Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans: Seventeenth Century Essays (review)

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 671 new. Doubtless much in his construction is speculative, difficult to demonstrate conclusively ; but he has amassed sufficient evidence to establish some degree of plausibility for much of his account, enough so that those who would attempt to refute his theory will surely have to come up with some new evidence, or at least a significant reworking of the existing evidence. Whether or not Bos' conclusions are true, they are sure to incite a new direction in Aristotelian studies. The title of the book is mildly misleading. Most of the book is concerned with "cosmic" theology in the lost dialogues, and "meta-cosmic" theology is mentioned chiefly by contrast. Despite Bos' theory of the meaning ofexoterikoi logoi,one might well wonder just how much discussion of the Unmoved Mover one might have found in the dialogues, by comparison with Metaphysics Lambda, Physics8, and related passages in the corpus. Given the evidence Bos presents, one might imagine that the dialogues differ at least in emphasis from the corpus in that they must have presented a far more vivid picture of celestial divinity. ANTHONY PREUS State Universityof New York, Binghamton Hugh Trevor-Roper. Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans: Seventeenth Century Essays. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1988. Pp. xiii + 317 . NP. This fine collection of five previously unpublished essays begins with an attempt to find out who Nicholas Hill was, and why he wrote Philosophia Epicurea, Democritiana, Theophrastica (16ol), one of the earliest modern atomist works. Through some ingenious detective work, Trevor-Roper builds up a case that Hill, an English Catholic, was influenced by Bruno's visit to England, and by his theories, and tried in a minor way to set up a utopia right after Tommaso Campanella's attempt in 16ol. The last essay seeks to interpret John Milton's political views, from preRevolutionary times to his writing of Paradise Lost and Samson Agonistes, by showing his changes as expressions of Milton's egotism, rather than a continuous or coherent political theory, even in his writings during the Puritan Revolution and the Cromwell Protectorate. The three middle essays, "Laudianism and Political Power," "James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh" and "The Great Tew Circle," have a common core, and present some important perspectives for understanding seventeenth-century intellectual developments . Trevor-Roper insists that one has to see and understand intellectual developments in seventeenth-century England both in their political, social, and religious context, and as part of what was happening in Europe during the period of the Thirty Years' War, the rise of Calvinist orthodoxy in the Netherlands, and the interaction of continental ideas with English ones. The central essays portray and analyze the interplay of historical and prophetic Millenarianism as the account of what was going on, against the counterview that theology was beyond human knowledge, and that a kind of sceptical understanding of religion as a way of life, as a practice, could provide a basis for a social and political 672 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 29:4 OCTOBER 1991 world. The Reformation had caused a fundamental reconsideration of man in history. One Protestant version, presented in various forms in England, the Netherlands, Germany, Bohemia, Sweden and elsewhere, was that mankind was emerging from a drastic theological blight--the Reign of Antichrist, the Church of Rome and the Papacy . True Christianity, which had existed in early times, and was suppressed by Rome, reappeared sporadically in the movements of the Waldensians, the Hussites, the followers of Wyclif, and now was blossoming as the result of Luther and Calvin. The significance of this was described in prophecy, especially in the scriptural books of Daniel and Revelation, which indicated that the final chapter of human history, with the return of Jesus, would soon occur. Humans could prepare for this by perfecting themselves, their societies and their religious institutions. In the early seventeenth century this combined with Francis Bacon's advancement of learning, with different nationalisms proving that certain countries or societies would be the Millenial Kingdom , the New Israel. "I'revor-Roper shows that Archbishop Ussher, now regarded as a crank for telling us that the world was created in 4004 B.c., was a most eminent polemical Millenarian scholar...