AMES, WILLIAM (1 S 76-1633), English Puritan divine and controversialist, known as AMESIUS, was born at Ipswich, Suffolk, and died at Rotterdam. Ames was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, and became a fellow of his college. He raised a great stir in 16o9 by a sermon denouncing the "heathenish debauchery" attending the feast of St. Thomas. He was obliged eventually to leave England and spent the rest of his life in Holland, where he engaged in numerous theological controversies. He was for a short time chaplain to Sir Horatio Vere in Holland, then professor of theology at Franeker, Friesland (1622-33), and had just re moved to Rotterdam when he died.
The tracts which he wrote against Grevinchovius he collected in Coronis ad Collationem hagiensem, which was prepared in view of the Synod of Dort 1618-19. His works include Medulla theo logiae, a manual of Calvinistic doctrine for his students; De con scientia emus iure et casibus; Fresh suit against Ceremonies, post humously published, which is said to have made Richard Baxter a nonconformist; and Latin commentaries on the Psalms and St. Peter's epistle.
See John Quick's ms. Icones Sacrae Anglicanae; Life by Nethenus, prefixed to collected edition of Latin works (Amsterdam, 1658) ; Winwood's Memorials, vol. iii. pp. ; Neal's Puritans, i. 532; Fuller's Cambridge (Christ's College) ; Hanbury's Hist. Memorials, i. 533 ; Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. vi. (4th series, , pp.