Reprobation, in Christian theology, is a corollary to the Calvinistic doctrine of unconditional election which posits that some of mankind (the elect) are predestined by God for salvation. Those that remain are bound to their fallen nature and certain damnation. In Calvinist terminology, the non-elect are often referred to as reprobates. Similarly, when a sinner is so hardened as to feel no remorse or misgiving of conscience, it is considered to be a sign of reprobation.
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The English word, reprobate, is from the Latin root probare (English: prove, test), and thus derived from the Latin, reprobatus (reproved, condemned), the opposite of approbatus (commended, approved).
preterition [ˌprɛtəˈrɪʃən]
n
1. the act of passing over or omitting
2. (Law) Roman law the failure of a testator to name one of his children in his will, thus invalidating it
3. (Christian Religious Writings / Theology) (in Calvinist theology) the doctrine that God passed over or left unpredestined those not elected to final salvation
[from Late Latin praeteritiō a passing over]
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“Reprobate”
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Vol. IV:2560. [1915]
rep’-ro-bat:
This word occurs in the English Bible in the following passages: Jeremiah 6:30 (the Revised Version
(British and American) “refuse”); Romans 1:28; 2 Corinthians 13:5, 6, 7; 2 Timothy 3:8; Titus 1:
16. In all these cases the Greek has adokimos. The same Greek word, however, is found with other
renderings in Isaiah 1:22 (“dross”); Proverbs 25:4 (“dross”); 1 Corinthians 9:27 (“castaway,” the
Revised Version (British and American) “rejected”). The primary meaning of adokimos is “notreceived,”
“not-acknowledged.” This is applied to precious metals or money, in the sense of “notcurrent,”
to which, however, the connotation “not-genuine” easily attaches itself. It is also applied to
persons who do not or ought not to receive honor or recognition. This purely negative conception
frequently passes over into the positive one of that which is or ought to be rejected, either by God or
men. Of the above passages 1 Corinthians 9:27 uses the word in this meaning. Probably Romans 1:
28, “God gave them up unto a reprobate mind” must be explained on the same principle: the nous
of the idolatrous heathen is permitted by God to fall into such extreme forms of evil as to meet with
the universal rejection and reprobation of men.
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Dross \Dross\, n. [AS. dros, fr. dre['o]san to fall. See
Dreary.]
1. The scum or refuse matter which is thrown off, or falls
from, metals in smelting the ore, or in the process of
melting; recrement.
2. Rust of metals. [R.] --Addison.
3. Waste matter; any worthless matter separated from the
better part; leavings; dregs; refuse.
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Shakespeare - Sonnet
For I am shamed by that which I bring forth,
And so should you, to love things nothing worth.
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Jonson, Ode to Himself
...Say, that thou pour'st them wheat,
And they will acornes eat :
'Twere simple fury, still, thy selfe to waste
On such as have no taste !
To offer them a surfeit of pure bread,
Whose appetites are dead !
No, give them graines their fill,
Huskes, draff to drink and swill.
If they love lees, and leave the lusty wine,
Envy them not, their palate's with the swine.
No doubt some mouldy tale,
Like Pericles ; and stale
As the Shrieve's crusts, and nasty as his fish—
Scraps out of every dish
Throwne forth, and rak't into the common tub,
May keepe up the Play-club :
There, sweepings doe as well
As the best order'd meale.
For, who the relish of these guests will fit,
Needs set them but the almes-basket of wit.
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Susan de Vere/Susan Herbert - Protestant Patron
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Militant Protestants: British Identity in the Jacobean Period, 1603-1625
Jason C. White
...What follows below is a case study of thought about and aspirations for Britain following the 1603 union of crowns that focuses on the conceptualization of Britain as a militant Protestant power. Some interpretative cues will be taken from Jonathan Scott, who has argued that British history needs to be placed in a European contextt, especially the context of religious division on the continent. British identity was closely linked ot the European context because the potential relationship between Britain and contintental Protestantism after the union of crowns was at the forefront of much of the thought about Britain during this period. Much of this thought naturally centred on religion. While it has been the tendency of historians to emphasize that there was as much of a Lutheran/Calvinist divide on the continent in the seventeenth century as there was a Catholic/Protestant one, just as there has been an emphasis on the wide gulf in ecclesiology that seemingly kept the churches of England and Scotland separated, this tends to ignore the Protestant irenic movements that circulated throughout Britain and Europe in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. By bringing these elements - the continent, Protestant ecumenism and religious conflict - into the study of British identity new insight into what people thought and said about Britain under James VI and I can be gained. This article will explore British identity in the the seventeenth century in a similar way to the way Linda Colley explored it for the eighteenth century - by analysing the connections between the formation of British identity and anti-Catholic and anti-foreign polemic (which were often the same thing).
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Oxford/Shakespeare - Catholic, irenical, Italianate Englishman. Politically incorrect.
Oxford - sympathy with sunny southern European countries. Interrogates the gloomy Northern European militant Protestant mind in Hamlet. Examines the social success of the inwardness and 'ground' that militant Protestants claimed to 'build' upon. Hamlet a Catholic? critique of the groundlessness of Protestant inwardness, and its absolute dependency upon words - and the potential for socially destructive and sinful behaviours (lack of personal accountability) that are accommodated by the Protestant doctrines of election and Providence?
Maybe.
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The Politics of Election in Lady Mary Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus
Madeline Bassnett
Abstract
This essay suggests that the inward style of Wroth's sonnet sequence can be attributed to her reliance on a Protestant discourse of election that shares symbols commonly associated with Petrarchism, such as the tortured heart, the occluding dark, and the illuminating light. As I will further argue, the language of predestination had become an oppositional discourse by 1621, enabling Wroth's public self-identification with other militant Protestants such as William Herbert, who opposed the political and religious policies of James I.
(snip)
…By adopting this widespread discourse, Wroth placed herself firmly in the oppositional faction associated with her cousin and lover, James's Lord Chamberlain, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. Her recurrent references to light and dark and her use of the emblem of the tortured heart as well as the concepts of knowledge and experience both signify her sequence as Petrarchan and advertise a belief in predestination that, by 1621, would have been connected to a militant Protestant opposition. As I will also discuss, an initial comparison of the 1621 edition of the poems to the Folger manuscript of Pamphilia to Amphilanthus reveals that changes made to the published version seem to reinforce and heighten this distinctly Calvinist discourse.20 Wroth appears intentionally to have chosen language that would associate her with James's political detractors, and she created a model character—Pamphilia—who would endure the often-torturous passage through the stages of both love and election. Bold in its presentation of early modern female desire, this sequence is likewise audacious in its communication of Protestant longing for and submission to the will of the divine rather than earthly king.
(snip)
Alongside such instances of Court critique and politicized nostalgia, Wroth reminds the reader of her Protestant identity and heritage, as Mary B. Moore and Rosalind Smith have observed. Moore, although otherwise focused on the question of female subjectivity, draws attention to the Protestant symbolism of the labyrinth that Wroth uses in the corona that begins and ends with the line "In this strang[e] labourinth how shall I turne?" (pp. 127-34; P77, line 1-P90, line 14). Noting that the labyrinth "symboliz[es] Protestant inwardness and emphasiz[es] both the necessity and the difficulty of self-analysis," Moore also remarks on the overlapping Protestant and Petrarchan connections to this symbol: both "associate the labyrinth with difficult knowing." 25 It is Smith, however, who most effectively unites the use of Protestant discourse in the sonnets with opposition to James, demonstrating that the sequence, especially when considered in relation to Urania, reminds the reader of "its place in a Sidneian textual tradition inseparable from a contemporary Protestant religious and political agenda."26 Wroth declares her Protestant allegiance upfront, dedicating Urania to Susan Herbert, Countess of Montgomery, a known "Protestant patron," and identifying her own personal and political lineage on the title page: "Daughter to the right Noble Robert Earle of Leicester. And Neece to the ever famous and renowned Sr. Phillips Sidney knight. And to ye most exelēt Lady Mary Countesse of Pembroke late deceased."27 By the seventeenth century, Philip Sidney was firmly linked to the cause of international and martial Protestantism, a stance incompatible with that of the Jacobean regime; this self-association, Smith avers, reveals that Wroth's sequence was not simply a "private rejection of the courtly life" but instead was "a pointed and public rejection of the present court" that united religious and political beliefs.28
Apart from genealogy, Smith suggests that Wroth allies herself more broadly with the group of Spenserian poets including Fulke Greville, Michael Drayton, and Samuel Daniel, whose writing evoked the "Protestant ideals" of the Elizabethan Court in order to identify their disassociation from James.29 Wroth's association with this group of writers, discernible through dedications, as Smith discusses, might arguably suggest that they were part of her intended, or at least ideal, readership. As politically sympathetic readers, they would have recognized the political import of Wroth's election terminology and imagery. While I have found Smith's work especially useful in alerting me to the broader political aspects of Wroth's sonnet sequence, my interest in this essay is to specifically identify the presence of election discourse in her poem. As Marion Wynne-Davies suggests in relation to Urania, not only did Wroth call on her Sidney heritage as "a way in which she could complain against the injustices of the king and court," but she also adopted the Sidney literary practice of "doubling" and "cloaking" her allusions, in this case, not merely of "personages and events," but of political attitude as well.30 As a woman marginalized by her gender in James's notoriously misogynistic Court, Wroth allied herself with her powerful lineage and its political, literary, and religious loyalties as a means of registering opposition.
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Henry de Vere portrait displayed at Wilton House.
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Constitutional Consensus and Puritan Opposition in the 1620s: Thomas Scott and the Spanish Match*
P. G. Lake
a1 Bedford College, University of London
In 1620 Thomas Scott published a notorious pamphlet entitled Vox Populi. This purported to recount the proceedings of the Spanish council of state and denounced the devious machinations of Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, and by implication the pro-Spanish policy of King James. Once Scott's authorship became known he took the traditional way out and fled to the Low Countries. There he served as a preacher with the English regiments and as a minister at Utrecht. He also continued his pamphlet commentary on events in England. Scott, then, was that well-known figure, the radical puritan opponent of the Jacobean regime. He has certainly been cast in that role and until recently such a view of his career would have seemed unexceptionable enough. However, of late there has emerged a corpus of work which might be thought to render any such view of Scott untenable. On the one hand, the existence within the mainstream of English protestantism of anything approaching a coherent body of puritan attitudes has been challenged, at least until the emergence of Arminianism polarized religious opinion and almost created a self-conscious and aggressive puritanism where there had been none before. In the political sphere it has been claimed that within the predominant view of constitutional and political propriety any attempt at concerted opposition to royal policy was both conceptually and practically impossible.
Thomas Scott - chaplain to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke
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English Broadside - "When Charles, hath got the Spanish Gearle"
(Notes. Versions of this detailed poem on politics in the early 1620s
differ considerably in length, and it seems likely that extra verses
were added by different hands in the course of the poem's
circulation. In one source it is dated "March 1621" (Bodleian MS Eng. Poet. c.50)
Greate Edward his is Nowe in print
& thinks to get the divell & all
The Spanish gould come to our minte
then thats the day shall pay for all
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Fucus - Paint (outward show)
Davies, Scourge of Folly
Of the staid FURIOUS POET FUCUS
Epig. 114
Fucus, the furious poet writes but Plaies;
So, playing, writes: that’s, idly writeth all:
Yet, idle Plaies, and Players are his Staies;
Which stay him that he can no lower fall:
For, he is fall’n into the deep’st decay,
Where Playes and Players keepe him at a stay.
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John Davies -- Couplet written for Susan de Vere (1602)
"Nothing's your lot. That's more than can be told.
For Nothing is more precious than gold."
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Author: Cornwallis, William, Sir, d. 1631? Title: Essayes of certaine paradoxes Date: 1616
Pr. Thomas Thorpe
The Prayse of Nothing.
PArdon, Graue Sages, Natures Treasures,
Earths best Surueyers, Heauens best measures,
Who in the deepes of Sciences do wade,
Teaching that Nought of Nothing can be made.
I will vntwist the strength of your decree,
And from your errors Labyrinth you free.
Sith to the making of this All-Theater:
Nothing but Nothing had the All-creator:
And as the structure of this worlds great masse,
Out of vast emptinesse first reared was,
Embellisht with each curious ornament,
Without or staffe, or matter preiacent;
So by great Nothings frank and free expence,
We yet enioy each rarest excellence.
For Nothing is more precious then gold:
'Mongst all those things which Neptunes arms enfold,
'Mongst sublunarie bodies which do range,
About th' worlds Center suffring daily change,
Which fil Fates mort-main, & which death deth mierce,
Driuing them from their cradle to their hearse:
Amongst all these, and whatso else we haue,
Nothing did euer yet esape the graue.
Nothing's immortall: Nothing euer ioyes;
Nothing was euer free from all annoyes.
Why should not Nothing then of vs expect,
That shrines and Altars we to her erect?
(snip)
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Hubert Languet to Sidney:
"There is no reason to fear lest you should decay in idleness if only you will employ your mind; for in so great a realm as England opportunity will surely not be wanting for it's useful exercise." Nature has adorned you with the richest gifts of mind and body; fortune with noble blood and wealth and splendid family connections; and you from your first boyhood have cultivated your intellect by those studies which are most helpful to men in their struggle after virtue. Will you then refuse your energies to your country when it demands them? Will you bury that distinguished talent God has given you?'
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2 Thessalonians 2:11–12
11 And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: 12 That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
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"All events embraced in the purpose of God are equally certain, whether He has determined to bring them to pass by his own power, or simply to permit their occurrence through the agency of his creatures. It was no less certain from eternity that Satan would tempt our first parents, and that they would fall, than that God would send his Son to die for sinners. The distinction in question has reference only to the relation which events bear to the efficiency of God. Some things He purposes to do, others He decrees to permit to be done. He effects good, He permits evil. He is the author of the one, but not of the other. ... The effects produced by common grace, or this influence of the Spirit common to all men, are most important to the individual and to the world. What the external world would be if left to the blind operation of physical causes, without the restraining and guiding influence of God's providential efficiency, that would the world of mind be, in all its moral and religious manifestations, without the restraints and guidance of the Holy Spirit. There are two ways in which we may learn what the effect would be of the withholding the Spirit from the minds of men. The first is, the consideration of the effects of reprobation, as taught in Scripture and by experience, in the case of individual men. Such men have a seared conscience. They are reckless and indifferent, and entirely under the control of the evil passions of their nature. This state is consistent with external decorum and polish. Men may be as whitened sepulchres. But this is a restraint which a wise regard to their greatest selfish gratification places on the evil principles which control them. ... the Scriptures reveal the effect of the entire withdrawal of the Holy Spirit from the control of rational creatures, in the account which they give of the state of the lost, both men and angels. Heaven is a place and state in which the Spirit reigns with absolute control. Hell is a place and state in which the Spirit no longer restrains and controls. The presence or absence of the Spirit makes all the difference between heaven and hell" (Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology).
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Lady Anne Clifford - Second wife of Philip Herbert, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery (First wife Susan de Vere).
First Folio absent - Rejection or 'passing over' of Shakespeare was a sign of Anne Clifford's 'election' and judgement - and Shakespeare's reprobation.
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The Case of the Missing First Folio
by Bonner Miller Cutting
http://www.wjray.net/shakespeare_papers/first-folio.htm
Born in 1590, her life began in the reign of Queen Elizabeth and spanned nearly nine decades well into the reign of King Charles II. She constructed and restored castles and churches, put up monuments to family and friends, built and funded hospitals and almshouses, compiled manuscripts of record books, family histories, diaries and genealogies. Yet without a doubt her foremost achievement was her ultimate victory in a brutal legal battle to secure, in her own right, the vast Clifford ancestral estates in northern England. Her father had bequeathed these properties to his brother when he died, deliberately disinheriting her through the terms of his will. She was 15 years old at her father’s death, and 53 years old when her cousin Earl Clifford died, and the longed-for properties were finally hers. The three panels of her giant triptych— also known as “Lady Anne Clifford’s Great Picture”—were planned to commemorate these landmark events in her life. We will see shortly how the “Great Picture” became an integral part of her campaign to take charge of what she invariably called the “the lands of mine inheritance” — something that “had been her heart’s wish for as long as she could remember.”
(snip)
...What is striking about this bibliographic display is that there are so many books put on view. Approximately fifty books are depicted, most of them located in the right and left side panels. Some appear loosely shelved, some are on the floor, and others are carefully arranged in the background. They are all boldly labeled to be readily identifiable. Furthermore, in an interesting bit of overkill, the titles and authors are also listed right there in the inscriptions on the triptych!7 It is abundantly clear which authors have been selected to receive Lady Anne’s explicit endorsement. The problem that we will examine today is that Shakespeare’s First Folio — or anything representative of Shakespeare’s work — is missing.
This surprising omission is all the more puzzling because Lady Anne Clifford was the wife of Shakespeare’s patron. Her second husband, the Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, was one of the “Incomparable Paire of Brethren” to whom the First Folio was dedicated. This simple fact makes her very much an historical person of interest, especially when her excellent education and her life-long interest in literature are taken into consideration. We have here someone who is in the right place, at the right time, and with the right resume to know who Shakespeare was —or was not.
pret·er·i·tion (prt-rshn)
n.
1. The act of passing by, disregarding, or omitting.
2. Law Neglect of a testator to mention a legal heir in his or her will.
3. Christianity The Calvinist doctrine that God neglected to designate those who would be damned, positively determining only the elect.
[Late Latin praeteriti, praeteritin-, a passing over, from Latin praeteritus, past participle of praeterre, to go by; see preterit.]
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Stay passenger, why goest thou by so fast, Read if thou canst, whom enviuos Death hath plast with in this monument Shakspeare:
