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He makes a mild use of the sanctions of a Future Life to enforce the laws of Nature, and to give additional support to the commands of the sovereign that take the place of these in the social state. Among the numberless replies, called forth by the bold speculations of Hobbes, were some works of independent ethical importance; in particular, the treatises of Cumberland, Cudworth, and Clarke.
But if any attempt were made to establish it by proof, recourse would be had to the established order and regular sequences of Nature, as affording its most plausible verification, although they afford no real sanction to it, in so far as it differs from the Christian doctrine of Providence. Dr. Cudworth discusses this subject at great length, and makes mention of three distinct forms of Fatalism.
"The Sadducismus Triumphatus," which he published, is probably the ablest book ever published in defense of the superstition, and although men of the ability of Henry More, the famous philosopher Casaubon, the learned Dean of Canterbury, Boyle and Cudworth, came to his defense, the delusion was fast losing ground.
Bacon, Hooker, Taylor, Cudworth, Locke, Newton, Clarke, Berkeley, and Butler, and it would be as easy to find more, as difficult to find greater names among English authors, inculcate or comment upon it. Men the most opposed, in creed or cast of mind, Addison and Johnson, Shakespeare and Milton, Lord Herbert and Baxter, herald it forth.
How many great men Nature is incessantly sending up out of night, to be his men, Platonists! the Alexandrians, a constellation of genius; the Elizabethans, not less; Sir Thomas More, Henry More, John Hales, John Smith, Lord Bacon, Jeremy Taylor, Ralph Cudworth, Sydenham, Thomas Taylor; Marcilius Ficinus, and Picus Mirandola. Calvinism is in his Phaedo: Christianity is in it.
This seems to have been rightly done; for, in the language of Cudworth, “To believe a God, is to believe the existence of all possible good and perfection in the universe.” In this, says Leibnitz, is embosomed all possible good.
Cudworth himself was deposed; and it happens that Hathorne's terms of service, as recorded, seem at first to leave a gap barely wide enough to include this troublesome period. But, in fact, he resumed power as a magistrate just in time to add at least one to the copious list of bloody and distinguishing atrocities that so disfigure New England history.
He doubtless resembled another Latitudinarian Cudworth whom Burnet describes as "a man of great competence and prudence upon which his enemies did very falsely accuse him of craft and dissimulation."
The meal that had been provided was plentiful, and consisted of coffee, lemonade, sandwiches, etc. "On our way out we were introduced to the Rev. Mr. Cudworth, chaplain of the regiment. He is a fine-looking man, with black eyes and hair, set off by a white havelock. He wore a sword, and Fred, touching it, asked, 'Is this for use or ornament, sir?
Ralph Cudworth, author of "The True Intellectual System of the Universe," were likewise men of note. But one whose name is far more familiar than any writer of his time is John Bunyan, author of "The Pilgrim's Progress." He was the son of a tinker, and was born within a mile of Bedford town in the year 1628.
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