Some Questions and Answers about God’s Covenant and the Sacrament That Is a Seal of God’s Covenant

      With Related Texts

      Copyright © 2016 Aaron Clay Denlinger. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

      Pickwick Publications

      An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401

      www.wipfandstock.com

      paperback isbn: 978-1-62564-182-3

      hardcover isbn: 978-1-4982-8781-4

      ebook isbn: 978-1-4982-9942-8

      Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

      Names: Rollock, Robert.

      Title: Some questions and answers about God’s covenant and the sacrament that is a seal of God’s covenant : with related texts / Robert Rollock; translated and edited by Aaron Clay Denlinger.

      Description: Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2016 | Includes bibliographical references.

      Identifiers: isbn 978-1-62564-182-3 (paperback) | isbn 978-1-4982-8781-4 (hardcover) | isbn 978-1-4982-9942-8 (ebook)

      Subjects: LSCH: Rollock, Robert, 1555?–1599. | Reformed Church—Doctrines. | Reformed Church—Scotland—Doctrines—History. | Calvinism—Scotland—History. | Denlinger, Aaron C. (Aaron Clay).

      Classification: BX9424.5.S35 R75 2016 (print) | BX9424.5.S35 (ebook)

      Manufactured in the U.S.A.

      Acknowledgments

      Jesse Atkinson deserves thanks for going above and beyond his duties as my teaching assistant at Reformation Bible College by reviewing the manuscript of this work, noting problems, and making valuable suggestions for improvement. Thanks are also due to the students I’ve been privileged to teach Latin to over the past twelve years, first at Veritas Christian Academy, then at the University of Aberdeen, and most recently at Reformation Bible College and the Davenant Latin Institute. They have regularly (though perhaps unwittingly) revived my love and enthusiasm for Latin, and so contributed, albeit indirectly, to this present work. I wish to extend particular thanks to an anonymous student at the University of Aberdeen who remarked on his or her evaluation form for LT1509 (Latin II) that “this is by far the funniest class I have ever taken.” I consider the comedic value you discovered in my Latin class one of my greatest professional accomplishments. I hope that, in the course of being entertained, you also learned the language. My wife Louise and my children Kaitrin, Geneva, and Austin deserve thanks for the unique way in which they have collectively supported this work—namely, by regularly drawing me away from it and everything else related to my teaching, research, and writing to much more profitable pursuits. Vobis ago gratias, et vos amo. At the risk of offending the family members and other worthy persons just noted, I wish to express gratitude to another individual who lives in our home, our German Shepherd Oakley. For the past five years—two of them in Scotland and three of them in Florida—I have walked Oakley every morning, and while doing so have regularly taken advantage of the early morning quiet and relative solitude, not to mention Oakley’s apparent lack of interest in conversation, to review aloud Latin declensions and conjugations. Oakley has not once objected to my chanting in a strange language while we walk, though I’m quite certain he would have preferred silence or the odd English phrase he might have understood (for example, “good boy,” or “treat”). His indulgence of my strange behavior, and the opportunity it has afforded me to preserve my knowledge of Latin, is much appreciated. So much so, in fact, that I wish to dedicate this book to him, though I’m fairly certain he would rather eat it than read it.

      Introduction

      “

Of our old writers, Rollock, the Scotch divine, is incomparably the best.” So judged J. C. Ryle, a nineteenth-century evangelical preacher and author of some repute, in the introduction to his commentary on the gospel of John.1 Such an opinion of Rollock’s worth is not isolated. During his own lifetime Rollock’s contemporary Theodore Beza, pastor and scholar in Geneva, claimed that he had “never read or met with anything” among biblical commentaries “more pithily, elegantly, and judiciously written” than Rollock’s works on Romans and Ephesians.2 It is somewhat remarkable, given such testimonies to Rollock’s value, that he remains one of the more “neglected figures of Scottish church history.”3

      Rollock’s Life and Work

Robert Rollock was born in 1555 to minor Scottish nobility near Stirling. Following initial education at the local grammar school, he earned his MA at St. Salvator’s College in St. Andrews around 1578, after which he remained at the college teaching philosophy. In 1580 he was appointed examiner for the faculty of arts at St. Leonard’s College, and around the same time began studying biblical Hebrew under James Melville at St. Mary’s. In 1583 he was invited to assume the reins of a new college in Edinburgh (today the University of Edinburgh). Particularly instrumental in bringing Rollock to Edinburgh were James Lawson, the minister of St. Giles who had formerly taught Hebrew in St. Andrews and served as sub-principal of King’s College in Aberdeen, and William Little, a baillie who would shortly be elected provost in Scotland’s capital. Rollock delivered his inaugural address—“a brilliant address which gained him universal admiration” according to one contemporary—to the new university on October 1st of that year.4

Rollock spent the next several years leading the college’s first class through the entirety of the new institution’s liberal arts curriculum. During those same years he contributed much to his students’ theological formation—and served as a conduit of continental Reformed thought to Scotland—by lecturing on Beza’s Quaestiones et responsiones and the Heidelberg Catechism on Saturday and Sunday afternoons respectively.5 From 1587 onward he devoted himself more fully to the roles of principal and professor of theology in the college, and to regular preaching in one of Edinburgh’s parish kirks.6 The year 1590 witnessed Rollock’s first publication, a commentary—based on his university lectures—on Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians. During the decade of life remaining to Rollock, published commentaries on Daniel (1591), Romans (1593), First and Second Thessalonians and Philemon (1598), select Psalms (1599), and the gospel of John (1599) followed. His curriculum vitae eventually included three posthumously published commentaries—Colossians (1600), Galatians (1602), and Hebrews (1605)—as well as a manuscript commentary on 1 Peter. Nearly all Rollock’s published commentaries saw multiple editions on the continent, testimony to the man’s reputation and influence beyond the borders of his native Scotland.7 Rollock’s labors as principal, preacher, writer, and teacher were cut short by a fairly premature death—he had just turned forty-four—in February of 1599. He left behind him a wife Helen, who was pregnant with their first child (a daughter, Jean) when he died.8

      Rollock’s