GLANVILL, JOSEPH ( 1636-80). An English divine, born at Plymouth. He graduated at Exeter College, Oxford, in 1655, took the degree of M.A. at Lincoln College in 1658, and became chaplain•to Francis Rous, provost of Eton. After the Restoration he conformed, and in 1660 became rector of a little church at Wimbish, Essex, by appointment of his brother, a prominent London merchant. He became interested in the teachings of Henry More and the Cambridge Platonists, and was one of the early fellows of the Royal Society. At Wimbish he wrote his first and best known work, The Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661), an attack on the scholasticism of the Oxford School. It is chiefly interesting because it antici pates ITume's theory of causation, and because of a curious anticipation of the electric telegraph, in which he says: "To enter at the distance of the Indies by sympathetick contrivances may be aq natural to future times as to us is a literary correspondence." It also contains the story of the 'Scholar Gypsy' from which Matthew Arnold obtained the basis for his notable poem. He was
appointed rector of the Abbey Church at Bath in 1666, and chaplain in ordinary to Charles IT. in 1672. During the 'Popish Plot' excitement he wrote a spirited attack on the non-conformist sects, The Zealous and Impartial Protestant (published after his death in 1681). Among his voluminous works, written in a rather rhetorical style, besides those mentioned are: Lux Orientalis (1662), a defense of More's doctrine of the pre existence of souls; Scepsis Rcientifiea (1665; reprinted 1885), a revision of his first work with. additions; Philosophical Considerations, Touching Witches and Witchcraft (1666) ; Plus Ultra, or the Progress and .4 dra /icemen t of Knatrledge Since the Days of Aristotle( 1668) ; The Ways of Happi ness (1670) ; An Earnest Imitation to the Lord's Supper (1673); Essays on Several Important Subjects (1676), containing his remarkable "Anti-Fanatical Religion and Free Philosophy," in continuation of Bacon's New Atlantis: An Essay Concerning Preaching (1678).