This collection of essays looks at the distinctively English intellectual, social and political phenomenon of Latitudinarianism, which emerged during the Civil War and Interregnum and came into its own after the Restoration, becoming a virtual orthodoxy after 1688. Dividing into two parts, it first examines the importance of the Cambridge Platonists, who sought to embrace the newest philosophical and scientific movements within Church of England orthodoxy, and then moves into the later seventeenth century, from the Restoration onwards, culminating in essays on the philosopher John Locke. These contributions establish a firmly interdisciplinary basis for the subject, while collectively gravitating towards the importance of discourse and language as the medium for cultural exchange. The variety of approaches serves to illuminate the cultural indeterminacy of the period, in which inherited models and vocabularies were forced to undergo revisions, coinciding with the formation of many cultural institutions still governing English society.

This volume consists of 25 papers delivered at an international Spinoza conference held at the Erasmus University (Rotterdam) in October 1994 on the impact of Spinoza on the European Republic of Letters around 1700.

I. Reason and Religion "Si on soumet tout a la raison, notre religion n'aura rien de mysterieux et de surnaturel; si on choque les principes de la raison, notre religion sera absurde et ridicule",l In this passage from his Pensees Pascal summarizes what is perhaps the most basic problem for the defender of the reasonableness of Christianity: the necessity of upholding beliefs which Reason is incapable of judging, while at the same time claiming that those beliefs are reasonable. Pascal does not state the problem in precisely these terms regarding the limits of Reason, yet it seems clear that the dilemma he is indicating involves the question of the relation of religious beliefs to the compass of Reason. He does not, however-at least in the passage cited-indicate that the problem is a question of either/or: either Reason and no Religion, or Religion and Irrationality. Rather, he seems to be simply stating what he perceives to be a simple matter of fact. If Reason is allowed to be the judge of all Religion, then all Religion must abandon any elements that are either contrary to reason or cannot be shown to be in accord with Reason. On the other hand, if Reason is not allowed to judge Religion at all, then Religion will be absurd and ridiculous.

"Richard Hooker has long been viewed as the first systematic defender of Anglicanism, as a via media between Roman Catholicism and Reformed Protestantism. In the last twenty years this traditional assumption has been increasingly challenged, however, and it has been argued that Hooker was a Reformed figure whose Anglican credentials are the invention of the Oxford Movement. Whilst the theological ambiguity of Hooker remains perplexing, it is clear that the seventeenth century, not the nineteenth, was responsible for the creation of his reputation as a leading Anglican father. Michael Brydon examines how, during a period of both religious and political consolidation, Hooker became both an authoritative figure and an Anglican emblem. He demonstrates how Reformed suspicions of Hooker, combined with a Catholic desire to exploit his perceived sympathies, helped secure his status as a distinctive English writer. This led to his subsequent adoption by the avant-garde churchmen and his enthronement at the Restoration, through Isaac Walton's biography, as the epitome of the Anglican identity. Unsurprisingly, the unfolding of contemporary crises led to some reappraisal of his standing. The Glorious Revolution meant that Hooker's previously unpalatable belief in an original political compact now came to the forefront and his vision of a national Church was replaced with an established one. Nevertheless, whilst the boundaries of Anglican comprehensiveness have expanded and contracted in response to particular situations, the belief that Hooker was the unparalleled guardian of the English Church has remained remarkably constant ever since."--BOOK JACKET.

This volume deals with scepticism and irreligion in the 17th and 18th century. The various contributions seek to clarify and to understand the challenges made then to both the framework of thinking about God and religion and the intellectual systems that had supported religious thinking. Ample attention is given to early modern interpretations of ancient Pyrrhonism and also to biblical criticism. Contributors include: Susanna Åkerman, Silvia Berti, Constance Blackwell, Olivier Bloch, Harry M. Bracken, James E. Force, Alan Gabbey, Sarah Hutton, David S. Katz, Alan Charles Kors, Lothar Kreimendahl, Sylvia Murr, Ezequiel de Olaso, Richard Popkin, Theo Verbeek, Ernestine van der Wall, Richard A. Watson, and Ruth Whelan.