Good Counsell and Advice to all the Friends of Truth to be Read throughout all their Families by them whom the Lord hath Called and is Calling into his Everlasting Covenant ▶️SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/user/stack45ny ▶️After subscribing, click on NOTIFICATION BELL to be notified of new uploads. ▶️SUPPORT CHANNEL: https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_donations&business=RB72ANM8DJL2S&lc=US&item_name=stack45ny¤cy_code=USD&bn=PP%2dDonationsBF%3abtn_donateCC_LG%2egif%3aNonHosted My Primary Backup Sites: ▶️LBRY: https://odysee.com/@RichMoore ▶️My WordPress blog: https://sermonsandsongsdotorg.com/ ▶️Telegram: https://t.me/ChristianSermonsAndAudioBooks ▶️RUMBLE https://rumble.com/c/c-278901 William Ames was born in 1576 at Ipswich, Suffolk, then a center of the robust Puritanism. Ames’s father was a well-to-do merchant with Puritan sympathies; his mother was related to families that would help to found Plymouth Plantation. Since both parents died when he was young, he was reared by his maternal uncle, Robert Snelling, a Puritan from nearby Boxford. Ames’s uncle sent him in 1594 to Christ’s College, Cambridge University. He graduated with a B.A. in 1598 and in 1601 with a M.A., after which, was elected Fellow at Christ’s College and ordained to the ministry. He underwent a dramatic conversion under the “rousing preaching” of William Perkins. Following his spiritual transformation, Ames declared that “a man may be bonus ethicus—a moral person in outward religion—and yet not bonus theologus—a sincere-hearted Christian (Fresh Suit Against Human Ceremonies, 1:131). Ames quickly became the moral compass and conscience of the College. But this was short-lived. King James’s edict at the 1604 Hampton Court Conference strengthened the conviction that any Puritan activity at the colleges that involved criticism of the Church of England must be suppressed. Puritan spokesmen were soon stripped of their degrees and dismissed. The process culminated in 1609 with the appointment of Valentine Cary, who hated Puritanism, to the mastership rather than William Ames. On December 21, 1609, when Ames preached a stinging sermon on St. Thomas’s Day—an annual festivity at Cambridge which had become increasingly raucous over the years—and denounced gambling, administering the “salutary vinegar of reproof,” the college authorities had him taken into custody and suspended him from his academic degrees and ecclesiastical duties. After a brief period as city lecturer in Colchester, Ames was forbidden to preach by George Abbott, Bishop of London. In 1610, Ames decided to seek the freer academic and ecclesiastical climate of the Netherlands where he remained for the rest of his life. Ames first went to Rotterdam where he met John Robinson, pastor of the English Separatist congregation. Some of the congregation’s members were soon to establish Plymouth Plantation. Ames could not persuade Robinson to abandon his Separatist sentiments that the Puritan churches should separate “root and branch” from the Church of England, but did succeed in tempering some of his more radical views. Ames’s skill as a theologian won him considerable acclaims as the “Augustine of Holland” and “the hammer of the Arminians” (Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 1:943). Eventually, the Arminian issue was addressed at the Synod of Dort (1618-1619). Because of his expertise in addressing issues of the Arminian struggle, Ames, while a non-voting member of the synod, was called to be chief theological advisor and secretary to Johannes Bogerman, the presiding officer. An anti-Arminian purge in academic circles left a professorship vacated at Leiden University. He later developed some of these lectures into his famous Marrow of Theology. In 1632, Ames accepted an invitation from his friend Hugh Peter to join him in co-pastoring the church of English refugees at Rotterdam. Ames was attracted to the post because of Peter’s vision of a covenant-centered congregation that strove for a purged membership of regenerate believers who truly practiced their faith. He was desired to help the church develop a Puritan college in Rotterdam. In late summer, 1633, Ames finally headed south to Rotterdam. In the fall, the Maas River breached its banks, and Ames, already unwell, became even more ill after his house was flooded. He died of pneumonia on November 11 at the age of fifty-seven in the arms of Hugh Peter. To the end, he remained firm in faith and triumphant in hope. Shortly before his death, Ames seriously considered joining his friend John Winthrop in New England. Four years after Ames’s death, his wife and children went to live in the Puritan settlement of Salem, Massachusetts. They brought Ames’s library with them, which formed the nucleus of the original library for Harvard College, though fire later destroyed most of the books. Thomas Goodwin said that “next to the Bible, he esteemed Dr. Ames, his Marrow of Divinity, as the best book in the world.”