Besides John Owen , Thomas Goodwin and John Bunyan .....the real Giant of the Puritans and an equal of the above is William Perkins....I think this quote will shine some light on my comments...
"This was one day in the life of Master William Perkins, an outstanding Puritan divine of late sixteenth-century Cambridge. His preaching every Lords Day at the local jail was blessed to the conversion of many prisoners, Perkins being moved with pity towards their souls (Clarke, p.851).
But surely such a zealous and evangelistic preacher was an Arminian? Surely his conviction that the most unlikely sinners could be saved, must have been borne of a belief in the innate goodness of man and human free will?
At the very most, Perkins would have been an exceedingly moderate Calvinist, who would say little about predestination and would quietly withhold such things from the people? For belief in predestination is incompatible with such a concern for souls and such an attitude of expectancy right?
Wrong! Perkins was a strict Calvinist and a renowned champion of a full-orbed Reformed orthodoxy. In fact it was Perkins who crossed swords most fiercely with Jacobus Arminius himself, in a series of rival publications and international debates.
Unambiguous
Perkins abhorred Arminianism for, in his view, it made Christ only a half redeemer (Perkins,
Works, 1616-18, II:622). Perkins was consumed with a desire for the glory of God in salvation, and clearly taught to a Christocentric, double-predestinarian scheme.
The latter term refers to the teaching that God predestines the non-elect to hell as truly as he predestines the elect to heaven. Perkins argued from Romans 9:21 that everyone is unto God, as a lump of clay in the potters hand: and therefore God according to his supreme authority doth
make vessels of wrath, he doth not
find them made (II:610; emphasis added).
For Perkins, redemption was unambiguously particular. Concerning the substitutionary death of Christ, he taught that the price is appointed and limited to the elect alone by the Fathers decree, and the Sons intercession and oblation.
Christ (he continues) doth not sacrifice for those for whom he doth not pray: because to make intercession and to sacrifice are conjoined: but he prayeth only for the elect (II:609).
Perkins did not shy away from stating bluntly of the reprobate that God giveth them no Saviour. For Christ is only the Redeemer of the Elect, and of no more (I:415).
Distinctives
Nor did Perkins feel it necessary to soften his Reformed distinctives in the realm of preaching the gospel to sinners.
He taught that ministers of the gospel ought indifferently to exhort all and every one to repent (II:608). But he did not resort to the kind of equivocal language which suggests that God somehow desires to save those whom he had already foreordained to destruction. Such an approach, Perkins believed, could lead only to Arminianism.
According to Perkins, God does not desire to save the reprobate, nor does God suffer frustration or conflict of will concerning them. Yet this does not render the gospel call insincere, for by this means, declares Perkins, he shows unto them the riches of his grace, and declares that they perish by their own fault (II:625).
But if God
would have all men to be saved, he asks, then why are they not all saved? The answer would have to be that men will not keep the condition [accept Gods terms] and believe. But that, he protests, is flat to hang Gods will upon mans will; to make every man an emperor, and God his underling (I:295).
Rather, he continues, God sometimes giveth a commandment [to repent and believe] not that it should be actually done, but that men may be tried, and that they may be convicted of their natural infidelity before God in the last judgement (II:625).
Standard fare
This theology was not closet Calvinism, confined to the ivory towers of Cambridge colleges. True enough, Perkins moved in academic circles throughout his working life. Born in Warwickshire in 1558, Perkins entered Christs College, Cambridge, in 1577.
Having been made Fellow in 1584, he took up the only other position of his career in 1595, namely, lecturer at St Andrew the Great, Cambridge, a post he held until his death on 22 October 1602, exactly 400 years ago.
Yet Perkins theology was standard and popular fare in Elizabethan England. Between 1590 and 1618 the primary publishing house in Cambridge printed approximately 210 books. Of these Perkins wrote no fewer than fifty.
These books comprised not only weighty Latin tomes for the benefit of European scholars, but also plain English devotional volumes suited to the spiritual needs of the simplest believer.
Modern scholars today concur in styling Perkins as the most eminent English Reformed theologian of the late sixteenth century. But Perkins was also formative in promoting a deeply experiential and practical Calvinism, which was characterised as much by a compassion for souls as a zeal for correct doctrine.
At the four-hundredth anniversary of this great mans death, we would do well to reconsider the life and teaching of this father of Puritanism. Let us pray that God in his mercy would raise up in our day what Perkins was in his soul-winning champions of orthodoxy."
http://www.evangelical-times.org/Articles/Oct02/oct02a09.htm
