On Language, Theology, and Utopia

Francis Lodwick FRS (1619-94) was a prosperous merchant, bibliophile, writer, thinker, and member of the Royal Society. He wrote extensively on language, religion, and experimental philosophy, most of it too controversial to be safely published during his lifetime. This edition includes the first publication of his unorthodox religious works alongside groundbreaking writings on language. Following an extensive introduction by the editors the book is divided into three parts. Part One includes A Common Writing (1647), the first English attempt at an artificial language, and the equally pioneering phonetic alphabet set out in An Essay Towards an Universal Alphabet (1686). Part Two contains a series of linked short treatises on the nature of religion and divine revelation, including 'Of the Word of God' and 'Of the Use of Reason in Religion', in which Lodwickargues for a new understanding of the Bible, advocates a rational approach to divine worship, and seeks to reinterpret received religion for an age of reason. The final part of the book contains his unpublished utopian fiction, A Country Not Named: here he creates a world to express his most firmly-held opinions onlanguage and religion, and in which his utopians found a church that bans the Bible. The book gives new insights into the religious aspects of the scientific revolution and throws fresh light on the early modern frame of mind. It is aimed at intellectual and cultural historians, historians of science and linguistics, and literary scholars - indeed, at all those interested in the interplay of ideas, language, and religion in seventeenth-century England

The signal achievement of this impeccably-edited volume is to suggest new ways of understanding the relationships in the 17th century between natural philosophy and theology, orthodoxy and heterodoxy, print and manuscript, public and private., The inclusion of all of Lodwick's work, in its various stages of development, valuably demonstrates the evolution of burgeoning Enlightenment thought in a relatively unknown writer., This is a remarkable and very welcome volume ... Technically, the edition is of a high standard. The text and apparatus are presented separately, with both commentary and textual notes at the end of the book, and it soon becomes intuitive to the user to flick backwards and forwards between the two ... the finishing touch is provided by a section of eight plates in full colour, most of them of manuscripts, which gives a fine sense of the material on which the volume is based. In all, this is a splendid book.

Felicity Henderson manages history of science events and exhibitions at the Royal Society. Previously she was based at King's College London, Cambridge University, where she was Munby Fellow in Bibliography, and Monash University, Melbourne. She works on seventeenth century intellectual history and manuscript culture. William Poole is Galsworthy Fellow and Tutor in English of New College, Oxford. He was formerly a Research Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge. He works on seventeenth-century textual scholarship and intellectual history. He has published many articles on aspects of literary, scientific, and intellectual history, and has edited various linguistic, theological, and bibliographical manuscripts from the period.