en made no secret of their homage to Plato. And let it be
noticed that they were students of Plato and Plotinus more than of
Dionysius and his successors. Their Platonism is not of the debased
Oriental type, and is entirely free from self-absorbed quietism. The
_via negativa_ has disappeared as completely in their writings as in
those of Boehme; the world is for them as for him the mirror of the
Deity; but, being philosophers and not physicists, they are most
interested in claiming for religion the whole field of _intellectual_
life. They are fully convinced that there can be no ultimate
contradiction between philosophy or science and Christian faith; and
this accounts not only for their praise of "reason," but for the happy
optimism which appears everywhere in their writings. The luxurious and
indolent Restoration clergy, whose lives were shamed by the simplicity
and spirituality of the Platonists, invented the word "Latitudinarian"
to throw at them, "a long nickname which they have taught their
tongues to pronounce as roundly as if it were shorter than it is by
four or five syllables"; but they could not deny that their enemies were
loyal sons of the Church of England.[359] What the Platonists meant
by making reason the seat of authority may be seen by a few
quotations from Whichcote and Smith, who for our purpose are, I think,
the best representatives of the school. Whichcote answers Tuckney, who
had remonstrated with him for "a vein of doctrine, in which reason
hath too much given to it in the mysteries of faith";--"Too much" and
"too often" on these points! "The Scripture is full of such truths,
and I discourse on them too much and too often! Sir, I oppose not
rational to spiritual, for spiritual is most rational." Elsewhere he
writes, "He that gives reason for what he has said, has done what is
fit to be done, and the most that can be done." "Reason is the Divine
Governor of man's life; it is the very voice of God." "When the
doctrine of the Gospel becomes the reason of our mind, it will be the
principle of our life." "It ill becomes us to make our intellectual
faculties Gibeonites.[360]" How far this teaching differs from the
frigid "common-sense" morality prevalent in the eighteenth century,
may be judged from the following, which stamps Whichcote as a genuine
mystic. "Though liberty of judgment be everyone's right, yet how few
there are that make use of this right! For the use of this right doth
depend upon self