to do in their generation precisely what
the long line of spiritual interpreters had for more than a century been
endeavouring, through pain and suffering, misunderstanding and fierce
persecution, to work out for humanity--a religion of life and reality, a
religion rooted in the eternal nature of the Spirit of God and the spirit
of man, a religion as authoritative and unescapable "as mathematical
demonstration."[3]

It is not possible to establish direct connection between the leaders of
this school and the writings of the successive {289} spiritual Reformers
on the Continent whom we have been studying in this volume, though the
parallelism of ideas and of spirit is very striking. Both groups were
powerfully influenced by the humanistic movement, both groups drew upon
that profound searching of the soul which they found in the works of
Plato and Plotinus, and both groups read the same mystical writers.
These things would partly account for the similarities, but there was
almost certainly a closer and more direct connection, though we cannot
trace it in the case of Whichcote as we can in that of John Everard of
Clare College. There has been a tendency to explain Whichcote's views
through the influence of Arminius and Arminians; but he himself denied
that he had been influenced by Arminius,[4] while his disciple, Nathaniel
Culverwel, speaks disapprovingly of Arminianism.[5] There are no
distinct allusions in Whichcote to Jacob Boehme, and the former's
conception of the Universe is vastly different from the latter's, but
their vital and ethical view of the way of salvation is almost exactly
the same, and the constant insistence of Whichcote and his disciples that
Heaven and Hell are primarily conditions of life in the person himself
has, as we know, a perfect parallel in Boehme.

The Cambridge scholars were much better equipped for their task than any
of the men whom we have so far studied, their gravest difficulty being an
overweighting of learning which they sometimes failed to fuse with their
spiritual vision and to transmute into power. But with all their
propension to learning and their love of philosophy, they were primarily
and fundamentally _religious_--they were disciples of Christ rather than
disciples of Plato and Plotinus. Bishop Burnet's testimony to the
positive spiritual contribution of this movement, now under
consideration, and to the genuineness of the religious life of these men
is well worth quoti