A Collection of Several Philosophical Writings of Dr. Henry More

...them against the approval of his superiors. 21. That if the philosophy which he has applied to Moses’s text is true, it is a real restoration of the Mosaic Kabbalah original: "Mosaick Cabbala". More believed that the Book of Genesis contained a hidden philosophical tradition—a "Kabbalah"—that was compatible with rational science and Platonism..

1. Decorative drop cap T featuring floral scrolls and foliage. So that these writings, which you find bound up in one volume, may also appear to be held together by some common purpose, I thought it not inappropriate to say something by way of a general preface to them all. Therefore, if your curiosity makes you eager to ask what I have done in these new editions of my books, I am ready to inform you that I have taken the same liberty in this intellectual or theoretical garden of my own planting that men usually take in their natural ones: which is to plant or pull up, to transplant and graft original: "inoculate"; in 17th-century gardening, this referred to grafting a bud from one plant onto another, where and what they please. Therefore, if I have erased some things (which are very few), transposed others, and inserted others, I hope I shall seem harmful to no man in organizing and cultivating this philosophical plantation of mine according to my own disposition and liking.

2. But these are smaller matters, and hardly any part of what I was going to say. The great bond original: "Cement" that holds these various discourses together is one main design which they jointly aim for, and which, I think, is admittedly noble original: "generous" and important: namely, THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD, and through that, of TRUE HAPPINESS, so far as REASON can cut her way through those darknesses and difficulties she is burdened with in this life. Though these difficulties are many and great, I would misrepresent original: "belie" the sense of my own success if I were to call them insurmountable; also, if I were deprived of that sense of success, I would lose many pleasures and enjoyments of mind that I am now conscious of. Among these, none is as significant as that quiet reflection within myself regarding what real service might come original: "redound" to RELIGION from these labors of mine. For what greater satisfaction can there be to a rational spirit than to find himself able to appeal to the strictest rules of REASON and PHILOSOPHY to show that those doctrines of the EXISTENCE OF GOD and the IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL are true? And what greater support original: "Establishment" to RELIGION can there be than to discover these two grand PILLARS so firm and stable, even upon those very grounds that our own mental faculties naturally agree are true? This cannot help but bring much honor and reverence to the PRIESTHOOD and silence the mouths of shallow and profane WITS original: "Wits"; here meaning intellectuals or skeptics who used their cleverness to mock religion, who are so prone to look upon every PRIEST as either a FOOL or an IMPOSTER.

3. Nor would I be thought to limit the reasonableness of our religion to those two main points only, as if the rest were not reasonable too. For I believe the CHRISTIAN RELIGION is rational throughout, and I think I have proved it to be so in my Mystery of Godliness. This, I must confess, was the main—if not the only—purpose of my so long and anxious search into REASON and PHILOSOPHY; without this goal, I would have proven to be only a lazy and negligent inquirer into the nature of things. For to heap up a great deal of reading, ideas original: "Notions", and experiments without some such noble and important PURPOSE would have been, as I imagined, like making my mind or memory a shop of cheap trinkets original: "small-wares". But having this so eminent a goal in my view, and taking up that noble resolution of