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Anthony Gilby: Puritan in Exile — A Biographical Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Dan G. Danner
Dan G. Danner
Affiliation:
Assistant professor of theology in the University of Portland, Oregon
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Extract

Perhaps the most succinct introduction to the life of Anthony Gilby is found in the famous decree of the University of Oxford in 1683 which denounced “pernicious books and damnable doctrines, destructive to the sacred persons of princes, their state and government, and of all human society.” Among the collection are Gilby's writings.

Type
Articles
Information
Church History , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , December 1971 , pp. 412 - 422
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1971

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References

1. Cooper, Charles H., Athenae catabrigienes (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell and Co., 1858-1913), I, pp. 516–18.Google Scholar

2. Curtis, Mark H., Oxford and Cambridge in Transition 1558–1642 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959,) p. 70.Google Scholar

3. Rackham, H., Early Statutes of Christ's College, Cambridge (Cambridge: Fabb and Tyler, 1927), pp. 91ff.Google Scholar

4. Mullinger, James Bass, The University of Cambridge from the Earliest Times to the Royal Injunctions of 1535 (Cambridge: University Press, 1873), p. 623.Google Scholar

5. Porter, H. C., Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge: University Press, 1958), p. 82.Google Scholar

6. Brook, Benjamin, The Lives of the Puritans (London: James Black, 1813), I, pp. 278–84.Google Scholar

7. Garrett does not give this statement much credence, for she does not find any evidence of Gilby's ordination; in addition, Nichols, in his Leicestershire (III, Pt. 2, 619, 639)Google Scholar, mentions Gilby's vicarage of 1560 but no earlier one. See Garrett, Christina H., The Marian Exiles, A Study in the Origins of Elizabethan Puritanism (Cambridge: University Press, 1938), pp. 161–62.Google Scholar

8. Whittingham, William, A Brief Discourse of the Troubles at Frankfort, 1554–1558 A.D. (London: Elliott Stock, 1575), p. 30.Google Scholar

9. Ibid., pp. 23ff.

10. See A. F. Mitchell's introduction to the Livre des Anglais (no date). For further information on this document see below (note 13).

11. Ibid.

12. An anonymous “Student of the Temple, about 1603,” wrote a life of Whittingham which serves as a preface to the latter's A Brief Discourse of the Troubles at Frankfort, in which the author suggests that Whittingham remained with several others to complete the task of translation, op. cit., pp. 4, 228.

13. This document has been made available by J. Southerden Burn, published at London in 1831, and later inserted into his History of Parish Registers. The facsimile in my possession was provided by the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C., with a prefatory note by A. F. Mitchell, loc. cit. It will be found also, with historical analysis, in Hackett, Horatio B., “Church-Book of the Puritans at Geneva, from 1555 to 1560,” Bibliotheca Sacra (July, 1862), pp. 469ffGoogle Scholar, and Heyer, Th., “Notice sur la Colonie Anglais, Etablie à Genève de 1555 à 1560,” Memoires et Documents, publiés par la Societie d'archeologie de Genève (1855), IX, pp. 337–68Google Scholar, as well as in Martin, Charles, Les Protestants Anglais réfugiés à Genève au temps de Calvin 1555–1560 (Geneva: A. Jullien, 1915), pp. 43–78.Google Scholar

14. Brook, loc. cit.

15. Ibid.

16. Whether Gilby informed Grindal of this lack of jurisdiction or Grindal himself came to this conclusion is problematic. It would appear that Gilby's public ministry was silenced considerably from this date. Cf. Brook (Ibid.) and Strype, John, The Life and Acts of Edmund Grindal (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1821), pp. 252–53.Google Scholar

17. The work Gilby responded to was A Detection of the Devils Sophistrie, wherewith he robbeth the unlearned people of the true belief, in the most blessed Sacrament of the aulter, 1546. See Gilby, Anthony, An Answer to the devilish detection of Stephane Gardiner, Bishoppe of Winchester (no colophon, 1547).Google Scholar

18. Ibid., fol. ix, recto.

19. Ibid., fol. xvi, recto.

20. Ibid.

21. Ibid., fol. xxx, recto.

22. Ibid., fol. xl, verso.

23. Ibid., fol. lxxiv, recto.

24. Cf. the notes on Gen. 9:13, fol. 4, verso, and Lk. 22:19, fol. 40, verso, in the Geneva Bible (The Bible and Holy Scriptvres conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament…., printed by R. Hall, Geneva, 1560)Google Scholar, as well as Joseph C. McLelland's keen comparative analysis of Martyr's eucharistic thought in The Visible Words of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957).Google Scholar

25. In his Treatise on Election, dated 1556, he wrote: “Whereas three years ago … I did write of this matter of Election and Reprobation, which is called Predestination, in a certain Commentary upon the Prophet Malachi, by the occasion of this text, ‘I have loved Jacob, and I have hated Esau,’ the which Treatise, by the rage of persecution, partly perished, and part did come of late to my hands: accompting this doctrine so necessary, that upon all occasions it ought with reverence to be uttered to the glory of God. …” Cf. A Briefe Treatise of Election and Reprobation, with certen answers to the Obiections of the aduersaries of thys doctrine (Geneva, 1556), fol. Aii, recto.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., fol. Aii, verso.

27. Although Calvin stressed many of the same motifs, his basis for the doctrine of predestination was more soteriologically oriented, and he did not stress to the same degree the necessity of good works as a consequence of predestination. Cf. The Institutes of the Christian Religion, edited by John T. McNeill and translated by Ford Lewis Battles. 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), III, 21, 7Google Scholar. Cf. also Wendel, François, Calvins, The Origins and Development of His Religious Thought translated by Mairet, Philip (London: Wm. Collins, 1963), p. 277Google Scholar. It is certainly true that Calvin's Commentary on Romans leans more in the direction of a double predestination (especially the double decree) than the early editions of the Institutes; only in the 1559 edition does the double predestination motif become stronger. But the differences in emphasis between Gilby and Calvin are significant enough to discourage the interpretation that the former borrowed from the latter. Cf. A Commentarie upon the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans, written in Latine by M. Iohn Caluin, and newly translated into Englishe by Christopher Rosdell (London, 1583)Google Scholar, as well as Wendel, op. cit., pp. 263ff. If anything, Gilby is closer in tone to Beza, whose doctrine of predestination was not fully developed until 1554. His Summa totius Christianismi, sive descriptio et distributio causarum salutis electorum et exitii reprobatorum ex sacris literis collecta (1555) was translated into English by Whittingham in Geneva in 1556. The English title, noted above, was A Briefe declaration of the chiefe poynts of Christian Religion. In 1561, John Stockwood collected this treatise, to which he added Gilby's Treatise on Election and a short piece on predestination by John Foxe, and entitled it The Treasure of Truth. These considerations surely lend evidence to the similarity of the views of Gilby and Beza, but the place of priority belongs to Gilby. Both argue from the base of God's sovereignty and the necessity of good works as a sign of election, and both stress the double predestination (decree) motif, although Gilby's may be the heavier emphasis.

28. Gilby, Anthony, A Commentarye upon the Prophet Mycah (London, 1551), fol. Aii, verso.Google Scholar

29. Ibid., fol. Av, recto.

30. Ibid., fol. Avi, verso-Avii, verso.

31. This description, generally used in Old Testament studies, refers to the later work of the “Deuteronomist” who is presumed to have reworked many of the sources which the “Jahwist” had already used in his compilation of certain sections of the Pentateuch as well as other Old Testament materials. The Deuteronomist, in his rehearsal, incorporated into his work his own view of history, interpreting events as being either favorable or unfavorable to Israel in direct relation to the nation's faithfulness to the covenant with God. Gilby, only one of many English Protestants to favor such a method, is here depicted as playing the role of a sixteenth-century English “Deuteronomist.”

32. Cf. the text of Lang, David, The Works of John Knox (Edinburgh: James Thin, 1895), IV, p. 554.Google Scholar

33. Ibid., pp. 554–56.

34. Ibid., p. 562.

35. Ibid., p. 563.

36. Ibid., pp. 566–67.

37. Cf. Commentaries of that diuine Iohn Caluine, upon the Prophet Daniell, translated into Englishe, especially for the use of the family of the ryght honorable Earle of Huntingdon, to set forth as in a glasse, how one may profitably read the Scriptvres, by consideryng the text, meditatyng the sense thereof, and by prayer. Translated by Anthony Gilby (London, 1570).

38. Perhaps the earliest and most prolific predecessor of Gilby in this respect was William Tyndale. See especially his prefaces to the books of the Pentateuch (William Tyndale's Five Books of Moses called the Pentateuch), being a verbatim reprint of the edition of 1530, (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967)Google Scholar; and Jonah, (The prophete Jonas with an introduccion before teachinge to understood him, Antwerp, 1531?).Google Scholar

39. Butterworth, Charles C., The Literary Lineage of the King James Bible, 1340–1611 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961), p. 165.Google Scholar

40. Wescott, Brooke Foss, A General View of the History of the English Bible. 3rd edition revised by Wright, W. A.. (New York: Macmillan, 1916), p. 222.Google Scholar

41. Moulton, W. F., The History of the English Bible (London: Chas. Kelly, 1911), pp.164–65.Google Scholar

42. Daiches, David, The King James Version of the English Bible (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941), p. 180.Google Scholar

43. Moulton, op. cit., p. 165.

44. Fry, Francis, “Standard Edition of the English New Testament of the Genevan Version,” Journal of Sacred Literature (July, 1864), pp. 279–89.Google Scholar

45. SeeStrype, John, The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1821), I, pp. 410ff.Google Scholar

46. For the contrast see Hughes, Philip, The Reformation in England. Rev. ed. (London: Burns and Oates, 1963), III, p. 230Google Scholar; and Eadie, John, The English Bible (London: Macmillan, 1876), p. 28.Google Scholar

47. Eadie, Ibid., p. 15.

48. Ibid., p. 28.

49. Hoare, H. W., The Evolution of the English Bible. 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1902), p. 221.Google Scholar

50. Metzger, Bruce M., “The Geneva Bible of 1560,” Theology Today (October, 1960), pp. 339–52.Google Scholar

51. Ibid. Cf. also Metzger's, “The Influence of Codex Bezae upon the Geneva Bible of 1560,” New Testament Studies (October, 1961), pp. 72–79.Google Scholar

52. Isaacs, J., “The Sixteenth-Century English Versions,” The Bible in its Ancient and English Versions, Robinson, H. Wheeler, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), p. 186.Google Scholar

53. Darlow, T. H. and Moule, H. F., Historical Catalogue of the Printed Editions of Holy Scripture in the Library of the British and Foreign Bible Society (London: The Bible House, 1903), I, p. 60f.Google Scholar

54. He vented his anxiety over such abuses in several letters to sympathetic colleagues. Two separate letters to Coverdale, Whittingham, Sampson and Humphrey are found in a little book entitled Tracts Concerning Vestments (no colophon, no date). Gilby's two letters are preceded by the following frontispiece: To my louynge brethren that is troublyed about the popish aparrell, two short and Comfortable Epistels, dated probably 1566.

55. Tracts Concerning Vestments, fol. Ciii, verso.

56. See A parte of a register, contayninge sundrie matters, written by diuers godly and learned in our time, which stand for, and desire the reformation of our Church, in Discipline and Ceremonies, accordinge to the pure worde of God, and the Lawe of our Lande (London, 1594), fol. H1, verso.

57. Ibid., fol. Hl, verso-H2, recto.

58. An Admonition to Parliament (London: 1572), fol. Ai, verso.Google Scholar

59. Ibid., fol. Aii, recto.

60. Ibid., fol. Avii, recto.

61. Ibid., fol. Biii, recto-verso.

62. Ibid., fol. Biii, verso-Biv, recto.

63. Ibid. fol. Bv, recto.

64. In 1579, he wrote A Preface to An Answer made by Oliver Carter … unto certaine Popish Questions and Demands (London, 1579)Google Scholar; a very entertaining treatment of the same polemic is found in A Pleasavnt Dialogye, Betweene a Soldier of Barwicke, and an English Chaplaine. … (no colophon, 1581).Google Scholar

65. View of Antichrist, fol. 14, verso.