RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Usher Usteri
although the first payment was not made till 1647. He was invited to sit in the Westminster Assembly and responded by preaching against its legality. Again in 1647 he was offered a seat in the assembly, but he never attended. None the less the influence of his writings is apparent in the assembly’s work. As the crisis drew near between king and parliament, Ussher fearlessly denounced the attitude of the latter and proclaimed the doctrine of divine right. Cromwell sought his advice and promised, without according, pecuniary relief. At Ussher’s death he made a treasury grant of £200 toward the expenses of an elaborate public funeral in Westminster Abbey.
Ussher’s contemporaries rightly held him too mild for a good administrator, but all parties found in him something with which they could agree— the Puritan his Calvinistic theology, the churchman
his reverence for antiquity, the royal-
Charac- ist his steadfastness for the king. All ter and respected his goodness and sincerity, Writings. felt the charm of his personal gifts, and
marveled at his learning (characterized by Selden as “‘ miraculous’). He wrote much (the list of first editions of his books in the DNB has 27 numbers) on topics suggested by the controversies of his time, but with a thorough and exact use of original sources which still makes much of his work of first-rate value—notably his contributions to the history of the creed and to the Ignatian problem, and in the field of early British and Irish church history. His chronology was taken into the margin of the Authorized Version and is still printed in English Bibles. His complete Works, with life, were published at Dublin in 17 volumes, 1847-64 (vols. ixiv. ed. Charles Richard Elrington, vols. xv.-xvii. ed. James Henthorn Todd, index by William Reeves). There are many editions of separate works by both English and foreign editors, the more important being A Discourse of the Religion Anciently Professed by the Irish (Dublin, 1623; enlarged London, 1631); An Answer to a Jesuit in Ireland (Dublin, 1625); Gotteschalci et Predestinatiane Controversie Historia (1631), in which he published for the first time Gottschalk’s ‘‘ Confessions,’ which he had obtained from Venice; Veterum Epistolarum Hibernicarum Sylloge (1632); Britannicarum Ecclesiarum Antiquitates (1639; enlarged London, 1677); Polycarpi et Ignatit Epistole (Oxford, 1644); Appendix Ignatiana (1647); De Romane Ecclesie Symbolo Apostolico Diatriba (1647); Annaliwm Pars Prior (1650), and Pars Posterior (1654), which in 1659 were combined into the Annales Veteris Testamenti; an English translation, with additions, was published at London in 1658 as the Annals of the World to the Beginning of the Emperor Vespasian’s Reign.
USSING, us’sing, HENRY BRAEM: Danish preacher and theologian, son of the philologist and archeologist Johan Louis Ussing; b. at Copenhagen July 2, 1855. He was graduated from the Metropolitan school of that city (1873), and from the University of Copenhagen (candidate in theology, 1877), continuing his studies in Germany, France, Italy, and England. In 1882 he was appointed pastor at Veilby; in 1883 at Hvidovre and Valby, sub-
urbs of Copenhagen, his present charge. In 1883 he published an apologetic work, Den kristelige Vished, which gained for him the university degree of Lic. theol., and the resultant right of delivering lectures at the University of Copenhagen, of which right he has made much and valuable use. He is an able preacher and a thorough scholar, who has made, especially through periodicals, valuable contributions to practical theology. The Scandinavian students know him as one of their most faithful directors at their conventions, and in Sunday-school circles his name is highly cherished. He was a delegate at the centennial celebration of the Sundayschool in London, 1880. Since 1891 he has been coeditor of Indre Missions Bérneblad. His Vor Gudstjeneste (1888) and Tanker til Overvejelse om Menighedsliv og Kirkeliv (1890) show the Scriptural conception of liturgy and a firm grasp of the problems of congregational life. The literary work, however, which especially has brought him fame is Evangeliets Sejrsgang ud over Jorden (1902). The best collection of his sermons is Troens gode Strid (1904; on the epistles of the old church year). Joun O, Evsen.
Bistiograruy: C. F. Bricka, Dansk biographisk Lexikon,
xviii. 120-121, 19 vols., Copenhagen, 1887-1905.
USTERI, iis’te-ri, LEONHARD: Swiss Protestant; b. at Zurich Oct. 22, 1799; d. at Bern Sept. 18, 1833. He was educated in his native city and at the University of Berlin (1820-23), coming in the latter institution under the special influence of Schleiermacher. Returning to Zurich he published his Commentatio critica in qua evangelium Joannis genuinum esse. . . ostenditur (Zurich, 1823), and began a private course for his young friends on the Pauline epistles, these lectures forming the basis of his most important work, the Hntwickelung des paulinischen Lehrbegriffes mit Hinsicht auf die tibrigen Schriften des Neuen Testamentes (1824). The work is, however, antiquated, even in its basal concept of the derivation of the Pauline system from the antagonism between Christianity and the pre-Christian period; and it is, moreover, less a development than a presentation of individual Pauline doctrines in accordance with a scheme previously adopted. At the same time the author rightly recognized two points since claimed by others: Paul’s search for righteousness, after his: conversion, solely in the grace of God and in fellowship with Christ; and the gradual extension of the apostle’s purview and activity from the knowledge of Christ as the Redeemer and the Son of God. The work merited its fame, and served to prepare the way for a renewed and deepened knowledge of the great apostle to the gentiles.
Just as the Hntwickelung was leaving the press, its author accepted a call to Bern as professor of classics and Hebrew, as well as director. at the gymnasium. Here he spent the remainder of his life, also teaching for a time at the university as privatdocent. In addition to his official duties, he found time to prepare an edition of Wolf’s lectures on the first four books of the Iliad (2 vols., Bern, 1830) and of Plutarch’s Consolatio ad Apollonium (1830), and to write a Commentar wiber den Brief Pauli an die Galater (1833), which, though not entirely satisfac-
Usuardus Usury