Lastly, justification by works causes trouble and disquietness to the conscience. No man’s conscience can be appeased before God’s wrath is appeased, and God’s wrath cannot be appeased by any works. For the best works the regenerate can do are imperfect, and are stained with some blemish of corruption, as may appear in the prophet Isaiah and in Paul, both of whom had a great disliking of that good which they did, because it was mingled with sin [Isa. 64:6; Rom. 7:14–16]. And again, every man is bound by duty to keep the whole law, so that if a man could keep it perfectly, he should do no more than he is by duty enjoined to do. And therefore he who looks to merit eternal life at God’s hand by keeping the law, trusts but to a broken staff, and is like the bankrupt who will pay one debt by another. For by his sin, every man is indebted to the Lord, and is bound to answer to the Lord the full punishment of all his sins. This debt (the papist says) we may discharge by obedience to the law, that is by a new debt, which we are as well bound to pay to our God as the former.

To end this point, let a man look to be saved by works, and therefore let a man employ himself to do the best works he can, yet he shall never come to know when he has done sufficient to satisfy God’s wrath. And this uncertainty, all his life, but especially in the hour of death, must needs disquiet him. And truly, when a man shall have done many thousands of works, yet his heart can never be quiet, as it appears in the young man, who though he had labored all his life to fulfill the law thereby to be saved, yet distrusting all his doing, asks further of our Savior Christ what he might do to be saved [Mark 10:17].

Furthermore, it is the doctrine of the Church of Rome that there is nothing in the regenerate that God can hate, and that they are inwardly pure and without spot. A doctrine that will make any Christian conscience despair. For if a man shall fall to examine himself, he shall find that he is sold under sin [Rom. 7:14], [and] compassed about of sin [Heb. 12:1]. He shall see his particular sins to be as the hairs of his head [Ps. 40:12]. At the sight and feeling of these, he shall find that there is much matter in him worthy of hatred and damnation too. He being in this case, will begin to doubt whether he is the child of God or not. And persevering in this doubting, he shall be driven to despair of God’s love towards him, considering that he cannot find any such pureness in himself as the doctrine of the Church of Rome requires.

Lastly, experience itself teaches that the Romish religion can bring no peace to the conscience; in that some for the maintaining of it have despaired. As Francis Spira, who against his own conscience, having abjured the truth and subscribed to the doctrine of the Romish Church, most fearfully despaired of his salvation. This could not have been if that doctrine had been agreeable to God’s Word, which is spirit and life to the receiver. For the same cause Latomus, a Doctor of Louane, despaired, crying that he was damned because he had opposed himself to the known truth. This also befell Gardner at his death, as the book of Acts and Monuments declares.

William Perkins, A Treatise Tending unto a Declaration whether a Man is in the Estate of Damnation or in the Estate of Grace, in Works, 8:54

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Post authored by:

• Inwoo Lee

  

  Inwoo Lee (BA, UCSD) earned his MA (Historical Theology) in 2020 from Westminster Seminary California and is author of “Righteous Before God: William Perkins’ Doctrine of Justification in Elizabethan England” (MA Thesis, Westminster Seminary California, 2020). He lives in the Great Seoul area, in South Korea with his wife Holly.

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