ABSTRACT
Heiko Oberman has written forcefully of a modern trend that squeezes theology out of the study of the Reformation. Cities, social crises, empire and princes occupy our attention before any consideration of matters religious. The surest way to categorise a Christian controversialist of the post-Reformation is to determine their understanding of the nature of man, and in this James Ussher and John Bramhall are no exceptions, and it is perhaps in this area of dogmatics that their theological lights burn furthest from each other. On the subject of perseverance, Bramhall is silent, which is significant in itself since stress in an important theological tool. Bramhall's positive appraisal of the human condition is nowhere stated more clearly than in his renowned controversy with Hobbes. The soteriology of the Roman Church was too anthropocentric, a theory of salvation in which man could earn or even buy his reward involved an elevation of human nature that they were not prepared to accept.
