Author: CULVERWELL (Nathanael/Nathaniel)
Title: An Elegant And Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature; With several other Treatises. Vix. The Schism. The Act of Oblivion. The Child's Return. The Panting Soul. Mount Ebal. The White Stone. Spiritual Optics. The Worth of Souls.
Description: London, Printed by Tho. Roycroft, for Mary Rothwell at the Bear and Fountain in Gold-smiths-Row in Cheapside. 1661. FIRST EDITION. Small 4to, 184 x 136 mms., pp. [xvi], 175 [176 blank], 212, recently rebound in quarter calf, gilt spine, red morocco label, marbled boards, vellum corners; text showing its age, but sound. In his short life, Nathaniel Culverwel (1619 - 1651) has one distinctive claim to a place in the intellectual history of Britain, or at least England, An Elegant And Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature. Sarah Hutton in her Oxford DNB entry asserts that his "claim to fame rests with his posthumously published book, An Elegant and Learned Discourse of the Light of Nature (1652). Based on a set of academic exercises dating from 1646, this was prepared for publication by his younger brother, Richard Culverwell, rector of Grundisburgh, Suffolk, who was assisted by William Dillingham, who had been elected fellow of Emmanuel at the same time as Nathaniel Culverwell. Although Culverwell did not achieve his full promise as a thinker, he deserves on the strength of this book to be considered one of the Cambridge Platonists, whose optimistic and liberal protestant theology he shared. Although the book is dedicated to the stern Calvinist Anthony Tuckney, then master of Emmanuel, it resonates with the humanist spirit and the liberal theological outlook of Benjamin Whichcote. Like the other Cambridge Platonists, Culverwell held that reason and faith are compatible. And like theirs, Culverwell's was a voice of moderation at a time of acute religious discord: according to Dillingham, Culverwell aimed 'to vindicate the use of Reason in matters of Religion, from the passions and prejudices of some weaker ones in these times' (Culverwell, 7). Culverwell was the only member of the Cambridge Platonists to invoke natural law theory as the foundation of his rational ethics. His founding of the legal authority of moral law in the will of God and in the cognitive capacities of human beings has resulted in his being considered a precursor of Locke, major differences between them notwithstanding."

Keywords: Philosophy pseudo-science prose


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