1. Ralph Cudworth was an English Anglican clergyman, Christian Hebraist, classicist, theologian and philosopher, and a leading figure among the Cambridge Platonists who became 11th Regius Professor of Hebrew, 26th Master of Clare Hall, and 14th Master of Christ's College.
Ralph Cudworth was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Divinity in 1603.
Ralph Cudworth edited Perkins's Commentary on St Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, with a dedication to Robert, 3rd Lord Rich, adding a commentary of his own with dedication to Sir Bassingbourn Gawdy.
Ralph Cudworth then applied for the rectorate of Aller, Somerset and, resigning his fellowship, was appointed to it in 1610.
Ralph Cudworth Snr was appointed as one of James I's chaplains.
Ralph Cudworth continued to study, working on a complete survey of Case-Divinity, The Cases of Conscience in Family, Church and Commonwealth while suffering from the agueish climate at Aller.
Ralph Cudworth was awarded the degree of Doctor of Divinity, and was among the dedicatees of Richard Bernard's 1621 edition of The Faithfull Shepherd.
Ralph Cudworth Snr died at Aller declaring a nuncupative will before Anthony Earbury and Dame Margaret Wroth.
The second son, and third of five children, Ralph Cudworth was born at Aller, Somerset, where he was baptised.
Dr Stoughton paid careful attention to his stepchildren's education, which Ralph Cudworth later described as a "diet of Calvinism".
Letters, to Stoughton, by both brothers James and Ralph Cudworth make this plain; and, when Ralph matriculated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, Stoughton thought him "as wel grounded in Scho[o]l-Learning as any Boy of his Age that went to the University".
Mary Machell Ralph Cudworth Stoughton died during summer 1634, and Dr Stoughton married a daughter of John Browne of Frampton and Dorchester.
From a family background embedded in the early nonconformity and a diligent student, Ralph Cudworth was admitted to his father's old college, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, matriculated, and graduated.
Ralph Cudworth published a tract entitled The Union of Christ and the Church, in a Shadow, and another, A Discourse concerning the True Notion of the Lord's Supper, in which his readings of Karaite manuscripts were influential.
In 1645, Thomas Paske had been ejected as Master of Clare Hall for his Anglican allegiances, and Ralph Cudworth was selected as his successor, as 26th Master.
Ralph Cudworth attained the degree of Bachelor of Divinity, and preached a sermon before the House of Commons of England, which was later published with a Letter of Dedication to the House.
Ralph Cudworth's appointment coincided with his marriage to Damaris, daughter of Matthew Cradock, first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company.
Ralph Cudworth emerged as a central figure among that circle of theologians and philosophers known as the Cambridge Platonists, who were in sympathy with the Commonwealth: during the later 1650s, Ralph Cudworth was consulted by John Thurloe, Oliver Cromwell's Secretary to the Council of State, with regard to certain university and government appointments and various other matters.
Ralph Cudworth was appointed Vicar of Great Wilbraham, and Rector of Toft, Cambridgeshire Ely diocese, but surrendered these livings when he was presented, by Dr Gilbert Sheldon, Bishop of London, to the Hertfordshire Rectory of Ashwell.
Ralph Cudworth was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1662.
In 1665, Ralph Cudworth almost quarrelled with his fellow-Platonist, Henry More, because of the latter's composition of an ethical work which Ralph Cudworth feared would interfere with his own long-contemplated treatise on the same subject.
Ralph Cudworth was a member of the Cambridge Platonists, a group of English seventeenth-century thinkers associated with the University of Cambridge who were stimulated by Plato's teachings but were aware of and influenced by Descartes, Hobbes, Bacon, Boyle and Spinoza.
Ralph Cudworth was stimulated by the Cartesian idea of the mind as self-consciousness to see God as consciousness.
All of the atheistic approaches posited nature as unconscious, which for Ralph Cudworth was ontologically unsupportable, as a principle that was supposed to be the ultimate source of life and meaning could only be itself self-conscious and knowledgeable, that is, rational, otherwise creation or nature degenerates into inert matter set in motion by random external forces.
Ralph Cudworth saw nature as a vegetative power endowed with plastic and spermatic forces, but one with Mind, or a self-conscious knowledge.
The essence of atheism for Ralph Cudworth was the view that matter was self-active and self-sufficient, whereas for Ralph Cudworth the plastic power was unsentient and under the direct control of the universal Mind or Logos.
Ralph Cudworth had the idea of a general plastic nature of the world, containing natural laws to keep all of nature, inert and vital in orderly motion, and particular plastic natures in particular entities, which serve as 'Inward Principles' of growth and motion, but ascribes it to the Platonic tradition:.
Ralph Cudworth challenged Hobbesian determinism in arguing that will is not distinct from reason, but a power to act that is internal, and therefore, the voluntary will function involves self-determination, not external compulsion, though we have the power to act either in accordance with God's will or not.
Ralph Cudworth's 'hegemonikon' is a function within the soul that combines the higher functions of the soul on the one hand with the lower animal functions, and constitutes the whole person, thus bridging the Cartesian dualism of body and soul or psyche and soma.
Thomas Reid and his "Common Sense" philosophy, was influenced by Ralph Cudworth, taking his influence into the Scottish Enlightenment.
Ralph Cudworth's works included The Union of Christ and the Church, in a Shadow ; A Sermon preached before the House of Commons ; and A Discourse concerning the True Notion of the Lord's Supper.
In 1678, Ralph Cudworth published The True Intellectual System of the Universe: the first part, wherein all the reason and philosophy of atheism is confuted and its impossibility demonstrated, which had been given an Imprimatur for publication.
Ralph Cudworth criticizes two main forms of materialistic atheism: the atomic ; and the hylozoic.
Atomic atheism, to which Ralph Cudworth devotes the larger part of the work, is described as arising from the combination of two principles, neither of which is, individually, atheistic.
Ralph Cudworth holds that theistic atomism was taught by Pythagoras, Empedocles and many other ancient philosophers, and was only perverted to atheism by Democritus.
Ralph Cudworth purposed to build a fortress which should protect Christianity against all dangerous theories of the universe, ancient or modern.
Ralph Cudworth dwelt on the action of law, rejected the continuous exercise of miraculous intervention, pointed out the fact that in the natural world there are "errors" and "bungles" and argued vigorously in favor of the origin and maintenance of the universe as a slow and gradual development of Nature in obedience to an inward principle.