ABSTRACT
Dudley Fenner (1558–1587) was an Englishman who was compelled to live in exile in the Netherlands during most of the 1570s and the 1580s due to his support for a presbyterian settlement in the English Church. Fenner was fascinated by the ambitions of Petrus Ramus to simplify Aristotelian pedagogy, making it faster to teach. Fenner followed a Ramist approach in his Theologia Sacra first printed probably in London in 1585 and reprinted in Geneva the following year, which we excerpt here. This Ramist approach, in which information was laid out in sub-divided diagrams, was intended to be easy to memorize. Like most Reformed theologians, Fenner believed that the duties of superior and inferior magistrates were established by God, and the latter were obliged to defend their subjects from the tyranny of the former. He believed also that even individuals might kill usurping tyrants. Like Polanus, Fenner saw the protection of true religion, whether at home or abroad, as the primary just cause for war.
