Ussher on Joy (2)

Was rebuked by MW (you know who you are) a while ago for not posting. A busy summer, but here’s a post.

Have been writing something on Ussher and joy. This is a sample of his thoughts from a sermon on Psa. 32:11, circa 1624.

And howsoever the wicked think the life of God’s children full of heaviness, and uncomfortable, yet indeed their life, of all other, is most cheerful, wherein they ought to rejoice [...] That it is the privilege and sole property of the children of God, who trust in him alone, not only to have the only true joy, but also the abundance and height of joy, rejoicing in the midst of afflictions, and therefore [the Psalmist] willeth them to rejoice, and rejoice again and again. Wherein we may perceive that he directly crosseth the common opinion, that the life of Christianity is such a tedious task, and uncomfortable life full of sorrows, a narrow way, with a number of other imputations of the like sort; by the contrary proving, that none can truly rejoice, but he who is a godly man, who is compassed with mercy.

‘English Hypothetical Universalism’

My review of Jonathan Moore’s ‘English Hypothetical Universalism: John Preston and the Softening of Reformed Theology‘ (Eerdmans, 2007) should appear very shortly in the Spring issue of The Seventeenth Century. I wrote this back in December and have purposefully avoided blogging my thoughts on the book up until now. The book was enthusiastically endorsed by Carl Trueman, Anthony Milton, Patrick Collinson, and others of similar stature which was why I felt some trepidation in criticising it in print. But you go with your gut, eh?

The book is, on several levels, excellent. It is a very helpful study of John Preston on the extent of the atonement and the universal offer of the gospel. There is some very useful material on Perkins. The discussion of the York House Conference is superb. And in some important respects it contributes to the historiographical discussion around the Calvin vs. the Calvinists debate. R. T. Kendall comes out very poorly.

The major flaw is in the imbalance with which Moore portrays English hyothetical universalism. He foregrounds the discontinuity with Perkins, that paragon of Elizathan Protestantism, to such an extent that any sense of continuity with other streams in the Christian tradition is eclipsed. From one who has clearly read Muller carefully, this lack of sensitivity to the continuity and discontinuity of theological trajectories is disappointing. Ussher becomes the grand-daddy of hypothetical universalism in Moore’s genealogy, something of a spontaneous mutation, desperately seeking a via media to take the heat out of the Remonstrant controversy on the eve of the Synod of Dort. Ussher clearly played an important role, but as a shaper of a tradition, rather than a pioneer. Richard Muller’s review, recently published, makes the same point – see below. 

I have spent a lot of time on this subject recently, looking at both Ussher’s interaction with patristic and medieval sources on the intent and extent of the atonement and his precursors in England. The evidence in  the manuscripts is clear that not only did Ussher stand in continuity with a pre-existing stream of thought within the Christian tradition (a point well argued by Muller), but that he did so self-conciously, and that he cannot be considered the pioneer in Protestant England. I hope to publish something on this soon and will be talking to journal editors in the near future.

In the meantime, enjoy Muller, read my review (out shortly), and do read Moore, because despite this serious flaw, it’s an important book.

Muller:

This volume offers a detailed and finely argued exposition of the view of redemption expressed by John Preston both in his various writings and in his testimony at the York Conference in 1626. Where Moore clearly advances the discussion of both the York Conference itself and of early seventeenth-century British theology is in his clear identification of Preston’s teaching, together with that of several major contemporaries (notably John Davenant and James Ussher), as a form of hypothetical universalism, namely, the doctrine that Christ so died for the sins of the human race that, if all would believe, all would be saved. What Moore nicely shows is that the Reformed side of the debate was somewhat variegated, including hypothetical universalists as well as those who denied universal redemption and that previous analyses of the theological debates in early seventeenth-century England too simplistically identified the parties in debate as either Arminian or Calvinist. In effect, Moore resuscitates an issue recognized in the seventeenth century by Davenant, Baxter, and others, and noted with reference to the Westminster Assembly by Alexander Mitchell that there was an indigenous hypothetical universalism in British Reformed theology. Moore’s study, however, for all its excellent work on Preston and the York Conference, embodies two significant problems concerning perspective on and context of the materials examined. First, there is an underlying systematizing thread in the argument of the book that leads to claims that do not ultimately bear scrutiny concerning the interconnection of specific doctrinal formulations. Particularly in his review of William Perkins’ doctrine, Moore contends that Perkins’ supralapsarian predestinarianism together with his federalism “drives” him toward the conclusion of particular redemption, namely that the all-sufficiency of Christ’s satisfaction yields no hypothetical offer of salvation to all people. However, particularism was hardly the exclusive characteristic of supralapsarian federalists. There is also a clearly particularist formulation concerning Christ’s satisfaction in the work of Perkins’ contemporary, Gulielmus Bucanus, who tended toward an infralapsarian doctrine of predestination and was no federalist. Similarly, a later Reformed orthodox thinker such as Turretin, a convinced infralapsarian and, although party to the two-covenant schema but not a federal theologian in the strict sense of the term, taught a clearly prticularistic doctrine of Christ’s satisfaction.

Moore also underestimates the presence of non-Amyraldian or non-speculative forms of hypothetical universalism in the Reformed tradition as a whole and thereby, in the opinion of this reviewer, misconstrues Preston’s position as a “softening” of Reformed theology rather than as a continuation of one trajectory of Reformed thought that had been present from the early sixteenth century onward. Clear statements of nonspeculative hypothetical universalism can be found (as Davenant recognized) in Heinrich Bullinger’s Decades and commentary on the Apocalypse, in Wolfgang Musculus’ Loci communes, in Ursinus’ catechetical lectures, and in Zanchi’s Tractatus de praedestinatione sanctorum, among other places. In addition, the Canons of Dort, in affirming the standard distinction of a sufficiency of Christ’s death for all and its efficiency for the elect, actually refrain from canonizing either the early form of hypothetical universalism or the assumption that Christ’s sufficiency serves only to leave the nonelect without excuse. Although Moore can cite statements from the York conference that Dort “either apertly or covertly denied the universality of man’s redemption” (156), it remains that various of the signatories of the Canons were hypothetical universalists- not only the English delegation (Carleton, Davenant, Ward, Goad, and Hall) but also the [sic] some of the delegates from Bremen and Nassau (Martinius, Crocius, and Alsted)- that Carleton and the other delegates continued to affirm the doctrinal points of Dort while distancing themselves from the church discipline of the Belgic Confession, and that in the course of seventeenth-century debate even the Amyraldians were able to argue that their teaching did not run contrary to the Canons. In other words, the nonspeculative, non-Amyraldian form of hypothetical universalism was new in neither the decades after Dort nor a “softening” of the tradition: The views of Davenant, Ussher, and Preston followed out a resident trajectory long recognized as orthodox among the Reformed.

Calvin Theological Journal, 43(1), 150. (HT: Calvin and Calvinism)

On Valentine’s Day…

Some advice from Archbishop James Ussher, as he reflects on Proverbs 5:18-20:

…thou must nourish a kinde Affection to thy wife: for tis not The Hauinge, but The Louinge thy wife, will keep thee from the strange woman. 

So, go on, get her some flowers.

Ussher on Joy

There’s a lot to be said for studying someone who you enjoy reading.

I was working through some manuscript sermon material yesterday where Ussher considers Christian joy. He says, ‘I would be a Christian, bycause I would be more merry then another’. Gloomy Puritan? I think not. 

He continues, ‘when we see a Servant alwayes droopinge, wee say hee serves no good master’. So, what is our demeanour as we serve our master? He notes how God consumed the Israelite spies for their evil report. ‘Oh, some say, if thou be strict, and Precise in thy life, and conversation, thou wilt never bee a merry man: Tis false: Tis an evill report upon Religion: the best man is the merriest man. Some ministers thinke it their master peece, to cast men downe: the maine thinge that they have to do, is to bring men to joy. 2.Cor.1.last [= 2 Cor. 1:24], not that we have Dominion over your Faith, but wee are Helpers of your joy’.

The part that struck me was his encouragement that in heaven this joy will be enlarged – our joy now is of the same kind, though not of the same degree. And with a wonderful turn of phrase, ‘here, this joy comes into us: and There in Heaven, we goe into it’.

Hope that cheers up your Monday morning.

Ussher Online

There are a number of volumes of Elrington’s 17 volume edition of Ussher’s works on Google Books. You can link to them from here. Some of the other volumes are there with more limited access. It will hopefully be possible to update this list in future to include more volumes as they are added.

Vol. 1 The Life of James Ussher, D.D.
The Appendix includes the following:
i) Genealogical Table;
ii) An Account of the Commencement held on the 18 th of August, 1614;
iii) A Brief declaration of certein principall Articles of Religion set out by order and aucthoritie as well of the Right Honourable Sir Henry Sidney. as by the Archbyshops and byshops.;
iv) The 1615 Articles;
v) A Certificate of the State and Revenues of the Bishopricke of Meath and Clonmacnoise;
vi) An Historical narration of the controversy betwixt the Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin touching the Primacy;
vii) A Vindication of the opinions and actions of the Lord Primate Ussher in reference to the Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of England, and his conformity thereunto, from the aspersions of Peter Heylin, D.D. in his pamphlet called Respondet Petrus, by James Tyrell, Esq.

Vol. 3  An Answer to a Challenge made by a Jesuit in Ireland (1625).

Vol. 5  Brittanicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates ; caput I-XIII (1639).

Vol. 8  Annales veteris Testamenti, a Prima Mundi Origine deducti, una cum Rerum Asiaticarum Aegypticarum Chronico, a temporis historici principio usque ad Maccabaicorum initia producto (1650).

 

Vol. 9  Annales veteris Testamenti (contd.).

Vol. 10  Annales veteris Testamenti (contd.).

Vol. 11  Annales veteris Testamenti concludes;
Annalium Pars Posterior, in qua, praeter Maccabaicam et novi testamenti historiam, Imperii Romanorum Caesarum sub Caio Julio et Octaviano Ortus, rerumque in Asia et Aegypto Gestarum continetur Chronicon … (1654);
The Principles of Christian Religion (1654);
The Method of the Doctrine of Christian Religion (1654);
The Power communicated by God to the Prince, and the Obedience required of the Subject ;
The Original and first Institution of Corbes, Herenaches and Termon Lands ;
The first Establishment of the English Laws and Parliaments in the Kingdom of Ireland ;
A Discourse, showing when and how far the Imperial Laws were received by the old Irish and the Inhabitants of Great Britain ;
Chronologia Sacra .

Ussher’s Body of Divinity

You can download ‘A Body of Divinity’ for free. This is a problematic text and cannot be regarded as Ussher’s Summa. In fact, Ussher at first disowned this volume, describing it as ‘a common place book’ of the opinions of others. He later came round to the idea of publication, accepting that some might find it useful. The material was drawn from Cartwright’s catechism and other sources and forms a remarkably coherent whole. It seems that Ussher used this material in catechizing and in this sense he can be said to have made it his own.  It is a great source for the opinions that were current in the early seventeenth century.

Alternatively, you can get hard copy from Solid Ground Christian Books. Their edition has a preface by Renaissance man Crawford Gribben, who is now in hiding in rural Ireland. I think the students at Manchester were beginning to frighten him. Check out their fan club page (or should that be ‘cult’) on Facebook.

Ussher and the Cross – Revisited

I have been mulling over the strongly visual dimension of Ussher’s preaching on Christ’s Passion. He seeks to paint a picture, directing our gaze to the cross, or more precisely, to the crucifixion. He invites his hearers to ‘conceive…imagine him before your eyes thus represented’, (Works 13.153). This surprised me. It wasn’t what I expected to hear from a churchman of puritan inclination living the midst of Patrick Collinson’s iconophobic and visually anorexic Reformed culture. So the question is, was Collinson wrong (some think so), or was Ussher swimming against the tide. That, and the capacity of the Puritan imagination up to around 1640, is something for me to work on.

In the meantime, consider the words of Luther written against the iconoclasts:

Of this I am certain that God desires to have his works heard and read, especially the passion of our Lord. But it is impossible for me to hear and bear it in mind without forming mental images of it in my heart. For whether I will or not, when I hear of Christ, an image of a man hanging on a cross takes form in my heart, just as the reflection of my face naturally appears in the water when I look into it. (Against the Heavenly Prophets, 1525)

Brrrrr!

This morning, as I sit here pounding away at my laptop, I feel that I have gotten closer to James Ussher, that I have somehow entered into his experience, and felt what he felt. Yes, my central heating has broken down.

Thoughts from Ussher on the Cross

Why did God create the world in six days rather than one? So that we would consider his work of creation piece by piece in our meditations. In one manuscript Ussher suggests that this is the way to reflect on the cross,  not simply thinking of the cross in general, but rather considering how there was sorrow upon sorrow, ‘and we shall find it a marvailous meanes to extend our love to Christ, and to fasten our harte to him’. This is why in his preaching he seeks to paint a picture, directing our gaze to the cross. He invites us to ‘conceive…imagine him before your eyes thus represented’, (Works 13.153). Towards the end of one sermon in which he catalogues the sorrows of the vir dolorum come these powerful words:

“What aileth thee, O thou sun to be darkened, and thou earth to tremble?” was it not to shew his mourning for the death of its maker? The soul of Christ was dark within, and it is fit that all the world should be hung in black for the death of the King of kings. (Works, 13.157)