William Perkins’s Pastoral Encyclopedia: A Reformed & Ramist Reformulation of Aristotelian Moral Philosophy, and Vision for a Reformed English Church & Nation

Abstract

This thesis examines the Reformed, Ramist, and moderate puritan character of the worldview of William Perkins (1558–1602). It focusses on his schema of “sacred sciences” located at the front of his classic work, A Golden Chain, arguing that this represented Perkins’s higher curriculum for the training of preaching ministers. This can be described in Ramist terms as Perkins’s “pastoral encyclopedia”: the methodical comprehension of scriptural knowledge pertinent to the pastoral vocation. This schema centred on Aristotle’s moral philosophy (ethics, oeconomics, politics) as revised by Ramist method and Reformed theology, and followed an Augustinian and Ramist pattern of Christian Philosophy in which knowledge derived from the light of nature was regarded as subordinate to, and substantially contained within, Scripture itself. Perkins set out to produce Ramist primers on each of these sacred sciences, authoring several such works in his career, and leaving evidence of the shape and contents of others. This thesis examines each of Perkins’s projected primers, especially noting the dynamics of nature and grace at work in them, according to which all participated in the estates of society by nature, but only flourished by regenerating grace. This thesis coordinates Perkins’s pursuit of his curricular project with the historical shape of his career, especially by establishing the first critical chronology of his oratorical and literary labours. On this basis it argues that Perkins was impeded in the completion of his encyclopedia project by contemporary ecclesiastical circumstances, which he navigated in distinctly moderate puritan fashion. Perkins emerges from this study as a Reformed, Ramist, and moderate puritan thinker, whose well-known predestinarian theology belonged to a broader vision for a Reformed English church and nation.