Religious conventions and science in the early Restoration
Reformation and ‘Israel’ in Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society (1667)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8395197 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John Morgan (0000-0001-9224-5483, Toronto Metropolitan University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 42 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 321-344 |
| Publication date | 2009-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The British Journal for the History of Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-0874 • E-ISSN: 1474-001X |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0007087409002179 |
| OpenAlex | W2147912074 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 23 |
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
Art · Literature · Monarchy · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Royalist · Sociology · Sprat · State (computer science · Theology · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Philosophy and Science · History · Law · Philosophy · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity
Totius in Verba
Some early reactions to the Royal Society
Making Certain
The new experimental philosophy
Business as Usual? The Immediate Reception of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity
Richard Hooker's Reputation
Latitudinarianism’ and the Restoration Church
Methodology and Apologetics
John Locke and Anglican Royalism
Reason and Religion
The Anglican Origins of Modern Science
"Rational Religion" in Restoration England
In the Warehouse
Who was Then the Gentleman
Restoration, Reformation and the Origins of the Royal Society
Latitudinarianism and Science in Seventeenth-Century England
Miracles, Experiments, and the Ordinary Course of Nature
Federal Theology and the 'National Covenant
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |