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Choice and Action: William Ames's Concept of the Mind's Operation in Moral Decisions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Lynne Courter Boughton
Lynne Courter Boughton
Affiliation:
Lecturer in religious studies in DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois.
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Extract

When William Ames (1576–1633) chose not to wear a surplice while preaching at a Cambridge University chapel, he embodied the Reformation spirit of defiance toward the symbols of ecclesiastical and educational authority. This action and subsequent signs of dissent within the Church of England earned Ames a life of exile in the Netherlands. Yet in serving as a professor at the Universities of Leiden and Franeker, the Puritan scholar perfected methods of instruction that would establish him as an authority among those similarly committed to learning the revealed will of God and investigating the structure and operation of the human mind.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 56 , Issue 2 , June 1987 , pp. 188 - 203
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1987

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References

1. Keith Sprunger has analyzed the intellectual background and academic career of Ames, William in The Learned Doctor William Ames: Dutch Backgrounds of English and American Puritanism (Urbana, 1972);Google Scholar“Technometria: A Prologue to Puritan Theology,” Journal of the History of Ideas 29 (1968): 120–122;Google Scholar and “Ames, Ramus, and the Method of Puritan Theology,” Harvard Theological Review 59 (1966): 133–151.Google ScholarGibbs, Lee W. has focused on the metaphysical and logical aspects of Ames's philosophy in William Ames: Technometry (Philadelphia, 1979);Google Scholar“The Puritan Natural Law Theory of William Ames,” Harvard Theological Review 64 (1971): 37–57;Google Scholar“William Ames's Technometry,” Journal of the History of Ideas 33 (1972): 615–624.Google Scholar Also valuable in understanding Ames is John Eusden's introduction to Ames, William, The Marrow of Theology, trans. Eusden, John from the third Latin edition, 1629 (Boston, 1968),Google Scholar and Nethenus, Matthew, Visscher, Hugo, Reuter, Karl, William Ames, trans. Horton, Douglas (Cambridge, Mass., 1965).Google Scholar Ames's influence among Puritan and other Reformed thinkers is discussed by Miller, Perry, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1939);Google ScholarMorison, Samuel Eliot, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1936);CrossRefGoogle ScholarFiering, Norman, Moral Philosophy at Seventeenth-Century Harvard: A Discipline in Transition (Chapel Hill, 1981);Google Scholar and Kendall, R.T., Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649 (London, 1979).Google Scholar

2. For Ames's place in moral theology, see McAdoo, H.R., The Structure of Caroline Moral Theology (London, 1949)Google Scholar and Kirk, Kenneth E., Conscience and its Problems: An Introduction to Casuistry (London, 1927).Google Scholar

3. Fiering has discussed the various interpretations of Ames's moral philosophy at seventeenth-century Harvard and has also cited inadequacies in Ames's work itself. Fiering, , Moral Philosophy, pp. 188, 122–124.Google Scholar

4. Ames, William, Conscience with the Power and Cases Thereof (London, 1643),Google Scholar 1.7.7. This work is referred to in text as De conscientia.

5. Ibid., 1.7.5 and 1.7.6.

6. Ibid., 1.10.1–2 and 1.3.1. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1.2.19.1; 1.2.19.4;1.2.9.1; and 1.2.9.3; and Locke, John, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 2.21. 48–53.Google Scholar

7. Sprunger, , Learned Doctor, pp. 177–182;Google ScholarFiering, , Moral Philosophy, pp. 59–61, 120–125;Google ScholarEusden, , introduction to Ames, Marrow of Theology, pp. 15–17.Google Scholar

8. Among the works available on this subject are Scharlemann, Robert, Aquinas and Gerhard: Theological Controversy and Construction in Medieval and Protestant Scholasticism (New Haven, 1964)Google Scholar; Porter, C.W., Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge, 1958);Google ScholarArmstrong, Brian G., Calvinism and the Amyraut Heresy: Protestant Scholasticism and Humanism in Seventeenth-Century France (Madison, 1969);Google ScholarLewaher, Ernest, Spanisch-jesuitische und deutsch-lutherische Metaphysik des 17. Jahrhunderts (Hamburg, 1935; reprint, Darmstadt, 1967);Google ScholarBrodrick, James, Robert Bellarmine: Saint and Scholar (London, 1961);Google ScholarLeahy, Louis, Dynamisme volontaire etjugement libre (Paris, 1963);Google ScholarClifford, Norman K., “Casuistical Divinity in English Puritanism During the Seventeenth-Century: Its Origins, Development, and Significance” (Ph.D. diss., University of London, 1957).Google Scholar

9. Ames, William, The Marrow of Sacred Divinity (London, 1643);Google Scholar chart follows 2.15. This work is referred to in the text as Medulla.

10. Ibid., 2.1.1–39.

11. Ibid., 2.3.22–28.

12. Ibid., 2.2.7. The translation used here is that of Eusden, trans., Ames, Marrow pp. 224–225.

13. Ibid., 2.2.9.

14. See Ames, Conscience, 1.1.1; 1.7.7. and Ames, Marrow, 1.2.7. Fiering alerts us to the use of the word “faculty” among Schoolmen and seventeenth-century scholars and alludes to Ames's physiological interpretation of moral powers. Fiering, , Moral Philosophy, pp. 106–109.Google Scholar

15. Ames, Conscience, 1.1.1; 1.Summary.3; 1.7.7. This emphasis on the remnants of God's goodness in the will and understanding is also in Ames, , Marrow, 1.14.22–29,Google Scholar and Ames, , Bellarminus Enervatus, 4 vols. (London, 1633), 2: 225–226.Google Scholar

16. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 1.2.50.5; 1.2.17.3. Chart B which accompanies this article was constructed prior to consulting the Summa, but the relationship among moral faculties and the classification of moral activities as habits and acts as represented in the chart would match Aquinas's definitions and patterns. The major exception would be the importance given by Ames to divine instrumentality in the process of moral decision-making. Ames's emphasis on God as first cause is contrasted with Robert Bellarmine's in Ames, , Bellarminus Enervatus, 2: 286–287.Google Scholar

17. Ames, Conscience, 1.7.7, and Marrow, 1.14.28–29.

18. Ames, Conscience, 1.1.6.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid., 1.2.2.

21. Ibid.

22. Ibid., 1.Summary.5. Aquinas had called conscience an act adding that “an act does not remain in itself. It remains in its cause which is power and habit.” Summa, 1.1.79.13.

23. Ames, Conscience, 1.1 5.passim and 1.2.7–8. For Ames's understanding of final and efficient causes, see chart A above. The physical interpretation found here is consistent with his “metaphysical” principles.

24. Ames, Conscience, 1.7.7.

25. Ibid., 1.7.2.

26. Ibid., 1.1.4–5; 1.Summary.5.

27. See note 22 above, and Aquinas, Summa, 1.2.83 passim and 1.2.9.1.

28. Ames, Conscience, 1.2.7–8; 1.2.12–13.Google Scholar

29. Ibid., 1.Summary.18.

30. Ibid., 1.2.4; 1.3.2. See Ames, Marrow, 1.10.13–19, and 1.4.17–20.

31. Ames, Conscience, 1.4.3.

32. Ibid., 1.10.1–14; 1.2.5; 1.15.passim.

33. For example, Thomas Aquinas is described as an intellectualist by some authors because he argued that the will follows the intellect. But he also maintained that the will could reject the decision of the rational element. See Aquinas, Summa, 1.2.19.1, and 1.2.19.4. See also ibid., 1.2.9.1 and 1.2.9.3.

34. Chart A above. See also Fiering, , Moral Philosophy, pp. 124–125.Google Scholar

35. Brodrick, , Robert Bellarmine, pp. 197–199.Google Scholar

36. Although Ames and Maccovius disagreed on preparation and on Aristotle's metaphysics, both men were in agreement on the nature of divine decrees. See Boughton, Lynne Courter, “Supralapsarianism and the Role of Metaphysics in Sixteenth-Century Reformed Theology,” Westminster Theological Journal 48 (1986): 63–96.Google Scholar

37. Sprunger, , Learned Doctor, pp. 71–79.Google Scholar

38. Leahy, , Dynamisme volontaire, pp. 16–24;Google ScholarBrodrick, , Robert Bellarmine, pp. 198–199;Google ScholarLauer, Rosemary, “Bellarmine on Liberum Arbitrium,” Modern Schoolmen 3 (1956): 64, 74–79;Google ScholarMullaney, Thomas U., “Basis of Suarezian Teaching on Human Freedom,” [part 2] Thomist 11 (1948): 337.Google Scholar See Thomas, Summa, 1.1.83.4 and 1.2.13.1.

39. Ames, , Conscience, 1.7.3–7,Google Scholar and Ames, , Bellarminus Eneruatus, 2: 281–285.Google Scholar See also Leahy, , Dynamisme volontaire, p. 57.Google Scholar

40. Ames, Conscience, 1.2.3–7.

41. Ames, Marrow, 2.2.9.

42. Ibid., 2.2.7 and 2.2.5–6.

43. Ibid., 2.2.9.

44. Ames, , Bellarminus Enervatus, 2: 282;Google Scholar Ames, Conscience, 1.7.8.

45. Ames, Conscience, 1.3.7–8.

46. Ibid.

47. Aquinas, Summa, 1.2.15.1.

48. Ibid., 1.2.9.6.

49. Ames, Marrow, 1.6.1–5, and 2.15.7.

50. Ames, Marrow, 1.3.2. Ames held that faith, though “commonly signifying an act of the understanding“ is primarily “a receiving” and therefore also an “act of the will.” Divine testimony cannot be received without pious affection of the will towards God. Assent is, therefore, not the first act of faith but an act flowing from faith. Ibid., 1.3.2–17. See also William K.B. Stoever, “A Faire and Easie Way to Heaven”: Covenant Theology and Antinominianism in Early Massachusetts (Middletown, 1978), p. 106.

51. Ames used the word “command” to refer to the will's initiation of the reasoning process in its search for the good and again to refer to the cooperation of will and understanding at the conclusion of the reasoning process and the conclusion of the act of will. Ames, Conscience, 1.1.1 and 1.7.8. See also Aquinas, Summa, 2.9.3.

52. Ames, Conscience, 1.7.7. Conscience can be suppressed for a time, but it always remains capable of returning to the principles stored by the habit of synteresis. Ibid., 1.7.1–3.

53. Ibid., 1.7.6.