William Ames

William Ames (1576 to 1633) was an English Puritan minister and philosopher who spent much of his career in the Netherlands and is best known for his part in the controversy between the Calvinists and the Arminians. Born at Ipswich and educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he was influenced by his tutor William Perkins, he was suspended after a sermon against student revelry and left for the Netherlands. There he debated the Arminian minister Nicholas Grevinchovius at Rotterdam, served as a minister to the English soldiers of the States-General, and wrote the Coronis ad Collationem Hagiensem, his major book. In 1622 he became professor at Franeker, where he prepared the Medulla Theologiae, a manual of Calvinistic doctrine, for his students. His 1632 work on conscience tried to bring Christian ethics into clear relation with particular cases of conduct.