Francis Rous - Works

Works

While at Oxford he contributed a sonnet to Charles Fitz-Geffrey's Sir Francis Drake his Honourable Life's Commendation(1596). In imitation of Edmund Spenser, he wrote a poem in two books, entitled Thule, or Virtue's History (1598).

The theological works that first made his name were:

• Meditations of Instruction, of Exhortation, of Reprofe: indeavouring the Edification and Reparation of the House of God (1616);
• The Arte of Happines, consisting of three Parts, whereof the first searcheth out the Happinesse of Man, the second particularly discovers and approves it, the third sheweth the Meanes to attayne and increase it, (1619 and 1631);
• Diseases of the Time attended by their Remedies (1622);
• Oyl of Scorpions (1623).

Testis Veritatis (1626) was a reply to Richard Montagu's Appello Caesarem. Catholicke Charity: complaining and maintaining that Rome is uncharitable to sundry eminent Parts of the Catholicke Church (1641) was written earlier, as a reply to a 1630 work of the Catholic Tobie Matthew, but could not be printed in the Laudian 1630s.

He was a versifier of the Psalms. His translation, with some modifications, was adopted by the Church and Parliament of Scotland for use in public worship, a position which it held almost exclusively until the middle of the 19th century.

The subjective cast of his piety is reflected in his Mystical Marriage . . . betweene a Soule and her Saviour (1635). There is some doubt about the attribution to Rous of co-authorship in The Ancient Bounds, a work of 1645 advocating religious tolerance; some say he was an author, and that this has implications for his place on the spectrum of independents. A scholarly case has been made for the authorship of Joshua Sprigg.