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Richard Sibbes

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Richard Sibbes.

Richard Sibbes (or Sibbs) (1577 - 1635) was an English theologian. He is known as a Biblical exegete, and as a representative, with William Perkins and John Preston, of what has been called "main-line" Puritanism.[1]

Life

He was born in Tostock, Suffolk, where his father was a wheelwright;[2] other sources say Sudbury. He attended St John's College, Cambridge from 1595. He held various academic posts, of which he was deprived by the Court of High Commission on account of his Puritanism. He was lecturer at Holy Trinity Church, Cambridge, from 1610 or 1611 to 1615 or 1616.[3]

He was then preacher at Gray's Inn, London, from 1617, returning to Cambridge as Master of Catherine Hall in 1626, without giving up the London position.[4]

Also in 1626, the support group known as the Feoffees for Impropriations was set up, and Sibbes was a founder member (it built on an informal grouping dating back to 1613). It was closely linked to St Antholin, Budge Row, for its seven years of existence: it was shut down in 1633.[5] With others,[6][7] he worked to fund and provide platforms for preachers.[8] He was one of four ministers in the original feoffees, the other members being chosen as four lawyers and four laymen.[9]

Works

He was the author of several devotional works expressing intense religious feeling — The Saint's Cordial (1629), The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax (1631, exegesis of Isaiah 42:3), The Soules Conflict (1635), etc.

A volume of sermons appeared in 1630, dedicated to Horace Vere, 1st Baron Vere of Tilbury and his wife Lady Mare. Most of the other works were first published by Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye, after Sibbes died. The content belied the mainly moderate and conforming attitudes for which Sibbes was known in his lifetime.[10] Beames of Divine Light, A Description of Christ in Three Sermons and Bowels Opened appeared in 1639, as did The Returning Backslider, sermons on the Book of Hosea.

A complete edition was published 1862-4 in Edinburgh, in seven volumes, by James Nichol, with a biographical memoir by Alexander Grosart.[11]

Reprints
  • Expositions of St. Paul (1977)
  • Glorious Freedom: The Excellency of the Gospel Above the Law (2000)

Views

The clerical leaders of the Feoffees, Davenport, Gouge and Sibbes, all adhered to Calvinist covenant theology, as shaped by the English theologians Perkins, Preston, William Ames, and Thomas Taylor.[12][13] There was a tacit assumption of a state church.[14] Sibbes believed the Second Coming was necessary to complete the work that Christ had begun.[15]

Efforts to define further the Puritanism of Sibbes - which is a term much debated - place him in various groups. Under pious "non-separatists", he is with Preston, Richard Baxter, Robert Bolton, and John Dod.[16] Under those who would conform to set forms of worship, he is with Dod, Nicholas Byfield, Richard Capel, John Downame, Arthur Hildersham, and Richard Stock (another Feoffee).[17] He is also a fully conforming Puritan, with Preston, Samuel Ward, and Robert Hill.[18][19] With Richard Bernard, he was a moderate Calvinist who promoted religious tolerance.[20] With Perkins, Preston, Baxter and Henry Newcome, he was a moderate and non-Presbyterian Puritan.[21]

His perspective was European, or even wider, and he saw Catholicism in terms of a repressive conspiracy.[22] With Davenport, Gouge, Taylor, Thomas Gataker, John Stoughton, and Josias Shute, he helped raise money for Protestants of the Palatinate affected by the opening of the Thirty Year's War; and later for John Dury's missions.[23] Laud brought up Sibbes, Davenport, Gouge and Taylor in front of the Court of High Commission for this.[24] The Fountain Opened (1638) advocated mission work.[25]

Influence

His works were much read in New England.[26] Thomas Hooker, prominent there from 1633, was directly influenced by Sibbes, and his "espousal theology", using marriage as a religious metaphor, draws on The Bruised Reed and Bowels Opened.[27]

The poet George Herbert was a contemporary, and there are suggestions on parallels. Where Herbert speaks in The Church Militant about the westward movement of the propagation of the gospel, Christopher Hill comments that this may have come from The Bruised Reed.[28] Other examples have been proposed by Doerksen.[29]

Sibbes was cited by the Methodist John Wesley.[30] The Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon studied his craft in Sibbes, Perkins and Thomas Manton.[31] The evangelical Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote in the highest terms of his own encounter with the work of Sibbes.[32]

References

  •  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource.

Notes

  1. ^ Christopher Hill, Some Intellectual Consequences of the English Revolution (1980), p. 62.
  2. ^ Kelly M. Kapic, Randall C. Gleason, The Devoted Life: An Invitation to the Puritan Classics (2004), p. 83.
  3. ^ http://www.monergism.com/directory/link_category/Puritans/Richard-Sibbes/
  4. ^ Andrew Pyle (editor), Dictionary of Seventeenth Century British Philosophers (2000), article on Sibbes, pp. 744-6.
  5. ^ http://www.theologian.org.uk/churchhistory/achurchhalflyreformed.html
  6. ^ Frances Bridges, Samuel Brown[disambiguation needed], John Davenport, Richard Davies[link currently leads to a wrong person], Robert Eyre[link currently leads to a wrong person], John Gearing, George Harwood[link currently leads to a wrong person], Charles Offspring, Christopher Sherland, Richard Stock, John White[disambiguation needed].
  7. ^ Stock died soon after, and was replaced by William Gouge: http://www.millersville.edu/~history/faculty/Bremer/Hartford.htm
  8. ^ Francis J. Bremer, Tom Webster, Puritans and Puritanism in Europe and America: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia (2006), pp. 396-7.
  9. ^ Christopher Hill, Economic Problems of the Church (1968 reprint), p. 255.
  10. ^ Nicholas Tyacke, Aspects of English Protestantism, C. 1530-1700: C. 1530 - 1700 (2001), pp. 122-3.
  11. ^ Online text, including Grosart's memoir
  12. ^ Christopher Hill, Economic Problems of the Church (1968 reprint), p. 347.
  13. ^ Christopher Hill, A Turbulent, Seditious and Factious People: John Bunyan and His Church (1988), p. 170.
  14. ^ Christopher Hill, A Turbulent, Seditious and Factious People: John Bunyan and His Church (1988), p. 179.
  15. ^ Bryan W. Ball, A Great Expectation: Eschatological Thought in English Protestantism to 1660, p. 47.
  16. ^ William M. Lamont, Richard Baxter and the Millennium (1979), p. 230.
  17. ^ Christopher Hill, Society and Puritanism (1969 edition), p. 19.
  18. ^ Daniel W. Doerksen, Conforming to the Word: Herbert, Donne, and the English Church Before Laud (1997), p. 21.
  19. ^ http://wsupress.wayne.edu/literature/littheory/papazian%20content/papazianEXT.pdf, p. 3.
  20. ^ http://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/01-1/doermilt.html
  21. ^ Christopher Hill, The Experience of Defeat (1984), p. 211.
  22. ^ Christopher Hill, Puritanism and Revolution (1986 edition), pp. 127-8.
  23. ^ Anthony Milton, Catholic and Reformed: The Roman and Protestant Churches in English Protestant Thought, 1600-1640 (2002), p. 398.
  24. ^ Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (1993), p. 302.
  25. ^ Gerald H. Anderson, Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions (1999), p. 619.
  26. ^ Gerald H. Anderson, Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions (1999), p. 619.
  27. ^ Amanda Porterfield, Female Piety in Puritan New England: The Emergence of Religious Humanism (1992), pp. 36-7.
  28. ^ Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (1993), p. 139.
  29. ^ Helen Wilcox, The English Poems of George Herbert (2007), p. 477 and p. 500.
  30. ^ Frederick A. Dreyer, The Genesis of Methodism (1999), p. 90.
  31. ^ Hughes Oliphant Old, Worship: Reformed According to Scripture (2002), p. 88.
  32. ^ Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers (1972), p. 175.

Further reading

  • Ronald Norman Frost, Richard Sibbes' Theology of Grace and the Division of English Reformed Theology (1996)
  • Mark Dever, Richard Sibbes: Puritanism and Calvinism in Late Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (2000).
Academic offices
Preceded by Master of St Catharine's College, Cambridge
1626-1635 		Succeeded by
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