James Ussher and the Reformed Tradition, Anglicanism, and Justification…

James Ussher is in some ways the forgotten man of Anglicanism, otherwise known during his time as the Church of England/Church of Ireland. Why do I say that? Well, because among much of today’s Anglicanism his influence is simply overlooked. One reason may be that Anglicanism in many of its modern variations has moved away from identifying as a Reformed Protestant Church. And Ussher was certainly Reformed and arguably the most influential Reformed Anglican theologian of the 1600s. And as such he doesn’t fit the latitudinal templates of recent times. As to his influence outside of Anglicanism, even though he didn’t attend, Ussher’s theology had a significant impact on the Westminster Assembly and thus the resulting Confession of Faith. For some Anglicans that’s just a bit too “Reformed!”

All that to introduce the following excerpt from Harrison Perkins’ book James Ussher and the Reformed Tradition (page 78). One of the big debates at the Westminster Assembly was over a question concerning the imputation of Christ’s active or positive obedience to the believer as necessary for his justification. This was just one area of doctrine where Ussher’s theology was influential. Ussher connects Christ’s active obedience (fulfillment of the Covenant of Works where Adam failed) with the justification of those who trust in Christ. Perkins writes:

The second point drawn from the eschatological dimension of a covenant is the importance of the concept of justification.186 Because Ussher argued that justification was a status that Adam could achieve in his state of innocence, justification cannot be limited to the remission of sins. Justification includes the attainment of positive righteousness. If Adam had completed his task, he would have fulfilled everything the law demanded; he would be justified. This is one factor that makes the doctrine of the imputation of Christ’s active obedience so important within the full scheme of Ussher’s doctrinal system. To attain an eternal condition of blessedness a person must be declared perfectly righteous,which remains the case even after the covenant of works was broken. The first Adam was the representative head that was supposed to fulfill the law for his posterity in the first covenant. According to Ussher, justification became a benefit of salvation in the covenant of grace because Christ was the second Adam who did fulfill the law and transfers that righteous status to all who accept it by faith.

186 The doctrine of justification and its links to the covenant of works are considered again in more extensive detail in Chapter 6. 

187 Snoddy, Soteriology, 113-22.

188 CUL MS Mn.6.55, fol. 29r (sermon on Genesis 6:5, dated August 1642).

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The Irish Articles of Religion 1615, authored by James Ussher:

Article 21. Man being at the beginning created according to the image of God (which consisted especially in the wisdom of his mind and the true holiness of his free will), had the covenant of the law ingrafted in his heart, whereby God did promise unto him everlasting life upon condition that lie performed entire and perfect obedience unto his Commandments, according to that measure of strength wherewith he was endued in his creation, and threatened death unto him if he did not perform the same.

Article 35. Although this justification be free unto us, yet it cometh not so freely unto us that there is no ransom paid therefore at all. God showed his great mercy in delivering ns from our former captivity without requiring of any ransom to be paid or amends to be made on our parts; which thing by us had been impossible to be done. And whereas all the world was not able of themselves to pay any part towards their ransom, it pleased our heavenly Father of his infinite mercy, without any desert of ours, to provide for us the most precious merits of his own Son, whereby our ransom might be fully paid, the law fulfilled, and his justice fully satisfied. So that Christ is now the righteousness of all them that truly believe in him. He, for them, paid their ransom by his death. He, for them, fulfilled the law in his life; that now, in him, and by him, every true Christian man may be called a fulfiller of the law: forasmuch as that which our infirmity was not able to effect, Christ's justice hath performed. And thus the justice and mercy of God do embrace each other: the grace of God not shutting out the justice of God in the matter of our justification, but only shutting out the justice of man (that is to say, the justice of our own works) from being any cause of deserving our justification.

Our Daily Descent

 “What is man?”, the palmist asks. In this life I doubt we come to the full answer. John Calvin pointed in the right direction when he wrote that in order to get an idea of 'us' we need to start with God. For the truth of the matter is - "it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves"  [Psalm 100].

"Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other. For, in the first place, no man can survey himself without forthwith turning his thoughts towards the God in whom he lives and moves; because it is perfectly obvious, that the endowments which we possess cannot possibly be from ourselves; nay, that our very being is nothing else than subsistence in God alone." - Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin, Book 1.1

If self-knowledge begins with God, then apart from God any view of ourselves is distorted. The high regard we hold ourselves in since the Fall not only muddies a right understanding but is at the core of what ails us as sinners.  

I recently reread C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength. I picked it up again because the theme revolving around the N.I.C.E. reminded me of the still ongoing CDC involvement in the Covid 19 pandemic mandates. But I digress. What is relevant to this post is a small excerpt:

“There,” he said, “a very simple adjustment. Humans want crumbs removed; mice are anxious to remove them…”

“How huge we must seem to them,” said Jane.

This inconsequent remark had a very curious cause. Hugeness was what she was thinking of and for one moment it had seemed she was thinking of her own hugeness in comparison with the mice. But almost at once this identification collapsed. She was really thinking simply of hugeness. Or rather, she was not thinking of it. She was, in some strange fashion, experiencing it. Something intolerably big, something from Brobdingnag was pressing on her, was approaching, was almost in the room. She felt herself shrinking, suffocated, emptied of all power and virtue. She darted a glance at the Director which was really a cry for help, and that glance, in some inexplicable way, revealed him as being, like herself, a very small object. The whole room was a tiny place, a mouse’s hole, and it seemed to her to be tilted aslant — as though the insupportable mass and splendour of this formless hugeness, in approaching, had knocked it askew. She heard the Director’s voice.

“Quick,” he said gently,“you must leave me now. This is no place for us small ones, but I am inured. Go! - That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis. Chapter 8 The Pendragon

The presence of God was pressing upon Jane which necessitated a shrinking or humbling experience, a reorientation. Her inflated sense of self rapidly shrank to that of a mouse. She was uncomfortably thrown off balance as the Divine hugeness descended into that room. Jane, a sinner, was experiencing the beginning of self-knowledge which only comes when one encounters God. She was descending. John Calvin wrote:

… the inference to be drawn is that men are never duly touched and impressed with a conviction of their insignificance, until they have contrasted themselves with the majesty of God. (Calvin, Book 1.1)

To come into the presence of our Creator shatters any illusion of creaturely independence and self-sufficiency. We are not our own and are undone before him. Apart from him we have no existence (Col 1:16-17). It is God who created us, as Genesis 1 teaches, and not we ourselves. The Christian life is one of being brought low to a restored (saved) position with God who is the only point of reference for all of creation.

The psalmist asks the question,  

what is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor (Psalm 8:4-5) ESV

 "Lower than..." Our problem is not that we think too lowly of ourselves but too highly. We lift ourselves up. Yet God would have us brought lower (Luke 9:48b). Ever since Adam sinned man’s default orientation is to magnify himself. Most naturally we minimize our flaws and sins as we exalt ourselves in relation to others. Like crazed men we flee our created state of absolute dependence on God thinking our good lies in the opposite direction. 

This brings me to Thomas Cranmer’s 1662 BCP Office of Morning Prayer. In this daily liturgy the Christian is given a path of reorientation or, more to the point, sanctification through the confession of sin and trust in the gospel. 

At the beginning of MP there are several opening Scripture verses that essentially diagnose our condition and plight as sinners. We need forgiveness and we need righteousness. The standard of the Law is put before us:

When a wicked person turns away from the wickedness he has committed and does what is just and right, he shall save his life. (Ezekiel 18:27) ESV 

How does a sinner do this? He can’t. Morning Prayer then moves to an admonition, an appeal to all present to come down off our thrones. We are exhorted 

that we should not dissemble nor cloak [our sins and sinfulness] before the face of Almighty God our heavenly Father; but confess them with an humble, lowly, penitent, and obedient heart; to the end that we may obtain forgiveness of the same, by his infinite goodness and mercy. 

Our descent continues.

By nature we dissemble as to our true condition. Just think how difficult it is to honestly confess our sin to one we have offended. We don't want to go that low. We cloak and minimize our sin. In a word we need to approach the throne of grace with a sense of our dependency upon God: 

Turn thou us unto thee, O LORD, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old (Lam 5:21).  

Make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation! (Psalm 38:22)

Or as Augustine wrote, "God command what you will and grant what you command." 

The General Confession of Sin follows:

ALMIGHTY and most merciful Father; We have erred, and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against thy holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; And we have done those things which we ought not to have done; And there is no health in us. But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. Spare thou them, O God, which confess their faults. Restore thou them that are penitent; According to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord. And grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake; That we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life, To the glory of thy holy Name. Amen.

The confession of sin culminates in the acknowledgment of our condition. Due to our rebellion from God our Creator there is no health in us… we are miserable offenders. Brought lower still to our fallen, creaturely, and God-dependent state, the remedy of the gospel as declared in Christ Jesus is set forth! The minister then declares that through faith in Christ sins are forgiven: God pardoneth and absolveth all them that truly repent, and unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel! The power to forgive sins is in the gospel.

I find it both amazing and uplifting that we then find only two psalms actually printed out in the 1662 BCP Morning Prayer office: Psalm 95 and 100. And they both echo the same truth.

Psalm 95 

6. O come, let us worship and fall down : and kneel before the LORD our Maker.
7. For he is the Lord our God : and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. 

Psalm 100 

2. Be ye sure that the Lord he is God : it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.  

As his creatures, his sheep, his people our blessing is found with and in Christ Jesus alone who "being found in human form, humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Phil 2:8). 

For he has made us and not we ourselves.

Psalm 100

Jubilate Deo
O BE joyful in the Lord, all ye lands : serve the Lord with gladness, and come before his presence with a song.
Be ye sure that the Lord he is God : it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
O go your way into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise : be thankful unto him, and speak good of his Name.
or the Lord is gracious, his mercy is everlasting : and his truth endureth from generation to generation.

Update Oct.5, 2022:

John Calvin on the meaning to be taken from Psalm 100, "it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture."

Hence the Psalmist, after saying that the Lord "has made us," to deprive us of all share in the work, immediately adds, "not we ourselves." That he is speaking of regeneration, which is the commencement of the spiritual life, is obvious from the context, in which the next words are, "we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture," (Psalm 100:3.) Not contented with simply giving God the praise of our salvation, he distinctly excludes us from all share in it, just as if he had said that not one particle remains to man as a ground of boasting. The whole is of God. Institutes: Christian Religion, Book 2.3.6