If a reader familiar with James Ussher's two sermons on Romans viii.15–16 were to peruse the sermon on the same passage included in A. B. Grosart's edition of the works of Richard Sibbes, they would likely experience a strange sense of déjà-vu. For these are, in fact, the same sermons.Footnote 1
Déjà-vu and a textual conundrum
That these are the same sermons cannot be in doubt. A comparison of two short passages will give a sense of the degree of correspondence. From ‘The seal of salvation’ in Charles Elrington's edition of Ussher we have:
Whereby he means he will give a secret love token to the soul, whereby it rests assured of the unspeakable love of God, and freedom from condemnation. Now what was this white stone? [Revelation ii.17] The Athenians had a custom, when malefactors were accused and arraigned, to have black and white stones by them, and so according to the sentence given, those condemned had a black, and the acquitted had a white stone given them, unto this the Holy Ghost here alludes, that this stone, this seal shall assure them of absolute acquittance from condemnation, and so free them of the cause of fear.Footnote 2
And from ‘The witness of salvation’ in Grosart's edition of Sibbes:
whereby he means, in such a case he will give a secret love-token unto the soul, whereby it may rest assured of the unspeakable love of God and freedom from condemnation.
The Athenians had a custom, when malefactors were accused and arraigned, to have black and white stones by them, and so according to the sentence given, those acquitted had a white, those condemned had a black stone given them. Unto this the Holy Ghost here alludes, that this seal shall assure them of an absolute acquittance from condemnation, and so free them from the cause of fear.Footnote 3
The correspondence is such that it would be difficult to imagine that these are independent accounts of the same event. There certainly are minor differences, and a few more significant departures such as the penultimate paragraph where the ‘Sibbes’ version is more expansive, but the similitude is strongly suggestive of a literary relationship between the two texts, both being derived from a common source. Most likely this source was an auditor's notes, taken in shorthand and then written out for the edification of the individual or a wider group such as a family or friendship network.Footnote 4
How could the very same sermons find their way into the nineteenth-century editions of the works of two different seventeenth-century divines? For an answer, we must investigate the murky publishing history of The saints cordials.
The Saints Cordials
The first edition of The saints cordials rolled off the press in 1629, a collection of twenty-nine sermons to which many a godly reader would have turned eagerly for a long draught of spiritual refreshment. The Cordials were tonics, served to the reader ‘as they vvere delivered in svndry sermons upon speciall Occasions, in the Citie of London, and else-where’.Footnote 5 The enterprising London bookseller, Robert Dawlman, sought in this way to quench the seemingly insatiable public thirst for printed sermons.
This volume was one of a number of editions of sermons to appear in the early decades of the seventeenth century bearing the motto ‘uprightnes hath boldnes’,Footnote 6 usually accompanied by the device of a burning lamp and the legend Prælucendo pereo (‘Lighting the way for others, I perish’).Footnote 7 This is suggestive of a co-ordinated effort to make printed sermons available to the reading public, regardless of the wishes of their preachers. Arnold Hunt is surely correct in interpreting this motto ‘as an apology for unauthorised publication, on the grounds that the “uprightness” of the desire for godly literature should be held to excuse the “boldness” of publishing these sermons without the author's consent’.Footnote 8 At the centre of this enterprise lies the shadowy figure of John Hart, who worked with different publishers to bring edifying works of practical divinity to the press.Footnote 9
Second and third editions followed, published by Henry Overton in 1637 and by Henry Cripps in 1658 respectively, but with some significant changes.Footnote 10 In the first edition Sibbes is not named as the preacher or as compiler of the collection of sermons, nor is his name mentioned in the entry in the register of the Stationers’ Company.Footnote 11 With the second edition, Sibbes's name was displayed on the title page (and on the separate title pages for individual portions), along with a more focused description of the work: ‘delivered in svndry sermons at Graies-Inne, and in the Citie of London. Whereunto is now added, The Saints Safety in Evill Times, Preached in Cambridge upon speciall occasions. By Richard Sibbs D.D. Late Master of Katherine-Hall in Cambridge, and Preacher at Grayes-Inne’.Footnote 12
Furthermore, there was a major change in the contents between the first and second editions. Sixteen sermons, including the Romans viii sermon, have been removed leaving only thirteen from the first edition, and nine new sermons have been added (see Table 1). Paratextual information supplies some details absent from the first edition about the sermons which have been carried over. For example, we now know that the two sermons on 1 Corinthians xi.30–1 titled ‘The art of self-judging’ were preached ‘at Coleman-street Church’ (St Stephens), and that a sermon on 2 Timothy iv.17–8, one of the sermons titled ‘The saints safety in evill times’, was preached at Paul's Cross.Footnote 13 There was also a modicum of editing of the text.Footnote 14
The contents of The saints cordials
The status of the sixteen sermons that did not survive into the second edition was open to question. A warning against any casual attribution of these sermons to Sibbes could be taken from the fact that it has long been known that ‘The poore doubtinge Christian drawne unto Christ’, on John vi.45, is actually the work of Thomas Hooker. This is not even a complete sermon, lacking Hooker's typical structure of doctrine, reason and use. A second edition was published by Dawlman and Luke Fawn in 1635, still anonymous but longer by around two thousand words, and it continued to grow from there with its own complicated publishing history.Footnote 15 Later editions carried Hooker's name.
Sibbes's and Ussher's nineteenth-century editors
A. B. Grosart obviously felt some unease about the change in the contents between the first and second editions of The saints cordials. Whilst preparing his edition of Sibbes's works he reached out to the literati, ‘most anxious to ascertain if any of the … Sermons omitted in β [1637 edition] can be traced to any other than Sibbes’. He labelled these ‘uncertain’ and was particularly concerned that the sermons on 1 John iii.3 (‘The pattern of purity’) and Canticles i.5–6 (‘The Church's blackness’) had been omitted entirely from William Crowe and John Osborne's bibliography of sermons. He was aware of the inclusion of Hooker's ‘The poor doubting Christian’ in the first edition and this may have led him to fear other textual problems.Footnote 16
Any such apprehensions were either dismissed or glossed over in publishing his edition. On introducing the first of the discarded sermons, Grosart commented that ‘Probably the original edition of the “Cordials” was surreptitiously published from “imperfect notes”’, but that ‘it seems to have been revised by the author’. This sermon was, ‘no doubt, along with others, withheld from the editions of 1637 and 1658 because of the looseness and unsatisfactoriness of the report of it’. This was a matter of quality, we might say fidelity, rather than provenance.Footnote 17 The two sermons not catalogued by Crowe and Osborne simply ‘seem to have been overlooked’. Grosart insisted that ‘they authenticate themselves, being full of Sibbes's recurring phrases and words’.Footnote 18
In publishing Ussher's sermons, Charles Elrington also experienced a degree of unease, but in his case this was more general; a ‘considerable reluctance’ to publish any sermons other than the two which Ussher saw through the press himself. He noted the words of Ussher's chaplain, Nicholas Bernard:
If any sermon notes taken from him have been printed in his life-time, under his name, or shall be hereafter (which divers have of late attempted), the reader is to take notice, that it was against his mind, and that they are disowned by him, which as he endeavoured to his utmost to suppress, while he was living, so it was his fear to be injured in it after his death.Footnote 19
The sermons, where Ussher's evangelical Calvinism was often on clear display, would also doubtless have jarred with the sensibilities of his High Church editor, who on occasion can be found dialling down the rhetoric against the Arminians.Footnote 20
Elrington's source for the two Romans viii sermons was a printed collection from the 1670s,Footnote 21 but they are also found in a manuscript of thirty-six sermons preserved in Balliol College, Oxford, on which Elrington drew for ‘sermons never before published’.Footnote 22 He only took a further fifteen sermons from this source, thinking ‘that number will be fully sufficient to justify the fears expressed by the Archbishop for such unauthorized publications’.Footnote 23
Two further problems
What is interesting about the Balliol manuscript for our purposes is that it also contains sermons, left unpublished by Elrington, on 1 Cor. xi.28–9 (2 sermons) and 1 John iii.3 which on closer inspection are found to match two sermons discarded from later editions of The saints cordials, but included by Grosart in his edition of Sibbes: ‘The right receiving’ and ‘The pattern of purity’.Footnote 24 As with the Romans viii sermons the level of verbal correspondence, right down to the preacher's asides, is so close that these should be regarded not as different reports of the same sermon but as accounts with a direct literary relationship.
For example, from Grosart's edition of Sibbes, the sermon on 1 Cor. xi.28–9 is clearly in preparation for sharing in the Lord's Supper:
Take him. There is delivery and seizement of Christ – as by the ring of a door – we are interested into heaven, and if he be ours, with him, we have all things.
Nay, I will go further – for the Papists will go thus far – they will say Christ is to be delivered and received; ay, but how? After a gross caparnaicall Footnote 25 opinion, eaten really and bodily with the mouth. But Christ is transferred into me, and I into him, by faith; we are made one with him, flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone.Footnote 26
And from the Balliol manuscript, attributed to Ussher:
Take him. There is delyverie and seazement of Christ (as by the ring of a doore) wee are interrested into Heaven, and if hee bee ours, with him wee have all things. / Nay, I will goe further, for the Papistes, will goe thus farre. They will saie Christ is to bee delivered, and receaved. I [Aye] but how? After a grosse Capernaicall opinion, eaten really and bodiely with the mouth. But Christ is transferred into mee, and I into him, by Faith, wee are made one with him, fleshe of his fleshe, and bone of his bone.Footnote 27
From the sermon on 1 John iii.3 in Grosart's edition of Sibbes:
Thou must not continue with a common heart, as foul hands are called common hands in the Scripture, we must wash ourselves, make ourselves clean. Now from hence I observed in another place this doctrine, Doct. 1. That a man that is careless of purifying himself, that man must have no hope.
A harsh point, to bring a thing to desperate issue, but what shall we do? Shall we encourage men to that hope, that they shall carry with them to hell? May we say, thou mayest hope to be like Christ in glory, when thou dost not labour to be like him in purity in this world? We should betray souls. And do you know, this is the beginning of salvation.Footnote 28
And from the Balliol manuscript:
Thou must not contynue with a Common heart, as foule hands, are called Common hands in the Scripture, wee must washe our selves, make our selves clean. Nowe from hence, I observed (in another Place) this Doctrine, that, A man whoe is carelesse of purifieing himselfe, that man must have noe hope. An harshe Poynt to bring a thing to a desperate Issue. But what shall wee doe? Shall wee encourage men to that hope, that they shall carrie with them to Hell? Shall wee saie, that thou maiest hope to bee like Christ Jesus in glorie, when thou doest not laboure to bee like him in Puritie in this World? Wee should betraie soules. And doe yowe knowe that this is the beginning of Salvation.Footnote 29
Assessing the evidence
What is to be made of the sermons on these three texts which in different ways are attributed to both Ussher and Sibbes? A strong cumulative case can be made that these sermons should be attributed to Ussher.
First, the Balliol manuscript attributes its collection of sermons to Ussher: ‘Sermons on severall subjects. By the most right Reverend Father in God James Ussher, late ArchB[isho]p of Armagh, Primate of Ireland.’Footnote 30 The sermons are in several hands and include the two sermons published by Ussher himself, one before the House of Commons in 1621, the other before King James at Wansted in 1624, both appearing to be copied from the published versions.Footnote 31 It is not possible to ascertain precisely when the collection was assembled but it was entered in the Stationers’ register on 4 April 1656, two weeks after Ussher's death, though the plan was never followed through to publication.Footnote 32 It was entered on the register by Andrew Crooke and passed on to his son William, upon whose death in 1693 or 1694 it was bequeathed to Balliol College.Footnote 33 When the Romans viii sermons were eventually published in Twenty sermons (1678), they appeared under Ussher's name. By contrast, neither the entry for The saints cordials in the Stationers’ register in 1629 nor the published first edition bear the name of Sibbes.
Secondly, there are some suggestive parallels in the Balliol manuscript sermons to what we know of Ussher's visit to England in 1624 to 1626. There is evidence that he was closely associated with the circle around Robert Rich, second earl of Warwick, and that as Ussher moved from Essex to London and on to Islington in early 1626 some of his auditors moved with him. He preached a short sermon series on Hebrews ix.14 from a number of different pulpits, but a number of ‘honourable personages’ are clearly accompanying him and hearing the ongoing series.Footnote 34 When we read, in the excerpt from the sermon in 1 John iii.3 quoted above, ‘from hence, I observed (in another Place)’, this sounds more like the itinerant preaching of Ussher in this period than that of Sibbes.Footnote 35 Although we know that Sibbes preached from other London pulpits such as Mercers’ Chapel and Paul's Cross,Footnote 36 these were occasional sermons. Being settled in his lectureship at Gray's Inn he would be less likely to be preaching series or mini-series of sermons across different venues.
Furthermore, the first publication of the Romans viii sermons under Ussher's name specifies that these were preached at ‘Great S. Bartholomews’.Footnote 37 We know that Ussher preached there from 1 Peter iv.17 on 2 July 1626. This was one week after his strongly-worded sermon before King Charles at Greenwich,Footnote 38 and shortly before his departure for Ireland, leaving his hearers with the message that they should not be surprised at the ‘fiery trial’ they were undergoing and the warning that the axe of judgement would soon fall on England.Footnote 39 Like Felsted and Islington, where Ussher preached in the preceding months, St Bartholomew the Great, in Smithfield, London, had associations with the Rich family. Warwick House lay nearby on Holborn, and the advowson along with family property in the parish had been settled on Warwick's younger brother, Henry, now earl of Holland.Footnote 40 Lady Mary Vere, that patron of godly preachers whose influence with her brother-in-law, Sir Edward Conway, Secretary of State, was a driving force in Ussher's elevation to the archbishopric of Armagh, was a resident of the parish.Footnote 41 These connections to the parish, by themselves, are hardly conclusive evidence,Footnote 42 but they are suggestive given the company Ussher was keeping in the mid-1620s.
Thirdly, one can find interesting parallels between passages in these sermons and Ussher's later preaching on the same texts. For example, in the case of 1 Cor. xi.28–9, there are two manuscript accounts of his later preaching. The first of these was preached on 14 November 1647, shortly after Ussher took up his post as Lecturer at Lincoln's Inn. The concerns of this sermon are governed by the doctrinal arc followed in the sermons around it and it does not correspond closely to that in the Balliol manuscript.Footnote 43 The later instance, from Lincoln's Inn on 9 February 1651, by contrast, has numerous parallels to the Balliol manuscript.Footnote 44 These include an emphasis on spiritual rather than corporal eating, the need to appear at the feast in the wedding garments of faith (alluding to Matthew xxii.12), a careful distinction between damnation and judgement (necessary in view of the marginal note in the King James Bible, as observed in the later sermon),Footnote 45 the impossibility of faith without knowledge (with reference to Isaiah liii), the point that no one lays out a feast for dead menFootnote 46 and the encouragement that the weak find strength in the sacrament.
In warning against approaching the table without grace and faith, Ussher uses the same image in each sermon. From the earlier account:
Lett all ignorant persons examine themselves, for howsoever they maie come, yett it greiveth the Lord that they come, and this shalbee a Judgment unto them att the last, that they were soe bold to come without examinac[i]on. I speake not this to discourage a man from commeing, for thou shalt paie for it, if thou commest not. But knowe this, if thou come ignorantly, there standeth the Angell of the Lorde to keep thee (as Adam was, Gene[sis] 3) from this Sacrament.Footnote 47
And from 1651:
3. Gen. 24. At the East side of the garden of Eden, he set the Cherubins and the blade of a Sword shaken, to keepe the way of the Tree of life: So, here is an Angel with a fiery sword to cut in peeces all the Prophane, and unworthy Receivers, that touch this Table.Footnote 48
Moving to a close and warning his hearers against eating and drinking unworthily, Ussher uses a striking analogy:
Even soe hee that commeth to the Lord's Table, and yett thriveth not by that Heavenly Foode there eaten, hee discrediteth the same. It is with him as it was with the Ill favoured Kine, Gene[sis] 41. Whoe allbeeit they eates up seaven others, yett they themselves were still soe ill favoured and leane, that it could not bee seene, that they had eaten any thing. It is soe with many a poore Christian whoe often feast and yet are never the better, remaineing as leane as ever.Footnote 49
The later auditor, whose account is much briefer and more bullet-point-like has recorded: ‘Let us labour to finde, that Gods meate is not lost: wee Eate much, and yet are as Pharohs leane kine.’Footnote 50
In the earlier account in the Balliol manuscript Ussher immediately turns to the narrative of 1 Samuel xiv:
Jonathan (in the 1 Sam[uel], when Saule was in the pursuite of his Enimies, chargeing that they should taste noe foode, till they had gotten the victorie) heereupon (saith hee) my father hath troubled the People because hee hath forbidden them to eate, whereby theire strength faileth. Soe when God commeth to feede us, lett us find strength, let us see. Are not our eyes enlightened (as were Jonathan's beeing cleared after hee had tasted a little honney), have wee not better hearts then before?Footnote 51
Ussher expands on this, before a segue into the image of Elijah, sustained by one meal for a forty-day journey to Horeb, the mountain of God (1 Kings xix), with application for his hearers, before closing in prayer. The later account simply ends abruptly with ‘This is as the Honey to Jonathan, to give strength.’Footnote 52
This is not the same sermon preached a second time but the many parallels, especially the juxtaposition of the Old Testament images of Pharaoh's lean cattle and Jonathan's honey at the close, in sermons likely preached twenty-five years apart, suggest that these are stock elements in Ussher's preaching on a passage that would often have been the chosen text at a Communion service.
There are parallels too between the sermon on Romans viii.16 in the Balliol manuscript and notes of a later sermon on the same passage, in this case Ussher's first sermon preached as Lecturer at Lincoln's Inn on 31 October 1647.Footnote 53 One finds a number of supplemental texts deployed to the same end, for example Psalm xxxv.3 immediately followed by John xiv.21, and Revelation ii.17; iii.20.Footnote 54 There is also the distinction between how faith ‘works, and purges’ in sanctification, whereas in justification ‘is a sufferer onely’ (‘is an Agent … is a Patient’ in the later manuscript).Footnote 55
The broader concepts also exhibit substantial parallels. Unpacking the passage, Ussher explains that there are two witnesses, our spirit and God's Spirit who bears witness with our spirit. ‘These bee two evidences’, Ussher insists, ‘not single, but conjoined.’Footnote 56 Beginning with the testimony of our spirit, he explains that if one considers the marks on which the syllogisms operate, ‘the worke of working these things in mee comes of God. But for the worke of discerning, this is certaine, how our affection stands in this case, it comes of us’.Footnote 57 This testimony ‘comes of us’, it appears, as the judgement of conscience enlightened by the word of God. Ussher explains:
The Testimonie of our spirit I conceive to bee, when a man hath taken a survey of those excellent things belonging unto Justification and Sanctification: When according to the substantiall triall and truths, which I know in the word belonging thereunto, I observe and follow as fast as I can, what is there commanded; when I take the candle of the word, and with that bright burning lampe search into the word, what is there to bee done, and therewith launce my corruptions, and so bring it home: This is the groundworke of the witnesse of our spirit.Footnote 58
So, for example, if we will let all else fall to lay hold of Christ, and receive him with an empty hand rather than relying on our own works, the justifying faith that has been secretly wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit may then be discerned within. Likewise, a heart that rises against sin gives warrant of the inward washing of sanctification rather than an outward washing only. Our spirit, ‘se[e]ing it selfe to have interest’ in the promises belonging to justification and sanctification, ‘doth truly and on sound judgement witnesse the assurance of our salvation’.Footnote 59 In effect, the minor premise and conclusion of both the mystical syllogism (the reflexive act of faith) and the practical syllogism (the testimony of holiness and good works) are supplied by the enlightened conscience which gives assurance ‘that I have not misse-applyed the promises’.Footnote 60
God adds to the witness of our spirits the seal of his Spirit. The two witnesses testify together that we are children of God. In the normal course of events, this second witness does not immediately follow the first. There is usually ‘an interposing triall’, after which the seal of the Spirit comes ‘as reward of service done’. The reward for overcoming is ‘a white stone, and in the stone a new name written’ (cf. Rev. ii.17), ‘a secret-love token’ signifying acquittal and absolution.Footnote 61
Ussher's later sermon on the same text aligns neatly with this conceptually, if not always in the language chosen to express those concepts. Our spirit is identified as the conscience, which ‘compares the Evidences of Gods Word, with our Thoughts, words, and Actions, And Applyes that word to our Heart’. It is the ‘Candle of the Lord’, searching the inward parts (Proverbs xx.27, KJV). Although the human heart is deceitful, enlightened by the word of God it performs its role as ‘a little judge, and a jury, within my owne Breast’. The Spirit of God then bears witness not to our spirit, but with it as ‘Cowitnes’. The first evidence is ‘of our owne spirit … By Inference, and Conclusion out of the word of God’; the second ‘is more playne … the direct testimony of God himselfe’, ‘a white stone’ testifying to our acquittal.Footnote 62
The brevity of the later auditor's notes is frustrating but again there are definite parallels here. Ussher is making a clear point about the testimony of the Spirit in Rom. viii.16 being ‘with’, rather than ‘to’, our spirits. Many of his contemporaries took a different view, highlighting a strongly pneumatological dynamic to the operation of the mystical and practical syllogisms. John Preston, for example, insisted that the aid of the Spirit was indispensable in supplying the minor premise. The Spirit ‘discovers good things to us, we had need light of the Spirit to judge aright of the sinceritie of the graces that we have, we shall goe amisse else, we shall not be able except we have the Spirit to help and assist us’.Footnote 63 Ussher was saying something quite different; and in his undisputed published sermons, Sibbes nowhere makes the same point in the same way.Footnote 64
Correcting the canon
The evidence presented here makes a strong case that Grosart erred in including all the sermons from the 1629 edition of The saints cordials, barring the previously identified Thomas Hooker sermon, in his edition of Sibbes. It calls into question his explanation that some pieces from the first edition were discarded on the grounds that the auditors’ notes from which they were taken were unsatisfactory accounts of the preached sermons. It suggests that after Sibbes's death in 1635 there was a desire to reprint his earliest published sermons from the previous composite work, distilled to remove the extraneous matter, and fortified through the addition of new ingredients, rather than being diluted by the sermons of others. This time The saints cordials would bear Sibbes's name, because this time it was truly Sibbes’s work.Footnote 65
The following pieces included in Grosart's edition of Sibbes should therefore be attributed to James Ussher:
‘The right receiving’ (WRS iv. 59–74)
‘The witness of salvation’ (WRS vii. 367–85)
‘The pattern of purity’ (WRS vii. 505–16)
It is recommended that the following pieces be treated with a considerable degree of suspicion, and no weight rested on them in regard to the views of Sibbes:
‘Spiritual mourning’ (WRS vi. 265–92)
‘The vanity of the creature’ (WRS vii. 33–47)
‘Discouragement's recovery’ (WRS vii. 49–64)
‘The Church's blackness’ (WRS vii. 93–104)
‘The touchstone of regeneration’ (WRS vii. 127–37)
‘The discreet ploughman’ (WRS vii. 139–50)
‘The matchless mercy’ (WRS vii. 151–64)
‘The knot of prayer loosed’ (WRS vii. 229–52)
‘Sin's antidote’ (WRS vii. 261–79)
‘The general resurrection’ (WRS vii. 316–34)
‘A glimpse of glory’ (WRS vii. 492–504)
It may in future be possible to determine the identity of the preacher for more of the sermons discarded from the later editions of The saints cordials. The growing amount of available data on English sermon manuscripts is a promising avenue for further research.Footnote 66 This article has shown something of the evidentiary value of sermon manuscripts in suggesting an answer to a problem thrown up by the printed sources. A more comprehensive attribution of the discarded material may come about through the identification of close parallels in auditors’ notes of sermons preached in the 1620s. It may even transpire that some of the discarded pieces are actually authentic Sibbes sermons. For now, however, caution must be urged.
A survey of scholarship
It is worth briefly surveying some of the secondary literature to evaluate the degree to which the conclusions of earlier works on Sibbes rely on this disputed material. Sidney Rooy's chapter-length study was an important contribution to the earlier scholarship. Of sixteen citations of material not carried over into the second edition of The saints cordials, two were to ‘The pattern of purity’, and four to ‘The witness of salvation’, which we must now reckon to be Ussher's. One of the citations of the latter work is a half-page block quote.Footnote 67 Bert Affleck's doctoral dissertation draws on the Ussher material for thirty-eight of its forty-five spurious references, and its presentation of Sibbes's eucharistic thought is largely shaped by multiple quotations from ‘The right receiving’.Footnote 68 Harold Shelly's dissertation makes twelve problematic references, seven of these to the Ussher material, six of which are to ‘The witness of salvation’, colouring his portrayal of Sibbes's spirituality.Footnote 69 Cary Weisiger's dissertation has fewer questionable references, but again those to Ussher outnumber those to the unidentified sources, six to three, three of them being to ‘The witness of salvation’ and to similar effect.Footnote 70 Stephen Beck has thirty-three references to the disputed texts, twenty of them to the Ussher material, of which nine are to ‘The witness of salvation’, which is drawn on in particular for the discussion of the Spirit's preparative work of inducing ‘legal fear’.Footnote 71
More recently, Anthony Moore's dissertation features thirteen references to contested material, eleven of them being to the Ussher sermons. One strand of his rebuttal of Ron Frost on the normative role of the law in the Christian life falls completely, based as it is on multiple quotations from ‘The pattern of purity’.Footnote 72 The published version of Frost's dissertation contains only four dubious references, two of them being quotations from ‘The witness of salvation’.Footnote 73 Other recent writing on Sibbes also draws on the Ussher sermons: for example, four citations of ‘The pattern of purity’ in Paul Schaefer's chapter on Sibbes in his study of the Cambridge Puritans,Footnote 74 and three references to ‘The witness of salvation’ in a chapter on Sibbes and the Holy Spirit in Joel Beeke and Mark Jones's A Puritan theology.Footnote 75
The most important work on Sibbes is unquestionably Mark Dever's fine monograph. Dever makes forty-three references to material excluded from the later editions of The saints cordials, of which twenty-four relate to the three Ussher pieces. Over half of the forty-three references are simply supporting citations, corroborating a point made with primary reference to undisputed Sibbes material. Of the others, perhaps in some instances Dever could have made the same point from authentic Sibbes sermons. In some cases, however, we encounter something quite strong and distinctive such as the passage in ‘The witness of salvation’, quoted above, on how the ‘work of discerning’ how our affections stand ‘comes of us’.Footnote 76 This is repeated in the abridgement of Dever's monograph, aimed at a popular audience.Footnote 77
Nothing in this survey of the literature threatens wholly to overturn previous conclusions, but it does show that to varying degrees those who have written on Sibbes have been inadvertently misled on points of detail, and that this has distorted their presentation of Sibbes's teaching on specific doctrines, such as the work of the Holy Spirit and the Lord's Supper. It is also interesting to note the preponderance of references to the three Ussher pieces over references to the eleven that are unattributed. This might be suggestive of a measure of singularity of these pieces, either in terms of distinctiveness of thought or precision of expression, leading to heavier mining of these seams by Sibbes scholars. A note of caution must therefore be sounded about relying on earlier scholarship too uncritically. The reader needs to be aware that some of the source material cited is not authentic Sibbes.
Coda
These findings will certainly affect our reading of Sibbes and the secondary literature around him. Should they alter our reading of Ussher? This study adds further evidence of his close connections to early Stuart Puritanism.Footnote 78 That the experimental piety of his sermons could see them bundled in a collection along with those of Richard Sibbes and Thomas Hooker, and that his sermons could be so readily accepted by later generations as the work of Sibbes, shows that they had much in common. The two men were, in fact, dear friends, and Bernard reports ‘a most entire affection’ between them.Footnote 79 We might imagine their amusement at the confusion of the two, and perhaps a sense of vindication in their concerns about the unauthorised printing of their sermons.Footnote 80
This study also acts as a cautionary tale about the nature of the sources we work with. The opportunism of the seventeenth-century publishing industry and the credulity of a nineteenth-century editor have conspired to produce a significant textual problem inscribed in our standard edition of Sibbes and seemingly undiscovered for 150 years. This is a reminder of the need to return ad fontes and to handle the primary sources with critical awareness.
Finally, what of the literary relationship between the sermons in the Balliol manuscript and their doubles in The saints cordials? Perhaps a clue lies not inside the Balliol manuscript, but on its binding, where one finds the initials ‘I.H.’ within an olive wreath.Footnote 81 This opens up the fascinating possibility that the manuscript, or at least some part of its final contents, was the property of the mysterious John Hart and that his ‘boldness’ in publishing the sermons of godly preachers was the catalyst for the first edition of The saints cordials.
