Edmund Calamy the Elder
1600–1666
"Smectymnuus"; leader of London Presbyterians; hypothetical universalist.
Biography
Calamy of Aldermanbury was one of the five Smectymnuans (1641, the Presbyterian rebuttal of Bishop Hall) and the most influential London Presbyterian of the 1640s. His January 1646 speech for hypothetical universalism in the atonement debate is the canonical Assembly statement of the Davenant position; the Confession's language was drafted to accommodate it. He was ejected in 1662 and died four years later.
Principal works
- Smectymnuus (1641, with Marshall, Young, Newcomen, Spurstowe)
- Englands Looking-Glasse (1641)
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 24 cruxes
- The Canon and the Apocrypha
- The Order of the Decrees
- The Extent of the Atonement
- The Decree of Reprobation
- The Covenant of Redemption
- The Mosaic Covenant
- The Children of Believers and the Sign of the Covenant
- The Imputation of Christ's Active Obedience
- The Descent into Hell
- Justification and the Antinomian Crisis
- Assurance: Of the Essence of Saving Faith?
- The Perseverance of the Saints
- The Third Use of the Moral Law
- The Strict Sabbath
- The Tripartite Division of the Law
- The Grand Debate over Polity
- The Erastian Question
- The Regulative Principle of Worship
- Sacramental Efficacy: Signs and Seals
- The Pope as Antichrist
- Lawful Oaths
- Grounds of Divorce: Adultery and Wilful Desertion
- The Conscious Intermediate State
- The Final Judgment and the Last Things