He was then preacher at Gray's Inn, London, from 1617,[7] returning to Cambridge as Master of Catherine Hall in 1626, without giving up the London position.[8]
Also in 1626, the support group known as the Feoffees for Impropriations was set up, and Sibbes was a founding member. (It built on an informal grouping dating back to 1613). It was closely linked to St Antholin, Budge Row, for its seven years of existence: it was shut down in 1633.[9] With others, he worked to fund and provide platforms for preachers.[10] He was one of four ministers in the original feoffees, the other members being chosen as four lawyers and four laymen.[11]
He was the author of several devotional works expressing intense religious feeling – The Saint's Cordial (1629), The Bruised Reed and Smoking Flax (1631, exegesis of Isaiah 42:3), The Soules Conflict (1635), etc.
A volume of sermons appeared in 1630, dedicated to Horace Vere, 1st Baron Vere of Tilbury and his wife Lady Mare. Most of the other works were first published by Thomas Goodwin and Philip Nye, after Sibbes died. The content belied the mainly moderate and conforming attitudes for which Sibbes was known in his lifetime.[12]Beames of Divine Light, A Description of Christ in Three Sermons and Bowels Opened appeared in 1639, as did The Returning Backslider, sermons on the Book of Hosea.
A complete edition was published 1862–1864 in Edinburgh, in seven volumes, by James Nichol, with a biographical memoir by Alexander Grosart.
His perspective was European, or even wider, and he saw Catholicism in terms of a repressive conspiracy.[23] With Davenport, Gouge, Taylor, Thomas Gataker, John Stoughton, and Josias Shute, he helped raise money for Protestants of the Electorate of the Palatinate affected by the opening of the Thirty Years' War; and later for John Dury's missions.[24] Laud brought up Sibbes, Davenport, Gouge and Taylor in front of the Court of High Commission for this.[25]The Fountain Opened (1638) advocated mission work.[26]
His works were much read in New England.[26]Thomas Hooker, prominent there from 1633, was directly influenced by Sibbes, and his "espousal theology", using marriage as a religious metaphor, draws on The Bruised Reed and Bowels Opened.[28]
The poet George Herbert was a contemporary, and there are suggestions on parallels. Where Herbert speaks in The Church Militant about the westward movement of the propagation of the gospel, Christopher Hill comments that this may have come from The Bruised Reed.[29] Other examples have been proposed by Doerksen.[30][31]
Milton, Anthony (1996), Catholic and Reformed, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN0521401410
Old, Hughes (2002), Worship, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, ISBN0664225799
Porterfield, Amanda (1992), Female Piety in Puritan New England, New York: Oxford University Press, ISBN0195068211
Pyle, Andrew, ed. (2000), "Richard Sibbes", The Dictionary of Seventeenth-Century British Philosophers, vol. 2, Bristol: Thoemmes Press
Rooy, Sidney (1997), Anderson, Gerald (ed.), "Sibbes, Richard", Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, New York: Macmillan Reference USA, ISBN0028646045
Venn, John; Venn, John Archibald (1953), "Richard Sibbs", in Venn, John; Venn, John Archibald (eds.), Alumni Cantabrigienses (Online ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, archived from the original on 23 December 2012, retrieved 24 January 2014
