Warning the Complacent and Comforting the Anxious: William Perkins on Faith and Assurance

December 9, 2019

William Perkins (1558-1602) was a prominent Reformed theologian in the final decades of Elizabeth’s reign. He can be rightly described as a ‘Puritan’, though he didn’t describe himself that way. A Puritan was essentially anyone who thought that Elizabeth’s official religious settlement (1559) ought to be one step in a process of ongoing reform. In contrast, Elizabeth herself stubbornly resisted any change to her church for her entire 44-year reign.

By the 1590s it was clear that Elizabeth’s church would not formally change anything. However, some reformers, such as William Perkins, believed that the solid Reformed theology of the existing religious settlement outweighed its shortcomings. More importantly, the most important reforms could take place within the existing church structure and theological confession. The most important reform is always the human heart.

Girls, Body Image, and Theological Poetry: Lucy Hutchinson on the Beauty of the Human Body

December 15, 2018

Sometimes in an attempt to counter messages about self-esteem and body-shaming that ignore God we forget to acknowledge the beauty and goodness of the human body altogether. This kind of accidental Gnosticism can be especially harming for teenage girls who are constantly thinking about their bodies but are only taught two responses: one that makes them obsess even more about beauty by telling them to find meaning in themselves, and the other that makes them feel silly or sinful for struggling with body image in the first place but with no way to move forward other than trying to ignore their bad feelings and hope they go away.

Encouragement for Bible Reading from Puritan Women

October 6, 2018

“So how can we know what the Bible really says?” my classmate timidly asked at the end of a long lecture about interpretation. She was not playing the devil’s advocate, but was clearly discouraged by the fact that there seem to be many different and discordant ways of interpreting the Bible. Sometimes reading intense scholarly debates that dissect every tiny part of a passage, listening to sermons that use methods we don’t know how to use, or overhearing a friend joke about misapplying passages like Jeremiah 29:11 make us shrink back from Scripture.

The Pastoral Transition from Mediators to Shepherds During the Early Reformation

May 8, 2018

No longer serving as the human gateways to God, these men and their office became reborn as shepherds of the flock of Christ. In this era, we see the rise of the pastor as we know them today. By the end of Hudson’s “Puritan Age,” it was firmly established in title, practice, and clothing that “there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,” and the congregation looked to their “minister” to point them towards Him.

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