Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/780

Rh 736 A M E A M E nativity, and in it lie rebuked sharply Lusory Lotts and the &quot; heathenish debauchery &quot; of the students during the twelve days ensuing. His exposures and scathing denun ciations won thunders of applause, but there were sheathed in them lightnings of wrath among the High Church party. He was summoned before the vice-chancellor and whole senate of the university. He appeared, and in presence of as brilliant an assembly as ever met in the congregation- house, defended himself triumphantly. Nonconformity, admittedly in lesser things, was regarded as excluding him from the Church of England. He left the university, and would have accepted the great church of Colchester in Essex, but the relentless bishop of London refused to grant institution and induction. Like furtive persecution awaited him elsewhere, and at last he passed over to Holland. To leave England was not so simple or easy a thing then, and Ames had to disguise himself for safety. His disguise was singularly timed, for it produced an incident that has long been worked into the very fabric of church history in Eng land and Holland. Coincident with his arrival at Kotterdam a congress of theologians Remonstrant and non-Remon strant was being held. Ames went into the meeting in his &quot; habit of a fisherman, with his canvas slops about his body, and a red cap on his head.&quot; As the debate pro ceeded, the English visitor rose and craved permission to oppose Grevinchovius a theologian long since in oblivion, but a tower of strength in heresy at that day in Latin. The Remonstrant champion was rather taken aback at first; but jeered and flouted the plain countryman, &quot;like an other Goliath scorning David.&quot; The question was the old- new one of the &quot; self-determining power of the human will to spiritual good, without any need of the previous effica cious operations of divine grace.&quot; Ames bore his op ponent s gibes at his dress, and overwhelmed him with his logical reasoning from Phil. ii. 1 3, &quot; It is God that worketh in us both to will and to do.&quot; The fisherman-contro versialist made a great stir, and from that day became known and honoured in the Low Countries. Subsequently Ames entered into a controversy in print with Grevin chovius on universal redemption and election, and cognate problems. He brought together all he had maintained in his Coronis ad Collationem Ilagiensem his most master ful book, which figures largely in Dutch church history. At Leyden, Ames became intimate with the venerable Mr Goodyear, pastor of the English church there. While thus resident in comparative privacy he was sent for to the Hague by Sir Horatio Vere, who appointed him a minister in the army of the states-general, and of the English soldiers in their service, a post held by some of the greatest of England s exiled Puritans. He married at the Hague a daughter of Dr Burgess, who was domestic pastor of Vere. On his father-in-law s return to England, Ames succeeded to liis place. It was at this time he began his memorable controversy with Episcopius, who, in attacking the Coronis, railed against the author as having been &quot; a disturber of the public peace in his native country, so that the EnglisX magistrates had banished him thencoj and now, by his late printed Coronis, he was raising new disturbances in the peaceable Netherlands.&quot; It was a miserable libel. Mr Goodyear being present in the lecture-room when Epis copius vented his malice, there and then rebutted his charge against his absent friend. None the less did the controversy proceed. Ultimately Ames reduced the Re monstrants to silence. The Coronis had been primarily prepared for the Synod of Dort, which sat from November 1618 until May 1619. At this celebrated synod the posi tion of Dr Ames, if an extremely honourable, was a peculiar one. The High Church party in England had in duced the king to interfere and bring about his removal from the Hague, on the ground of his nonconformity ; but he was still held, deservedly, in such reverence that it was arranged he should attend the synod informally. Through out its sittings Dr Ames appears to have been the most active and influential of the foreign divines. It is a sorrowful fact that, from 1611-12 onward, Ames was interfered with harassingly by the High Church party in England. Twice over, when chosen professor, the most envenomed opposition was led from England. He was kept from the university of Leyden ; and when later in vited by the state of Friesland to a professoriate at Franeker, the persecution was renewed, but this time abortively. He was installed at Franeker on 7th May 1622, and de livered a most learned discourse on the occasion on &quot; Urim and Tlmmmim.&quot; He soon brought renown to Franeker as professor, preacher, pastor, and theological writer. He prepared his Medulla Tlieologica for his students. His Casus Conscientiae followed. Both these treatises left their mark on the thought of the century, liis &quot; Cases of Con science&quot; was a new thing in Protestantism. The work shows much insight into human nature, and may be favourably compared with the bulkier Ductor Duliitantium. Having continued twelve years at Franeker, his health gave way, and he contemplated removal to New England. But another door was opened for him. His English heart yearned for more frequent opportunities of preaching the gospel to his fellow-countrymen, and an invitation to Rotterdam gave him such opportunity. His friends at Franeker were passionately opposed to the transference, but ultimately acquiesced. At Rotterdam he drew all hearts to him by his eloquence and fervour in the pulpit, and his irrepres sible activity as a pastor. Home-controversy engaged him again, and he prepared his Fresh Suit against Ceremonies - extrinsically having the distinction of being the book which made Richard Baxter a Nonconformist. It was posthu mously published. He did not long survive his removal to Rotterdam. Having caught a cold from a flood which drenched his house, he died in November 1633, in his fifty-seventh year. Few Englishmen have exercised so formative and controlling an influence on continental thought and opinion as Dr Ames. He was a master in theological controversy, shunning not to cross swords with the formidable Bellarmine. He was a scholar among scholars, being furnished with extraordinary resources of learning. His works, which even the BiograpMa, Britannica (1778) testifies, were famous over Europe, were collected at Amsterdam in 5 vols. 4to. Only a very small proportion were translated into his mother tongue. His Lcdiones in omnes Psalmos Davidis (1035) is exceedingly sug gestive and terse in its style, reminding of Bengel s Gnomon, as does also his Commentarius utriusque Epist. S. Pctri. His &quot;Replies&quot; to Bishop Morton and Dr Burgess on &quot;Ceremonies&quot; tell us that even kinship could not prevent him from &quot; contending earnestly for the faith.&quot; (John Quick s MS. Iconcs Sacrcc Anglican, who gives the fisherman anecdote on the personal authority of one who was present ; Brook s Puritans, vol. iii. pp. 405-8 ; Win- wood s Memorials, vol. iii. pp. 346-7 ; Ncal s Puritans; Fuller s Cambridge (Christ s College) ; Sylvester s Life of Baxter, part i. pp. 13, 14 ; Biogr. Brit., vol. i. pp. 172-3 ; Mather s New England, book iii. ; Palmer s Nonconf. Memorial. ; Mosheim s Ecclcs. Hist., who mistakenly calls him a Scotsman; Hauburg, s.v. ; Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. vi., fourth series, 1863, pp. 576-7.) (A. B. G.) AMESBURY, an old town in Wiltshire, on the Avon, 8 miles north of Salisbury, and 78 west of London. It is an ill-built place, with little trade. It contains an old parish church, which probably belonged to an abbey, a chapel for the Wesleyan Methodists, and a beautiful house erected by Inigo Jones for the Duke of Queensberry. Near Amesbury are Stonehenge, and Milston, where Addi- son was born. Population, 1169. AMETHYST, properly, is only a variety of quartz or rock-crystal distinguished by its fine violet-blue or purple colour. This tint seems to be caused by a minute mixture of the peroxide either of iron or of manganese, and is lost when the stone is exposed to the action of the fire. It