Excerpt from The Cambridge Platonists: Being Selections From the Writings of Benjamin Whichcote, John Smith and Nathanael Culverwel With Introduction
I have tried to gather from the works of Whichcote, Smith, and Culverwel extracts which should illustrate as fairly as possible the teaching and style of each, and the relation in which they stood to one another. The passages chosen are, most of them, quite complete, and the rest very nearly complete, in themselves; and, though they lose something no doubt by being detached from the books in which they were first printed, it is to be remembered that they formed separate lectures or sermons, and - with the exception of those taken from Culverwel - were not intended by their authors to be parts of a nicely articulated series of discourses, or of a connected treatise.
For Introduction, I have set down summarily such few facts as have been preserved in the history of these writers, and have sketched their characters in outline. But I have essayed no criticism except what selection involves. That was a task for which I knew myself to be ill equipped; and it would have been superfluous to undertake it, since Principal Tulloch's chapters on the Cambridge Platonists in his Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the Seventeenth Century are as widely known as they are justly admired. There seemed to be a need for a fresh edition of some part at least of the writings of these long neglected men, and this I have attempted to supply.
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