There are truly important works that simply have been forgotten or unjustly ignored. One of these is William Ames’s Fresh Suit Against Human Ceremonies in defense of the Reformed theology and practice of worship. Another is William Perkins’s 1597 treatise A Reformed Catholic, subtitled Or a Declaration Showing How Near We May Come to the Present Church of Rome in Sundry Points of Religion and Wherein We Must Forever Depart from Them. To this he added, “With an Advertisement [a statement calling attention to something] to ‘All Favorers of the Roman Religion Showing How the Said Religion Is Against the Catholic Principles and Grounds of the [English] Catechism.’”

William Perkins (1558–1602) is worthy of our attention for a few reasons. First, he was one of the most important English Reformed theologians of the Reformation/post-Reformation periods. The other is John Owen. Arguably Perkins should be on anybody’s short list of “Great English Theologians.” Second, his teaching was a great influence on the Westminster Assembly, and thus to understand Perkins is to understand our own confession more fully. Third, he articulated Reformed theology at a time when the Reformation was under assault from the Socinians, the Arminians (Remonstrants), and a renewed Romanism. We still face these challenges in our day. We know the Socinians as the Unitarians today, but they were influential on many of the followers of Arminius (post Episcopius), and their methodological influence is still felt in American evangelical circles. The advocates of open theism rely on essentially a Socinian view of God and biblical hermeneutic (approach to reading Scripture). Biblicism, the idea that one is going to read the Bible as if no one has ever read it before, is deliberately ignorant and contrary to the Reformation approach to reading Scripture with the church past and present and is essentially a Socinian approach to Scripture that yielded a denial of Christ’s divinity, the Trinity, and the atonement, among other things.

Most Reformed folk who are familiar with Perkins might think of his Golden Chain, his exposition of the doctrine of predestination, and the criticism he received from Jacob Arminius, but Perkins was much more than a theologian of predestination. He was a member of the “Spiritual Brotherhood” at Cambridge. He was a Reformed churchman who understood that theology is not mere theory. He defined it as the “science of living blessedly forever.” He was as devoted to cultivating true piety as he was to defending true theology. For Perkins the two were inseparable.¹

Were the Reformation a boxing match, it appeared in the first half of the sixteenth century that Rome was flat on the canvas. Beginning with Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) in the 1540s, Rome got off the canvas, as it were, and began counterpunching theologically and militarily. Rome would try to recover their geopolitical influence, and the struggle would not end until the close of the Thirty Years’ War (1648). The Jesuits and others proved to be a genuine difficulty for the Reformation. They began to make more sophisticated appeals to tradition and to Scripture that required increased sophistication from the Reformed.

In this article we cannot survey all that Perkins wrote, but we will look at how his soteriology (doctrine of salvation) responded to Rome. Perkins’s argument was that it was the Reformed (and the Reformation doctrine more broadly), not Rome, who were the home of truly catholic (universal), Christian theology.

The Reformed Response to the Roman Counter-Reformation

This treatise is an interesting and useful example of the way the Reformed responded to the Roman response (the Counter-Reformation or the Catholic Reformation). Perkins responded by challenging a central Romanist assumption: that the Roman communion is the “Catholic Church.”

Perkins began his assault on Rome in the dedicatory epistle. (NB: I have modernized the spelling, capitalization, and punctuation on C. S. Lewis’s theory that we tend to impute ignorance to older writers when we see variance from our practice.)

RIGHT worshipful, it is a notable policy of the devil, which he has put into the heads of sundry men in this age, to think that our religion, and the religion of the present Church of Rome are all one for substance: and that they may be re-united as (in their opinion) they were before. Writings to this effect are spread abroad in the French tongue, and respected of English Protestants more than is meet, or ought to be. For, let men in show of moderation, pretend the peace and good estate of the Catholic Church as long as they will; this union of the two religions can never be made, more than the union of light and darkness. And this shall appear, if we do but a little consider, how they of the Roman Church have razed the foundation.

For though in words they honor Christ, yet in deed they turn him to a Pseudo-Christ, and an idol of their own brain. They call him our Lord, but with this condition, that the Servant of Servants of this Lord, may change and add to his commandments: having so great power, that he may open and shut heaven to whom he will; and bind the very conscience with his own laws, and consequently be partaker of the spiritual kingdom of Christ.

Again, they call him a Savior, but yet in us: in that he gives this grace unto us, that by our merits, we may partake in the merits of the saints. And they acknowledge, that he died and suffered for us, but with this caveat, that the fault being pardoned, we must satisfy for the temporal punishment, either in this world, or in purgatory. In a word, they make him our Mediator of Intercession unto God: but withal, his Mother must be the Queen of Heaven, and by the right of a Mother command him there.

Thus, in word, they cry Hosanna, but indeed they crucify Christ. Therefore we have good cause to bless the name of God, that hath freed us from the yoke of this Roman bondage, and hath brought us to the true light and liberty of the Gospel. And it should be a great height of unthankfulness in us, not to stand out against the present Church of Rome, but to yield our selves to plots of reconciliation.

To this effect and purpose I have penned this little treatise, which I present to your worship, desiring it might be some token of a thankful mind, for undeserved love. And I crave withal, not only your worshipful (which is more common) but also your learned protection; being well assured, that by skill and art you are able to justify whatsoever I have truly taught. Thus wishing to you and yours the continuance and the increase of faith and good conscience, I take my leave.

Cambridge, June 28, 1597

Your W. in the Lord,
W. PERKINS

Notice the issues that Perkins highlighted: the unique authority (and Spirit-wrought) clarity of the Scriptures, its corollary Christian freedom, the uniqueness of Christ’s once-for-all work, and the Roman denial of the assurance of faith that is a gift of God to believers as a consequence of the first two.

These are the issues that face us today. Perkins was concerned about a false ecumenism then, and we have as much reason to be concerned about it now. It is good to remember that Vatican II changed none of the doctrines against which the Reformation reacted. The issues remain. The popular, informal role of Mary as mediatrix has become formalized. The Roman doctrine of the necessity of cooperation with grace as part of progressive sanctification for eventual justification (after purgatory), the mediation of the saints, the authority of the church—all these issues are as divisive today as they were at Trent; and Perkins’s reassertion of the genuine catholicity (university) of the Reformed faith against the pretension of the Roman bishop and councils is as relevant today as the day it was first published.

In his treatise defending the Reformation understanding of Scripture against resurgent Romanism, Perkins counted twenty-two issues between Protestants (his term) and Rome:

1. Of Free-will.
2. Of Original sin.
3. Assurance of salvation.
4. Justification of a sinner.
5. Of Merits.
6. Satisfactions for sin.
7. Of Traditions.
8. Of Vows.
9. Of Images.
10. Of Real presence.
11. The sacrifice of the Mass.
12. Of Fasting.
13. The state of Perfection.
14. Worshipping of Saints departed.
15. Intercession of Saints.
16. Implicit faith.
17. Of Purgatory.
18. Of the Supremacy.
19. Of the efficacy of the Sacraments.
20. Of Faith.
21. Of Repentance.
22. The sins of the Roman Church

He began his exposition with a decidedly unfriendly quotation from Revelation 18:4:

And I heard another voice from heaven, saying,

Go out of her my people,

that ye be not partakers of her sins,

and receive not of her plagues.

His intent, as he went on to make clear, was to identify Rome as the whore of Babylon:

And the whore of Babylon, as by all circumstances may be gathered, is the state or regiment of a people that are the inhabitants of Rome and appertain thereto. This may be proved by the interpretation of the holy Ghost: for in the last verse of the seventeenth Chapter, the woman, that is, the whore of Babylon, is said to be a city which reigns over the kings of the earth: now in the days when Saint John penned this book of Revelation, there was no city in the world that ruled over the kings of the earth but Rome; it then being the seat where the Emperor put in execution his imperial authority. Again, in the seventh verse she is said to sit on a beast having seven heads and ten horns: which seven heads be seven hills, verse 9. whereon the woman sits, and also they be seven kings. Therefore by the whore of Babylon is meant a city standing on seven hills. Now it is well known, not only to learned men in the Church of God, but even to the heathen themselves, that Rome alone is the city built on seven distinct hills.

In response to the charge that to separate from Rome is schism, Perkins replied:

All those who will be saved, must depart and separate themselves from the faith and religion of this present church of Rome. And whereas they are charged with schism that separate on this manner; the truth is, they are not schismatics that do so, because they have the commandment of God for their warrant: and the party is the schismatic in whom the cause of this separation lies: and that is the Church of Rome, namely, the cup of abomination in the whores hand, which is their heretical and schismatical religion.

Note

1. For more on his life and setting, see Paul Schaefer’s The Spiritual Brotherhood (Reformation Heritage Books, 2011), 49–107.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on the Heidelblog in 2012.

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Post authored by:

• R. Scott Clark

  

  R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He is professor emeritus of church history and historical theology at Westminster Seminary California, where he taught for 29 years. He also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007 and the Heidelcast since 2009.

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