John Arrowsmith
1602–1659
Master of St John’s then Trinity Cambridge; Regius Professor of Divinity; hypothetical universalist.
Departs from the Confession on Extent of Atonement: Hypothetical-Universal not Particular
Biography
Cambridge man through and through — Fellow of St Catharine's, then Master of St John's College from 1644 (succeeding Beale, who had been ejected) and Master of Trinity from 1653 (succeeding Thomas Hill). He held the Regius Professorship of Divinity at Cambridge from 1651. At the Assembly Arrowsmith was a vigorous Reformed scholastic of moderate hypothetical-universalist sympathies, allied with Calamy, Vines, and Seaman in the January 1646 atonement debate. His Tactica Sacra (1657) — a tightly argued Latin treatise on the conflict between the believer and indwelling sin — and the posthumously edited Armilla Catechetica or A Chain of Principles (1659) are notable Cambridge-Latin distillations of Westminster doctrine; the latter was a standard catechetical text at Cambridge into the 1680s. He died at Trinity Lodge in February 1659.
Principal works
- Tactica Sacra (1657)
- Armilla Catechetica (1659)
English Presbyterian divine
The great majority of the sitting members were English parish ministers of Presbyterian conviction. They formed the drafting core of the Assembly, manning its three standing committees and supplying most of the text of the Confession, the two Catechisms, and the Directory for Public Worship.
Party in 1 crux
Ontology placement
· 1 override of 35
Cite this divine
Study Reformed, “John Arrowsmith” (Divine), Westminster Standards Atlas, version 79a5f9880ac1, https://studyreformed.com/atlas/cite/persona/john-arrowsmith/.
Ontology version 79a5f9880ac1 — the state of the Atlas you are reading, so a citation stays checkable when the ontology is revised.