William Perkins

Reformed Catholic

Sean Wilson

This is a good little volume to walk you through the main differences between the Protestants and the Roman Church, at least as things stood in the sixteenth century. Each topic begins with Perkins' consent with Rome as far as he can, then sets out their various points of departure. In each case, he wheels out patristic luminaries that support him.

A few surprises: Perkins holds that unfilled Adam couldn't have merited glory under the legal covenant! (I happen to agree with this, but I was surprised to see it in an early Reformed source.) Another huge surprise was seeing Pope Gregory the Great quoted against the concept of a global papacy.

I think my favourite chapter was on implicit faith, which both showed God's great generosity towards those sinners whose understanding is ill-informed and weak, but still urged the necessity of growing in grace as much as God enables you to.

The book begins with a pretty questionable historicist reading of Revelation, proving that the harlot is the Roman Church. Not a great deal of weight is placed upon this, but it wasn't a good start to a decent book. There were also a few questionable readings of Scriptural texts, which to me illustrated the danger of doing your exegesis in a polemical setting (see especially the treatment on John 6).

Reformed Catholic

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