The Proleptic Principles of Samuel Parker

The prolific English divine Samuel Parker (1640–1688) is best known for his works on theology and politics and for his blistering attacks on non-conformity, but was also an early member of the Royal Society who wrote extensively on natural philosophy and theology. My aim in this paper is to highlight a unifying element in this diverse corpus. First, I show how Parker promoted the epistemology and experimental methods of the nascent Royal Society in several early works, where he adopted a weak dispositional nativism rooted in an Epicurean theory of knowledge and mind not unlike the theory advanced by Gassendi. Secondly, I show how, in later polemics against non-conformism and puritanism, Parker repurposed this weak dispositional nativism for his theological and political polemics.