An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature: A Series of Sermons by Nathaniel Culverwell (Natural Law & Enlightenment Classics) - Hardcover

Culverwell, Nathaniel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 086597327X ISBN 13: 9780865973275

Publisher: Liberty Fund Inc, 2002

Synopsis

"An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature" is a concerted effort at intellectual mediation in the deep religious dispute ofthe 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 "Suarez'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 andpublished 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.

About this title

Review

The republication of this impressive edition will encourage the ongoing study of Culverwell as a significant figure at the genesis of modern ethical thought. The University of Toronto Press volume (1971) is republished here with all its principal features bar the editors' original Introduction. In recent times, Messrs. Greene and MacCallum's scholarly Introduction has been roundly praised for being balanced, informative, and useful.

Jacqueline Broad
Monash University
The Scriblerian
2005

Synopsis

Nathaniel Culverwell is considered one of the principal scholars of the seventeenth century. This collection of sermons he delivered in 1645-46, examines the relationship between reason and faith, and forms one of the first attempts in English Protestantism to stress the role of reason in ethics and to develop a doctrine of natural law. Culverwell represents a crucial intersection in the discussion of reason and faith. While providing a link between the Calvinist dependence on faith and grace and the Enlightenment dependence on reason and humanism, Culverwell's Discourse is a picture of the world on the brink of the Enlightenment. The seventeenth century was an era that included the Puritan migration from England to America and the English Civil War. During this period, an understanding of the divine, and the interrelationship between reason and revelation, was often a matter of violent debate. An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature spans several centuries, during which the very nature of knowledge as a product of reason, not the means of revelation, gained ascendancy in Western civilization.

This discourse was crucial to the development of a theoretical grounding for individual challenges to established authorities, both political and ecclesiastical, and thus to the development of modern theories of liberty and responsibility.

Edition details

• Publisher: Liberty Fund Inc
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 086597327X
• ISBN 13: 9780865973275
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 260