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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 Role in the Development of Reformed Covenant Theology

Despite Rollock’s accomplishments and reputation in his own day as a biblical commentator (reflected both in Beza’s praise for his work, noted above, and in the multiple editions of his commentaries), Rollock is best remembered today for the role he purportedly played in the development of covenant theology (a.k.a. “federal theology” or “federalism”) in the Reformed tradition.9 Indeed, it is difficult to find scholarly treatments of Rollock today that approach him from any other angle.10 The present work is no exception, though it does hope to offer something new—both in the translations that constitute the body of this work and here in the introduction to the same—to scholarly perspectives on Rollock’s significance as a covenant theologian.

To date, scholarly analysis of Rollock’s covenant thought and the role he played in the development of Reformed covenant theology has been almost entirely based on Rollock’s discussion of God’s covenants with man in the first several chapters of his 1597 Tractatus de vocatione efficaci.11 Very little attention—indeed, none at all by most scholars—has been given to Rollock’s 1596 Quaestiones et responsiones aliquot de Foedere Dei: deque Sacramento quod Foederis Dei sigillum est, or to relevant passages in his biblical commentaries that explore the subject of God’s covenants with man. This is partially due to the substantial overlap between the content of Rollock’s 1596 catechism and those chapters of the 1597 work on effectual calling that treat the covenants. In other words, Andrew Woolsey, who does make mention of Rollock’s catechism, is largely correct to observe with reference to the same that “the substance of this rare work was incorporated into a larger treatise on effectual calling, and published the following year as Tractatus de vocatione efficaci (1597).”12 Neglect of Rollock’s catechism and commentaries in discussions of his covenant thought stems more substantially, however, from the relative inaccessibility of those works in comparison to the 1597 work on effectual calling. Shortly after Rollock’s death, a London preacher named Henry Holland produced an English translation of the 1597 Tractatus titled A Treatise of God’s Effectual Calling (1603). That work was incorporated into a two-volume edition of Rollock’s works (in English translation) by the Wodrow Society in the nineteenth century, which edition was reprinted in 2008 by Reformation Heritage Books. Neither Rollock’s catechism nor his biblical commentaries, by way of contrast, have been translated or reproduced in modern editions/reprints.13

Exclusive attention to Rollock’s 1597 Tractatus in judgments about his role in the development of Reformed covenant thought is attended by certain problems. For one thing, there are aspects of Rollock’s thinking on the divine covenants that surface much more clearly in his catechism and commentaries than in his treatise on effectual calling. So, for example, the way in which Rollock’s ideas about God’s covenants (both before and after the fall) inform his thinking on the sacraments (both before and after the fall) becomes apparent from the catechism, which takes both covenant and sacrament as its themes, but not from the 1597 Tractatus, which contains scarcely a word on the sacraments. More substantial problems, perhaps, attend the oversight of Rollock’s catechism and commentaries in efforts to parse how and when discrete covenantal concepts appeared in Reformed writings of the late sixteenth-century, or in closely related (if arguably unfruitful) efforts to determine who influenced whom in the progress of covenantal ideas.

An example of the latter problem presents itself in the tendency to situate Rollock to the right of certain English divines—especially Dudley Fenner and William Perkins—in chronological surveys of early modern Reformed treatments of a pre-fall covenant, and/or to assume that Rollock was directly indebted to those English divines in his own thinking about such a covenant.14 Thus Woolsey: “Rollock’s teaching on the legal and evangelical covenants clearly followed the pattern of Perkins.”15 Such a move supports the more general conclusion that “the covenantal thought of . . . early Scottish theologians stands in the mainstream of Reformed theological tradition, its headwaters originating in Geneva and flowing through Heidelberg and Elizabethan Puritanism.”16 The supposition of some “influence of . . . English Puritan sources” on Rollock’s covenant thought in particular rests on the observation that Fenner and Perkins published writings contrasting the covenants of works and grace in 1585 (Fenner’s Sacra theologia) and 1590 (Perkins’s Armilla aurea) respectively, six years before Rollock published his catechism on God’s covenants and subsequent Tractatus. Rollock’s familiarity with Perkins’ writings by 1596 is taken for granted, perhaps rightly. His familiarity with Fenner’s work cannot so easily be assumed; Woolsey does, however, note that one of Rollock’s own printers, Robert Waldegrave, published two of Fenner’s works (though not the Sacra theologia) in Edinburgh in 1592, thereby rendering Rollock’s familiarity with Fenner by the time he began carving out his own covenantal ideas likely.17

Yet closer scrutiny of Perkin’s work and a quick glance at Rollock’s commentaries soon problematizes this narrative. There is, first of all, the fact that Perkins actually makes no mention of a pre-fall covenant or foedus operum (“covenant of works”) in the 1590 Armilla aurea. In 1591 Perkins published a second—and very much expanded—edition of the Armilla, which edition served as the basis for an English translation completed the same year.18 In that (and later) editions Perkins named “God’s covenant [foedus] and the seal of that covenant” as the “external means” by which God executes his eternal decree of election. He went on to define “God’s covenant” as “his pact [pactum] with man concerning the obtaining of eternal life under certain conditions,” and to name God’s covenant as duplex, comprising “the covenant of works [foedus operum] and the covenant of grace.” He further defined foedus operum as “the covenant of God that includes a condition of perfect obedience and is expressed in the moral law.” And finally, he named the Decalogue as “the epitome of the whole law and the covenant of works.”19 In 1590, by way of contrast, Perkins identified “the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments” as the “external means” by which God executes his decree of election. He named the Word as duplex, comprising “both law and gospel,” and proceeded to an examination of the Decalogue as the “epitome of the whole law” without a single reference to God’s covenant(s).20

Such nitpicking about the precise date of Perkins’ first reference to “the legal and evangelical covenants” assumes some significance, perhaps, when juxtaposed with Rollock’s comments on God’s covenants in his 1590 Ephesians commentary, a work based on his lectures from the late 1580s. Commenting on Eph 1:7, Rollock noted that every spiritual benefit ultimately enjoyed by believers is founded upon God’s decree. He identified God’s promise in time as God’s means of executing his eternal decree, and then added:

But the promise should be referred to the covenant. Therefore, something should be said briefly about the covenant, which we acknowledge as the source of this benefit of our redemption. God, then, has established a twofold covenant [foedus duplex] with man from the beginning: one natural, established in creation itself, containing the law; the other a covenant of grace, established with man after the fall, containing the gospel.21

As demonstrated below, Rollock expanded upon this doctrine of divine covenants considerably in his 1593 Romans commentary. But even this terse comment about God’s twofold covenant in 1590 raises questions about the supposed English Puritan, or at least Perkinsian, influence upon Rollock. There is, to be sure, affinity between Rollock’s comments here and Perkins’ comments in the 1591 Armilla, not only in the recognition of God’s covenant as duplex, but in the recognition (and statement of such in the immediate context) of God’s covenant as the means by which God executes his decree of election. But, needless to say, the earlier date of Rollock’s comments in this regard precludes the possibility of his indebtedness to Perkins on these matters. Indeed, the earlier date of Rollock’s comments establish the possibility (however slight) that influence moved in the opposite direction (that is, from Scotland to England), particularly so in light of Perkins’ decision to replace “proclamation of the Word” with God’s duplex covenant as the means by which God executes his saving decree in the 1591 edition of his work.22

Of course, Rollock’s reflections upon God’s foedus duplex from 1590 do not prohibit the possibility of Fenner’s influence on him. Indeed, they might even strengthen the case for Fenner’s influence since Rollock’s earliest apparent reference to God’s twofold covenant bears a noticeable degree of affinity to Fenner’s reference to the same in his Sacra theologia (1585). Fenner introduced the subject of “God’s covenant” in the fourth book of his Sacra theologia, immediately on the heels of a discussion of sin. Having defined Foedus Dei as “the covenant concerning life and death, established with man and his descendants,” and having noted that God’s covenant involves two voluntary actions (God’s stipulatio and man’s reception of the same), he observed that “God’s covenant is duplex,” comprising “the covenant of works” and “the covenant of gratuitous promise.” He then defined “the covenant of works” as “that covenant in which the annexed condition is perfect obedience,” and outlined a duplex function for that covenant “in the realization of predestination.” The covenant of works, he explained, served to “shut the mouth of the whole world and render it liable to God’s condemnation (Rom 3.19),” and to “make apparent man’s sin and misery” in order that elect sinners “might be impelled to seek restoration in the gratuitous covenant.” Whether Rollock was familiar with Fenner’s Sacra theologia, published in London in 1585 and again in Geneva in 1586 and 1589, is difficult to establish with any degree of certainty. Regardless, it should be noted that Rollock’s earliest reference to a “natural” covenant—a covenant that he rebranded foedus operum in 1593, using terminology by then employed by both Fenner and Perkins—explicitly situates that covenant before the fall (“established in creation itself”), a unique feature of Rollock’s doctrine vis-a-vis both Fenner’s and Perkins’s teachings, and one that received considerable elaboration in his Romans commentary and 1596 catechism.23

In any case, widening our scope to include Rollock’s more detailed considerations of God’s covenant of works with man from 1593 onward immediately brings into focus aspects of his teaching that increasingly distinguish it from both English Puritan and continental predecessors. Of course, “nothing comes from nothing,” a principle argued by Parmenides and popularized by Maria that applies to histories of doctrine as well as anything else. But Rollock does genuinely seem to have been an innovative thinker when it came to the particular subject of God’s covenant with man prior to the fall.

Rollock’s Covenant Theology Reconsidered in Light of the Present Translation

In turning to consider the texts translated in whole (the catechism) or in part (the Romans commentary) in this book, I should note that, despite the preceding comments, it is not ultimately my intention to advance any particular argument (or counter-argument) regarding influences on Rollock’s covenant thought, and/or to champion any detailed grand narrative regarding the development of covenant theology within post-Reformation Reformed theology. I do intend, rather more simply and mundanely, to highlight unique aspects of Rollock’s teaching on the covenants, or more precisely, unique aspects of his teaching on the pre-fall covenant, that become apparent from the broader survey of Rollock’s writings on the covenant that the translations offered here allow. The particular aspects of Rollock’s teaching I have in mind will, I suspect, be recognized by students of seventeenth-century Reformed thought as fairly standard features of the more developed Reformed covenant theologies of that (and later) period(s). Such, I think, reflects Rollock’s influence on subsequent Reformed covenant theologians, both in Scotland and abroad. To all appearances, Rollock left his stamp upon a certain trajectory within Reformed theology that made increasing use in subsequent years of the covenant motif to structure accounts of specific doctrines such as Scripture, anthropology, or soteriology, as well as surveys of salvation history in toto and/or accounts of Reformed doctrine as a systematic whole.

Ideally a claim regarding unique features in Rollock’s doctrine of the pre-fall covenant would proceed from a thorough survey of earlier treatments of that supposed entity by Reformed thinkers. Such a survey would include consideration of published comments on the pre-fall covenant/foedus operum by Zacharias Ursinus, Caspar Olevianus, Johannes Piscator, Fenner and Perkins (whose comments are sufficiently noted above), Robert Howie, and Amandus Polanus in the years leading up to Rollock’s 1596 catechism, as well perhaps as unpublished (as of 1596) comments on the subject by Thomas Cartwright and Franciscus Junius. Such a survey cannot realistically be included here.24 Suffice it to say that Reformed comments on a pre-fall covenant or foedus operum prior to 1596 are generally as abbreviated, or even more so, than those by Fenner and Perkins reviewed above, and rarely if ever move beyond those by Fenner and Perkins in detailing any theological significance to such a covenant. In my judgment, Amandus Polanus’s comments on the foedus operum in his 1590 Partitiones theologicae represent the fullest treatment of that subject prior to Rollock’s, but even those comments barely fill a single page of text. Polanus, much in the vein of Fenner, named God’s “eternal covenant”—that is, the “covenant in which God promises man eternal life”—as duplex, embracing both “the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.” He defined the foedus operum as “God’s pact [pactum] made with man concerning eternal life, to which is joined both a condition of perfect obedience to be fulfilled by man and a threat of eternal death should he not render perfect obedience.” Significantly, Polanus’s citation of Gen 2:17 to support this definition of the foedus operum and subsequent note that “repetition of the covenant of works was made by God” at Sinai mark that explicit situating of the foedus operum before the fall that is lacking in Fenner and Perkins. Polanus, finally, identified four functions to the covenant of works (as such is encountered in the moral law): it serves, first of all, to excite men to obedience; secondly, to render all men liable to God’s punishment on account of their failures in obedience; thirdly, to expose sin and wickedness; and fourthly, to impel men to seek restoration in the covenant of grace.25

The abbreviated nature of comments on the pre-fall covenant prior to the publication of Rollock’s catechism in 1596 points to the first and rather obvious unique aspect of Rollock’s teaching—namely, that he treats the pre-fall covenant at much greater length than earlier writers. Indeed, Rollock constitutes the first Reformed writer to treat the covenant of works beneath its own discrete heading. His catechism is divided into three overarching sections, the first titled “Concerning, first of all, God’s covenant in general, and then the covenant of works,” the second titled “Concerning the Covenant of Grace,” and the third titled “Concerning the Sacrament in General.” The apparently unprecedented decision to give the covenant of works its own discrete heading lends itself, of course, to a more robust discussion of that entity. Of the 102 questions and answers that Rollock ultimately devotes to the covenants, 28 (qs. 3–30) are specifically dedicated to the covenant of works, a continuous section spanning roughly eight pages of text. Yet such figures only partially reflect the extent of Rollock’s engagement with the covenant of works in his text, since that subject figures into substantial sections of his discussion of the covenant of grace (see qs. 31, 37–38, 41–42, 57, 64, 72–73, 76, and 89–90) and his discussion of the sacraments (see qs. 102–105). While Rollock’s lengthier treatment of the covenant of works vis-a-vis earlier Reformed writers may not seem particularly important, it is an obvious step towards a theology that attributes structural significance and ascribes substantial dogmatic functions to the notion of a pre-fall covenant between God and man.

Secondly (and more substantively), Rollock’s teaching is unique in the pronounced role that it attributes to the covenant of works as both a theological and redemptive-historical foil to the covenant of grace. Earlier writers anticipated Rollock in this regard. Their terse descriptions of the foedus operum as a covenant promising eternal life upon condition of perfect obedience were clearly intended to form a point of contrast and comparison for the covenant of grace, in which eternal life is freely offered to sinners. But Rollock discovers much greater potential in the covenant of works to highlight features of the covenant of grace and that salvation offered to sinners therein. His attention to the pre-fall covenant’s foundation (q. 6), promise (q. 7), condition (q. 8), historical location (q. 15), manner of establishment (q. 16), repetition in redemptive history (q. 18), manner of repetition in redemptive history (q. 19), function in redemptive history (q. 21), initial violation (q. 25), subsequent violation (q. 27), penalty (q. 28), and location in the biblical canon (q. 30) all serve, ultimately, to emphasize contrasting features of the covenant of grace. To note one example of how he develops such contrasts: Rollock identifies in q. 62 the condition of the covenant of grace as “faith in the mediator,” notes that faith is a product of grace rather than man’s innate powers (q. 63), and then observes, alluding to his earlier consideration of the pre-fall covenant’s condition (q. 8), that faith as the gracious covenant’s condition necessarily excludes “those good works of nature that were named as the condition of the covenant of works,” since “Christ and God’s mercy, which are the objects of faith, cannot—in the justification of man—consist with the powers of man’s nature or the works that proceed from that nature” (q. 64). At the risk of stating the rather obvious, this particular contrast between the covenant of works and covenant of grace ultimately serves to reinforce Protestant teaching on the exclusive and instrumental role that faith plays in justification.

Thirdly, Rollock’s teaching is unique in the way that it employs the covenant of works to frame an account and analysis of Christ’s obedience (as itself an aspect of Christ’s work). Rollock, in other words, is the first Reformed theologian to my knowledge to refer to Christ as one “born under the covenant of works” and “liable to the same” (q. 37), or as one who has “fulfilled the covenant of works,” (q. 38) both “by doing [agendo] and by suffering [patiendo]” (q. 39). These claims, for Rollock, lead on to a substantial discussion about Christ’s life of obedience and his passion, and how both contribute to man’s ultimate salvation (qs. 40–49). At one level, of course, the move to frame an account of Christ’s work by reference to the covenant of works is obvious and inevitable once man’s pre-fall experience has come to be defined with reference to that covenant. Christ, after all, is named in Scripture as the second (or last) Adam (cf. 1 Cor 15:45 & Rom 5:15), and as one “born under the law” (Gal 4:4), which “law” Reformed theologians recognized as promulgated upon tables of stone at Sinai but equally, and previously, written upon man’s heart in creation.26 Nevertheless, the concrete move to place the second Adam “under the covenant of works” and to frame an account of his work with reference to the same (over and above the law) was not without theological consequence. An understanding of Christ as one born under and fulfilling that covenant which God established with man before the fall found expression in, and had bearing upon, a number of intramural Reformed debates of the seventeenth century, such as that on the imputation of Christ’s active obedience to believers, or that on what man’s eschatological future would have been—heavenly, glorified life or perpetual, earthly existence—had Adam remained upright. It also found expression in, and had bearing upon, discussions about the meritorious nature of Adam’s hypothetical obedience in the covenant of works. Rollock, interestingly, denies in his catechism that Adam’s good works would have had the proper essence of merit in the foedus operum (qs. 12–13). In the seventeenth-century an increasing number of Reformed theologians demurred on this point and, with an eye towards the meritorious nature of that obedience rendered by the second Adam under the covenant of works, argued that the first Adam’s obedience would likewise have been meritorious, even if “merit” was ultimately defined by such thinkers not with reference to any intrinsic value of said hypothetical works but to God’s free determination of an appropriate reward for the same.27

A fourth and final unique aspect of Rollock’s teaching on the pre-fall covenant does not present itself in the translations offered below, but nevertheless warrants mention here in order to round out our consideration of Rollock’s significance to the development of Reformed covenant theology. This final, unique aspect of Rollock’s teaching presents itself in the chapter on original sin in Rollock’s 1597 Tractatus, in which chapter Rollock suggests—a first among Reformed thinkers, at least to my knowledge—that the pre-fall covenant per se functioned as the actual basis for humankind’s solidarity with Adam, and thus for humankind’s voluntariety of, and culpability for, Adam’s actual transgression in the Garden. Having asked “from whence” that transgression—that is, Adam’s eating of the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden—derived its “power [efficacia] to be propagated to each and every descendant of Adam,” Rollock contends that such “power” sprung not from the reality of any natural or intrinsic relationship between Adam and his descendants, but from “a certain covenant of God which he established with Adam in the first creation.”28 To state the matter otherwise, Rollock understands humankind’s culpability for Adam’s transgression to rest ultimately on God’s institution of solidarity between Adam and his descendants, which institution found expression from the very first in God’s explicit statement that “if man should stand firm in that innocence in which he was created, he would stand firm for himself and his descendants, but if on the contrary he should not stand firm and should rather fall, he would fall for himself and for his descendants.”29

Previous Reformed theologians had, of course, accepted humankind’s solidarity with Adam and culpability for Adam’s transgression, but they had been content to let humankind’s physical descent from Adam and universal participation in human nature jointly serve as the theoretical basis for that solidarity and culpability. Even those who had identified the law written on Adam’s heart—or, like Augustine, the law prohibiting consumption of the forbidden fruit—as a covenant, and thus either explicitly or implicitly named Adam’s offspring in toto as covenant-breakers, had so implicated Adam’s descendants by virtue of an acknowledged solidarity with Adam ultimately premised upon the concept of human nature.30 Subsequent Reformed theologians, on the other hand, would increasingly follow Rollock’s lead, acknowledging both a federal relationship—that is, a relationship premised upon the pre-fall foedus—between Adam and his posterity serving as the basis for humankind’s culpability for Adam’s sin, and a real/natural relationship between the same serving as the basis for humankind’s inheritance of corruption and perversity.31 Thus, for instance, Anthony Burgess in his book on original sin: “by God’s covenant we were looked upon as in [Adam].”32

While Rollock apparently constitutes the earliest Reformed thinker to explicitly premise humankind’s solidarity with Adam and culpability for Adam’s sin upon a covenant between God and Adam in the garden, he was not the first theologian per se to do so in his century. In a series of publications between 1532 and 1551, and during proceedings of the Council of Trent in 1546, an Italian Dominican friar named Ambrogio Catarino had challenged the adequacy of the concept of universal human nature to explain universal solidarity with Adam and culpability for Adam’s sin, and had promoted the idea that God established a covenant with Adam in the Garden that served as the basis for said solidarity and culpability. Catarino’s doctrine of a pre-fall covenant—a covenant specifically serving to establish humankind’s voluntariety of, and culpability for, Adam’s sin—was forcefully rejected by his Dominican contemporary Domingo de Soto (among others), but was embraced, at least in some form, by a number of contemporary and immediately subsequent Roman Catholic thinkers, including Juan Morillo (who, interestingly, converted to the Reformed faith in the early 1550s), Alfonso Salmeron, Gabriel Vasquez, Francisco Suarez, and Adam Tanner.33 Rollock was very likely familiar with Catarino’s teaching on the covenant (and perhaps to some extent with the minor controversy Catarino’s doctrine caused in Roman Catholic circles)—he engaged Catarino’s overall teaching on original sin in the course of his own chapter on the subject in the Tractatus.34 To all appearances, then, Rollock’s own insistence that God’s covenant with Adam in the Garden constitutes the proper basis for humankind’s solidarity with Adam and culpability for Adam’s sin marks a concrete—albeit unacknowledged, for obvious reasons—debt to Catarino.35

Further unique aspects of Rollock’s treatment of the pre-fall covenant vis-a-vis earlier Reformed treatments of that doctrine could, I suspect, be noted. The four unique aspects of his doctrine just identified, however, should serve to establish Rollock’s place as a pivotal figure in the development of Reformed covenant theology, particularly so since the aspects in question increasingly became, as intimated previously, standard features of seventeenth-century Reformed teaching on the divine covenants.

Notes on Text and Translation

The main body of this work comprises a complete translation of Rollock’s 1596 Quaestiones et responsiones aliquot de Foedere Dei: deque Sacramento quod Foederis Dei sigillum est. In 2009 I published a translation of the first half of Rollock’s catechism—that half dealing directly with the covenants—in Mid-America Journal of Theology.36 In revisiting Rollock’s catechism sometime later, I realized that a translation of the entire catechism would be useful for at least three reasons: first of all, because it’s preferable to have any work translated in its entirety rather than in part, especially so for students of that work’s author or doctrinal themes; secondly, because the latter half of Rollock’s catechism—that half dealing with the sacraments—provides further illustration of the theological utility that Rollock discovered in God’s duplex foedus, and so stands to enrich our appreciation for Rollock’s covenant thought; and thirdly, because Rollock’s existing works in translation include nothing on the subject of the sacraments, and access to his thoughts on that subject might serve both students of Rollock’s theology and students of early modern (Scottish) Reformed Sacramentology. Rollock’s questions and answers on the sacraments—appearing here for the first time in translation—stand, in other words, to buttress the claims I have made above about Rollock’s significance as a covenant theologian, and to inform scholarly judgments about various claims that have been made concerning post-Reformation Scottish thought on baptism and the Lord’s Supper.37

Rollock dedicated his catechism to William Little, the public official who had been instrumental in bringing him to Edinburgh. Rollock’s letter of dedication marks his recognition of Little’s patronage and paternal care for him. Little apparently had a son, also named William, enrolled at the University of Edinburgh when Rollock published his work. Rollock makes mention of the younger Little in his dedication, observing with good, humanist humility that his “small trifle” of a catechism comprises questions “about God’s covenant and the sacraments that are childish [pueriles]” but might “be useful to children [pueres] and students of the rudiments,” not least William Little’s son. Rollock actually sounds a rather ambivalent note regarding the younger William Little, expressing his hope that the son might eventually achieve the virtues of his father, but suggesting that if he does not, the failure “must be imputed to the son himself and not to the father.” One gets the impression Rollock would like to have added, perhaps on behalf of the entire university, “or to us.”38

My translation of Rollock’s catechism itself is, I think, fairly straightforward. The headings included throughout the catechism are original to his work. The only real liberty I have taken in translation is the addition of consecutive numbers to the questions. I added these on the assumption that they might prove a useful tool for persons wishing to reference Rollock’s catechism in the future. I have kept critical commentary to a minimum, very occasionally noting Rollock’s mistaken referencing of biblical proof-texts, highlighting the significance that a particular point made might have to scholarly questions/debates about early modern covenant theology, and/or pointing readers towards earlier questions that illumine the meaning of later ones that, at least in my judgment, seem slightly difficult to understand on their own.

Also included in this volume are three translated sections from Robert Rollock’s 1593 Romans commentary. The three sections in question were titled by Rollock himself “On the Covenant of God,” “On the Sacrament,” and “On Good Works.” These particular sections of his work on Romans appeared in a series of short, doctrinal summaries that Rollock inserted between commentary on Romans 8:30 and Romans 8:31 in order to explicate in greater detail those divine benefits concisely comprehended in Scripture’s reference (in Rom 8:29–30) to the foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification of believers.39

My decision to translate these specific theological tracts reflects recognition of the significant use they make, each in its own particular way, of the notion of a pre-fall covenant. The content of the first two tracts—“On the Covenant of God” and “On the Sacrament”—very much corresponds with the content of Rollock’s catechism in its respective halves. “On Good Works” covers unique ground in relation to the subject of Rollock’s catechism, and thereby discloses unique theological potential for the foedus operum. Though covering much ground in common with Rollock’s catechism, these selections from Rollock’s Romans commentary belong to a different genre of literature, and thus it is my hope that they might serve to illumine his doctrine as discovered in the catechism (and vice versa). These texts have added historical interest insofar as they belonged to a publication that was substantially more popular and influential in Rollock’s day than either his 1596 catechism or his 1597 Tractatus, at least if popularity and influence be measured by publication history. Rollock’s Romans commentary saw two editions in Edinburgh (1593 and 1594) and three editions in Geneva (1595, 1596, and 1608). It seems very likely that it served as the primary vehicle for the transmission of Rollock’s covenantal ideas to others.

An earlier effort of mine to translate Rollock’s “On the Covenant of God” and “On the Sacrament” appeared in 2013 in Reformation & Renaissance Review under the title “Robert Rollock on covenant and sacrament: two texts.” That earlier work appears here with permission, but it should be noted that—as with the section of Rollock’s catechism previously published but appearing here—I have revisited, revised, and I hope improved my earlier work for this volume. My resulting and final translation of these texts is, like that of the catechism, fairly straightforward in my judgment. I have taken the necessary liberties with punctuation and word order that translation from Latin to English requires, but none I hope with Rollock’s meaning. Perhaps one item worth noting is that I have followed the paragraph divisions found in the Geneva publications of Rollock’s Romans commentary, even though these were almost certainly introduced by the Genevan printer rather than Rollock. In the original Edinburgh edition of the work, Rollock (or his printer) proved far too reluctant on the matter of paragraph breaks for modern tastes.

1. Quoted in Woolsey, “Rollock,” 3.

2. Rollock, Works, 1:10.

3. Woolsey, “Rollock,” 2.

4. Rollock, Works, 1:xxxix–lxv.

5. Ibid., 1:lxv–lxvi.

6. Woolsey, “Rollock,” 7–9.

7. A bibliography of Rollock’s works can be found in Rollock, Works, 1:xc–xcv.

8. Rollock, Works, 1:lxxx–lxxxvii.

9. Michael McGiffert names Rollock “the first full–fledged federalist” on the basis of Rollock’s mature treatment of the covenant of works in addition to the covenant of grace in the Scottish divine’s 1597 Tractatus de vocatione efficaci (“Perkinsian Moment,” 146). Works which explore Rollock’s role in the development of Reformed covenant theology in some detail include Denlinger, “Rollock on Covenant and Sacrament”; Denlinger, “Rollock’s Catechism”; Fesko, Westminster Assembly, 135–36; Isbell, “Covenant of Works,” 41–51; Letham, “Foedus Operum,” 457–67; Macedo, “Covenant Theology of Rollock”; Woolsey, Unity and Continuity, 512–39.

10. There are notable exceptions, including Backus, “Piscator Misconstrued”; Ellis, “Eternal Decree”; Garner, “Discourse Analysis.”

11. See Rollock, Works, 1:33–55.

12. Woolsey, Unity and Continuity, 512.

13. The present volume incorporates two of my own previous efforts at translating Rollock. In 2009 I published a translation of the first half of Rollock’s catechism (Denlinger, “Rollock’s Catechism”) in Mid-America Journal of Theology. In 2013 I published translations of two short sections of Rollock’s Romans commentary (Denlinger, “Rollock on Covenant and Sacrament”) in Reformation & Renaissance Review. The translations comprised in those articles are reproduced here with permission, albeit with slight revision.

14. See, for example, Isbell, “Covenant of Works,” 35–50; Woolsey, Unity and Continuity, 442–539.

15. Woolsey, Unity and Continuity, 516. See also pp. 535–39, which offer more detailed analysis of Rollock’s influences.

16. Ibid., 535.

17. Ibid., 516.

18. While the 1590 Armilla ran to roughly 66 pages, the 1591 Armilla ran to well over 300 (of identical size and similar font).

19. Perkins, Armilla (1591), F2r–F2v. Perkins, it should be noted, does not identify this covenant of works as a pre-fall arrangement. References to Jer 32:31 and Gal 4:24 in his discussion of the foedus operum suggest he primarily envisioned the “covenant of works” as a principle of inheritance on the basis of perfect obedience established after the fall, a principle embodied especially in the Decalogue, a principle which served to prompt sinners to despair of their self-righteousness and take refuge in God’s gratuitous promise of life on the basis of Christ’s obedience and sacrifice.

20. Perkins, Armilla (1590), 15v.

21. Rollock, Epistolam ad Ephesios, 18.

22. Attention to Rollock’s earliest account of God’s duplex covenant with man likewise problematizes the assumption that Robert Howie, a Scottish student of Caspar Olevian’s in Herborn in the later 1580s, constituted an “important link” (Woolsey, Unity and Continuity, 517) between Rollock and the Heidelberg (covenant) theologians, an assumption that rests at least in part on Howie’s 1591 publication De reconciliatione hominis cum Deo. In that work Howie contrasted God’s gratuitous covenant, serving as the instrument of sinful man’s reconciliation to God, with “that covenant which God established with Adam in creation (which covenant was afterwards published in the law), according to which Adam was obligated to render perfect obedience to God in his own strength” (Howie, De reconciliatione, 15).