"The New Philosophy" among our youth
and gentlemen, with the view of rendering the clergy contemptible; or,
as he says, "to make them appear egregious fools in matters of common
discourse." He had always a motive for his actions, however opposite
they were; pretending that he was never moved by caprice, but guided
by principle. One of his adversaries, however, has reason to say, that
judging him by his "printed papers, he was a man of excellent
contradictory parts." After the Restoration, he furnished as odd, but
as forcible a reason, for opposing the Royal Society. At that time the
nation, recent from republican ardours, was often panic-struck by
papistical conspiracies, and projects of arbitrary power; and it was
on this principle that he took part against the Society. Influenced by
Dr. Fell and others, he suffered them to infuse these extravagant
opinions into his mind. No private ends appear to have influenced his
changeable conduct; and in the present instance he was sacrificing his
personal feelings to his public principles; for Stubbe was then in the
most friendly correspondence with the illustrious Boyle, the father of
the Royal Society, who admired the ardour of Stubbe, till he found its
inconvenience.[269]

Stubbe opened his formidable attacks, for they form a series, by
replying to the "Plus Ultra" of Glanvill, with a title as quaint,
"The _Plus Ultra_ reduced to a _Non-plus_, in animadversions on
Mr. Glanvill and the Virtuosi." For a pretence for this violent
attack, he strained a passage in Glanvill; insisting that the honour
of the whole faculty of which he was a member was deeply concerned
to refute Glanvill's assertion, that "the ancient physicians could not
cure a cut finger."--This Glanvill denied he had ever affirmed or
thought;[270] but war once resolved on, a pretext as slight as the
present serves the purpose; and so that an odium be raised against
the enemy, the end is obtained before the injustice is acknowledged.
This is indeed the history of other wars than those of words. The
present was protracted with an hostility unsubduing and unsubdued.
At length the malicious ingenuity, or the heated fancy, of Stubbe,
hardly sketched a political conspiracy, accusing the ROYAL SOCIETY of
having adopted the monstrous projects of CAMPANELLA;--an anomalous
genius, who was confined by the Inquisition the greater part of his
life, and who, among some political reveries, projected the
establishment of a univer