from public life; his life at Little Gidding; criticism it provoked.-Matthew Robinson; his distaste for Logic; his political sympathies; his anatomical studies; accepts a family living; his religious views; his recreations; New schools of thought.-Descartes; rapid spread of his philo- sophy.-Claims of Bacon's and Descartes' philosophy com- pared; Condorcet's comparison; general neglect of the Ba- conian method; Cousin's estimate of the new philosophies; Degerando's; Descartes not disposed to neglect experiment; Cousin's vindication; real differences between the two methods. -Differences between the Aristotelians and Cartesians; Des- Neo-Platonism; Eclecticism the great characteristic of Philosophy and Amelius; Iamblichus; Proclus; decline and extinction of the School.-Distinctive tenets of Neo-Platonism; Professor Maurice's criticism; resemblance to philosophy of Spinoza; its asceticism; its theory of life.-Relations of Neo-Plato- nism to Christianity; Dr Donaldson's account; sympathy of the early Fathers; Clemens of Alexandria; rivalry between Neo-Platonism and Christianity.-Iamblichus de Mysteriis; Professor Maurice's criticism on the work.-Claims of Neo- Platonism to miraculous powers; effects of such claims upon the policy of the Church.-The Cambridge School; elements of mysticism to be recognized in the 17th century; Dr Henry More; influence and character of his writings; his Mystery of Godliness; Professor Maurice's criticism; Isaac Milles's account; his "Psychozoia;" his admiration of Spenser.- Dr Ralph Cudworth; his Intellectual System; his Theory of a Plastic Medium.-Views of the Platonists respecting the Cartesian Philosophy; Dr Whewell's comments; Cudworth's criticisms on Descartes.-Dr Thomas Gale; his edition of Iamblichus; his censure of the Sceptical Philosophy.-The Platonists as Moralists; contrasted with Hobbes; Hobbes's Utilitarianism; Cudworth's Eternal and Immutable Morality; Dr Whewell's criticism; his views contrasted with those of Cudworth.-Mr Buckle's censure of the Clergy of the day; FROM THE OUTBREAK OF THE CIVIL WAR TO Outbreak of the Civil War; Royalist sympathies of Cambridge; Cromwell; his measures in the University; conduct of the Parliament soldiery.-Establishment of rival Schools.-Change in the studies of the University; Heywood's account; Tuto- rial influences.-Dr James Duport; his lectures on Theo- phrastus; his conservative tendencies; his fondness for verse composition; his occasional pieces; his Homeri Gnomologia; retires from the Greek Professorship in favour of Barrow; INTRODUCTION. THE seventeenth century, an eventful era in the annals of all Europe, will always possess a paramount interest in relation to the history of our own country, as the period during which she passed through her most trying ordeal and the crisis of her political life. Whether viewed in relation to their destructive or their re-constructive tendencies, the events of those years are unsurpassed in importance both as regards their immediate and their subsequent effects. Then it was that the great principles of the Reformation expanded and bore fruit; the potent charm which had so long enthralled the minds of men had been broken; the achievement of religious freedom was soon followed by aspirations after political liberty; the authority of the Vatican once set aside, the divine right of kings soon began to be called in question; a new element was perceptible alike in the utterances of the pulpit and the forum; the bold tones of the monk of Wittenburg reechoed in the attainder of Strafford and the debates of Westminster Hall. It was an age of revolution, and events, alike in the political, the intellectual, and the religious world, conspired to make it so. The English sceptre had passed from the ablest of the Tudors to the feeblest of the Stuarts. A new philosophy had arisen which boldly impugned the authority of antiquity and the labours of the 10 M. 1 schoolmen, and was already asserting its claims to that supremacy over the national mind which it was destined ultimately to achieve. And lastly, the elements of political discord were gradually embittered by an antagonism of sects, unsurpassed in the history of religious warfare for its fervour of conviction and intensity of feeling. It is to be observed, moreover, that in each province of its action the results of this great revolution still remain. Other nations have been shaken by revolutions of equal severity, which have, however, passed away to leave in a few years scarcely a vestige of their influence. Larger armies and abler generals have contended than those who fought at Naseby and at Marston Moor; battles have been lost and won which have turned back the tide of barbaric invasion or have changed the boundaries of empires; with such, in their immediate effects on the current of human affairs, the struggles of our great civil war cannot compare. The dignity of that contest consists almost entirely in its moral significance: it was a war of principles, of opinions and of creeds, of earnest men fighting for what they held to be inalienably theirs by right, of valiant men fighting to preserve that which they held ought ever to be regarded as sacred and inviolable. In proportion as we appreciate more closely the debt we thus owe to those of our forefathers who bore the burden of those eventful days, is our desire to be more intimately acquainted with all relating to the history of the time,—a desire the growth of which is sufficiently attested by the earnest spirit in which not a few of our ablest writers have devoted themselves to the study and elucidation of that history. Nor can we conceive that these annals will ever lose their interest for thoughtful Englishmen. The time will probably come when a future generation will turn over with languid emotion the page that records the achievements of Agincourt, of Poitiers, and even of Waterloo, as recording enmities which we would fain hope are fast disappearing before the mutual esteem and mutual benefits resulting from the increased intercourse of two great nations. But the interest which gathers round the contests of Crown and Parliament in the seventeenth century is of a different order; it finds response in the deepest convictions of human nature, and will survive when the vulgar renown of wars waged for mere material dominion has ceased to attract alike the historian and the student. Amid times of so much danger and commotion, amid the great moral struggle by which they were preceded and the great constitutional changes by which they were followed, it can be neither an uninteresting nor an uninstructive enquiry to endeavour to trace the history of our national centres of learning and education. What, in reference to our own University, we feel tempted to ask, was the part she played? How did the sons whom she nurtured acquit themselves in those eventful days? How far did the studies within her walls act upon the restless spirit of innovation and enquiry without? To what extent did that spirit, in turn, influence her academic life and vitalise her pursuits? Do those of her sons whose names shone with lustre in the field of action or of intellectual achievement appear to have derived vigour from her fostering care and guidance from her teachings, or do they rather stand out in strong relief as instances of genius, asserting its inherent powers above the accidents of time and place, and rising superior to a lifeless round of traditional studies and chilling formalism to grasp the laurel of future renown? How far, again, may the revolution within her own walls be a lesson to us now? What influences for good and for evil may we trace to the great change in her character and pursuits which this eventful seventeenth century beheld? |