James Ussher (1581-1656)
was one of the greatest Reformed evangelicals of the
seventeenth century. At an early age he rose to high
academic and episcopal office. He was made a professor
of divinity at Trinity College Dublin in his twenties.
In his forties he was made the protestant Archbishop of
Armagh.
Despite his high-profile
role in public and ecclesiastical affairs he was a
tireless Christian scholar. His complete works run to
seventeen volumes, not including A Body of Divinity
and Immanuel, which were published
posthumously. The present volume also contains Ussher’s
Irish Articles of 1615. Ussher’s work is a model of
faithful biblical scholarship that the publishers hope
will be an inspiration to all those who seek to stand
for scriptural truth today.
The Body of Divinity
is James Ussher’s most accessible work of theology. It
provides a comprehensive summary of the Reformed
Christian faith that will prove invaluable to all
Christians who want to enter more deeply into the
understanding of Scripture.
Ussher was a profound
scholar who has much to teach contemporary evangelicals
on a number of vital issues. The present volume also
includes his Irish Articles of 1615 and a brief
exposition of the incarnation entitled Immanuel.
Together they constitute a fine introduction to the
thought of one of the greatest Reformed evangelical
scholars of the 17th Century.
James
Ussher (4 January 1581 – 21 March 1656) was Church of
Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland
between 1625 and 1656. He was a prolific scholar, who
most famously published a chronology that purported to
establish the time and date of the creation as the night
preceding Sunday, 23 October 4004 BC, according to the
proleptic Julian calendar.
Ussher was born in Dublin, Ireland, into a well-to-do
Anglo-Irish family. His maternal grandfather, James
Stanihurst, had been speaker of the Irish parliament,
and his father Arnold Ussher was a clerk in chancery who
married Margaret Stanihurst. Ussher's younger, and only
surviving, brother, Ambrose, became a distinguished
scholar of Arabic and Hebrew. According to his chaplain
and biographer, Nicholas Bernard, the elder brother was
taught to read by two blind, spinster aunts.
Ussher was a gifted polyglot, entering Dublin Free
School and then the newly founded (1591) Trinity
College, Dublin on 9 January 1594, at the age of
thirteen (not an unusual age at the time). He had
received his Bachelor of Arts degree by 1598, and was a
fellow and MA by 1600 (though Bernard claims he did not
gain his MA till 1601). In May 1602, he was ordained in
the Trinity College Chapel as a deacon in the
Protestant, established, Church of Ireland (and possibly
priest on the same day) by his uncle Henry Ussher, the
Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland.
Ussher went on to become Chancellor of St Patrick's
Cathedral, Dublin in 1605 and Prebend of Finglas. He
became Professor of Theological Controversies at Trinity
College and a Bachelor of Divinity in 1607, Doctor of
Divinity in 1612, and then Vice-Chancellor in 1615 and
vice-provost in 1616. In 1613, he married Phoebe,
daughter of a previous Vice-Provost, Luke Challoner, and
published his first work. In 1615, he was closely
involved with the drawing up of the first confession of
faith of the Church of Ireland.
In 1619 Ussher travelled to England, where he remained
for two years. His only child was Elizabeth (1619–93),
who married Sir Timothy Tyrrell, of Oakley,
Buckinghamshire. She was the mother of James Tyrrell.
He became prominent after meeting James I. In 1621 James
nominated him Bishop of Meath. He also became a national
figure in Ireland, becoming Privy Councillor in 1623 and
an increasingly substantial scholar. A noted collector
of Irish manuscripts, he made them available for
research to fellow-scholars such as his friend, Sir
James Ware. From 1623 until 1626 he was again in England
and was excused from his episcopal duties to study
church history. He was nominated Primate of All Ireland
and Archbishop of Armagh in 1625 and succeeded
Christopher Hampton.
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