William Perkins' LIfe & Ministry (Part 4)

Synopsis of Post-Conversion Years: Youth to Adulthood (Continued)

Perkins was not an insipidly isolated-ivory-tower academician, however. As much as he was a scholar among scholars, he was also a scholar for the common people. For example, his success as an across-the-board writer was largely due to his inimitable ability “to extract ideas from others, to combine them with his own insights and to relate the result to the needs of laity, ministers and scholars over a wide range of subjects." Breward notes that an examination of his writings suggests two main reasons why he was so popular internationally and extensively—“an ability to clarify and expound complex theological issues which aroused the respect of fellow scholars and a fit for relating seemingly abstruse theological teaching to the spiritual aspirations of ordinary Christians.” Hence, he possessed what might be called a “ministerial scholarship” or “relevant scholarship” or even “significant scholarship.”

Perkins’ ministry also extended beyond the common people. He was known as one who, following his conversion, dealt sympathetically with those in dire spiritual need. But his sympathy was externalized in gospel-ministry, not merely in charitable deeds. For instance, upon his first entrance into the ministry of the Gospel, “the first beam he sent forth shined to those which sat in darknesse and the shadow of death,” that is, the prisoners incarcerated in the castle of Cambridge. These were individuals living detached from Christ, bound in their fallen flesh and seared in their consciences—the epitome of Rom 3:10-18. Yet, he made it his personal business to obtain permission to convene with these prisoners so that he might minister to them even as he did among the large crowds that came to hear him preach at St. Andrews. Fuller provides the following details regarding this personal ministry:

"Perkins prevailed so far with their jaylour, that the prisoners were brought… to the Shire-house hard by, where he preached unto them every Lords day. Thus was the prison his parish, his own Charity his Patron presenting him unto it, and his work was all his wages. Many an Onesimus here he begat, and as the instrument freed the prisoners from the captivity of sin."

Clark also adds that it was his “manner to go with the prisoners to the place of execution when they were condemned, and what successe his labours were crowned with… by this example.” Perhaps, it would be fair to reckon that Perkins’ sympathetic ministry is akin to the ministry model of Jesus Christ Himself, who “did no come to be served, but to serve (Matt 20:28)” and was also “a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matt 11:19).

This was the post-conversion William Perkins. A man radically transformed and renewed by the grace of God. A former reckless and profane individual and a drunkard, who became the most esteemed Elizabethan Puritan—whose ministry influenced both his contemporaries and those of the ensuing generations, even in the international domain. One whose theology did not cause him to become cold or callous towards sinners but mercifully brought his theology to both the learned and the unlearned, the scholarly and the laity, the minister and the commoner, even the socially outlawed and communally confined—those who were cold and callous against his God even as he once was.

Notes:

1. Breward, 116.
2. Ibid., 113.
3. www.apuritansmind.com/williamperkins/williamperkins.htm
4. Fuller, The Holy State, 81.
5. Hulse, Who Are The Puritans?, 44.
6. Fuller, The Holy State, 81.
7. Clark, 416.