Robert Crocker

Henry More (1614-1687) tercentenary studies

Henry More: a biographical essay.- Henry More and the limits of mechanism.- Henry More and the scientific revolution.- Henry More versus Robert Boyle: the spirit of nature and the nature of providence.- Leibniz and Mores Cabbalistic circle.- The spiritualistic cosmologies of Henry More and Anne Conway.- Henry More and witchcraft.- Mysticism and enthusiasm in Henry More.- Henry More and Jacob Boehme.- Appendix: A commendatory poem by Henry More.- Henry More and the Jews.- More, Locke and the issue of liberty.- Reason and toleration: Henry More and Philip van Limborch.- A bibliography of Henry More compiled by Robert Crocker.

Mysticism and Enthusiasm in Henry More

The seventeenth reaction against enthusiasm has excited considerable interest amongst scholars in recent years. Perceived as a more visible aspect of the elite’s gradual disenchantment with the world of the supernatural, the reaction against enthusiasm has been approached in a variety of ways.1 While social and political historians have generally perceived the phenomenon in terms of the enthusiasts’ challenge to theological and social orthodoxy,2 literary historians have concentrated on its more notable literary and cultural effects, particularly on the appearance of a plainer style of English, and the emergence of the social comedies and satire characteristic of the post-Restoration period.3

Henry More and the preexistence of the Soul

Henry More (1614–87), the Cambridge Platonist, is well known to scholars of early modern thought as a prolific controversialist, who made extensive use of contemporary natural philosophy in his many books defending his religion against ‘atheism’, ‘enthusiasm’ and Roman Catholicism.1 However, his defence of the doctrine of the soul’s preexistence has enjoyed something of a mixed reputation, being depicted in many studies as an inconsequential byway of his spiritualism and Neoplatonism.2

The Role of Illuminism in the Thought of Henry More

When Henry More was about fifteen years old he had a dream. In his dream angels appeared, blowing trumpets through a mist, which gradually cleared before his eyes as the trumpets grew louder.2 As the sound from the trumptets increased, they pained his ears to such an extent that he awoke. On waking from his dream, he tells his readers, he remained for several days in an “unexpressable” state, “which if it were in my power to relate would seem to most men incredible”.3

Henry More: A Biographical Essay

Henry More was born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, in October 1614, the seventh son of Alexander More, a scion of a large and honourable northern landed family.1 Brought up in a large Calvinist gentry household, More was sent as a child to the local grammar school in Grantham. After revealing something of his intellectual abilities there, at fourteen his education was taken in hand by a learned uncle, Gabriel More, sometime Fellow of Christ’s College in Cambridge, and sent to Eton ‘to perfect his Latin’.2 In a little autobiography included in the General Preface to his Opera omnia (1679), More describes how his rather thoughtful and studious nature early led him into conflict with his uncle and brother over the doctrine of predestination -he was the chastised for ‘a forwardness in philosophizing’.3 Entered under Robert Gell at Christ’s in Cambridge in late 1631, More shows himself to have been a gifted poet and an acute and sensitive student, early taking up the difficult subject of metaphysics as the main focus of his energies.4 However, by the time he graduated, like a number of other intellectual Puritans of his generation, he had become disillusioned with the scholastic masters of his metaphysical studies, and particularly with the apparent incompatibility between their teaching on the nature and origin of the soul and the doctrines of the Church.5

The Cupri-Cosmits and the Latitude-Men

‘Latitudinarianism’ is perhaps best described as a pervasive tendency in mid-seventeenth century England, having its roots in intellectual Puritanism, and the growing reaction against Calvinist dogmatism that began in the 1620s and 30s.1 The term ‘Latitude-man’ seems to have been first employed by the Presbyterians in Cambridge in the 1650s against a small but gifted group of anti-Calvinist ‘moderate’ divines, including More and his Platonist friends, who were broadly ‘puritan’ in their theology, but who had rejected the orthodox dogmatism and ecclesiology of their peers.2 The few surviving ‘apologies’ for the doctrines of the ‘Latitude-men’ produced after the Restoration suggest that the term had been taken over by the returning exiles to indicate those ‘gentlemen of broad swallow’, who had survived the interregnum by compromising their doctrine for their safety and comfort. These same apologies also laid siege to certain negative or intolerant aspects of doctrinal Calvinism, appealing directly to the newly reinstated Anglican hierarchy for approval.3 Their differences, though, with the ‘High Church’ restorers of dogmatic orthodoxy amongst the returned exiles — over doctrine, the basis of authority and its exercise in the Church, and other ‘things indifferent’ — were consistently played down besides this main polemical insistence on their status as doctrinally orthodox and obedient, ‘good’ Anglicans, a surviving rump of loyalists from an earlier period.4

Hylozoism and the Nature of Material Substance

When not contained by his limited vitalism, ‘pure’ mechanism seemed to More to lead to a ‘nullibism’, where spirit was said to be in effect ‘nowhere’. In Descartes this had arisen from his conception of the physical world as an indefinite material extension, and his radical exclusion of all rational spiritual beings from this extension. In Hobbes this ‘nullibism’ was made more explicit: there was simply nothing that could be known from observation but matter in motion. For More such an exemplary ‘atheism’ was not strictly speaking the result of a disbelief in the existence of God, or even in the immortality of the soul, but of a philosophy which might be taken to imply such a disbelief.

The Preexistence of the Soul

Until quite recently, More’s defence of the doctrine of the soul’s preexistence, along with his interest in apparitions, ghosts and witchcraft, was regarded as part of a regressive ‘spiritualism’ or mysticism, clearly at odds with his rationalism and interest in the new philosophy and Cartesianism.l However, the doctrine played a significant role in his rational theology, as a ‘most likely hypothesis’ supporting the more central orthodox doctrines of the soul’s immortality and a personal divine providence.2 More’s explicitly ‘rational’ defence of preexistence, and the derivative arguments of several younger followers,3 also formed part of a sustained polemic against the Augustinian traditions of interregnum Calvinism, and in particular its theological voluntarism. More’s aim was not to promote a revival of Origen’s theology as a doctrinal panacea to the re-established Anglican Church, but rather to counter this voluntarism, and establish a rational providentialism in Anglican theology that could emphasise the supremacy of goodness and love amongst the divine attributes over the Calvinist tendency to emphasise an absolute ‘divine dominion’.4 His open defence of such a challenging doctrine was part of a response to the deep-seated doctrinal crisis of Anglicanism at the Restoration. As Sarah Hutton has pointed out, More’s promotion of Origen’s theological contribution was only one of several voices raised in the defence of Origen in the Church of England in this period.5

Psychozoia: The Journey of the Soul

More’s Psychodia Platonica (1642) is in many respects a profoundly religious document, a ‘confession’ in verse, describing in sometimes obscure allegorical detail a quite unique illuminist revelation. More’s interest in philosophy was framed and inspired by specific spiritual and apologetic concerns, as both Ward’s biography, and the little autobiography included in the General Preface to More’s Opera Omnia (1679), make clear.1 For More the end of all ‘true’ philosophy was the defence and explication of Christian religion, and the end of all religion was the believer’s ‘Second Birth’, and his or her illumination or ‘deification’:2 our endeavour must be not onely to be without sin, but to become God, that is, impassible, immaterial, quit of all sympathy with the body, drawn up wholly into the intellect, and plainly devoid of all perturbation.

The Limits of Mechanism and the Experimental Philosophy of the Royal Society

In a well-known passage in the Divine Dialogues, one of the most reflective of More’s characters, Bathynous, describes a dream.1 Whilst asleep in a forest, he dreams that in the same forest he is presented with the ‘two keys of Providence’ by a ‘divine Sage’ or messenger from God. The first, silver key contained a scroll representing the Copernican and Cartesian ‘true Systeme of the World’, which was revealed only after the dreamer had placed the jumbled letters on the outside of the key into their correct order, which spelt out the Platonic motto, ‘Claude Fenestras, ut luceat domus’ ‘Close the windows in order to light the house’).2 This asserted the idea that true knowledge of even the physical world depended upon a prior withdrawal from the senses — that the windows of the soul must be closed before true knowledge can be discoverd by the intellect. In a similar manner, placing the jumbled letters inscribed upon the second, golden key into their correct order revealed the complementary devotional motto, ‘Amor Dei lux Animae’ (‘The love of God is the light of the soul’).3 This in turn revealed a list of More’s favourite doctrines written on the key’s scroll, the first six of twelve aphorisms. These are worth quoting in full:4 1. The Measure of Providence is the Divine Goodness, which has no bounds but it self, which is infinite. 2. The Thread of Time and the Expansion of the Universe, the same Hand drew out the one and spread out the other. 3. Darkness and the Abyss were before the light, and the Suns or Stars before any Opakeness or Shadow. 4. All Intellectual Spirits that ever were, are or ever shall be, sprung up with the Light, and rejoiced together before God in the Morning of the Creation. 5. In the infinite Myriads of free Agents which were the Framers of their own Fortunes, it had been a wonder if they had all of them taken the same Path; and therefore Sin at the long run shook hands with Opacity. 5. As much as the light exceeds the Shadows, so much do the regions of Happiness those of Sin and Misery.