William Perkins' LIfe & Ministry (Part 1)

Several years ago, I've had the privilege learning about and from the great Elizabethan Puritan and preacher, William Perkins. I was first introduced to him by reading Erroll Hulse's introductory book, Who Are The Puritans? (Buy It Here), and remember that for some reason he stood out to me more so than the rest of the puritan greats (perhaps, due to his excellence in the pulpit). Well, by God's providence I was provided the opportunity to read of him and study him more. It is probably true that many Christians have never heard of the man. This blog-series is my modest effort to make him more well known. Note: there are some misspelled words by modern English standards but they are accurate quotations of the seventeenth-century English resources utilized. Enjoy!

WILLIAM PERKINS' LIFE & MINISTRY

"It was through the pulpit that Puritanism made its mark on the English nation in the early seventeenth century."

–Leland Ryken

This observation by Ryken is remarkably true. The more notable Puritans, such as John Cotton, Thomas Goodwin, John Preston, and Richard Sibbes, were primarily preachers of the scriptures. These men were not without a paradigm, however. Elizabethan Puritans, such as Laurence Chaderton, Richard Greenham, and Richard Rogers, were all model preachers, yet none were as influential as William Perkins. Sinclair B. Ferguson comments, “In his preaching at Great St. Andrews, Perkins proved to be an outstanding example of the principles he enunciated, and he set the standards which… pulpit giants… would emulate.” But such impact was not first without an internal reformation on the part of Perkins.

Synopsis of Pre-Conversion Years: Childhood to Youth

William Perkins was born to Thomas and Hannah Perkins in the village of Marston Jabbett in Bulkington Parish of the Warwickshire County in the year of 1558. Virtually nothing is known about his childhood years. Thomas Fuller notes in one of his biographical works that Perkins’ childhood “is a matter before dated in the Register of my Intilligence, whereof I can receive no instruction. Onely I dare be bold to conclude, that with Saint Paul, 1 Cor. 23.11. When he was a childe, he spake as a childe he understood as a childe, he thought as a childe… so we passe it over with silence.” Ian Breward concurs that between his birth and admittance into Christ’s College in Cambridge “Almost no details of this period survived."

A few things are known about Perkins’ youthful years in Cambridge, however, albeit mostly atrocious. Simply put, he was a young man given to drunkenness, profanity, and recklessness. It was not long after his admittance into Christ’s College in Cambridge that, despite possessing scholarly ability, his concentration was given to and his life was absorbed by untamed vileness. It was an age in which one may call it “the Mid-Summer Moon” or “the Dog-Days” of a man’s life. And although it is a mystery as to how and when Perkins exactly started to engage in such decadence, it is nevertheless certain that he took “such wild liberties to himselfe as oft him many a sigh in his reduced age.”

The Mid-Summer Moon days or the Dog-Days of Perkins’ life continued until his early graduate years. It was then that he became much more addicted to the study of natural magic. So intense was his addiction that people thought of him as bordering the very hell itself with regards to his curiosity for magic and equated it to “black art” or “blackness.” Fuller, however, while not conveying tolerance for his addiction, expresses that such an equation is an exaggeration and an ignorant observation of Perkins’ practice of magic:

"There goeth an uncontroll’d tradition, that Perkins, when a young scholar, was a great studier of Magick, occasioned perchance by his skill in Mathematicks. For ignorant people count all circles above their own sphere to be conjuring, and preferently cry out those things are done by black art for which there dimme eyes can see no colour or reason. And in such case, when they cannot flie up to heaven to make it a Miracle, they fetch it from hell to make it Magick, though it may lawfully be done by natural causes."

Hence, his addiction to magical practices was not what should be deemed as satanic or occultic but rather resultants of his trickery of hand or even careful calculation. Even so, his addiction was still that, an addiction. Coupled with his alcohol-prone lifestyle, he persisted in a debauched state of godlessness.

Notes:

1. Leland Ryken, Worldly Saints (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1986), 91.
2. Sinclair B. Ferguson, foreword to The Art of Preaching (1595; trans. 1606; reprint, Carlisle: Banner of Truth Trust, 2002), x.
3. Thomas Fuller and Other Eminent Divines, Abel Rendevivus or The Dead Yet Speaking (1652), 431-432
4. Ian Breward, “The Significance of William Perkins,” The Journal of Religious History 4, no. 2 (Dec 1966): 116.
5. Joel R. Beeke, Perkins on Predestination and Preaching, www.apuritansmind.com/willia mperkins/beekejoelperkinspredestinationpreaching.htm
6. Fuller, 432.
7. Ibid., 432.
8. Thomas Fuller, The Holy State, 4d ed. (London: Printed by John Redmayne for John Williams, 1663), 81.