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Ames, Ramus, and the Method of Puritan Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Keith L. Sprunger
Keith L. Sprunger
Affiliation:
Bethel College, North Newton, Kansas
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Extract

Theology, as many Puritans saw it, was a combination of sound doctrine, practical exhortation, and precise method. The Marrow of Sacred Divinity by William Ames, a great favorite in many seventeenth-century Puritan homes, owed much of its reputation to a blend of these ingredients of doctrine, practical divinity, and method. Although Puritan theologians wrote few systematic theologies except for creeds and catechisms, the Marrow is one example of theology from a scholarly Puritan perspective. The writings of Ames with their Congregational theories were most at home in Congregational New England, perhaps, but Puritans in England also read and studied Ames. William Ames, 1576–1633, was born in East Anglia and educated at Christ's College, Cambridge; but he lived for over twenty years in the Netherlands as a religious exile. Like his life, his theology combines English nonconformity and Continental Calvinism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 59 , Issue 2 , April 1966 , pp. 133 - 151
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1966

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References

1 It first appeared as Medulla theologiae (Franeker, 1623) and in many editions thereafter for the next thirty-five years. It was translated into English as the Marrow of Sacred Divinity, Drawne ovt of the holy Scriptures, and the Interpreters thereof, and brought into Method (London, 1638?). Material on Ames by Matthew Nethenus, Hugo Visscher, and Karl Reuter has recently been brought together and translated by Douglas Horton in William Ames (Harvard Divinity School Library, 1965).

2 Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana; Or, the Ecclesiastical History of New England, ed. Thomas Robbins (Hartford, 1853–55), I, 245.

3 Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory: or, a Sum of Practical Theology, and Cases of Conscience (1673), in The Practical Works of Richard Baxter (London, 1847), I, 478.

4 Marrow, 200.

5 Walter J. Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1958), 29–35.

6 Banosius, Theophilus, “Vita Petri Rami,” in Ramus, Commentariorum de Religione Christiana, Libri quatuor (Frankfurt, 1577)Google Scholar.

7 On the theology of Ramus see Paul Lobstein, Petrus Ramus als Theologe (Strassburg, 1878); Moltmann, Jürgen, “Zur Bedeutung des Petrus Ramus für Philosophic und Theologie im Calvinismus,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 68 (1957), 295–318Google Scholar.

8 Ong, Ramus, 30–31.

9 Ramus, Commentariorum de Religione, 3.

10 Ibid., 3.

11 Ibid., 6, 96.

12 Ibid., 96.

13 Ibid., 6.

14 Ong, Ramus, 41.

15 Moltmann, “Zur Bedeutung,” 304.

16 Charles Waddington, Ramus: sa vie, ses écrits et ses opinions (Paris, 1855), 356–60.

17 Ramus, “Pro Philosophica Parisiensis Academiae Disciplina,” in Ramus' Scholae in Liberates Artes (Basle, 1569), col. 1018.

18 Scholarum Metaphysicarum, in Scholae in Lib. Artes, col. 996.

19 Syntagma Logicvm. or, The Divine Logike (London, 1620), quoted in Wilbur S. Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500–1700 (New York, 1961), 229.

20 Ong, Ramus, 298; Moltmann, “Zur Bedeutung,“296.

21 Alexander Richardson, The Logicians School-Master: or, a Comment vpon Ramvs Logicke (London, 1629), 332.

22 Ibid., 331; Ames, Marrow, 200.

23 Richardson, 336.

24 Amandus Polanus, The Svbstanec [sic] of Christian Religion, 3rd ed. (London, 1600); John Wollebius, The Abridgment of Christian Divinitie, trans. Alexander Ross (London, 1650).

25 Ames, Marrow, “Briefe Premonition.“

26 Alexander Ross, “The Epistle Dedicatory,“in Wollebius, The Abridgment.

27 Karl Reuter, Wilhelm Amesius: der führende Theologe des erwachenden reformierten Pietismus (Neukirchen, 1940), 18.

28 Howell, Logic and Rhetoric, 211.

29 Mather, Magnalia, I, 336. The philosophical writings of Ames parallel Richardson's at many places.

30 Paul Dibon, L'enseignement philosophique dans les universités à l'époque précartésienne (1575–1650), vol. I of La philosophie néerlandaise au siècle d'or (Amsterdam, 1954), 152.

31 Philosophemata, printed in Vol. V of Ames' Opera (Amsterdam, 1658), contains the following treatises: “Technometria“; “Alia technometriae“; “Disputatio theologica adversus metaphysicam“; “Disputatio theologica de Perfectione SS. Scripturae“; “Demonstratio Logicae Verae“; “Theses Logicae.“

32 Ames, “Theses Logicae,“189.

33 “Demonstratio Logicae Verae,“141; cf. Richardson, 238–39.

34 “Technometria,“1.

35 Ibid., 11–20.

36 “Theses Logicae,“191.

37 “Technometria,“7–8, 15–16.

38 “Adversus metaphysicam,“86–87.

39 “Demonstratio Logicae Verae,“158.

40 Ames, An Analyticall Exposition of Both the Epistles of the Apostle Peter, in The Workes of the Reverend and Faithful Minister of Christ William Ames. … (London, 1643), 184.

41 Marrow, “Briefe Premonition.“

42 Ibid.

43 John Burgess, An Answer Reioyned to that Mvch Applauded Pamphlet of a Namelesse Author …. (London, 1631), 197.

44 Hugo Visscher, Guilielmus Amesius. Zijn Leven en Werken (Haarlem, 1894), 88–89; Reuter, Wilhelm Amesius, 40–43.

45 Ames, “Theses Logicae,“174.

46 Marrow, “Briefe Premonition.“

47 Ibid., 4.

48 Ibid., 4.

49 Samuel Eliot Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1936), I, 267; Edwin Oviatt, The Beginnings of Yale (1701–1726) (New Haven, 1916), 196–200; Herbert McLachlan, English Education under the Test Acts (Manchester, 1931), 64, 303.

50 Marrow, 4. Reuter referred to an “empirische Prinzip“of the Christian life in Ames' theology, Wilhelm Amesius, 30–35.

51 Marrow, 3.

52 Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century, reissue (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1963), 142, 173–74.

53 Marrow, 4.

54 “Paraenesis ad Studiosos Theologiae,“in Ames, Opera, vol. II, after De conscientia.

55 Miller, Seventeenth Century, 95–96.

56 “To the Reader,“in James Fitch, The First Principles of the Doctrine of Christ (Boston, 1679).

57 Miller, Seventeenth Century, 89–108.

58 Mather, Magnalia, I, 336.

59 Marshall M. Knappen, Tudor Puritanism (Chicago, 1939), 367–78.

60 Howell, Logic and Rhetoric, 206–07, 219–20.

61 The Works of John Milton, Columbia Edition, 18 vols. (New York, 1931–38), XIV, 23. Although written by Milton, De doctrina Christiana was not published until 1825.

62 Helen Darbishire, The Early Lives of Milton (London, 1932), 61.

63 John Norton, A Brief Catechism Concerning the Doctrine of Godliness, of Living unto God (Boston, 1660); Samuel Stone, A Short Catechism Drawn out of the Word of God (Boston, 1684).

64 Boston, 1679, 1.

65 Boston, 1726, 33, 559.

66 Mather, Magnalia, I, 245.