Editing Ralph Cudworth (section)

==Works==
{{Portal|Christianity}}

===Sermons and treatises===
Cudworth's works included ''The Union of Christ and the Church, in a Shadow'' (1642); ''A Sermon preached before the [[United Kingdom House of Commons|House of Commons]]'' (1647); and ''A Discourse concerning the True Notion of the Lord's Supper'' (1670). Much of Cudworth's work remains in manuscript. However, certain surviving works have been published posthumously, such as ''A Treatise concerning eternal and immutable Morality, and A Treatise of Freewill. ''

====''A Treatise concerning eternal and immutable Morality'' (posth.)====
Cudworth's ''Treatise on eternal and immutable Morality'', published with a preface by [[Edward Chandler (bishop)|Edward Chandler]] (1731),<ref>R. Cudworth, ''Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality... with a Preface by... Edward Lord Bishop of Durham'' [https://archive.org/stream/treatiseconcerni00cudw#page/n5/mode/2up (1st edn, James and John Knapton: London, 1731)]</ref> is about the historical development of British moral philosophy. It answers, from the standpoint of [[Platonism]], Hobbes's famous doctrine that moral distinctions are created by the state. It argues that just as knowledge contains a permanent intelligible element over and above the flux of sense-impressions, so there exist eternal and immutable ideas of morality.<ref name=EB1911/>

====''A Treatise of Freewill'' (posth.)====
Another posthumous publication was Cudworth's ''A Treatise of Freewill'', edited by [[Chaplain of King's College London|John Allen]] (1838). Both this and the ''Treatise on eternal and immutable Morality'' are connected with the design of his ''magnum opus'', ''The True Intellectual System of the Universe''.<ref>{{cite book|author=Ralph Cudworth|title=Ralph Cudworth: A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality: With A Treatise of Freewill|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XZiig6ljKSoC&pg=PA219|year=1996|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-47918-9|page=219|editor=S. Hutton}}</ref>

===''The True Intellectual System of the Universe'' (1678)===
In 1678, Cudworth published ''The True Intellectual System of the Universe: the first part, wherein all the reason and philosophy of atheism is confuted and its impossibility demonstrated'', which had been given an [[Imprimatur]] for publication (29 May 1671).

[[File:The True Intellectual System of the Universe -bound with another text by Cudworth- 2 vols - Upper cover (Davis187).jpg|thumb|right|A finely-bound first edition of the ''True Intellectual System'' (1678) in the British Library (shelfmark: Davis 187).]] 
The ''Intellectual System'' arose, according to Cudworth, from a discourse refuting "fatal necessity", or [[determinism]].<ref name=EB1911>{{cite EB1911|wstitle=Cudworth, Ralph| volume=7| pages=612–613 |last= Sturt |first= Henry |author-link= Henry Sturt}}</ref> Enlarging his plan, he proposed to prove three matters:

# the [[existence of God]];
# the naturalness of moral distinctions; and
# the reality of human [[Free will|freedom]].

These three comprise, collectively, the intellectual (as opposed to the physical) system of the universe; and they are opposed, respectively, by three false principles: atheism, religious fatalism (which refers all moral distinctions to the will of God), and the fatalism of the ancient [[Stoics]] (who recognized God and yet identified him with nature). Only the first part, dealing with atheism, was ever published.

Cudworth criticizes two main forms of materialistic [[atheism]]: the [[atomism|atomic]] (adopted by [[Democritus]], [[Epicurus]] and [[Thomas Hobbes]]); and the [[Hylozoism|hylozoic]] (attributed to [[Strato of Lampsacus]], which explains everything by the supposition of an inward self-organizing life in matter). Atomic atheism, to which Cudworth devotes the larger part of the work, is described as arising from the combination of two principles, neither of which is, individually, atheistic (namely atomism and corporealism, or the doctrine that nothing exists but body). The example of Stoicism, Cudworth suggests, shows that corporealism may be theistic.

Cudworth discusses the history of atomism at length. It is, in its purely physical application, a theory that he fully accepts. He holds that theistic atomism was taught by [[Pythagoras]], [[Empedocles]] and many other ancient philosophers, and was only perverted to atheism by Democritus. Cudworth believes that atomism was first invented before the [[Trojan war]] by a [[Sidon]]ian thinker named Moschus or [[Mochus]] (whom he identifies with [[Moses]] in the [[Old Testament]]).

Cudworth's method in arranging his work was to marshal the atheistic arguments elaborately before refuting them in his final chapter. This led many readers to accuse Cudworth himself of atheism – as [[John Dryden]] remarked, "he has raised such objections against the being of a God and Providence that many think he has not answered them".<ref>{{cite book |last=Scott |first=W. R. |date=1891 |chapter=The Life of Ralph Cudworth |title=An Introduction to Cudworth's Treatise |location=London |publisher=Longmans, Green and Co |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ARxLAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA15 |pages=15–17}}</ref> Much attention was also attached to a subordinate matter in the book, the conception of the "Plastic Medium" (a revival of [[Plato]]'s "[[Anima mundi|World-Soul]]") which was intended to explain the existence and laws of nature without referring to the direct operation of God. This theory occasioned a long-drawn controversy between [[Pierre Bayle]] and [[Georges-Louis Leclerc]], with the former maintaining, and the latter denying, that the Plastic Medium is favourable to atheism.

Summing up the work, [[Andrew Dickson White]] wrote in 1896:

<blockquote>
To this day he [Cudworth] remains, in breadth of scholarship, in strength of thought, in tolerance, and in honesty, one of the greatest glories of the English Church ... He purposed to build a fortress which should protect Christianity against all dangerous theories of the universe, ancient or modern ... While genius marked every part of it, features appeared which gave the rigidly orthodox serious misgivings. From the old theories of direct personal action on the universe by the Almighty he broke utterly. He dwelt on the action of law, rejected the continuous exercise of miraculous intervention, pointed out the fact that in the natural world there are "errors" and "bungles" and argued vigorously in favor of the origin and maintenance of the universe as a slow and gradual development of Nature in obedience to an inward principle.<ref>{{cite book |last=White |first=Andrew Dickson |date=1901 |title=A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom |volume=1 |location=New York |publisher=D. Appleton and Company |url=https://archive.org/details/ahistorywarfare04whitgoog/page/n44/mode/2up?&view=theater |page=16}}</ref>
</blockquote>