In 2024 I completed my doctoral thesis on William Perkins with the title “William Perkins’s Pastoral Encyclopedia: A Reformed & Ramist Reformulation of Aristotelian Moral Philosophy, and Vision for a Reformed English Church & Nation.” (I figure that if you’re going to write a thesis on an early-modern figure, it might as well have the kind of lengthy title typical of an early-modern work!). I am presently revising my thesis for publication but thought it worth summarising some of what I argue here. I’m always keen to discuss further with those interested, and especially those doing academic work on Perkins or related subjects.

William Perkins (1558-1602) was a remarkably influential figure. Often described as the “father of puritanism,” Perkins was the preeminent English Reformed theologian of his day (i.e. the late-Elizabethan era, esp. the 1590s). He authored some 38 works which (in the early-modern period) were published in more than 550 editions spanning 10 languages. The modern RHB edition of Perkins’s works runs to 10 volumes, and is supplemented by a volume of manuscript texts edited by myself and Stephen Yuille. Few early-modern authors can boast comparable literary output, popularity, or scale of dispersion. Yet despite his literary success, in his own day Perkins was known above all as a preacher. Indeed, the majority of Perkins’s published works originated as sermons or lectures which he had delivered from memory from Ramist outlines. Perkins then refined this material for publication with the aid of others in his circle. Perkins spent his entire career in Cambridge, serving as a fellow at Christ’s College (his alma mater), as an unofficial “chaplain” to the prisoners of Cambridge gaol, as a catechist for students and lay audiences, and as a lecturer (i.e. a privately funded preacher) at St Andrewes the Great Church. Perkins exercised an especially powerful influence on a generation of ministry students in Cambridge, both in his preaching and his writing. He especially excelled at bridging the popular and academic spheres, engaging in theological debate and teaching at the highest levels, whilst also distilling his Reformed learning into accessible and attractive material for unlearned audiences. Perkins died in 1602 after a brief illness, aged 44. He left behind a remarkable legacy tinged with a sad sense of what more he might have achieved had he lived longer.

Recent decades have witnessed renewed scholarly interest in Perkins. A vast number of scholarly articles and a handful of monographs have treated a great many aspects of Perkins’s thought, including predestination, covenant, preaching, catechesis, conscience, memory, Ramism, scholasticism, practical divinity, assurance, free will, vocation, demonology, and much more. Yet, for all the scholarly attention given to Perkins, fundamental questions have not been adequately resolved. For example, what was the character of Perkins’s ecclesiastical identity? Most scholars have identified him as a puritan, however the most recent book-length account of Perkins (W.B. Patterson’s William Perkins and the Making of a Protestant England, 2014) rejects this characterisation, describing Perkins as a “mainstream conformist” and “apologist” for the Elizabethan settlement. This question of Perkins’s identity is bound up with broader questions of what “puritan”, “conformist”, and “Anglican” meant (and mean), and of the relation of these notions to one another. These are themselves perennially disputed questions, and one cannot help feeling that answers are often unduly influenced by a given author’s own ecclesiastical and theological affinities.

Further, assessing Perkins’s identity and overall worldview is made difficult by how narrow the focus of studies on Perkins tend to be. For example, one might study Perkins’s predestinarian thought, preaching, Ramism, or astrological views, and make significant advances in scholarly understanding of the particular subject in view, yet without relating this to Perkins’s broader range of interests. Whilst such studies are important and valuable, they are not positioned to convincingly advance understanding of Perkins as a whole. Indeed, the proliferation of narrowly focussed studies on Perkins has resulted in something of a siloing effect in Perkins studies, where Perkins’s range of interests are often treated in virtual isolation from one another. Yet Perkins was one man, whose various ideas intersected and affected one another as part of a coherent worldview. What holds Perkins’s thought together? What were Perkins’s career ambitions? What rationale or drive animated his vast and multifaceted body of work and held it together? Without evaluating the range of Perkins’s thought and activity in holistic and integrative fashion, one cannot hope to arrive at convincing conclusions regarding his broader worldview and identity. The scale and diversity of Perkins’s corpus make this an intimidating task to undertake, but it remains a necessary one if scholarly understanding of Perkins is to advance.

A further complication to understanding Perkins is a persistent lack of scholarly attention to the chronology of his career. Scholars have long relied on a pair of 17^th century character sketches for biographical information on Perkins, albeit supplemented by a handful of other datapoints. There has been little scholarly effort to date his many works with any precision, or critical consideration of his biography in general. Consequently, Perkins’s works have generally been treated as emerging from within a roughly 20-year period (c.1584-1602) without any sense of specific context. This severely limits efforts to identify development or intention in Perkins’s career.

In view of these challenges, my work sets out to offer a holistic account of Perkins’s identity, worldview, and career aspirations, coordinated with close attention to the historical chronology of his career. I argue that Perkins’s identity and worldview consisted of three essential threads: he was Reformed, Ramist, and a Moderate Puritan, serving in late-Elizabethan Cambridge. I contend that underplaying any of these elements significantly distorts historical understanding of Perkins. To each in turn.

First, Perkins’s Reformed credentials need no introduction; he is universally recognised as a giant of Reformed orthodox theology. A quick visual indication of his significance comes via the below seventeenth-century depiction of prominent early Protestant divines championing the gospel-centred theology of the Reformation against their Roman Catholic opponents. Here Perkins stands alongside giants as Luther, Calvin, Beza, Vermigli, Bucer, and Zanchi. These were figures who Perkins was deeply influenced by, and who Perkins self-consciously wrote in continuity with, even as he sought to further refine Reformed theology in service of English Christianity, at both academic and popular levels.

Second, Perkins was a devoted Ramist. This is a more contentious claim. Most scholars accept that Perkins was at least was influenced by Ramism, yet the character and extent of that influence is disputed, as is the nature of Ramism itself. Donald McKim’s monograph, Ramism in William Perkins’ Theology (1987) traced the use of Ramism through Perkins corpus, yet has made only modest impact on subsequent scholarship. This is largely because Ramism has long been misunderstood as a shallow and pragmatic tool for merely organising information, which was of little material significance. In contrast, building on the recent work of Simon Burton and others, I argue that Ramism was a metaphysically realist logical method for formulating discourse such that it corresponded to the objective structure of reality. As such, it closely relates to notions of the “light of nature” and natural law. Ramism represented an attempt to reclaim the objective structure of all human knowledge, both natural and theological. This much underappreciated aspect of Perkins’s thought is essential to understanding his worldview, his means of composing his works (both oral and literary), and the character of his academic curriculum (see below). My work also highlights ways in which Perkins’s Ramism played an essential role in his distinctive formulation of various doctrines for which he is well-known for: predestination, conscience, assurance, preaching, Christian experience, and more. Modern scholars (preeminently Richard Muller) have traced out the powerful role that scholastic methodologies played in the post-Reformation formulation of Reformed orthodox theology. I argue that Perkins offered a distinctly Ramist codification of Reformed theology, and that this had far reaching effects on its distinctive formulation and character. More broadly, my work locates Perkins within late-Elizabethan Cambridge Ramist circles which overlapped with Cambridge puritan circles in striking ways. Ramist philosophy, it turns out, had great affinity with puritan pastoral goals and sensibilities, and was embraced by many puritans of Perkins’s generation. In short, Perkins’s works represented a distinctly Ramist codification of Reformed theology and was representative of a broader Ramist-puritan school of Reformed theology.

Finally, Perkins was a moderate puritan. Historians such as Patrick Collinson and Peter Lake have done much to trace out a kind of “moderate puritanism” prevalent in late-Elizabethan England. This strain of Reformed religion sought further reform of the established English church whilst carefully weighing the relative degrees of importance of reformist concerns (e.g. liturgy, polity, vestments) against the potential costs of outspoken advocacy for further reform. These were agreeable puritans, who didn’t so much defy conformity as tactfully withhold full assent to it. Perkins himself gave only careful and muted expression to his reformist ideals in his lifetime, seeking to prioritise the greater goal of filling England’s pulpits with capable godly preachers. This was especially important in the 1590s, a time at which ecclesiastical authorities relentlessly sought to uncover and prosecute puritan reformist networks. I argue that Perkins chose to suspend the full pursuit of his project of educational reform (especially its more controversial aspects) in view of the censure that it would have inevitably received from church authorities at that time.

At a material level my work focuses on Perkins’s reform of the university’s higher curriculum such that it might serve the training of godly, preaching ministers. Perkins’s curriculum gives clear expression to his eformed, Ramist, and moderate puritan commitments. I have dubbed Perkins’s curriculum his “pastoral encyclopedia.” Ramist curricula, or encyclopaedia, sought to encapsulate the scope of each subject and place them in their proper relation to one another. Reformed Ramists, like Perkins and his younger contemporary William Ames, specifically sought to root all knowledge in the science of theology in the Augustinian and Franciscan fashion characteristic of Ramism. Perkins’s curriculum was not a comprehensive encyclopedia that sought to encapsulate all human knowledge, like the ever expanding Ramist and post-Ramist encyclopedias produced through the seventeenth century. It was instead a specifically pastoral encyclopaedia, encapsulating the practical knowledge pertinent to the clerical vocation.

Here Perkins used Ramist method and Reformed scriptural theology to refine not only theological science, but also the natural and scriptural sciences that served theology as its attendants. Perkins’s most remarkable move here was to use Scripture and Ramist method to revise Aristotelian moral philosophy to formally describe the societal context in which the blessed life of theology was intended to flourish. Perkins set out to author textbooks on each of the “sacred sciences” comprising his curriculum, making thoroughgoing use of Ramist method to produce streamlined, scientific accounts of each subject. Several of these texts are extant, and the essential content of the others is largely discernable.

William Perkins’s pastoral encyclopedia is of the utmost significance for understanding his worldview. It bears emphasis that Perkins’s academic curriculum represented his most deliberate and explicit formulation of his Reformed, Ramist, and (moderate) puritan worldview which he sought to instil in prospective Reformed ministers. As such, Perkins curriculum offers the best vantage point from which to understand his own thought and worldview in holistic fashion. Here Perkins offered his streamlined and pricisely formulated vision of theology, the Christian life, and the Christian society, which reflected his own deepest aspirations and priorities.

My hope is that my research will do much to further understanding not only of Perkins himself, but of a range of other areas of study including Puritanism, Ramism, Anglicanism, scholasticism, and a full range of theological issues. I believe that this work opens a multitude of avenues for further research, which I eagerly hope to take up, and that others likewise will pursue.