Ralph, a very learned philosopher and divine of the seventeenth century, was born at Aller, in Somersetshire, in 1617, and studied at Cambridge, where he distinguished himself as a tutor, and had as a pupil the celebrated Mr. afterwards Sir William Temple. In 1641 he was presented to the rectory of North Cadbury, in Somersetshire; and the year following published a discourse concerning the true nature of the Lord's Supper, which Bochart, Spencer, Selden, and other eminent writers have quoted with great commendation. In January 1657, he was one of the persons nominated by a committee of the parliament to be consulted about the English translation of the Bible. In 1678 he published his True Intellectual System of the Universe, a work which at the time met with great opposition. He likewise published a treatise entitled Deus Justificatus, or the divine goodness vindicated against the assertions of absolute and unconditional reprobation. He embraced the mechanical or corpuscular philosophy; but with regard to the Deity, spirits, genii, and ideas, he principally followed the Platonists. He died at Cambridge in 1688. It has been justly observed, that it is not easy to meet with a greater storehouse of ancient learning than the Intellectual System; and various writers have been indebted to it for an appearance of erudition which they might not otherwise have been able to assume. That Dr Cudworth was fanciful in some of his opinions, and that he was too devoted a follower of Plato and his successors, will scarcely be denied even by those who are most sensible of his general merit. But the reflections which have Cudworth been cast upon this great writer by bigoted writers are altogether contemptible. It is often the lot of distinguished merit to be thus unworthily treated. Lord Shaftesbury speaking on this subject, has borne honourable testimony to the merits of Dr Cudworth. "You know," says his lordship, "the common fate of those who dare to appear fair authors. What was that pious and learned man's case who wrote the Intellectual System of the Universe? I confess it was pleasant enough to consider that, though the whole world were not less satisfied with his capacity and learning than with his sincerity in the cause of Deity; yet he was accused of giving the upper hand to the atheists, for having only stated their reasons, and those of their adversaries, fairly together." "Though his life," says Sir James Macintosh, "was devoted to the assertion of divine Providence, and though his philosophy was imbued with the religious spirit of Platonism, yet he had placed Christianity too purely in the love of God and man to be considered as having much regard for those controversies about rites and opinions with which zealots disturb the world. They represented him as having fallen into the same heresy as Milton and Clarke; and some of them even charged him with atheism, for no other reason than that he was not afraid to state the atheistic difficulties in their fullest force. As blind anger heaps inconsistent accusations on each other, they called him an Arian, a Socinian, or a deist. The courtiers of Charles II., who were delighted with every part of Hobbes but his integrity, did their utmost to decry his antagonist." (See Dissertation Second, p. 223, where the reader will find at once the ablest and most eloquent view of the peculiar doctrines and characteristic attributes of this profound thinker and truly original writer, which is perhaps to be found in the English language). But the slanders of fierce polemics and profligate courtiers are now only remembered to be detested or despised; and posterity has done justice alike to the traducers and the traduced. It is observed by Dr Birch that Dr Cudworth's Intellectual System of the Universe has raised him a reputation to which nothing can add but the publication of his other writings still extant in manuscript in the British Museum. That these writings are valuable cannot possibly be doubted. It is known, indeed, that they display great compass of sentiment and a vast extent of learning; nevertheless, from their bulk, the abstruseness of the subjects of which they treat, and the revolutions of literary taste and opinion, it is pretty certain that the publication of them would not be successful in the present age. We may add, that the Intellectual System was translated into Latin by Mosheim, and published at Jena in 1733, one volume folio, with a life of Cudworth and notes. Dr Cudworth's daughter Damaris, who married Sir Francis Masham of Oates, in Essex, was a lady of genius and learning. She had a great friendship for Mr Locke, who resided several years at her house at Oates; and she had the honour to nurse the infirmities and to watch the last breath of that great philosopher, who had been opposed to her father in speculative philosophy, but who heartily agreed with him in the love of truth, liberty, and virtue.

Dr Cudworth, as already stated, left several manuscripts, which seem to be a continuation of his Intellectual System, of which he gave the world only the first part. One of these was published by Chandler, bishop of Durham, in 1731, 8vo, under the title of a Treatise on Eternal and Immutable Morality; a work levelled against the writings of Hobbes and others, who had revived the exploded opinions of Protagoras, by which the essential and eternal difference of moral good and evil, justice and injustice, was destroyed, and these attributes were considered as arbitrary productions of divine and human will. Dr Cudworth also left several other manuscripts, entitled,

1. A Discourse of Moral Good and Evil; 2. Another Book of Morality, in which Hobbes's philosophy is explained; 3. A Discourse of Liberty and Necessity, in which the grounds of the atheistical philosophy are confuted, and morality vindicated and explained; 4. Another book De Libero Arbitrio; 5. Upon Daniel's Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks, in which all the interpretations of the Jews are considered and refuted, with several of some learned Christians; 6. Of the Verity of the Christian Religion against the Jews; 7. A Discourse of the Creation of the World and the Immortality of the Soul; 8. Hebrew Learning; and 9. An Explanation of Hobbes's notion of God, and of the extension of Spirits. These manuscripts, after passing through various hands, and being exposed to many dangers, are now safely lodged in that noble repository the British Museum.