William Ames

William Ames (/eɪmz/; Latin: Guilielmus Amesius; 1576 – 14 November 1633[1]) was an English Puritan minister, philosopher, and controversialist.

It was delivered in the university Church of St Mary the Great, Cambridge on 21 December 1609, and in it he rebuked sharply "lusory lotts" and the "heathenish debauchery" of the students during the Twelve Days of Christmas.

"[5][6][4] He left Cambridge, and was offered a lecturer position at Colchester, but George Abbot, the Bishop of London, went against the wishes of the local corporation, and refused to grant institution and induction.

At Rotterdam, he debated with Grevinchovius (Nicholas Grevinckhoven, died 1632), minister of the Arminian party, with reasoning from Philippians ii.

He brought together all he had maintained in his Coronis ad Collationem Hagiensem (A Finishing Touch to the Hague Conference)[8]—his major book.

[10] A proposal to make him principal of a theological college at Leiden was frustrated by Archbishop Abbot; and when later invited by the state of Friesland to a professoriate at Franeker, the opposition was renewed, but this time abortively.

He brought renown to Franeker as professor, preacher, pastor and theological writer;[11] one student of the period influenced by Ames was Johannes Cocceius.

[14] His De Conscientia, ejus Jure et Casibus (1632), an attempt to bring Christian ethics into clear relation with particular cases of conduct and of conscience, was a new thing in Protestantism.

[15] Having caught a cold from a flood which inundated his house, he died in November 1633, at the age of fifty-seven, apparently in needy circumstances.