esented. They were, too, contemporaries of Descartes,
and they followed with intense interest the attempt of the great
Frenchman to put philosophy in possession of a method as adequate for its
problems as the method of geometry was for the mathematical sciences.
None of the "Platonists" was possessed of the same rare quality of genius
as either of these two great philosophers, but they saw with clear
insight the full bearing of both systems. They heartily disapproved of
Hobbes' materialism and shuddered at its nakedness. They were too much
committed to the ideals of Humanism to be positive opponents of
Descartes' rational formulation of all things outer and inner, but they
never felt at home with the vast clock-like mechanism to which his system
reduced the universe, and they set themselves, in contrast, to produce a
religious philosophy which would guarantee freedom, would give wider
scope for the inner life, would show the kinship of God and man and put
morality and religion--to their mind for ever one and inseparable--on a
foundation as immovable as the pillars of the universe.

The first of this group, the pathbreaker of the movement, was Benjamin
Whichcote, though it must not be forgotten that he had noble forerunners
in John Hales, William Chillingworth, and Jeremy Taylor. The
biographical details which have survived him are very limited. A great
teacher's life is so largely interior and so devoid of outward events
that there is usually not much to record.[7] He was descended from "an
ancient and honourable family," and was born at Whichcote-Hall, in the
parish of Stoke, the 11th of March, 1609. He was admitted in 1626 to
Emmanuel College--"which was looked on from its first foundation as a
Seminary of Puritans"--and was there under the tutorship of two great
Puritan teachers. Dr. Anthony Tuckney and Thomas Hill, {292} both of
whom were for a time associated with John Cotton, afterwards the famous
preacher of colonial Boston. He was ordained both deacon and priest in
1636, was made Provost of King's College, Cambridge, in 1644, "went-out"
Doctor of Divinity in 1649, and for twenty years gave the afternoon
Lecture on Sundays at Trinity Church, Cambridge. At the Restoration he
was deprived of the Provostship by order of the King, which brought his
university career to an end. He was made curate of St. Anne's,
Blackfriars, in 1662, and later received from the Crown the vicarage of
St. Laurence Jewry, where