Patrick, Symon. Jewish Hypocrisie, A Caveat to The Present Generation. Wherein is Shewn Both the False and the True Way ...

Description

Simon Patrick (1626-1707), bishop of Ely. "Patrick, so often taken to be the archetype of the latitudinarian clergyman, nevertheless stands out among his latitudinarian colleagues. Arguably the closest to the Cambridge Platonists in philosophy, he sought to harness their sense of spirituality within a traditional Anglican framework of scripture, tradition, and reason, keenly aware of the fragility of the boundary separating adoration from enthusiasm. This project is evident in his indefatigable practical ministry and throughout the devotional works for which he was famed. It also motivated his polemical works against those who rejected what he felt to be the most appropriate means of effecting a reconciliation with God.... The targets were those whose extremism threatened to distort the fabric of the true church as Patrick conceived it, antinomianism on the one side and Roman Catholicism on the other. He had produced sermons against what he saw as the Pharisaism of puritans in Cambridge in the 1650s, and he expanded this into a work titled The Jewish Hypocrisy (1660), which compared puritan precisionism with Jewish formalism."