Theopedia

Peter Martyr Vermigli

Overview

Peter Martyr Vermigli (1500-1562) was an Italian-born Reformed theologian whose Common Places, a posthumous digest of his writings, went through fourteen editions between 1576 and 1656 and, for decades, outsold John Calvin’s Institutes.1 Not to be confused with Peter Martyr, the thirteenth-century Dominican friar and martyr, Vermigli left the Roman Catholic priesthood for the Reformation, taught alongside Martin Bucer at Strasbourg, and was recruited by Thomas Cranmer to train a generation of English clergy at Oxford.2

Life and Ministry

Vermigli began as an Augustinian priest laboring for reform inside the Roman Catholic Church before his conversion to the Protestant cause between 1537 and 1540.2 He fled Italy in 1542, eventually reaching Strasbourg, where he taught alongside Bucer from 1542 to 1547; by Jared Moore’s account, his reputation as a teacher came to surpass Bucer’s own.2 Cranmer recruited Vermigli, together with John à Lasco and Bucer, to teach at Oxford and Cambridge and train Anglican clergy in Protestant theology, work that helped move the Church of England decisively toward Protestantism.3 Vermigli taught at Oxford from 1547 to 1553.3 After his death, his own writings were gathered into the Common Places.1

Theological Contribution

Concupiscence and Indwelling Sin

Vermigli defended Augustine’s judgment that concupiscence, the sinful desire remaining in a believer after baptism, is itself true sin, against the Roman Catholic controversialist Albert Pighius, who held that such desire is not sin once its guilt is remitted.4 In his Common Places, Vermigli wrote:

Augustine says, that in any wise they be sin before baptism, yea, the Holy Ghost also by Paul calls them sins: and the nature of sin is agreeable onto them. For we have defined sin in such sort, as it pertains to all things, whatsoever does strive against the law of God… Seeing therefore all these things do stir us up, to transgress and rebel against the word of God, both they are unrighteous, and must be called sins.4

Concupiscence, on this account, is not neutral material left over from creation but an active pull toward transgression, unrighteous in itself even where God no longer counts it against the believer.4

Particular Grace

Vermigli held that saving grace is not extended to everyone alike but given to some and withheld from others according to God’s own good pleasure. In his Common Places he wrote: “We in no wise saie, that grace is common unto all men, but is given unto some; and unto others, according to the pleasure of God, it is not given.”5

Historical Significance

Zacharias Ursinus, the principal author of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), studied under Vermigli at Zurich for nearly a year, and named Vermigli as the theologian who influenced him most, ahead of both Calvin and Bullinger, whom he had also met on his travels through the Reformed world.6

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Jared Heath Moore, A Biblical and Historical Appraisal of Concupiscence with Special Attention to Same-Sex Attraction (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2019), chap. 3, 106. ↩ ↩2

  2. Moore, 105-106. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Moore, 97. ↩ ↩2

  4. Moore, 106-107: “But Augustine says, that in any wise they be sin before baptism, yea, the Holy Ghost also by Paul calls them sins… Seeing therefore all these things do stir us up, to transgress and rebel against the word of God, both they are unrighteous, and must be called sins.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. Peter Martyr Vermigli, The Common Places of the Most Famous and Renowned Divine Doctor Peter Martyr, trans. Anthonie Marten (London: Henry Denham and Henry Middleton, 1583), 31.38, quoted in Matthew Michael Barrett, “Monergism in the Calvinist Tradition,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 21-87, at 62-63. ↩

  6. Moore, 102-103. ↩