RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Moraia More
MORE, HENRY: One of the most distinguished members of the school of Cambridge Platonists (q.v.); b. at Grantham (23 m. s.s.w. of Lincoln), Lincolnshire, 1614; d. at Cambridge Sept. 1, 1687. He was educated at Eton and Christ's College, Cambridge (B.A., 1635; M.A., 1639) and was elected to a fellowship, being ordained about the same time. He passed practically the entire remainder of his life within the walls of his college, refusing all preferment except a prebend at Gloucester, which he held for a short time in 1676, though three collegiate headships, the deanery of St. Patrick's, Dublin, and two bishoprics were offered to him. He was strongly attached to the cause of Church and king, even in the period of parliamentary supremacy, and was an indefatigable and voluminous author. His works, by their mystical character, did not commend themselves to the practical and skeptical eighteenth century; but John Wesley praised them highly, and Coleridge declared that they contained more original, enlarged, and elevating views of the Christian dispensation than he had met with in any other single volume. His best-known book is the Divine Dialogues, 1668, in which various speakers discuss the attributes and providence of God. This book contains in a condensed form most of his characteristic views in philosophy and religion. In his method and the basis of his thought he occupies the common ground of the Cambridge school. He was a vigorous advocate of the rights of reason, and the main scope of his studies was to demonstrate the rationality of the Christian religion. But while reason was to him the only sure foundation of divine truth, he advocated strongly the recognition of a higher principle " more noble and inward than reason itself," to which he gives the name of " divine sagacity." The emphasis laid by him upon the fact that in order to apprehend higher divine truth it must be approached with a right disposition as well as a free and unprejudiced intellect became the key-note of his whole system. With such a rational basis for bis thought, it is surprising that he developed so strong an element of mysticism and even of credulity. He was a firm believer in the current tales of witchcraft and recounts at great length stories of ghosts and apparitions, setting them forth as attestations of the supernatural. In his Antidote against Atheism, 1652, the first and second books present the theistic argument in an acute and logical manner, while the third is entirely devoted to tales of this kind. His tendency to mystical extravagance partially explains why, after being at first an ardent admirer of Descartes, he came later to oppose him even with bitterness, and the Manual of Metaphysics, 1671, was expressly designed to refute Cartesianism. His aim, and that of the Cambridge philosophy in general, was the vindication of a true sphere of spiritual being; the proof and definition of incorporeal substances seems to him the sole object of metaphysics. His Manual of Ethics, 1666, is the clearest and most compact of his works. In it he defines morality as " the art of living well and happily "j goodness and happiness are to him merely different aspects of the highest law of our being, or what the older moralists spoke of as the summum
bonum (see Good, the Highest). Moral goodness is simple and absolute; right reason is the judge of its nature, essence, and truth, but its attractiveness and beauty are felt by a certain capacity, the " boniform faculty," not unlike the " moral sense " of later writers.
Bibliography: R. Ward, The Life of . . Dr. H. More, London, 1710; J. Tulloch, Rational Theology . . . in England in the 17th Century, ii. 303-409, Edinburgh, 1872; DNB, xxxviii. 421-423.
MORE, SIR THOMAS: Lord chancellor of England, the foremost English representative of the learning and aspirations of the earlier Renaissance, was born in Milk Street, Cheapside, London, Feb. 7, 1478; he was executed on Tower Hill, London, July 6, 1535. His father, Sir John More, a lawyer, was a judge, and his maternal grand- Life, father, Thomas Graunger, was sheriff of London. More attended St. Anthony's School in Threadneedle Street and in 1491 became a member of the household of John Morton (q.v.), archbishop of Canterbury and chancellor, on whose recommendation he was sent to Oxford, entering Canterbury Hall (afterward absorbed in Christ Church) about 1492. He was not a plodding scholar, but he learned to read Greek readily and to write good Latin; he also studied French, mathematics, and history and mastered the viol and the flute. After about two years, however, he was back in London studying law in accordance with his father's wish. He was speedily called to the bar, became a highly esteemed lecturer on law at Furnival's Inn, and later ranked among the first lawyers of England. Between 1499 and 1503 he passed through a period of strong religious emotion and contemplated becoming a priest. He adopted a severely ascetic life and even thought of joining the Franciscans. At this time he gave lectures on Augustine's " City of God " in the church of St. Lawrence Jewry, of which his former Oxford tutor, William Grocyn, was rector.
Ever afterward More remained abstemious in life and wore sackcloth next to his skin. In 1503, however, he returned with ardor to his profession and entered the field of politics. He became member of parliament (1504), undersheriff of London (1510), envoy to Flanders to negotiate in favor of English commerce (1515) and to Calais to arrange disputes with France (1516), master of requests (i.e., examiner of petitions presented to the king on his progresses through the country) and privy councilor (1518), subtreasurer to the king (1521), speaker of the house of commons (1523), high steward of Cambridge University and chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster (1525), and succeeded Wolsey as lord chancellor in 1529. He was knighted in 1521. Not favoring the divorce of Catharine of Aragon and disapproving of ecclesiastical changes desired by the king, he resigned as chancellor in May, 1532. For a year and a half he lived in retirement mainly engaged in religious controversy with Tyndale and Frith. But he was too notable a man to be suffered to maintain even a tacit opposition to the royal wishes and policy. He barely escaped conviction in connection with the proceedings against the Holy Maid of Kent (see Bar-
More Morgan