John Webster (1610–1682), also known as Johannes Hyphastes, was an English cleric, physician and chemist with occult interests, a proponent of astrology and a sceptic about witchcraft.
[1][2][3] Webster studied under the Hungarian alchemist Johannes Huniades (János Bánfi-Hunyadi), who is known to have lectured at Gresham College.
He has been linked to Roger Brearley, the Grindletonian leader active at this period in Kildwick (three years earlier);[5] and classified as an Antinomian.
During the First English Civil War, Webster left his position as a teacher in Clitheroe and became a surgeon and army chaplain in the Parliamentarian forces.
[9] Webster preached with William Erbery on 12 October 1653 in a dispute with two London ministers at All Hallows, Lombard Street.
[15][16] The Academiarum Examen of 1654 made detailed proposals for the reform of the university curriculum; it was dedicated to General John Lambert, a highly placed officer of the New Model Army.
Excluding classical authors and Church Fathers, at first appearance they comprise the following: According to Frances Yates: In the heart of Puritan England, this Parliamentarian chaplain produces a work that is right in the Renaissance magico-scientific tradition, culminating in Dee and Fludd, and he thinks that this is what should be taught in the universities, together with Baconianism, which he sees as incomplete without such authors.
[22]A reply from the Oxford academics Seth Ward and John Wilkins, in Vindiciae Academiarum (1654) was used by them as an opportunity to defend a more moderate programme of updating, partly put in place already.
Ward and Wilkins put the case that Webster was ignorant of recent changes, and inconsistent in championing both Bacon and Fludd, whose methods were incompatible.
[23] Ward and Wilkins used the same publication to argue against others (William Dell and Thomas Hobbes) who had been attacking the old universities of Cambridge and Oxford.
[14] Daniel Georg Morhof criticised it as largely a compilation from German authors (Boyle was not mentioned); the views of Johann Pharamund Rhumelius were given at length.