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Latitudinarianism and Philosophy

But there is another crime which cannot be denyed, that [the Latitude-men] have introduced a new Philosophy; Aristotle and the Schoolemen are out of request with them. True indeed it is that ipse dixit [Latin: he himself says it]is an argument much out of fashon; and ... it will scarce passe for a Philosophical resolution of any Problem to say, It is the nature of the beast, it is done by virtue of its form or quality; They love to search some more particular cause...

- Simon Patrick, A Brief Account of the new Sect of LATITUDE-MEN: Together with some reflections upon the NEVV PHILOSOPHY (London: 1662), 14

Latitudinarianism was a movement within the Anglican church that arose in response to various forms of religious strife, including especially the English Civil War. One of the catalysts to that conflict had been Archbishop Laud's attempts to impose high church liturgy and Arminian theology throughout the church. This move swelled the ranks of Puritan dissenters. These Puritans (low church Calvinists) were aligned with the Parliamentary party as against the Royalists in this protracted and bloody conflict, eventually gaining the upper hand and installing the Cromwell regime.

It was widely assumed at this time that social and political stability required a shared religion to bind the nation together. Some degree of toleration for religious dissent was perhaps possible but, it was assumed, such dissenters were a stress on the system, a place where things might at any time (again) break down into anarchy and civil war. The latitudinarians did not dispute this general picture. However, whereas others had thought that the solution was to impose some one religion by force of arms, the latitudinarians thought that the lesson of the English Civil War was that this strategy was a failure. Instead, they thought, the state church should allow a great deal of latitude in belief and practice in order to bring as many dissenters back into the fold as possible, without requiring them to violate their consciences. This was combined with a policy of (limited) toleration for dissenters. The strategy was to welcome and persuade rather than compel. Following the Restoration of the Monarchy (1660), latitudinarianism became the dominant position in the Anglican church hierarchy.

Simon Patrick's Brief Account of a New Sect of Latitude-Men (a text for which I have a particular fondness) represents an early stage of the rise of this movement. Since the latitudinarians endorse the core traditional beliefs and practices of Anglicanism, while leaving room for diversity of belief and practice in 'non-core' matters, Patrick wonders why they have been so vilified by their opponents. A large part of the answer, Patrick claims, is their friendliness to 'the new philosophy'.

What was the 'new philosophy' to which the latitudinarians were friendly? Patrick characterizes it as having two key principles: mechanism and epistemological individualism. The epistemological individualism is connected by Patrick with the use of experimental methods. Patrick's account of the new philosophy gives pride of place to Galileo, but also gives honorable mention to Descartes, Scheiner, Tycho, Gilbert, and Boyle.

Many other latitudinarians in this early period were heavily influenced by the Cambridge Platonists, who themselves generally held latitudinarian views. Later, however, Locke and Newton become the central philosophers on whom the latitudinarians draw. (Samuel Clarke was one of the most influential latitudinarians of the early 18th century.)

The use of Locke and Newton is a bit tricky for the latitudinarians because both Locke and Newton hold religious views a bit more radical than the latitudinarians are comfortable: they straddle the border between latitudinarianism and Socinianism/unitarianism. Further, Locke was extremely popular with deists. This is a particularly uncomfortable position for the latitudinarians because their conservative opponents frequently alleged that they were no different from Socinians (or, later, deists). Further, the deists, in an attempt to secure acceptability for their view, are forever emphasizing their agreements with the latitudinarians. Nearly every deist tract in this period carries a quote from latitudinarian archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson on its title page. The extent of Newton's heterodoxy was perhaps not widely known in the period, but Locke's religious views were the subject of extensive public controversy. It was therefore very important for latitudinarians to defend themselves against the charge that their Lockean philosophical commitments could not be rendered consistent with even their own very relaxed standards of religious orthodoxy. Many of the writings of folks like Samuel Clarke and Catharine Trotter Cockburn can be seen as aiming to do this.

The role of Stillingfleet in all of this is a bit puzzling: his early work Irenicum (1662) is clearly a latitudinarian polemic (or, rather, a latitudinarian irenic...), but he seems to push a much more conservative line in his controversy with Locke. One possibility is that Toland convinced Stillingfleet that the 'Way of Ideas' really does lead to serious forms of heterodoxy.

Let me conclude with a remark on the relevance of all of this to the history and historiography of philosophy. The relationship of latitudinarianism to Cambridge Platonism and later to Lockeanism seems to me to be an important object of study for our understanding of 17th and 18th century Anglophone philosophy, but it has not received much attention from historians of philosophy. (It has received more attention from religious and political historians, and I myself have only just begun to scratch the surface of that literature.) This, I think, is partly because many historians of philosophy simply haven't been interested in religious disputes, but also partly because of the dominance of the 'rationalism-empiricism' story. If one sees early modern philosophy as a dispute between British empiricists and Continental rationalists, then, first, the Cambridge Platonists have to get left out of the story since they are (unholy abomination!) British rationalists. Second, on this view, for the latitudinarians to switch from the influence of Cambridge Platonism to the influence of Locke is such a monumental flip-flop as to call into question whether there is any coherent continuing movement there. But this is a mistake. The rationalism-empiricism dispute (insofar as it exists at all) just doesn't have that level of fundamentality. Individuals and movements can change their minds on these issues and it doesn't have to represent any kind of revolution. It's just one philosophical position among many.

Posted by Kenny at May 8, 2018 10:46 AM