The Latitudinarians, a group of prominent clergymen in the late seventeenth-century Church of England, were articulate opponents of Anglicanism's intellectual foes. Against the challenges of Hobbism, Spinozism, Deism, scepticism, and Roman Catholicism, they presented a body of thought emphasizing reason in religion and practical morality over credal speculation. Their theology was designed to combat 'practical atheism' and their sermons stressed that the chief design of Christianity was 'to make men good.' They advocated an alliance of religion and science, and were early participants in the Royal Society. In preaching, they developed a simpler sermon style influential for English prose. As an important part of the Anglican Church at the time of the Glorious Revolution, they helped in drafting the Revolution Settlement, the seedbed, in Macaulay's words, of subsequent personal liberties. This definition and analysis of Latitudinarianism was completed by the late Martin Griffin in 1962 and has been updated since his death in 1988 by Professor Richard H. Popkin.

The Latitudinarians, a group of prominent clergymen in the late seventeenth-century Church of England, were articulate opponents of Anglicanism's intellectual foes. This definition and analysis of the Latitudinarians by the late Martin Griffin has now been completely updated since the latter's death by Professor Richard H. Popkin.

Over the past twenty-five years - since the very large collection of Newton's papers became available and began to be seriously examined - the beginnings of a new picture of Newton has emerged. This volume of essays builds upon the foundation of its authors in their previous works and extends and elaborates the emerging picture of the `new' Newton, the great synthesizer of science and religion as revealed in his intellectual context.

Ryan J. Stark presents a spiritually sensitive, interdisciplinary, and original discussion of early modern English rhetoric. He shows specifically how experimental philosophers attempted to disenchant language

The relationship between Latitudinarian moral theology and eighteenth-century literature has been much debated among scholars. However, this issue can only be tackled if the exact objectives of the Latitudinarians' moral theology are clearly delineated. In doing so, Patrick Müller unveils the intricate connection between the didactic bias of Latitudinarianism and the resurgent interest in didactic literary genres in the first half of the eighteenth century. His study sheds new light on the complex and contradictory reception of the Latitudinarians' controversial theses in the work of three of the major eighteenth-century novelists: Henry Fielding, Laurence Sterne, and Oliver Goldsmith.

The Royal Society’s establishment in 1660 signaled a new beginning for the rhetoric of science, mainly because the organization’s founders advocated a modern plain style for scientific communication. Rhetoric and the Early Royal Society aims to initiate fresh debates about this watershed event in the history of rhetoric and science. In the last twenty years, scholars in numerous disciplines have produced significant work, ranging from theoretical essays to case studies of founding members such as Wilkins, Hooke and Boyle. This is the first book to collect in one volume the key contributions. The newly written introduction by editors Skouen and Stark places the reprinted essays into perspective by evaluating the Society’s pioneering role in shaping modern scholarly communication.

This book is based on my doctoral dissertation from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1996) of the same title. As a master's student, working on an entirely different project, I was well aware that many of Newton's theological manuscripts were located in our own Jewish National and University Library, but I was under the mistaken assumption that scores of highly qualified scholars must be assiduously scouring them and publishing their results. It never occurred to me to look at them at all until, having fmished my master's, I spoke to Professor David Katz at Tel-Aviv University about an idea I had for doctoral research. Professor Katz informed me that the project I had suggested was one which he himself had just fmished, but that I might be interested in working on the famous Newton manuscripts in the context of a project being organized by him, Richard Popkin, James Force, and the late Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, to study and publish Newton's theological material. I asked him whether he was not sending me into the shark-infested waters of highly competitive scholarship, and learned that in fact there were only a handful of scholars in the world who actively studied and published on Newton's theology. At the time the group consisted mainly of Popkin, Force, Dobbs, Frank Manuel, Kenneth Knoespel, and David Castillejo.