William Perkins: Protestant England
William Perkins (1558-1602) was the most influential English clergyman and Cambridge theologian of his day. He lived right in the middle of the 100-year period between the English Reformation (Edward VI) and the English Civil Wars (Charles I). Those years literally defined what Anglicans believe - the Elizabethan Settlement and the challenges to the theological consensus of the traditional Anglican formularies. Perkins answers many of the questions I have had about our Anglican identity.
I’ve always wanted to know why the Church of England started with a firm commitment to moderate Calvinism, but after Edward VI, Elizabeth I, and James I the colors of our flag changed to Arminian (called “Pelagian” in Article 9, and by the anti-Arminians of that century). By 1630s-40s the church was aggressively turning anti-Calvinist which partially explains the civil wars and the hair-shirt relationship that Anglicans sometimes have with its Reformed formularies (the Thirty-nine Articles, the Homilies, and the 1662 Book of Common Prayer). The events of those crucial years must explain the shift from the high christology of salvation by grace through faith alone of Tyndale and Cranmer, to the high anthropology (moralism) of Laud, Hammond, and Taylor in the next 100 years - that then quickly led to the High-Church Movement and inevitably to the holiness movement of John Wesley - and on to modern expressions of Arminianism that are found in pietism, revivalism, the spiritual disciplines movement, and eventually into most Anglican churches today. And this is the bedrock theological question that underlies all: Is Jesus the Savior of all who choose to choose him, or is our eternal destiny predestined, individual, and absolute from “before the foundations of the world were laid” (Article 17)?
When a friend recommended William Perkins & the Making of a Protestant England by W. B. Patterson, I was glad for the chance to know Perkins better. Patterson’s book has been enormously helpful filled in many gaps in my education. Reading Patterson has taken me to read Perkins himself, and I have come to see him as a top-tier scholar and influencer, in every way equal to his contemporaries John Jewel and Richard Hooker for the grounding of the Elizabethan church in Protestantism. Although he was the most prolific writer of his day, ranking 2nd to John Calvin in numbers of books published in English, he has been mostly written off as a “puritan” - a pejorative term for many people then and today. Patterson shows that Perkins was not a puritan at all if that term means a dislike for the Elizabethan Settlement (as Peter Lake defines “puritan”), but he was in fact England’s Calvin with a very high appreciation for the authority of the Bible and the power of the preached Word, the sovereignty of God, and the biblical doctrine of election. Perkins had an enormous appreciation for the Articles of Religion and episcopal authority (Church governance by bishops). To be a convinced predestinarian in some circles means “puritan,” but Patterson shows that the Church of England was thoroughly predestinarian until the Elizabethan Settlement was challenged by the anti-Calvinists leading up to the English civil wars (1642-1651).
Perkins claimed, as did John Jewel, that he was a true catholic whose faith was that of the Bible and the ancient consensual faith of the church (A Reformed Catholike, 1597). In his The Arte of Prophecying (1592) he argued that there is only one way of interpreting Scripture, the literal or plain sense, and that the most effecting preaching combines the law and the gospel. And in The Golden Chain (1591) and A Christian and Plaine Treatise of Predestination (1606) Perkins addressed the pressing theological question of his day: election and predestination (Article 17, Thirty-nine Articles). He defines predestination as “the decree of God by which he hath ordained all men to a certain and everlasting estate, that is either to salvation or condemnation for his own glory.” Interestingly, Patterson shows how Perkins might not have agreed completely with Whitgift’s Calvinist Lambeth Articles, while at the same time being completely convinced of the doctrine of divine election (the doctrine that “is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons” Article17).
Perkins was forty-four when he died. He wrote forty-eight books (21 published in his lifetime). Peterson’s chapter on “Legacy” shows the remarkable impact that Perkins had on church and society in his day, and the lasting impact he has had on literature, justice issues, and theology throughout the generations. He deserves a whole new appreciation, the kind this monograph provides. Anglicanism is a Christ centered, Bible-believing church as is wonderfully preserved in our historic formularies. William Perkins knew this and lived it to the strengthening and furtherance of our Reformation Anglican heritage.
“The basic principle in application is to know whether the passage is a statement of the Law or of the Gospel. For when the Word is preached, the law and the gospel operate differently. . . Both the law and the gospel must be preached; the law to give birth to repentance and the gospel to lead to faith. But they must be preached in their proper order, first the law to bring repentance and then the gospel to work faith and forgiveness - never the other way around.”
Perkins, The Art of Prophecying