Editing William Ames

{{Short description|English Puritan minister (1576–1633)}}
{{For|the Quaker|William Ames (Quaker)}}
{{Use British English|date=August 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=November 2023}}
[[File:William Ames.jpg|thumb|right|William Ames, theologian (1576–1633)]]
'''William Ames''' ({{IPAc-en|eɪ|m|z}}; [[Latin]]: ''Guilielmus Amesius''; 1576{{snd}}14 November 1633<ref>{{Britannica|20448|William Ames}}</ref>) was an English [[Puritan]] minister, philosopher, and controversialist.  He spent much time in the Netherlands, and is noted for his involvement in the controversy between the [[Calvinism|Calvinists]] and the [[Arminianism|Arminians]].

==Early life and education==
Ames was born at [[Ipswich]], and was brought up by a maternal uncle, Robert Snelling of [[Boxford, Suffolk|Boxford]]. He was educated at the local grammar school and from 1594 at [[Christ's College, Cambridge]].<ref>{{acad|id=AMS593W|name=Ames, William}}</ref> He was considerably influenced by his tutor at Christ's, [[William Perkins (Puritan)|William Perkins]], and by his successor [[Paul Bayne]]. Ames graduated BA in 1598 and [[Master of Arts|MA]] in 1601, and was chosen for a [[fellow]]ship in Christ's College.<ref>Kelly M. Kapic, Randall C. Gleason, ''The Devoted Life: An Invitation to the Puritan Classics'' (2004), p. 53.</ref>{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=850}}

He was popular in the university, and in his own college. One of Ames's sermons became historical in the [[Puritan]] controversies. It was delivered in the university [[Church of St Mary the Great, Cambridge]] on 21 December 1609, and in it he rebuked sharply "lusory lotts" and the "heathenish debauchery" of the students during the [[Twelve Days of Christmas]].{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=850}}

A partisan election, however, had led to the mastership at Christ's going to [[Valentine Carey]]. He quarrelled with Ames for disapproving of the [[surplice]] and other outward symbols. Ames's vehemence led to his being summoned before the [[Vice-Chancellor]], who suspended him "from the exercise of his [[ecclesiastical]] function and from all degrees taken or to be taken."<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=66653|title=The colleges and halls: Christ's &#124; British History Online}}</ref><ref>Margo Todd, ''Providence, Chance and the New Science in Early Stuart Cambridge'', The Historical Journal, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Sep. 1986), pp. 697–711.</ref>{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=850}}

==Ministry in Holland==
He left Cambridge, and was offered a lecturer position at [[Colchester]], but [[George Abbot (Archbishop of Canterbury)|George Abbot]], the [[Bishop of London]], went against the wishes of the local corporation, and refused to grant institution and induction.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=21980|title=Tudor and Stuart Colchester: Religious life &#124; British History Online}}</ref> Similar rebuffs awaited him elsewhere, and he travelled with [[Robert Parker (minister)|Robert Parker]] to the [[Netherlands]], helped by English merchants who wished him to controvert the supporters of the English church in [[Leiden]]. At [[Rotterdam]], he debated with Grevinchovius ([[Nicholas Grevinckhoven]], died 1632), minister of the [[Arminian]] party, with reasoning from ''[[Philippians]]'' ii. 13, "It is God that worketh in us both to will and to do."
This dispute made his name in the Netherlands.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=850}}

Subsequently, Ames entered into a controversy in print with Grevinchovius on [[universal redemption]] and election, and [[cognate]] problems. He brought together all he had maintained in his ''Coronis ad Collationem Hagiensem'' (A Finishing Touch to the Hague Conference)<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.apuritansmind.com/William%20Ames/WilliamAmes.htm |title=William Ames - Main Page |access-date=1 November 2008 |archive-date=6 October 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081006110323/http://www.apuritansmind.com/William%20Ames/WilliamAmes.htm |url-status=dead }}</ref>—his major book. At Leiden, Ames became intimate with [[Hugh Goodyear]], pastor of the English church there. He was sent for to [[The Hague]] by [[Sir Horatio Vere]], the English governor of [[Brielle|Brill]], who appointed him a minister in the army of the states-general, and of the English soldiers in their service. He married a daughter of [[John Burges]], who was Vere's chaplain, and, on his father-in-law's return to England, succeeded to his place.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=850}}

It was at this time he began his controversy with [[Simon Episcopius]], who, in attacking the ''Coronis'', railed against the author as having been "a disturber of the public peace in his native country, so that the English magistrates had banished him thence; and now, by his late printed ''Coronis'', he was raising new disturbances in the peaceable Netherlands." Episcopius was rebutted by Goodyear,{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=850}} who became a defender of Ames against the [[Remonstrants]], and later provided Nethenus with material for his biography of Ames.<ref>Keith L. Sprunger, ''Dutch Puritanism: A History of English and Scottish Churches of the Netherlands in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries'' (1982), p. 133.</ref>

The ''Coronis'' had been primarily prepared for the [[Synod of Dort]], which sat from 13 November 1618 until 9 May 1619. At this synod the position of Ames was anomalous. The [[High Church]] party in England had induced Vere to dismiss him from the [[chaplaincy]]; but he was still held in reverence. It was arranged he should attend the synod, and he was retained by the [[Calvinist]] party at four [[Dutch gulden|florins]] a day to watch the proceedings.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=850}} He was adviser to [[Johannes Bogerman]], the synod's president.<ref>W. B. Patterson, ''King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom'' (1997), p. 279.</ref>

==Academic==

A proposal to make him principal of a [[theological]] college at Leiden was frustrated by [[Archbishop George Abbot|Archbishop Abbot]]; and when later invited by the state of [[Friesland]] to a professoriate at [[Franeker]], the opposition was renewed, but this time abortively. 
He was installed at Franeker on 7 May 1622 and delivered a discourse on the occasion on ''[[Urim and Thummim]]''. 
He brought renown to Franeker as professor, preacher, pastor and theological writer;{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|pp=850–851}} one student of the period influenced by Ames was [[Johannes Cocceius]].<ref>Jan Rohls, ''Reformed Confessions: Theology from Zurich to Barmen'' (1998 translation), p. 25.</ref> 
Another student was [[Nathaniel Eaton]], later of [[Harvard College]].<ref>Francis J. Bremer, Tom Webster, ''Puritans and Puritanism in Europe and America: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia'' (2006), p. 83.</ref>

He prepared his ''Medulla Theologiae'' (The Marrow of Theology), a manual of Calvinistic doctrine, for his students. Ames was much influenced in terms of method by [[Ramism]], and opposed the residual teaching of [[Aristotle]].<ref>Willem Frijhoff, Marijke Spies, ''Dutch Culture in a European Perspective'' (2004), p. 286-7.</ref> His ''De Conscientia, ejus Jure et Casibus'' (1632), an attempt to bring Christian ethics into clear relation with particular cases of conduct and of conscience, was a new thing in [[Protestantism]].{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=851}}

==Move to Rotterdam==
Having continued twelve years at Franeker (where he was [[Rector (ecclesiastical)|rector]] in 1626), his health gave way, and he contemplated a move to [[New England]]. But another door was opened for him, with an invitation to Rotterdam. There he prepared his ''Fresh Suit against Ceremonies''—the book which made [[Richard Baxter]] a [[Nonconformist (Protestantism)|Nonconformist]]. It sums up the issues between the Puritan school and that of [[Richard Hooker]], and was [[Posthumous work|posthumously]] published.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=851}}

Having caught a cold from a flood which inundated his house, he died in November 1633, at the age of fifty-seven, apparently in needy circumstances.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=851}} He left, by a second wife Joan Fletcher, two sons and a daughter, who emigrated to Massachusetts in 1637; the sons later returned to England; his daughter Ruth married in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Edmund Angier, and their son Samuel Angier later married in 1680 Hannah Oakes,<ref>{{cite book|last=Paige|first=Lucius R.|title=History of Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1630–1877|url=https://archive.org/details/historyofcambrid2163paig|year=1877|publisher=H. O. Houghton and Company|location=Boston|pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyofcambrid2163paig/page/479 479], 481–2}}</ref> the daughter of [[Urian Oakes]].<ref>{{cite DNB|wstitle=Oakes, Urian|first=John Andrew|last=Doyle|volume=41}}</ref>

==Influence==
His works, which the ''Biographia Britannica'' (1778)<ref name="Kippis1778">{{cite book|author=Andrew Kippis|title=Biographia Britannica: or, The lives of the most eminent persons who have flourished in Great Britain and Ireland, from the earliest ages, down to the present times|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RnlaAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA171|year=1778|publisher=Printed by W. and A. Strahan, for C. Bathurst, W. Strahan, J. Rivington and sons|pages=171–}}</ref> testifies were known over Europe, were collected at [[Amsterdam]] in five volumes. Only a small proportion was translated into English.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911|p=851}}  Ames' thought was particularly influential in New England.

==Notes==
{{Reflist}}
'''Attribution:'''
*{{EB1911|wstitle=Ames, William|volume=1|pages=850–851}}

==Sources==
*Keith L. Sprunger, ''The Learned Doctor William Ames'' (1972)
*See also:
**[[John Quick (divine)|John Quick]]'s manuscript ''Icones Sacrae Anglicanae'', which gives the fisherman anecdote on the personal authority of one who was present;
**''Life'' by [[Matthias Nethenus]] prefixed to collected edition of Latin works (5 vols, Amsterdam, 1658);
**Winwood's ''Memorials'', vol. iii. pp.&nbsp;346–347;
**[[Daniel Neal]]'s ''Puritans'', i. 532;
**[[Thomas Fuller]]'s ''Cambridge'' (Christ's College);
**Hanbury's ''Hist. Memorials'', i. 533;
**Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. vi., fourth series, 1863, pp.&nbsp;576–577.
*{{cite ODNB|first=Keith L.|last=Sprunger|title=Ames, William (1576–1633)|id=440}}

==Further reading==
* {{cite encyclopedia
  | last = Webster
  | first = Charles
  | title = Ames, William
  | encyclopedia = [[Dictionary of Scientific Biography]]
  | volume = 1
  | pages = 133–135 
  | publisher = Charles Scribner's Sons
  | location = New York
  | year = 1970
  | isbn = 0-684-10114-9
 }}
* Keith L. Sprunger, ''The Learned Doctor William Ames'', Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972.
* Jameela Lares, "William Ames," ''The Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 281: British Rhetoricians and Logicians, 1500–1660, Second Series'', Detroit: Gale, 2003, pp.&nbsp;3–13.
* {{cite DNB|wstitle=Ames, William (1576-1633)|first=James Bass|last= Mullinger|volume=1}}
* Ceri Sullivan, ''The Rhetoric of the Conscience in Donne, Herbert, and Vaughan'', Oxford University Press 2008, ch. 1.

==External links==
{{commons category}}
* {{PRDL|113}}
* {{in lang|fr}}[http://www.scholasticon.fr/Database/Scholastiques_fr.php?ID=149 ''Scholasticon'' page]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ames, William}}
[[Category:English Jacobean nonconforming clergy]]
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[[Category:English Calvinist and Reformed theologians]]
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[[Category:English evangelicals]]
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[[Category:People of the Elizabethan era]]
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