Ames, William

AMES, WILLIAM (Lat. Amesius): Puritan; b. at Ipswich, Suffolk, England, 1576; d. at Rotterdam Nov. 14, 1633. He studied at Christ’s College, Cambridge, and became fellow. From the first he was a rigid and zealous Puritan and so without hope of preferment in the Church of England. In 1611 he went to Leyden, thence to The Hague, where he became chaplain to, Sir Horace Vere, commander of the English troops in the Netherlands, but lost this post through intrigues of the High-church party at home. He was paid four florins a day by the States General to attend the Synod of Dort (1618-19) and assist the president; became professor of theology at Franeker in 1622, and rector in 1626; shortly before his death he became pastor of the English church in Rotterdam. He contemplated settling in New England, and his family went thither, taking with them his library. His influence on the Continent was considerable, and his reputation is greater there than in his native land. As a decided Calvinist he was active in the Arminian and other controversies of his time, both with voice and pen. His most noteworthy books were the Medulla theologica (Amsterdam, 1623; Eng. transl., The Marrow of Sacred Divinity, London, 1642) and the De conscientia et ejus jure vel casibus (1632; Eng. transl., Conscience, 1639), an ethical treatise which was really a continuation of the old scholastic casuistry. A collected edition of his Latin works, with life by M. Nethenus, was published in five volumes at Amsterdam in 1658.

(E. F. Karl Müller).