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Ralph Cudworth Quotes

Ralph Cudworth was a famed English Christian Hebraist, classicist, theologian and philosopher, and a leading figure among the Cambridge Platonists. From a family background embedded in the early nonconformist environment of Emmanuel College in the University of Cambridge, where he studied, he became Regius Professor of Hebrew 1645–88, Master of Clare Hall 1645–54 and Master of Christ's College 1654–88. His great work, entitled The True Intellectual System of the Universe, was published in 1678. He was a leading opponent of Thomas Hobbes's political and philosophical views.

✵ 1617 – 26. June 1688
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Ralph Cudworth: 5   quotes 0   likes

Famous Ralph Cudworth Quotes

“The best assurance any one can have of his interest in God, is doubtless the conformity of his soul to Him. When our heart is once turned into a conformity with the mind of God. when we feel our will conformed to His will, we shall then presently perceive a spirit of adoption within ourselves, teaching us to say, "Abba, Father."”

Ralph Cudworth

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 16.

“If intellection and knowledge were mere passion from without, or the bare reception of extraneous and adventitious forms, then no reason could be given at all why a mirror or looking-glass should not understand; whereas it cannot so much as sensibly perceive those images which it receives and reflects to us.”

Ralph Cudworth

Source: Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (1731), Ch. 1, sct. 3

“The true knowledge or science which exists nowhere but in the mind itself, has no other entity at all besides intelligibility; and therefore whatsoever is clearly intelligible, is absolutely true.”

Ralph Cudworth

Source: Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (1731), Ch. 5, sct. 7

“Knowledge is not a passion from without the mind, but an active exertion of the inward strength, vigour and power of the mind, displaying itself from within.”

Ralph Cudworth

Source: Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (1731), Ch. 1, sct. 1

“Truth is the most unbending and uncompliable, the most necessary, firm, immutable, and adamantine thing in the world.”

Ralph Cudworth

Source: Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (1731), Ch. 5, sct. 3

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