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Diluting The Saints Cordials: Questioning the Canon of Richard Sibbes
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2025
Abstract
This article notes the appearance of the same sermons on Romans viii.15–16 in the nineteenth-century editions of both James Ussher and Richard Sibbes. It explores the sources on which these editions rest and the publication history of The saints cordials, the contents of which were too uncritically accepted by Sibbes's nineteenth-century editor, A. B. Grosart. Manuscript evidence is employed to argue that three items in Grosart's edition of Sibbes should be attributed to Ussher, and the provenance of a further eleven is questioned. The article concludes with a survey of the appearance of the disputed material in modern Sibbes scholarship.
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References
1 The sermons on Romans viii.15–16 may be found at WJU xiii. 297–316, 317–34, and WRS vii. 367–85. In WRS the material is presented as one sermon, with a smooth transition on WRS vii. 376. For the careers of Ussher and Sibbes, the best treatments are Ford, Alan, James Ussher: theology, history, and politics in early-modern Ireland and England, Oxford 2007CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Dever, Mark E., Richard Sibbes: Puritanism and Calvinism in late Elizabethan and early Stuart England, Macon, Ga 2000Google Scholar.
2 WJU xiii. 331.
3 WRS vii. 383.
4 On this practice see Hunt, Arnold, The art of hearing: English preachers and their audiences, 1590–1640, Cambridge 2010, 142–7Google Scholar.
5 The saints cordials, London 1629, title page.
6 The motto is also found in a manuscript of Sibbes's sermons: Bodl. Lib., ms Lyell empt. 27. Sibbes is clearly identified as the preacher.
7 McKerrow, Ronald B., Printers’ & publishers’ devices in England & Scotland, 1485–1640, London 1913, 155, nos 412, 413Google Scholar.
8 Hunt, The art of hearing, 127.
9 See also Smith, John, Essex doue, London 1629Google Scholar, and Robert Welstead, The cure of a hard-heart, London 1630. The latter exhibits the motto but not the printer's device. Both of these works carry dedicatory epistles by ‘I. [John] Hart’. An earlier production of Hart's, lacking the ‘boldness’ motto, is The burning bush not consumed, London 1616. On Hart see Green, Ian, Print and Protestantism in early modern England, Oxford 2000, 483–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Watt, Tessa, Cheap print and popular piety, 1550–1640, Cambridge 1991, 318Google Scholar.
10 Though it should be noted that in the second edition every portion of the work that has its own separate title page carries the name ‘Robert Dawlman’ with the date 1637, even where this precedes material new to the second edition (pp. 117, 137, 198, 213), and most of these bearing the lamp device with the Prælucendo pereo legend.
11 The work was registered by Dawlman on 2 April 1629 and the entry reads, ‘Entred for his Copie vnder the handes of master Doctor Jefferaies and master Weaver warden The saints cordialls: or, A few legacies gathered together for, and left vnto them in divers Sermons’: Transcript of the registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554–1640, iv, ed. Edward Arber, London 1877, 176.
12 Richard Sibbes, The saints cordialls, London 1637, title page.
13 Ibid. (1637), 75, 159.
14 Grosart's notes on variant readings for ‘Judgement's reason’ gives an example of the level of editorial intervention: WRS iv. 75–112.
15 Sargent Bush, ‘The growth of Thomas Hooker's “The poor doubting Christian”’, Early American Literature viii (1973), 3–20; Frank C. Shuffelton, ‘Thomas Prince and his edition of Thomas Hooker's “Poor doubting Christian”’, Early American Literature v (1971), 68–75.
16 A. B. Grosart, ‘Richard Sibbes’ “Saint's cordials”’, Notes and Queries, second ser. xii (1861), 291; William Crowe, A collection, or catalogue of our English writers on the Old and New Testament either in whole or in part: whether commentators, elucidators, adnotators, or expositors: at large or in single sermons, London 1663.
17 WRS iv. 60.
18 WRS vii. 563.
19 WJU xiii, p. iii. Elrington quotes, without reference, Nicholas Bernard, The judgement of the late arch-bishop of Armagh, of the extent of Christs death, and satisfaction, &c., London 1657, second pagination, 20–1.
20 Jamie Blake-Knox, ‘High-Church history: C. R. Elrington and his edition of James Ussher's works’, in Mark Empey, Alan Ford and Miriam Moffitt (eds), The Church of Ireland and its past: history, interpretation and identity, Dublin 2017, 74–94; James Ussher and a reformed episcopal Church: sermons and treatises on ecclesiology, ed. Richard Snoddy, Lincoln, Ne 2018, 97–117.
21 James Ussher, Twenty sermons preached at Oxford, before his majesty, and elsewhere, London 1678, 155–75. The two sermons are an addition to an earlier collection, Eighteen sermons preached in Oxford. 1640: of the doctrine of repentance, speedy conversion, and redemption by Christ, seasonable for these times: by the late reverend James Usher, lord primate of Ireland: taken from his mouth by a faithful minister, and compared with the notes of several schollars then resident in Oxford, London 1660, which carried a preface by another former Ussher chaplain, Stanley Gower, justifying their publication: ‘spices gathered to the Embalming of this Rare Phoenix out of his own ashes’ (sig. Av).
22 Balliol College, Oxford, ms 259, fos 10r–34r .
23 WJU xiii, pp. iii–iv, viii.
24 Balliol College, ms 259, fos 214r–246r, 385r–398v; cf. WRS iv. 59–74; vii. 505–16.
25 ‘Capernaite’ (and the adjective ‘Capernaitic’) is a derogatory term reflecting the literalistic misunderstanding of the Jews in the synagogue at Capernaum about what it meant to eat the flesh of the Son of Man (John vi.52). John Calvin and Theodore Beza used the term against Lutheran opponents in the sixteenth-century eucharistic controversies. See Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian tradition: a history of the development of doctrine, IV: Reformation of Church and dogma (1300–1700), Chicago, Il 1984, 197.
26 WRS iv. 68.
27 Balliol College, ms 259, fo. 229r.
28 WRS vii. 506.
29 Balliol College, ms 259, fo. 386r.
30 Ibid. fo. 2r.
31 James Ussher, The substance of that vvhich was delivered in a sermon before the Commons House of Parliament, in St. Margarets Church at Westminster, the 18. of February, 1620, London 1621; A briefe declaration of the universalitie of the Church of Christ, and the unitie of the catholike faith professed therein: delivered in a sermon before his majestie the 20th of Iune, 1624. at Wansted, London 1624; cf. Balliol College, ms 259, fos 71r–97v, 420r–439r. For a modern, annotated edition of these sermons see Snoddy, James Ussher and a reformed episcopal Church, pp. xv–xxiii, 22–96.
32 A transcript of the registers of the worshipful Company of Stationers, from 1640–1708, II: 1655–1675, ed. G. E. Briscoe Eyre, London 1913, 47.
33 Catalogue of the manuscripts of Balliol College Oxford, ed. Roger Mynors, Oxford 1963, 279–80.
34 Richard Snoddy, ‘“The mysteries of Christ”: James Ussher among the Puritans, 1626’, Confessional Presbyterian xvi (2020), 33–51.
35 Brief notes of another sermon on 1 John iii.3 in Ussher's hand, with his annotation ‘Lond[on] Febr. 15. 1623, [/24]’ can be found in his notebook: Bodl. Lib., ms Rawlinson D1290, fo. 58v. It begins, ‘Doctr[ine]. A person that continueth in impuritye must not as much hope to see God’. It cannot be determined whether this is the sermon referred to, or part of the same series, or simply another sermon on a favoured text to which Ussher returned repeatedly.
36 Sibbes, The saints cordialls (1637), 115, 159.
37 Ussher, Twenty sermons, 155.
38 Snoddy, James Ussher and a reformed episcopal Church, pp. xxiii–xxvii, 97–117.
39 Bodl. Lib., ms Eng.th.e.25, fos 125r–144r. On the perception of Ussher as a prophet of England's woes see Ute Lotz-Heumann, ‘“The spirit of prophecy has not wholly left the world”: the stylisation of Archbishop James Ussher as a prophet’, in Helen Parish and W. G. Naphy (eds), Religion and superstition in Reformation Europe, Manchester 2002, 119–32.
40 The records of St. Bartholomew's Priory and St. Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield, ii, ed. E. A. Webb, Oxford 1921, 292–6.
41 The correspondence of James Ussher, 1600–1656, ed. Elizabethanne Boran, Dublin 2015, i. 303; Ford, James Ussher, 133–4; The records of St. Bartholomew's Priory and St. Bartholomew the Great, ii. 273, 277.
42 Sibbes would dedicate The bruised reede, and smoaking flax (1630) to Sir Horatio and Lady Mary Vere.
43 CUL, ms Mm.6.55, fos 47v–48r. Ussher begins, ‘The last day, wee told you How faith was begotten: now wee come to shew you How faith is discovered.’
44 CUL, ms Mm.6.55, fos 205v–6v.
45 Ibid. fo. 206r.
46 Expressed slightly differently: ‘No man spreads his table for dead men’: Balliol College, ms 259, fo. 231r; ‘Did Christ ordayne this Table for dead men?’: CUL, ms Mm.6.55, fo. 206r.
47 Balliol College, ms 259, fo. 224r–v.
48 CUL, ms Mm.6.55, fo. 206v.
49 Balliol College, ms 259, fo. 245r–v.
50 CUL, ms Mm.6.55, fo. 206v.
51 Balliol College, ms 259, fo. 245v.
52 CUL, ms Mm.6.55, fo. 206v.
53 Ibid. fo. 46r–v.
54 Balliol College, ms 259, fos 30v, 32r, 33v.
55 Ibid. fo. 23v.
56 Ibid. fo. 21v.
57 Ibid. fo. 22v.
58 Ibid. fo. 23r.
59 Ibid. fo. 27v.
60 Ibid. fo. 21v.
61 Ibid. fos 29r, 32r.
62 CUL, ms Mm.6.55, fo. 46r–v.
63 John Preston, The breast-plate of faith and love, a treatise, wherein the ground and exercise of faith and love, as they are set upon Christ their object, and as they are expressed in good works, is explained, 5th edn, London 1637 (misprinted 1634), 1st pagination, 107–8.
64 For Ussher on assurance and the different positions taken on this text see Richard Snoddy, The soteriology of James Ussher: the act and object of saving faith, New York 2014, 177–232, esp. pp. 199–204. For Sibbes on assurance see Dever, Richard Sibbes, esp. pp. 175–87, and Anthony R. Moore, ‘Assurance according to Richard Sibbes’, unpubl. PhD diss. Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary 2014. Both of these helpful studies of Sibbes have folded some of the disputed material from these Romans viii sermons into their accounts of Sibbes on assurance (for example, Dever, Richard Sibbes, 152). It is not a straightforward matter to determine which side of this question Sibbes would have come down on as his comments sometimes appear to emphasise the role of the Spirit in revealing his graces to the believer (for example, WRS i. 137–8; ii. 30; iv. 220; v. 447, 450), but at other times the role of the believer's reason in discerning these things (for example, WRS iii. 25, 208–9, 456). A change of view is, of course, one possible explanation, but most of Sibbes's sermons cannot be dated reliably at this time, making such a reconstruction difficult.
65 The editorial changes to the sermons that remained from the first edition may come from the hand of Sibbes as Grosart insists: WRS v. 176.
66 See the Gateway to Early Modern Manuscript Sermons at <https://gemmsorig.usask.ca>.
67 Sidney H. Rooy, The theology of missions in the Puritan tradition: a study of representative Puritans: Richard Sibbes, Richard Baxter, John Eliot, Cotton Mather, and Jonathan Edwards, Grand Rapids, Mi 1965, 15–65, esp. pp. 24–5.
68 Bert Affleck Jr, ‘The theology of Richard Sibbes, 1577–1635’, unpubl. PhD diss. Drew University 1969. On his use of ‘The right receiving’ see pp. 341 nn. 2–4; 347 nn. 3–4; 348 nn. 1–3; 350 nn. 1–4; 351 nn. 1–2; 352 nn. 1–3; 353 n. 1, nn. 3–4; 354 n. 1.
69 Harold Patton Shelly, ‘Richard Sibbes: early Stuart preacher of piety’, unpubl. PhD diss. Temple University 1972. For his use of ‘The witness of salvation’ see pp. 127 nn. 1–2; 147 n. 3; 148 n. 2; 149 n. 3; 151 n. 3.
70 Cary Nelson Weisiger iii, ‘The doctrine of the Holy Spirit in the preaching of Richard Sibbes’, unpubl. PhD diss. Fuller Theological Seminary 1984. For his use of ‘The witness of salvation’ see pp. 277 n. 528; 280 n. 535; 346 n. 648.
71 Stephen Paul Beck, ‘The doctrine of gratia praeparans in the soteriology of Richard Sibbes’, unpubl. PhD diss. Westminster Theological Seminary 1994. On the Spirit and ‘legal fear’ see pp. 174–5 nn. 102–5, 107.
72 Moore, ‘Assurance according to Richard Sibbes’, 76.
73 R. N. Frost, Richard Sibbes: God's spreading goodness, Vancouver, Wa 2012, 215–16.
74 Paul R. Schaefer Jr, The spiritual brotherhood: Cambridge Puritans and the nature of Christian piety, Grand Rapids, Mi 2011, 164–217 at pp. 190 n. 81; 193 n. 90; 196 n. 103; 198 n. 115.
75 Joel R. Beeke and Mark Jones, A Puritan theology: doctrine for life, Grand Rapids, Mi 2012, 573–85 at pp. 578 n. 38; 582 n. 68; 583 n. 69.
76 Dever, Richard Sibbes, 152.
77 Idem, The affectionate theology of Richard Sibbes, Sanford, Fl 2018, 116.
78 On this see Richard Snoddy, ‘“The mysteries of Christ”: James Ussher among the Puritans, 1626’, and Elizabethanne Boran, ‘An early friendship network of James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh, 1626–1656’, in Helga Robinson-Hammerstein (ed.), European universities in the age of Reformation and Counter Reformation, Dublin 1998, 116–34.
79 Nicholas Bernard, The life & death of the most reverend and learned father of our Church Dr. James Usher, late arch-bishop of Armagh, and primate of all Ireland, London 1656, 83. On the attempt to lure Sibbes to Trinity College, Dublin, see Ford, James Ussher, 163.
80 For their irritation at this phenomenon, see The order of the House of the Lords, for the calling in and suppressing of a sermon, falsly fathered upon James archbishop of Armagh, under the title of Vox Hiberniæ, London 1642, and Sibbes, Richard, The bruised reede, and smoaking flax, London 1630Google Scholar, sig. a3r–v.
81 Catalogue of the manuscripts of Balliol College Oxford, 279.