– 3 Min Read
William Perkins lived from 1558 – 1602. From 1584 until his death, Perkins served as the preacher of Great St. Andrew’s Church in Cambridge. It was there, at Christ’s College in Cambridge, where Perkins received his bachelor’s degree in 1581 and master’s degree in 1584. William Perkins also taught for Christ’s College and catechized students at Corpus Christi College. Some of the students would be Richard Sibbes, John Cotton, John Preston, and other well-known Puritan ministers.
We do not know a lot about Perkins’s childhood. His father and mother, Thomas and Hannah Perkins, had William in the village of Marston Jabbet in Bulkington Parish of Warwickshire. In his early years, William was considered a wild young man and a drunkard. So much so that there was an incident that Benjamin Brook records; “As he was walking in the skirts of the town, he heard a woman say to a child that was forward and peevish, ‘Hold your tongue, or I will give you to drunken Perkins yonder.’” [1]
Sometime after this, Perkins became aware of his sinfulness and need for the only Savior who could deliver him from it. Perkins would come to Christ and attend Christ’s College where Laurence Chaderton, “the pope of Cambridge Puritanism”, would be his personal tutor. Perkins was an excellent student and brilliant theologian. Thomas Fuller said of Perkins;
“[He] had a rare felicity of speedy reading of books, and as it were but turning them over would give an exact account of all considerables therein… He took strict notice of all passages, as if he had dwelt on them particularly; persing books so speedily, one would think he read nothing; so accurately, one would think he read all.”
– Thomas Fuller [2]
Perkins’s Ramism, (named after the French humanist philosopher, Petrus Ramus), was quite evident in his writings. He was introduced to Ramism by his tutor, Chaderton [3]. Ramism should not be confused with Aristotelian theology or Thomism, though similar in ways in their metaphysical understandings of God. Though Ramism could bring a “hyper-simplicity” to the doctrine of God, it appears Perkins did not let it go that far in his thinking of the Trinity. That is the apparent danger of these methods of theology. Though Perkins never produced a treatise on the Trinity, an orthodox view is seen in his writings. Perkins taking this deep thought and logic to the Bible, along with his brilliant mind, would help him plainly communicate complex biblical truths in his sermons and writings. No wonder why he was one of Jonathan Edwards’s favorite theologians [4].
William Perkins has been called “the prince of Puritan theologians,” “the most famous of all Puritan divines,” “the principal architect of Elizabethan Puritanism,” and his most popular title “the father of Puritanism.” Some people even go as far as to include Perkins with John Calvin and Theodore Beza as the “trinity of theology” [5]. He was truly a great Puritan and produced a treasure trove of great works. And one of those great works is A Golden Chain.
Read Next: William Perkins and The ‘Ordo Salutis’ Part 2: A Golden Chain
Works Cited
[1] Benjamin Brook, Lives of the Puritans. (Soli Deo Gloria ed., vol. 2, London, Jack Black, 1813. 3 vols.), 129
[2] Thomas Fuller, Holy State. (vol. 4, 1642), 91
[3] William Perkins, Biographical Preface, in The Works of William Perkins vol. 1. (London, 1608 vols 10.), 19
[4] H. C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge, (Archon Books, 1972), 258-260.
[5] John Eusden, Puritans, Lawyers, and Politics (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1958), 11