They came to their intellectual development in the period when Hobbes was formulating one of the most powerful and subtle types of materialism that has ever been presented. They were, too, contemporaries of Descartes, and they followed with intense interest the attempt of the great Frenchman to put philosophy in possession of a method as adequate for its problems as the method of geometry was for the mathematical sciences. None of the "Platonists" was possessed of the same rare quality of genius as either of these two great philosophers, but they saw with clear insight the full bearing of both systems. They heartily disapproved of Hobbes' materialism and shuddered at its nakedness. They were too much committed to the ideals of Humanism to be positive opponents of Descartes' rational formulation of all things outer and inner, but they never felt at home with the vast clock-like mechanism to which his system reduced the universe, and they set themselves, in contrast, to produce a religious philosophy which would guarantee freedom, would give wider scope for the inner life, would show the kinship of God and man and put morality and religion--to their mind for ever one and inseparable--on a foundation as immovable as the pillars of the universe. The first of this group, the pathbreaker of the movement, was Benjamin Whichcote, though it must not be forgotten that he had noble forerunners in John Hales, William Chillingworth, and Jeremy Taylor. The biographical details which have survived him are very limited. A great teacher's life is so largely interior and so devoid of outward events that there is usually not much to record.[7] He was descended from "an ancient and honourable family," and was born at Whichcote-Hall, in the parish of Stoke, the 11th of March, 1609. He was admitted in 1626 to Emmanuel College--"which was looked on from its first foundation as a Seminary of Puritans"--and was there under the tutorship of two great Puritan teachers. Dr. Anthony Tuckney and Thomas Hill, {292} both of whom were for a time associated with John Cotton, afterwards the famous preacher of colonial Boston. He was ordained both deacon and priest in 1636, was made Provost of King's College, Cambridge, in 1644, "went-out" Doctor of Divinity in 1649, and for twenty years gave the afternoon Lecture on Sundays at Trinity Church, Cambridge. At the Restoration he was deprived of the Provostship by order of the King, which brought his university career to an end. He was made curate of St. Anne's, Blackfriars, in 1662, and later received from the Crown the vicarage of St. Laurence Jewry, where he preached twice each week until his death in 1683.