In 1650 CUDWORTH was presented with the college living of North Cadbury, which WHICHCOTE had resigned, and was made D.D. in the following year.
In 1654 he was elected Master of Christ's College, with an improvement in his financial position, there having been some difficulty in obtaining his stipend at Clare Hall. In this year he married.
In 1662 Bishop SHELDON presented him with the rectory of Ashwell, in Hertfordshire. He died in 1688. He was a pious man of fine intellect;but his character was marred by a certain suspiciousness which caused him wrongfully to accuse MORE, in 1665, of attempting to forestall him in writing a work on ethics, which should demonstrate that the principles of Christian morality are not based on any arbitrary decrees of God, but are inherent in the nature and reason of things.
CUDWORTH'S great work--or, at least, the first part, which alone was completed,--_The Intellectual System of the World_, appeared in 1678.
In it CUDWORTH deals with atheism on the ground of reason, demonstrating its irrationality. The book is remarkable for the fairness and fulness with which CUDWORTH states the arguments in favour of atheism.
So much for the lives and individual characteristics of the Cambridge Platonists: what were the great principles that animated both their lives and their philosophy? These, I think, were two: first, the essential unity of religion and morality;second, the essential unity of revelation and reason.
With clearer perception of ethical truth than either Puritan or High Churchman, the Cambridge Platonists saw that true Christianity is neither a matter of mere belief, nor consists in the mere performance of good works; but is rather a matter of character. To them Christianity connoted regeneration.
"Religion," says WHICHCOTE, "is the Frame and TEMPER of our Minds, and the RULE of our Lives"; and again, "Heaven is FIRST a Temper, and THEN a Place."[1] To the man of heavenly temper, they taught, the performance of good works would be no irksome matter imposed merely by a sense of duty, but would be done spontaneously as a delight.
To drudge in religion may very well be necessary as an initial stage, but it is not its perfection.
[1] My quotations from WHICHCOTE and SMITH are taken from the selection of their discourses edited by E. T. CAMPAGNAC, M.A. (1901).
In his sermon before the House of Commons, CUDWORTH well exposes the error of those who made the mere holding of certain beliefs the essential element in Christianity. There are many passages Ishould like to quote from this eloquent discourse, but the following must suffice: "We must not judge of our knowing of Christ, by our skill in Books and Papers, but by our keeping of his Commandments.
. . . He is the best Christian, whose heart beats with the truest pulse towards heaven; not he whose head spinneth out the finest cobwebs.
He that endeavours really to mortifie his lusts, and to comply with that truth in his life, which his Conscience is convinced of;is neerer a Christian, though he never heard of Christ;then he that believes all the vulgar Articles of the Christian faith, and plainly denyeth Christ in his life.... The great Mysterie of the Gospel, it doth not lie only in CHRIST WITHOUT US, (though we must know also what he hath done for us) but the very Pith and Kernel of it, consists in _*Christ inwardly formed_ in our hearts.
