Chapter 9 “The Sacred Circle of All-Being”: Cusanus, Lord Brooke, and Peter Sterry
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This chapter reveals the dependence of the Cambridge Platonist, Peter Sterry on Cusanus’ perspectivalism. Sterry’s first employer, Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke, a prominent Member of Parliament and general during the English Civil War, showed his support for universal reform in his treatise The Nature of Truth (1641). Brooke, who was among the sponsors of Jan Amos Comenius in his voyage to England, very likely wrote this highly Platonic treatise with Sterry’s aid. Brooke uses the logic of coincidence to form his central argument that all truths, even the contradiction of “Esse and Non-Esse,” are in reality unified in the ultimate Truth that descends from God. In his writings Sterry refers explicitly to Cusanus, making reference to De docta ignorantia and De coniecturis, as well as betraying a knowledge of De visione Dei and Idiota de mente. Like Cusanus, Sterry argues that only the “higher” kinds of intellection, such as the divine and angelic intellects, are set above the “wall of Paradise” as Cusanus describes it in De visione dei. Sterry appeals to Cusanus’ Trinitarian names (Unity, Equality, and Union) to explains his own understanding of the “arithmetical Trinity.” He promotes this “glass” of the Trinity as the proper lens for viewing all of reality. For Brooke and Sterry, the Cusan logic of coincidence initiates a conversion of perspective as it persuades the soul to agree, “Ne te quaesiveris extra.” Most importantly, the acceptance of coincidence provides for a broader sense of tolerance and freedom in the individual as well as society as it limits human ambition, specifically the quest for absolute certainty in matters of religion and politics. Thus, Brooke and Sterry represent two prominent and influential proponents of the idea of “coincidence” as the means to universal reform and peace in seventeenth-century England.