While William Perkins (1558–1602) has long been recognized as a truly significant theologian in Elizabethan England and often called a puritan theologian, academic study of Perkins has not been plentiful. Veteran historian W.B. Patterson has now provided an outstanding study of Perkins, setting him in his Elizabethan England/Cambridge University context, explicating his theological views, and establishing even more fully Perkins's importance in the emerging English church. For Patterson, “It was the power of ideas to shape and transform human beings that most concerned Perkins, and, as this book suggests, he transmitted a vision of the Christian life that was long at the heart of English Protestantism” (5).
One of Patterson's major contributions is showing Perkins as an “Apologist for the Church of England” (chapter 2). He begins his book by detailing “The Unsettled Elizabethan Settlement” (chapter 1) as it developed through various ecclesiastical actions, the writings of important theologians such as Richard Hooker, and the theological controversies that enveloped the established Church. In this, the most bitter and stormy period of English history, theological positions were staked out. But “by 1603, no consensus had been achieved, and in less than half a century civil wars were to break out across Britain and Ireland in which religion was to play a key role” (39).
William Perkins, Fellow of Christ College, Cambridge, was “the most widely known English theologian of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries” (41). His extensive writings had a long and lasting influence and his works went through numerous published editions in England on the continent. Perkins' theology was thoroughly Reformed, owing to the influences of Calvin, Beza, Bullinger, Polanus, Zanchi, and other continental Reformed figures.
Perkins was also a leading voice for the spiritual renewal of the English church. His theology with its spiritual emphases was appropriated by those consciously identified with the “Puritan movement.” But Perkins himself never left the established church. Patterson's view of Perkins as an “Apologist for the Church of England” maintains that Perkins' “real significance for the English Church and nation has not been recognized.” He was “not so much an Elizabethan Puritan as he was an apologist, perhaps the chief apologist, for the Church of England as it emerged in the late Elizabethan period” (40). This suggests, Patterson maintains, “a far less adversarial relationship than has been assumed to exist between Reformed or Calvinistic clergy in England and the established Church of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries” (40). Highlighting these views is an important contribution of this book.
As for Perkins's relation to the puritan movement, Patterson indicates that while he did not identify himself with “those called Puritans,” he also “did not dismiss their efforts to achieve an inward purity, either” (49). While not directly linked to the puritan movement itself, “there is much to link him with the mission of the established Church of his day” (49).
Perkins's writings confirm both his spiritual emphases as well as his commitment to the established church. Patterson says Perkins saw his vocation as “to win the ignorant, the superstitious, the uninformed, and those whose faith was still half-Roman Catholic to a religious faith that would transform and renew them from within” (62). His task was to help his countrymen to a fuller understanding of the Christian faith and make them “more fully the people of God.” Thus, Perkins felt called “not so much to alter the established Church of his time as to make it more effective and its teachings better known and appreciated” (63). No one in his era reached as many readers as Perkins, his theological influence being “pervasive and enduring, lasting at least until the early stages of the English Civil Wars” (63). In this regard, Perkins was “the most important and influential contemporary theologian of the Elizabethan Church of England in advancing its teachings and values and in shaping the Protestant religious culture of the nation” (63).
The rest of Patterson's fine volume explicates Perkins's views on the great topics with which he dealt and shows the general areas where his work was path-breaking and his impact substantial.
These include the controversies over Salvation, especially in regard to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. Perkins's A Golden Chaine (England 1591) was one of the most thorough treatments of salvation/predestination, being Perkins's attempt “to cast my myte into the treasurie of the Church of England” (71). He wanted to defend “the doctrine (as they call it) of Calvin” (81). But he went beyond the Genevan master in detail and in the issues with which he dealt.
Perkins established protestant practical divinity and explorations of the role of conscience in his works of casuistry. This case study approach dealt with cases of conscience combining theology and ethics in an enduring approach to help persons make informed decisions on difficult issues.
Perkins produced a leading homiletic text with his The Arte of Prophecying (1607), “the first major English book on preaching” (114). Patterson also indicates Perkins's influence on the English prose tradition.
An important chapter is Patterson's treatment of Perkins's views in “The Quest for Social Justice.” He shows Perkins's social concerns, especially for the poor, and his support of emerging English Poor Laws. Perkins was “deeply committed to fostering the idea of community” (163), seeing all members of society, “including the poor themselves, as bearing responsibility for improving the conditions that threatened the well-being of all” (162).
Perkins's defense of protestant theology in relation to Roman Catholicism made him a major defender of the faith and of the established English protestant church. Patterson's book concludes by discussing Perkins's “broad-based and multi-faceted” legacy (190). His study is especially welcomed. It is thorough and judicious. It draws attention to one of England's greatest theologians, whose works continue to repay careful study today.
