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Religious conventions and science in the early Restoration: Reformation and ‘Israel’ in Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society (1667)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2009

JOHN MORGAN
JOHN MORGAN
Affiliation:
Department of History, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada. Email: jpmorgan@ryerson.ca.
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Abstract

Sprat situated his analysis of the Royal Society within an emerging Anglican Royalist narrative of the longue durée of post-Reformation England. A closer examination of Sprat's own religious views reveals that his principal interest in the History of the Royal Society, as in the closely related reply to Samuel de Sorbière, the Observations, was to appropriate the advantages and benefits of the Royal Society as support for a re-established, anti-Calvinist Church of England. Sprat connected the two through a reformulation of the powerful conventions of ‘Reformation’ and ‘Israel’, both of which still resonated strongly in the religious politics of the 1660s. Applying his voluntarist theology, Sprat changed especially the representation of the chosen nation from a tale of divine castigation and punishment to a rational and probabilistic covenant based on material success as the indicator of God's pleasure. Sprat proposed that the knowledge and application of nature, through the experimental labours of the Royal Society, could build an increasingly wealthy nation and so a permanent home for the reconfigured Israel. Attaching this to a renewed monarchical and Anglican state also meant security for the traditional forms of rule.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , September 2009 , pp. 321 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 British Society for the History of Science

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References

1 T. Sprat, History of the Royal-Society of London, For the Improving of Natural Knowledge (1667) (ed. J. I. Cope and H. W. Jones), St Louis and London, 1959. On Sprat's life and career see esp. ODNB; Dictionary of Scientific Biography; Cope, J. I. and Jones, H. W., ‘Introduction’ to the History; H. W. Jones, ‘Thomas Sprat (1635–1713)’, Notes and Queries (1952), 197, 10–14Google Scholar and 118–23; anon., Some Account of the Life and Writings of Thomas Sprat, London, 1715; C. L. Sonnichsen, ‘The Life and Works of Thomas Sprat’, unpublished 1931 Harvard University Ph.D. thesis (AAT 0304338); R. Cluett, ‘These seeming mysteries: the mind and style of Thomas Sprat (1635–1713)’, unpublished 1969 Columbia University Ph.D. thesis (AAT 7006950).

2 Heyd, M., ‘The new experimental philosophy: A manifestation of “enthusiasm” or an antidote to it?’, Minerva (1987), 25, 423–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Syfret, R. H., ‘Some early reaction to the Royal Society’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London (1950), 7, 207–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and idem, ‘Some early critics of the Royal Society’, ibid. (1950), 8, 20–64; J. R. Jacob, ‘Aristotle and the new philosophy: Stubbe versus the Royal Society’, in Science, Pseudo-Science and Society (ed. M. P. Hanen et al.), Waterloo, 1979, 217–36; M. Spiller, ‘Concerning Experimental Natural Philosophie’: Meric Casaubon and the Royal Society, The Hague, 1980.

3 Henry Oldenburg's favourable review appeared in Philosophical Transactions (1667), 2, 501–6, in Philosophical Transactions, vols. I–III, 1665–8. See also The Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg (ed. A. Rupert Hall and M. Boas Hall), Madison, WI, 1966, 3, 515–16, 525–6, 491–2.

4 DSB, ‘Thomas Sprat’; Wood, P., ‘Methodology and apologetics: Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society’, BJHS (1980), 13, 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 See especially S. Shapin and S. Schaffer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life, Princeton, 1985, esp. Chapters 7 and 8; Wood, op. cit. (4), 5; M. Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England, Cambridge, 1981, esp. Chapter 5; Jacob, J. R., ‘Restoration, Reformation and the origins of the Royal Society’, History of Science (1975), 13, 155–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 169; Jacob, J. R. and Jacob, M. C., ‘The Anglican origins of modern science: the metaphysical foundations of the Whig constitution’, Isis (1980), 71, 251–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 251. On the Royal Society's commitment to Bacon's ‘methodological precepts’ see most recently W. Lynch, Solomon's Child: Method in the Early Royal Society of London, Stanford, 2001, esp. Chapter 1.

6 The literature is very extensive. For identification of the History as ‘latitudinarian’ see, for example, Shapiro, B., ‘Latitudinarianism and science in seventeenth-century England’, Past and Present (1968), 40, 16–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England: A Study of the Relationships between Natural Science, Religion, History, Law, and Literature, Princeton, 1983; Jacob, J. R. and Jacob, M. C., ‘The saints embalmed: scientists, latitudinarians, and society: a review essay’, Albion (1992), 24, 435–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Heyd, op. cit. (2), 430; Lynch, op. cit. (5), 168 and note 43, 169 note 48. For criticisms of the posited latitudinarian connection see M. Hunter, ‘Latitudinarianism and the “ideology” of the early Royal Society: Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society (1667) reconsidered’, in Philosophy, Science, and Religion in England 1640–1700 (ed. R. Kroll et al.), Cambridge, 1992, 199–229, 210–11, 206–12, 216–18; Mulligan, L., ‘Anglicanism, latitudinarianism and science in seventeenth-century England’, Annals of Science (1973), 30, 213–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On latitudinarianism more broadly see Spurr, J., ‘“Latitudinarianism” and the Restoration Church’, Historical Journal (1988), 31, 61–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; W. Spellman, The Latitudinarians and the Church of England, 1660–1700, Athens, GA and London, 1993, esp. Chapter 6; J. Spurr, The Restoration Church of England, 1646–1689, New Haven and London, 1991, esp. Chapter 6; R. Ashcraft, ‘Latitudinarianism and toleration: historical myth versus political history’, in Philosophy, Science, and Religion in England 1640–1700 (ed. R. Kroll et al.), Cambridge, 1992, 151–77, 152–4.

7 Shapin and Schaffer, op. cit. (5); Dear, P., ‘Totius in verba: Rhetoric and authority in the early Royal Society’, Isis (1985), 76, 145–61Google Scholar; Schaffer, S., ‘Making certain’, Social Studies of Science (1984), 14, 137–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; M. Poovey, A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society, Chicago and London, 1998. Lynch, op. cit. (5), further develops some of these ideas.

8 B. Shapiro, John Wilkins 1614–1672: An Intellectual Biography, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969, 203, 206; Sonnichsen, op. cit. (1), 64.

9 T. Sprat, ‘To the Happie Memorie of … Oliver, Lord Protector … ’, in Three Poems Upon the Death of his late Highnesse Oliver Lord Protector, London, 1659, sigs. C2, C2 verso.

10 Hunter, op. cit. (6), esp. 199–207. On the Royal Society's role in the History see Royal Society, Minutes of Council, I, passim; and T. Birch, History of the Royal Society, 4 vols., London, 1756–7, i, 507; ii, 161, 163, 171; iii, 2, 6, 7, 47, 138, 161, 171, 197.

11 For example, ‘And in this place I am to render their publick thanks’: Sprat, op. cit. (1), 143.

12 Hunter, op. cit. (6), 205, 206, 200.

13 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 94. Sprat notes the break in the work came at 120.

14 Sprat, op. cit. (1), ‘Advertisement’, sig. B4.

15 Royal Society, MS Minutes of Council, I, 92, 133–4. The committee included Brouncker (who did not share Wilkins's views on comprehension), Moray, Petty and Wilkins. Hunter, op. cit. (6), 210–11.

16 Beale and Oldenburg were both prominent Baconian influences. Hunter, op. cit. (5), 194–7, 54; idem, ‘Promoting the new science: Henry Oldenburg and the early Royal Society’, History of Science (1988), 26, 165–81.

17 Hunter, op. cit. (6), 209–11, 218, also argues that the History did not support ‘ecclesiastical comprehension’.

18 On self-fashioning in the ‘scientific’ circle see S. Shapin, ‘Who was Robert Hooke?’ in Robert Hooke: New Studies (ed. M. Hunter and S. Schaffer), Woodbridge, 1989, 256–69; Iliffe, R., ‘“In the Warehouse”: Privacy, property and priority in the early Royal Society’, History of Science (1992), 30, 29–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Sprat had become a prebendary at Lincoln Cathedral in October 1660 and priest probably in March 1661. ODNB, ‘Thomas Sprat’.

19 For reasons of space, I have had to confine my remarks here to Sprat's religious beliefs. For Sprat's views of English politics and international relations, and their effect on the writing of the History, see my ‘Science, England's “interest” and universal monarchy: the making of Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society’, History of Science, forthcoming.

20 Goldie, M., ‘John Locke and Anglican Royalism’, Political Studies (1983), 31, 61–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 68–70, 75 and passim; R. A. Beddard, ‘Restoration Oxford and the remaking of the Protestant establishment’, in History of the University of Oxford, Volume 4 (ed. N. Tyacke), Oxford, 1984, 803–62, 807, 830, 853–4; idem, ‘Tory Oxford’, in ibid., 870, 894; Tumbleson, R. D., ‘“Reason and Religion”: The science of Anglicanism’, Journal of the History of Ideas (1996), 57, 131–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 135 ff. The beginnings of the Anglican Royalist mindset are explored in A. Milton, Laudian and Royalist Polemic in Seventeenth-Century England: The Career and Writings of Peter Heylyn, Manchester and New York, 2007.

21 Sprat, op. cit. (9); idem, The Plague of Athens, London, 1659.

22 J. J. Jusserand, A French Ambassador at the Court of Charles the Second: Le Comte de Cominges, from his Unpublished Correspondence, New York and London, 1892, 63; DSB, ‘Thomas Sprat’; Cope and Jones, op. cit. (1), pp. xv–xviii; Sarasohn, L., ‘Who was then the gentleman? Samuel Sorbière, Thomas Hobbes, and the Royal Society’, History of Science (2004), 42, 211–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 223–8.

23 S. de Sorbière, A Voyage to England …, London, 1709 (in English), 17; T. Sprat, Observations on Monsieur de Sorbier's Voyage into England, London, 1665, 101–2.

24 John Evelyn informed Sprat of Sorbière's earlier work and also provided some biographical information: letter dated 31 October 1664, British Library MS Additional 78298, fol. 128, printed in Diary and Correspondence of John Evelyn, F.R.S. … (ed. William Bray), 4 vols., London, 1850, iii, 144–7. I have addressed Sprat's reply to Sorbière's political comments in the paper referred to in note 19 above.

25 F. S. Fussner, The Historical Revolution: English Historical Writing and Thought 1580–1640, London, 1962; D. C. Douglas, English Scholars 1660–1730, revised edn, London, 1951; J. M. Levine, Humanism and History: Origins of Modern English Historiography, Ithaca and London, 1987; idem, Re-enacting the Past, Aldershot, 2004, esp. Chapter 14; Schaffer, op. cit. (7); Shapiro, Probability, op. cit. (6), 129, notes that the Royal Society was interested in civil as well as natural histories.

26 Fussner, op. cit. (25), 258, 262, 268; Fisch, H. and Jones, H. W., ‘Bacon's influence on Sprat's History of the Royal Society’, Modern Language Quarterly (1951), 12, 399–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

27 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 62. Levine, Humanism and History, op. cit. (25), 149–50. Lynch, however, sees Sprat as ‘suspicious of rhetoric’; Lynch, op. cit. (5), 168.

28 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 44.

29 J. A. I. Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: The Church of England and Its Enemies, 1660–1730, Cambridge, 1992, 34, 39, 40–4.

30 So Meric Casaubon noted of a certain point he was making: ‘Bodinus is my Author at this time, and he is one that may be trusted in matter of history’: M. Casaubon, A Letter of Meric Casaubon to Peter du Moulin concerning natural experimental philosophie, Cambridge, 1669, 25.

31 Sprat, op. cit. (21), sig. A3.

32 T. Sprat, The Bishop of Rochester's Second Letter, London, 1689, 7, 12. See, similarly, idem, A True Account and Declaration of the Horrid Conspiracy: At the Rye-House, London, 1696 (originally 1685), sig. A3 verso; J. Gutch (ed.), Collectanea Curiosa, 2 vols., Oxford, 1781, i, 431, letter from Sprat to Archbishop Sancroft, 1688.

33 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 297. Sprat frequently used the conventional appeal to harmony; see, for example, Sprat, Second Letter, op. cit. (32), 5–6; idem, A Discourse Made by the Ld Bishop of Rochester to the Clergy of his Diocese, 1695, London, 1696, 27–8.

34 Shapin and Schaffer, op. cit. (5), 73.

35 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 34–6, 23–4; other examples at 12–13, 48–9, 52–3.

36 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 100.

37 Sprat, op. cit. (1), sig. B4 verso.

38 See especially H. Stubbe, Legends No Histories, London, 1670, e.g. 19–21; J. R. Jacob, Henry Stubbe, Radical Protestantism and the Early Enlightenment, Cambridge, 1983, esp. 95–6; S. Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth-Century England, Chicago and London, 1994, esp. 294–5. Casaubon, op. cit. (30), 17, 21, also raised the issue.

39 Heyd, op. cit. (2); idem, ‘The reaction to enthusiasm in the seventeenth century: towards an integrative approach’, Journal of Modern History (1981), 53, 258–80; Wood, op. cit. (4); Lynch, op. cit. (5), 163, 189.

40 On early Restoration theology see, generally, N. Tyacke, ‘Religious controversy’, in History of the University of Oxford, Volume 4 (ed. N. Tyacke), 569–619; idem, ‘Arminianism and the theology of the Restoration Church’, in The Exchange of Ideas: Religion, Scholarship and Art in Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Seventeenth Century (ed. S. Groenveld and M. Wintle), Zutphen, 1994, 68–83; Spurr, op. cit. (6), esp. Chapters 3 and 6; Beddard, ‘Restoration Oxford’, op. cit. (20); D. D. Wallace, Puritans and Predestination – Grace in English Protestant Theology 1525–1695, Chapel Hill, 1982; H. R. McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism, London, 1965. On the importance of the language of convention see I. Hacking, The Emergence of Probability, Cambridge, 1975, 80–4.

41 R. Ferguson, The Interest of Reason in Religion, London, 1675, 10–14. Sprat later castigated Ferguson as one of the Rye-House conspirators. Sprat, Horrid Conspiracy, op. cit. (32).

42 R. South, Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions …, 7 vols., Oxford, 1823, i, 376; Spurr, J., ‘“Rational Religion” in Restoration England’, Journal of the History of Ideas (1988), 49, 563–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 576. For South's identification as a Calvinist see Tyacke, ‘Religious controversy’, op. cit. (40), 602–3; Beddard, ‘Restoration Oxford’, op. cit. (20), 834.

43 For example, Hunter, op. cit. (5), Chapter 6; Heyd, op. cit. (2).

44 Spurr, op. cit. (6), 312–13; Syfret, op. cit. (2), esp. 243–6.

45 South, op. cit. (42), 373, 375. Michael Hunter notes John Worthington's similar concerns. Hunter, op. cit. (5), 152.

46 Robert South, quoted in Syfret, op. cit. (2), 243; F. Bacon, The Advancement of Learning, London, 1915, Book I, 42.

47 Ferguson, op. cit. (41), 62, 7 ff.; Beale to Evelyn, 2 January 1669, quoted in Jacob, op. cit. (38), 81; Heyd, op. cit. (2), 437–8.

48 A. Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600–1640, Cambridge, 1995.

49 Spurr, op. cit. (6), 108–10.

50 Milton, op. cit. (48), 323–9; Spurr, op. cit. (6), 116.

51 G. S. De Krey, Restoration and Revolution in Britain: A Political History of the Era of Charles II and the Glorious Revolution, London, 2007, 43, 80–1, 129.

52 This paragraph is based especially on J. W. McKenna, ‘How God became an Englishman’, in Tudor Rule and Revolution: Essays for G. R. Elton (ed. DeLloyd Guth and J. McKenna), Cambridge, 1982, 26–37; A. Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England, Oxford, 2001, esp. Chapter 6; McGiffert, M., ‘God's controversy with Jacobean England’, American Historical Review (1983), 88, 1151–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar and (1984), 89, 1217–18; Bozeman, T. D., ‘Federal theology and the “National Covenant”’, Church History (1992), 61, 394–407CrossRefGoogle Scholar; P. Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, London, 1988, esp. Chapter 1; C. Hill, ‘The protestant nation’, in The Collected Essays of Christopher Hill Volume II, Brighton, 1986, 21–36.

53 T. Claydon and I. McBride, ‘The trials of the chosen peoples: recent interpretations of Protestantism and national identity in Britain and Ireland’, in Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, c.1650–c.1850 (ed. T. Claydon and I. McBride), Cambridge, 1998, 3–29, 10–13.

54 Walsham, op. cit. (52), 286; Collinson, op. cit. (52), 10, 17–18.

55 Walsham, op. cit. (52), 281 ff.; P. Collinson, ‘Biblical rhetoric: the English nation and national sentiment in the prophetic mode’, in Religion and Culture in Renaissance England (ed. C. McEachern and D. Shuger), Cambridge, 1997, 15–45, 24–8; C. Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution, London, 1993, 265–9; Collinson, op. cit. (52), esp. 3–4.

56 C. Kidd, ‘Protestantism, constitutionalism and British identity under the later Stuarts’, in British Consciousness and Identity: The Making of Britain, 1533–1707 (ed. B. Bradshaw and P. Roberts), Cambridge, 1998, 321–42, 328, 329; S. Zwicker, ‘England, Israel, and the triumph of Roman virtue’, in Millenarianism and Messianism in English Literature and Thought 1650–1800 (ed. Richard Popkin), Leiden, 1988, 37–64, 48.

57 See, for example, M. Mason, A Faithful Warning, with Good Advice from Israel's God to England's King and His Council, London, 1660; H. Wollrich, A Visitation to the Captive-Seed of Israel, And a door opened to the Prisoner in the pit, that the band of darkenesse may be broken, and the Cloud of Errour scattered, by the brightness of His rising who is the Resurrection, and whose Life is the Light of men, London, 1661; B. Worden, ‘Introduction’, in E. Ludlow, A Voyce from the Watch Tower, Part Five: 1660–1662 (ed. A. B. Worden), London, 1978, 6, 10.

58 South, op. cit. (42), ii, 541.

59 Covici, P. Jr, ‘God's chosen people: Anglican Views, 1607–1807’, Studies in Puritan American Spirituality (1990), 1, 97–128Google Scholar, 105; S. N. Zwicker, Dryden's Political Poetry: The Typology of King and Nation, Providence, 1972, e.g. 27, 71, 78; Hill, op. cit. (52), 30.

60 J. Spurr, ‘“Virtue, Religion and Government”: the Anglican uses of providence’, in The Politics of Religion in Restoration England (ed. Tim Harris, Paul Seaver and Mark Goldie), Oxford, 1990, 30–3; Spurr, op. cit. (6), 238–45; Covici, op. cit. (59).

61 See, for example, J. Gauden, Gods Great Demonstrations, London, 1660, sig. A 2 verso.

62 Spurr, op. cit. (60), esp. 33, 35.

63 J. Dryden, Annus Mirabilis: The Year Of Wonders, 1666, London, 1667; M. McKeon, Politics and Poetry in Restoration England: The Case of Dryden's Annus Mirabilis, Cambridge, MA and London, 1975, 63; S. N. Zwicker, Politics and Language in Dryden's Poetry: The Art of Disguise, Princeton, 1984, 40–4; M. Goldie, ‘Restoration political thought’, in The Reigns of Charles II and James VII and II (ed. L. Glassey), London, 1997, 12–35, 15, 21.

64 J. Milward, The Diary of John Milward, Esq., Member of Parliament for Derbyshire: September, 1666 to May, 1668 (ed. C. Robbins), Cambridge, 1938, 12–14.

65 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 345.

66 Quoted in Syfret, op. cit. (2), 230.

67 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 204; idem, A Sermon Preach'd to the Natives of Dorset, 1692, London, 1693, 19.

68 M. Brydon, The Evolving Reputation of Richard Hooker: An Examination of Responses, 1600–1714, Oxford, 2006, esp. Chapters 2 and 3; MacCulloch, D., ‘Richard Hooker's reputation’, English Historical Review (2002), 117, 773–812CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 792–3; W. J. Torrance Kirby, Richard Hooker's Doctrine of the Royal Supremacy, Leiden and New York, 1990, e.g. 22–6, 45; Lake, P., ‘Business as usual? The immediate reception of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History (2001), 52, 456–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; N. Voak, Richard Hooker and Reformed Theology: A Study of Reason, Will, and Grace, Oxford, 2003.

69 John Evelyn, writing to John Beale concerning Joseph Glanvill's defence of the Royal Society against Stubbe, suggested that Glanvill consult Hooker to ‘render[?] him his glut of quotations to his purpose’: 27 July 1670, BL MS Additional 78298, fols.182v–83v, Letter CCCXXIX.

70 Walton sent Sprat an inscribed copy of his Life of Dr. Sanderson (1678). P. Beal, Index of English Library Manuscripts, Volume 2, 1625–1700, London, 1993, Part 2, 627, 633. On the construction of Walton's portrait of Hooker see D. Novarr, The Making of Walton's Lives, Ithaca, 1958; J. Martin, Walton's Lives: Conformist Commemorations and the Rise of Biography, Oxford, 2001.

71 I. Walton, The Life of Mr. Richard Hooker, in The Lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, 4th edn, London, 1675, 203 ff., 183–7, 206–7, 240–1, 243–5, 247, 248.

72 Walton, op. cit. (71), 202–3, 213, 234–5; R. Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (ed. Georges Edelen), Cambridge, MA, 1977, I.6.4–6.

73 Walton, op. cit. (71), 183, 174, 188; Brydon, op. cit. (68), 113–15. The Anglican Royalist Roger L'Estrange also referred to the ‘judicious Hooker’ in Interest Mistaken, Or, The Holy Cheat: Proving, From the undeniable Practises and Positions of the Presbyterians, that the Design of that Party is to enslave both King and People under the Masque of Religion, London, 1661, 70.

74 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 370, 374, 368.

75 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 355.

76 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 11.

77 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 376.

78 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 356, 366–7; idem, op. cit. (23), 108. On Sprat's interest in the ‘primitive church’ see also idem, ‘An account of the life and writings of Mr Abraham Cowley’, in The Works of Mr Abraham Cowley (ed. T. Sprat), London, 1668, fol. e verso. In later works, Sprat more directly rejected Calvinist double predestinarianism and instead stressed universalism and human cooperation with God's offer of grace. He also situated the Church's ceremonies in post-Reformation discourses of lawful authority and dutiful obedience but also of the via media. Sprat, A Sermon Preached before the King, 1676, London, 1677, 29–30; idem, Sermon Preach'd before the Lord Mayor, 1681/2 (1682), 18, 21–3; idem, Sermon Preached, Nov. vii.1678, London, 1678, 6, 12, 30; idem, Discourse 1695, op. cit. (33), 43.

79 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 104–7.

80 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 106–7, 114–15.

81 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 104–7, 135–6.

82 Sorbière, op. cit. (23), 17, 18.

83 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 98, 100, 101–2.

84 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 107–8; on the Royal Society's ceremonies being similarly necessary but limited see ibid., 239.

85 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 121; DNB, ‘Henry Ireton’.

86 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 183.

87 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 110–11; idem, op. cit. (1), e.g. 405–6, 403. On other aspects of the decentralization of the gentry see Iliffe, R., ‘Foreign bodies: travel, empire, and the early Royal Society of London Part II’, Canadian Journal of History (1999), 24, 24–50Google Scholar, 39.

88 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 370; idem, op. cit. (23), 113–14. See, similarly, idem, Sermon 1681/2, op. cit. (78), 40; Sprat, op. cit. (33), 67.

89 Sprat, Sermon 1676, op. cit. (78), 30.

90 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 183; Heyd, op. cit. (2), 434.

91 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 426–7.

92 Sprat, Sermon Nov. 1678, op. cit. (78), 35, 30.

93 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 124–5, 29, 98–9. Sprat himself advocated leniency towards individual moderate Dissenters; idem, Sermon 1676, op. cit. (78), 8; idem, Second Letter, op. cit. (32), 39; idem, A Sermon Preached before the King … December the 22. 1678, London, 1678, 13–14, 22.

94 Spurr, op. cit. (6), esp. Chapter 3.

95 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 109, 136.

96 Sprat, op. cit. (33), 67; see also idem, Second Letter, op. cit. (32), 54.

97 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 347, 353–4, 356.

98 Sprat, op. cit. (1), esp. 370–4, 366–7, quotation at 371. For brief comment on the parallel reformations see Wood, op. cit. (4), 14–15; Jacob, ‘Restoration’, op. cit. (5), 169–70; Kemsley, D., ‘Religious influences in the rise of modern science’, Annals of Science (1968), 24, 199–226CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 224–6.

99 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 372; Shapin and Schaffer, op. cit. (5), esp. Chapter 7.

100 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 241–2.

101 Beale to Evelyn, 11 September 1667, BL Additional MS 78312, fols. 66–7 verso.

102 Evelyn to Beale, 27 July 1670, BL Additional MS 78298, fols. 182 verso–183 verso, Letter CCCXXIX; H. Stubbe, A Censure upon certaine passages contained in the history of the Royal Society, Oxford, 1670; idem, op. cit. (38); Jacob, op. cit. (38), esp. Chapter 5.

103 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 369.

104 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 351, 352.

105 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 82; similarly, 111, 348, 351.

106 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 85, 347–9.

107 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 27, 372, 132.

108 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 375. For a similar comment from this circle see Evelyn's letter to Boyle of 20 June 1674, BL Additional MS 78298, Letter CCCLXVI.

109 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 25–6, 33, 132.

110 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 365–7.

111 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 82, 349. Henry Power, Glanvill and Boyle also held the view that experimentalists were the best defenders of religion: H. Power, Experimental Philosophy, London, 1664, 191–2; Shapin and Schaffer, op. cit. (5), 313, 319.

112 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 374.

113 Sprat, op. cit. (21); idem, op. cit. (1), 435 ff., 33.

114 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 57, also 426–7; idem, op. cit. (23), 109, 136.

115 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 371.

116 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 38.

117 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 436. The abbreviated text (in Latin) appeared on the title page of Bacon's Great Instauration (1620).

118 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 54.

119 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 332, 104, also 343–5. This was a common defence of experimentalism; see also R. Hooke, Micrographia (1665), Preface.

120 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 257.

121 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 17.

122 Ferguson, op. cit. (41), 275–6.

123 Sprat, op. cit. (9), 30, 22, 28.

124 T. Sprat, A Sermon Preach'd before the Lord Mayor, 1684 (1684), 24; idem, op. cit. (93), 34–5.

125 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 92–4; see also idem, op. cit. (124), 24.

126 T. Sprat, A Sermon Preached before the Honourable House of Commons, 1677/8, 1678, 17, 3, 11, 18; idem, op. cit. (124), 25.

127 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 15, 76, 322–3.

128 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 64, 92.

129 Sprat, op. cit. (1), e.g. 88, 114, 129; idem, op. cit. (23), 289. On Sprat's treatment of English character, though without reference to ‘Israel’, see also Iliffe, op. cit. (87); L. Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, Cambridge, MA, 1992, 83–5. For a rather different view see Lynch, op. cit. (5), esp. 163–5.

130 Milton, quoted in McKenna, op. cit. (52), 31.

131 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 114–15, 152; idem, op. cit. (23), 291.

132 Sprat, op. cit. (1), sigs. B2–B2 verso.

133 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 114–15, 129, 404 ff.

134 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 362.

135 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 358.

136 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 358 et seq.; Dear, P., ‘Miracles, experiments, and the ordinary course of nature’, Isis (1990), 81, 663–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lynch, op. cit. (5), 92–4. For an example of Sprat's use of direct divine intervention see Sprat, op. cit. (124), 38.

137 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 363, 364.

138 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 123.

139 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 430.

140 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 378.

141 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 152.

142 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 3.

143 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 152.

144 Jacob, J. R., ‘The political economy of science in seventeenth-century England’, Social Research (1992), 59, 505–32Google Scholar, esp. 518–19, 529–30.

145 Blagrave, quoted in Hill, op. cit. (55), 269.

146 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 377.

147 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 367–8. Cf. John Preston's Calvinist view that grace was not ‘mending two or three things that are amisse, it is not repairing of an old house, but all must be taken downe, and be built anew, you must be New Creatures’. J. Preston, The Saints Qualification: or a treatise I. Of humiliation, in tenne sermons. II. Of sanctification, in nine sermons: whereunto is added a treatise of communion with Christ in three sermons, London, 1633, 39–40.

148 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 371 ff.

149 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 292.

150 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 63; idem, op. cit. (23), 109, 135–6.

151 Sprat, op. cit. (1), esp. 79, 421 ff.; idem, op. cit. (23), 165, 287, 89–90, 159–60, 290–2.

152 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 403, 26.

153 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 403, 78; idem, op. cit. (23), 291, 163–6, 153.

154 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 290–2; idem, op. cit. (1), 423.

155 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 89–90.

156 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 91, also 153, 159–62, 163–6; 288, 290–2.

157 Sprat, op. cit. (1), 428, 110, 117–18.

158 Sprat, op. cit. (23), 163–4, 153 ff.