William Perkins' LIfe & Ministry (Part 3)

Here is part 3 of the series on William Perkins. Bear in mind that there are some misspelled words by modern English standards.

Synopsis of Post-Conversion Years: Youth to Adulthood

Perkins’ scholarly ability demonstrated during his rebellious years was now put to valuable use. Samuel Clark provides an example of his intellectual aptitude: “He had a rare felicity in reading of Books, and as it were, but turning them over, would give an exact account of all that was considerable therein: He perused Books so speedily that one would think he read nothing, and yet so accurately that one would think he read all.”

He also collaborated with other intellectually and spiritually able men such as Chaderton, Richard Greenham (1531-1591), and Richard Rogers (1550-1620) to form a spiritual brotherhood at Cambridge that advocated Calvinistic Puritan convictions. This amalgamation of God-gifted ability with spiritual and theological accountability proved expeditiously effective. Fuller notes:

"The happy houre was now come wherein the stragling sheep was brought home to the fold, and his vanity and mildnesse corrected into temperance and gravity. It is certainly known and believed, that if Quick-silver could be fired (which all coufesse difficult, and most conclude impossible) it would amount to an infinite treasure; so when the roving parts, the giddy an unstable conceits of this young Scholar began to be settled, his extravagant studies to be confined and centered on Divinity, in a very short time he arrived at an incredible improvement."

Schaefer adds that Perkins continued to mature “after the Cambridge and southeastern England controversies over vestments and church government.”

Perkins rapid maturity both spiritually and academically eventually made him “the most influential of Elizabethan puritans,” and “the prince of puritan theologian and the most eagerly read” among his contemporaries. According to Curt Daniels, Perkins “became the Cambridge Calvin. To be more precise, he was the Beza of Cambridge. Perkins closely modelled [sic] his theology after Beza… Though not as well known today, Perkins exercised far more influence among the later Puritans than anyone else. His books sold like theological hotcakes.” Breward explains just how popular his writings were and why they were so popular:

"Perkins was the first theologian of the reformed Church of England to achieve an international reputation on the basis of editions published outside Britain… A check in major European libraries for editions for Perkins published outside Britain has revealed fifty printed in Switzerland, nearly sixty in various parts of Germany and over 100 in the Netherlands. Smaller printings were made in France, Bohemia and Hungary… Perkins shared his knowledge of and dependence upon Reformed and Lutheran Scholars, but what makes him so important is that by the end of the sixteenth century his writings had begun to displace those of Calvin, Beza and Bullinger. Though he was not a scholar of the first rank, his gift for rapid and retentive reading, clarity of thought and expression, felicity with his pen and influence in Cambridge enabled him both to reach a wide audience and fill some of the yawning gaps in the theological equipment of the Elizabethan Church."

Indubitably, such comparisons to and even surpassing the achievements of the giants of the Protestant Reformation, coupled with his distinctive academic ability, corroborates his impressive scholarship regarding things divine.

Notes:

1. Samuel Clark, The Marrow of Ecclesiastical History, 3d ed. (London: W.B., 1675), 416.
2. “In 1570 Greenham left the academic atmosphere of Cambridge, where he had been a tutor, to take up pastoral work in the humble village of Dry Drayton about five miles from Cambridge. There he laboured for twenty years, only occasionally preaching away from home. Greenham was pastor par excellence, a physician able to discern the deep experiences of the soul, an expert in counseling and comforting. He constantly rose, winter and summer, at 4 a.m. He refused several lucrative offers of promotion and abounded in acts of generosity to the poor. Young men came to live at Dry Drayton, forming a ‘School of Christ’ and devoting themselves to the Scriptures and to the outworking of the Word in their own souls and the souls of others. Why should a village situation be exciting? The answer is that here we see a microcosm of a wider work, the rooting of the gospel in rural England. Richard Greenham was criticized for his nonconformity and the manner in which he conducted worship services. He was passive in his resistance. He did not wish to argue about things he regarded as adiaphora, that is, things different. He preached Christ, and him crucified, and simply pleaded for tolerance that he should continue to be a faithful minister of Christ. He enjoyed the friendship of men of influence who always managed to put in a good word for him and thus keep him out of trouble” (Hulse, 41).
3. “In 1574 Richard Rogers became a preacher of God’s Word in the village of Wethersfield, Essex, there to labour for the conversion of souls, but also to work at the mortification of sin in his own soul. Like Greenham, he kept a school for young men in his house. Having first committed himself to the rigours of the godly life, he wrote in detail on practical godly living. This was called The Seven Treatises, a work which went through seven editions before 1630. His close friend and neighbour Ezekiel Culverwell expressed the wish that readers of the book could have seen it author’s practice with their own eyes and heard his doctrine with their own ears. Here we see illustrated a fascination with the essence of godliness. Rogers kept a diary and from it can be seen a man walking as closely as possible with God. One of his series of expositions gained fame, namely, discourse on the book of Judges. We should not imagine that Rogers led an easy life, being waited on by servants, so that he could give himself to spiritual exercises. Besides the care of his immediate large family we read of him that ‘He did regard it as his duty to meditate, study and write but at the same time he carried on no less conscientiously the activities of a householder, a farmer, a figure in the countryside, a preacher, a pastor, a reformed and the head of a boarding school’” (Hulse, 42-43).
4. Beeke, www.apuritansmind.com/williamperkins/beekejoelperkinspredestinationpreaching.htm
5. Fuller, Abel Rendevivus or The Dead Yet Speaking, 433.
6. Paul R. Schaefer, “The Arte of Prophesying” in The Devoted Life, ed. Kelly M. Kapic and Randall C. Gleason (Downers Grove: Inter Varsity Press, 2004), 38.
7. John Morgan, Godly Learning (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 25.
8. Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 125.
9. Curt Daniels, The History and Theology of Calvinism (Springfield: Good Books, 2003), 41.
10. Schaefer adds, “Perkins’s fame spread well beyond the borders of his England. Churchmen from other lands translated his treatises into a number of languages including Dutch, German and Polish. In the land of his birth, salves of his works soon eclipsed even those of Calvin and lined the bookshelves of “the godly.” (“The Art of Prophecying” in The Devoted Life, p.40).
11. Ian Breward, “The Significance of William Perkins,” 113, 116.
12. The following are two possibilities why Perkins is scantly known in the twenty-first century Christianity: “Although William Perkins was one of the most widely read preachers of his own age, and one of the most outstanding theological thinkers of the Elizabethan era, many, even among those who regularly buy and read Puritan reprints, scarcely know of him. Part of the reason for this might be that unlike the writings of notables such as Owen, Baxter and Sibbes, few of Perkins’s works actually have been reprinted in either of the Puritan reprint revivals of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. Another reason for this might be the quandary of exactly how to under Perkins, a man whose scant forty-four years (1558-1602) nevertheless spanned almost he entirety of the religiously tumultuous reign of Elizabeth I (reigned 1558-1603) (Schaefer, 38).