CUDWORTH, RALPH. - English philosopher and (latitudinarian) theologian, b. at Aller (Somersetshire) in 1617, d. 26 July 1688 at Cambridge. He studied and taught at Cambridge, a man of vast erudition, most devoted to the Christian religion, and the most celebrated figure of the Cambridge Platonist school.
His *A Discourse concerning the true Notion of the Lord's Supper* (London 1642) had wide resonance; in it, basing himself on 1 Cor 10:14-22, he maintained that the Lord’s Supper is not a sacrifice but a symbolic banquet. In *The Union of Christ and Church a Shadou* (ibid. 1642) he defended the view that marriage was instituted by God as a type of the union between Christ and the Church. The work, however, that absorbed all of Cudworth’s energies was *The true Intellectual System of the Universe*, a grand dam raised against the inroads of atheism. He published only *The first part*, wherein all the reason and philosophy of atheism is confuted and its impossibility demonstrated (ibid. 1678). His theory of the “plastic nature” (Appendix, ch. 3) and his conception of the Trinity (ch. 4) provoked numerous discussions. He was placed on the Index by decree of 13 April 1739. The other two parts were to treat of the eternity and immutability of good and evil and of free will. Cudworth left numerous manuscripts on these subjects. They were published posthumously: *A treatise concerning eternal and immutable Morality* (Chandler 1731) and *A Treatise of the Freewill* (Allen 1838).