Gloria Filiorum Patres

William Ames (1576-1633) mother was related to families that would help to found Plymouth Plantation.; he was reared by his maternal uncle from a young age due to parent’s death; from childhoold Ames was steeped in the vigorous Puritanism of his time and place; ordained in 1601; underwent a dramatic conversion experience under the preachin g of William Perkins; at this time he declared that “a man may be bonus ethicus [a moral person in outward religion], and yet not be bonus Theologus [a sincere-hearted Christian]; to be bonus Theologus became his life long concern; this led to a practical Christianity that expressed the inner piety of an obedient, redeemed heart; he sought a more freer academic and ecclesiastical climate from the Netherlands; wrote four books against Arminianism; became skilled in systematic theology and became known as “Augustine of Holland” and the “hammer of the Arminians”; when the Arminian issue was addressed at an international Synod in the Dutch city of Dordrecht (1618-19), he was called upon providing expertise in addressing Arminian issues, not in a voting honor, but became chief theological advisor and secretary to the presiding officer; he was married twice; three children with second wife; began a house college to support his family and thus began his lectures on his famous “Marrow of Theology”; his greatet contribution was in theology and ethics, which he saw as a unified system that helped the Christian live a life of genuine piety. to the end he maintained firm in faith and triumphant in hope; four years after his death, his wife and children went to live in the Puritan settlement of Salem, Massachusetts, carrying with them Ames’s library which later formed the nucleus of the original library for Harvard College and were for the majority lost due to a fire; his influence was perhaps greatest in New England where his Marrow became the primary text at Harvard and was often read and quoted throughout the colonies; Cotton Matther called Ames, “that profound, that sublime, that subtle, that irrefragble - yea, that angelic doctor” he was least influential in his homeland of England;