An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature is a concerted effort at intellectual mediation in the deep religious dispute of the English civil war in the seventeenth century. On one side was the antinomian assertion of extreme Calvinists that the elect were redeemed by God’s free grace and thereby free from ordinary moral obligations. Opposite to that was the Arminian rejection of predestination and assertion that Christ died for all, not just for the elect. Faced with the violence of these disputes, Nathaniel Culverwell attempted a moderate defense of reason and natural law, arguing, in the words of Robert Greene, that “reason and faith are distinct lights, yet they are not opposed; they are complementary and harmonious. Reason is the image of God in man, and to deny right reason is to deny our relation to God.” Culverwell presented this understanding of the role of reason by expounding upon Proverbs 20:27, “The understanding of a man is the Candle of the Lord.” This was a favorite text among the Cambridge Platonists (Whichcote, Cudworth, Smith, and More), to whom Culverwell was close. He had obviously absorbed much also from Bacon, Grotius, and Selden. However, the most profound influence on him was that of the Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suárez’s De Legibus, ac Deo Legislatore (1612), which is also part of this series. An Elegant and Learned Discourse was delivered as a series of sermon-like lectures at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1645/46 and published posthumously in 1652. Nathaniel Culverwell (1619–1651) was a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Robert A. Greene is Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. Hugh MacCallum was Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Toronto. Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History and Director of the Centre for Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, England.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1654 Edition.

"The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy of the 17th Century provides an advanced comprehensive overview of the issues that are informing research on the subject of British philosophy in the seventeenth century, while at the same time offering new directions for research to take. It covers the whole of the seventeenth century, ranging from Francis Bacon to John Locke and Isaac Newton. The book contains five parts: the introductory Part I examines the state of the discipline and the nature of its practitioners as the century unfolded; Part II discusses the leading natural philosophers and the philosophy of nature, including Bacon, Boyle, and Newton; Part III covers knowledge and the human faculty of the understanding; Part IV explores the leading topics in British moral philosophy from the period; and Part V concerns political philosophy. In addition to dealing with canonical authors and celebrated texts, such as Thomas Hobbes and his Leviathan, it discusses many less-well-known figures and debates from the period whose importance is only now being appreciated."--Publisher's description.

The Oxford Handbook of British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century comprises twenty-six new essays by leading experts in the field. This unique scholarly resource provides advanced students and scholars with a comprehensive overview of the issues that are informing research on the subject, while at the same time offering new directions for research to take. The volume is ambitious in scope: it covers the whole of the seventeenth century, ranging from Francis Bacon to John Locke and Isaac Newton. The Handbook contains five parts: the introductory Part I examines the state of the discipline and the nature of its practitioners as the century unfolded; Part II discusses the leading natural philosophers and the philosophy of nature, including Bacon, Boyle, and Newton; Part III covers knowledge and the human faculty of the understanding; Part IV explores the leading topics in British moral philosophy from the period; and Part V concerns political philosophy. In addition to dealing with canonical authors and celebrated texts, such as Thomas Hobbes and his Leviathan, the Handbook discusses many less well-known figures and debates from the period, whose importance is only now being appreciated.

The relationship between Latitudinarian moral theology and eighteenth-century literature has been much debated among scholars. However, this issue can only be tackled if the exact objectives of the Latitudinarians' moral theology are clearly delineated. In doing so, Patrick Müller unveils the intricate connection between the didactic bias of Latitudinarianism and the resurgent interest in didactic literary genres in the first half of the eighteenth century. His study sheds new light on the complex and contradictory reception of the Latitudinarians' controversial theses in the work of three of the major eighteenth-century novelists: Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, and Oliver Goldsmith.