Political Projects of Cambridge School (History of the Bensalem Kingdom)

This article examines the Latitude-men intellectual movement in England during the Civil War of the mid-seventeenth century and the Restoration of the Monarchy. The developments of the Reformation make a very significant contribution to the political history of Europe: they become not the only but the most important factor in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), and in England they contribute to the largest crisis of power in its history. English intellectuals, representing the elite of the national clergy, see the causes of the crisis in the decline of faith and the spread of “atheism,” by which they mean any deviant interpretation of religion. A form of Calvinism prevails in the clerical and university environment, which professes the ideas of universal predestination of events, the salvation of the few, and the inevitability of eternal punishment for sinners. In this milieu stands out a group of free-thinking intellectuals who oppose Calvinism with the fundamental ideas of “inner man,” the conformity of human nature to the nature of God, personal freedom of the will, and free spiritual agents operating in nature within the framework of the divine all-presence. This group of thinkers was formed primarily in Cambridge based on the Neoplatonic philosophical movement, later called the Cambridge Platonists. Named the Latitudinarians, or “broad thinkers,” they were opposed to religious radicalism and fanaticism (enthusiasm), to the theological extremes of numerous Reformed sects, and to the development of a religious platform that would provide a basis for understanding the discoveries of the scientific revolution. Their worldview is also based on the fundamental (Platonic in its origin) idea of “non-bodily acting forces” in nature (“Spirit of Nature” by H. More, “Plastic Nature” by R. Cudworth), recognition of atomistic structure of matter, Origenistic doctrines on Immortality of the Soul, possibilities of its Transmigration, and universal Restoration in etheric bodies. Despite their high spiritual and university positions, the leaders of this movement were subjected to theological criticism and administrative pressure in post-Restoration England. This raises a series of literary apologetics for the movement, explaining the political platform of the Cambridge School. The authors of this article analyze the writings of this movement, reflecting the contribution of Henry More (1614–1687) to the ideology of the Latitude-men.