Religious Thought

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31500, 14 October 1967, Page 4

Religious Thought

From Puritanism to the Age of Reason. By G. R. Cragg Cambridge University Press. 247 pp. The complexion of religious thought changes in each century and every period hes its distinctive quality. But the forty years following the Restoration were marked, Dr. Cragg asserts, by changes of more than usual mj rtaace. When Charles II came to throne the representatives of Anglicanism had dear affinities with the past By the end of the century the men who were moulding religious thought were indebted to Newton and Locke for their undenstanding of the world and man's relation to it Their outlook was that ef the mod-

ern age. The issues they discussed—the place of reason, the character of morality, the limits of authority, the nature of the universe, the reign of law—are still debated and to much the same spirit Dr. Cragg discusses the eclipse of Calvinism, the Cambridge Platonlsts, Toland and the rise of Deism, the relationship between the Church id Civil power snd the question of religious toleration.

This important study of the changes to religious thought in the Chun* of England in the latter half of the seventeenth century has now been reprinted to a paperback edition. In its original form it wes awarded the Archbishop Creamer Prize for 1945.