The Casuistry Of William Perkins
12
THE CASUISTRY
OF WILLIAM PERKINS
I. Breward
Outside the Roman Church, the word casuistry has rather unpleasant associations. We tend to link it automatically with words such as priestcraft, with the confessional and a moral judgment which is capable of twisting any obligation to its own ends. The word has never been the same since Pascal published his devastating exposure of Jesuit casuistry.1 Even if we were to look at modern Roman treatments, many of us would be repelled by the contents and methods used, feeling that we had strayed into an alien world.
Yet we have all indulged in casuistry at some time or other, for it is simply the science of bringing general moral principles to bear on particular cases. Most people would subscribe in the abstract to the principle of speed limits in built up areas, but few would feel that they were bound by the speed limit law in an emergency. Clearly, there could be good and bad reasons for breaking this law, and the fact that some people justify their actions by bad reasoning would not make us want to prevent people exercising their moral judgment altogether, in order to avoid the possibility of abuse.
Casuistry can be good or bad, and the fact that there are some blundering practitioners should not lead us to reject it without careful consideration. It may be that it can be formulated in such a way as to avoid the dangers of legalism or laxity. To be sure, modern Protestant writers on the subject of ethics tend to reject any form of casuistry, holding that it rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of the Christian ethic, which, according to them, is not based on an abstract law, but is founded on living encounter with Christ in the situations in which we find ourselves. Love, they say, transcends any law.
Working on these assumptions, it is not surprising that the Protestant casuistry of the seventeenth century gets a bad press from them. The verdict of W. F. Forrester on Baxter’s Christian Directory is perhaps typical: “Any such system of legalistic attitudes or codification of duties is quite repugnant to our Protestant faith and way of life.”2 But I wonder if it is quite as simple as that! Certainly, we must not underestimate the perennial danger of legalism in ethical thinking, but have we not gone to the other extreme and called wooliness Christian freedom, simply because we are reluctant to sort out the principles by which we live, thinking clearly and biblically about the way in which we should apply them?
For this reason, I think that a fresh look at the beginnings of Protestant casuistry might be useful. We might not feel that we can go all the way with the exhaustive treatments which the subject received; we might even want to disagree with some of the principles which seventeenth-century casuists used. But it is hard to resist admiration for the pastoral ideal on which Protestant casuistry was based, or for its attempt to build up an all-inclusive theoretical and practical theology, in which there was no attempt to bypass any of the thorny problems which arise when one tries to apply the Christian ethic to the multifarious situations of daily life.
To begin with, we must remember that, for Protestants, the word “casuistry” had a far wider connotation in the seventeenth century than it has nowadays in Roman literature. It included many subjects which would make a modern casuist blink, subjects which nowadays would be allotted to systematic and practical theology, psychology, and apologetics, as well as dealing with issues which we would consider belonged to the province of ethics or moral theology. There was no trace of the divorce between moral and ascetical theology which was beginning to appear in the Roman casuistry of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, leading eventually to the undoubted excesses which were condemned by the Roman hierarchy. As I hope to show, the development of Protestant casuistry was by no means the theological fall from grace which Karl Barth conceives it to have been. “By the end of the 16th century,” Barth writes, “matters had gone so far that the Puritan William Perkins was willing and able to write a book De Casibus Conscientiae in which he gave a systematic account of the correct individual decisions enjoined upon the Christian.”3 This seems to Barth very regrettable, and he quotes Calvin in his support, but what Calvin was attacking and what Perkins wrote about were two very different things.
Reformation Background
Certainly, both Luther and Calvin denounced medieval moral theology in no uncertain terms, putting in place of the mechanical and legalistic codification of offences found in medieval collections of “cases” (offences which could usually be commuted for cash!) a system of pastoral care which expressed in practical terms their theology of justification, the principle of the priesthood of all believers, and their concern to give freedom from the oppressive ordinances of men which had been such a burden to scrupulous consciences. Medieval casuistry had been written to help priests assess guilt when hearing confessions; but the Reformers abolished the medieval confessional. In their hands, confession was no longer a compulsory search for the yearly tally of mortal sins, but became simply the last recourse for those whose consciences were not set at rest by the regular preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments. As Luther put it, confession was “a cure without equal for distressed consciences.” And in fact all the Reformers stressed the power given by God to the minister to declare God’s forgiveness of the sins which had been causing the distress. In this respect the voice of the minister was as the voice of God himself. Perkins stood firmly in this tradition, stressing the value of voluntary confession, not only from the point of view of the minister, who needed to know what was at the root of the troubled conscience, but also for its value to the distressed.4
The Reformers may have repudiated casuistry in the traditional sense, but they all gave guidance on matters of Christian duty, often in considerable detail. One has only to glance at the correspondence of Luther and Calvin to see the extent to which they continued to resolve cases of conscience, though they did not formalize their treatment as Perkins was to do at the end of the century in his Cases of Conscience.
Without exception, the Reformers realized the importance of instructing the conscience. Ideally, conscience was an infallible guide, the voice of God in man. In practice, it was corrupted like the rest of man’s faculties and even when regenerated still needed to be guided by the law (i.e., the Decalogue) and the great affirmations of the Christian faith. Catechisms were frequently based on the Apostles’ Creed, the Decalogue, and the Lord’s Prayer, and these played an increasingly important role in the popularization of Reformed theology and ethics.
By the end of the sixteenth century, it was becoming obvious that the inherited ideas of the past, the resistance of vested interests, the revival of Romanism, and the cooling of Protestant zeal, were all combining to make the maintaining of the Reformation’s highest ideals increasingly difficult. Christian freedom is all very well, but it presupposes a certain level of spiritual maturity. Fear of antinomianism was widespread, and there was much laxity among Protestant layfolk. It should not altogether surprise us if other complementary emphases, more pedagogic and disciplinary, came to the forefront of Reformed ethical thinking at the end of the sixteenth century. Nurturing believers capable of responsible action is in any case a staggering task, as every minister knows. It is in this kind of context that we should try and see why Perkins wrote his Cases of Conscience.
Not that Perkins was in every respect breaking new ground. Isolating him from the ethical thinking and pastoral practice of Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and Peter Martyr makes his work appear far more novel than it actually was. And there were important precedents in the Church of England too. I need not dwell on the pastoral deficiencies of many of the sixteenth-century Anglican clergy and the attempts of the Puritans to remedy a very difficult situation by means of “prophesyings,” and later through the classical movement. By no means all the clergy labelled “Puritan” were interested in introducing a Presbyterian form of Church government, and even those that were still found time to discuss cases of conscience, as the minutes of the Dedham classis show. Perkins himself was a moderate Puritan, more interested in building up the Church than in worrying about the finer points of Church government. He stood in the tradition of men like Foxe, Wilcox, Dering, and Greenham, who were all noted for their skill in resolving cases of conscience. People came for miles to consult clergy of Greenham’s stamp about problems of conscience, and books of letters written by godly ministers to troubled souls were starting to appear, for instance Large Letters by Thomas Wilcox, published in 1589.
Books on moral problems were also starting to appear, in which the Christian attitude to dancing, gambling, and so on was discussed, sometimes in rather lurid detail. People were very conscience of the problem of right conduct. There was a large secular literature of a moralizing kind, and ethical principles culled from the classics were drilled into every schoolboy in the process of acquiring some kind of facility in the classics. It is not surprising that people should have been willing and, indeed, anxious to read handbooks on how to live the Christian life. Francis Bacon no doubt spoke for many when, in 1589, he complained about the way preachers failed to apply their directions for Christian living to cases of conscience, “that a man may be warranted in his particular actions, whether they be lawful or not.”5
Having now said something about the kind of society in which Perkins lived, and the activities of his predecessors, I hope that I have made it clear that this element of ethical thinking is found from the very beginning of the Reformation, and that far from being an innovator, Perkins is building on the foundations of the original Reformers.
Perkins’s Purpose
I wish now to have a look at the aim, methods, and contents of Perkins’s casuistry.
His casuistry must not be seen apart from the rest of his theology, but as an integral part of it. One of his earliest works, A Treatise Tending unto a Declaration Whether a Man Be in the Estate of Damnation or the Estate of Grace (1589), sought to show the reader the ways in which the signs of grace could be recognized, settling the conscience and enabling the Christian to bear the sorrows and pains of this world with a courageous spirit. He knew that if one is afflicted with a wounded spirit “the grief is so great, the burden so intolerable, that it will not by any outward means be eased or assuaged.”6 The same preoccupation with conscience appears in all Perkins’s works. The cure of afflicted consciences was, he held, part of the work of Christ’s prophetic office, which He has now committed to ministers of the gospel.7 One is not surprised to find that Perkins spent his Sundays resolving problems of conscience. In all this there was nothing new, as I have already shown. What was new was Perkins’s collection of these cases in a systematically arranged treatise, which was published after his death by Thomas Pickering as Cases of Conscience in 1606.
Perkins had two kinds of readers in mind. First, he was concerned to publish something which would be of value to his fellow ministers in their dealings with troubled consciences. This was the first Protestant attempt of its kind, and evidently met a long-felt need, for it went through at least fifteen editions in English, Latin, and German and inspired many other similar treatises by both Lutheran and Reformed theologians in the seventeenth century.
Perkins modestly disclaimed any pretensions to completeness. Likening the subject to a vast sea, it is, he said, impossible to present an exhaustive treatment. “I will only (as it were) walk by the banks of it, and propound the heads of doctrine that thereby I may at least occasion others, to consider and handle the same more at large.”8 In composing this kind of production for ministers, Perkins was doing something which was common practice in the Roman Church, though it must be remembered that he presupposes a different kind of pastoral relation: he was not writing a manual for confessors!
That he wrote in the vernacular and not in Latin shows us that he did not only have his ministerial brethren in mind, but was also writing for laymen who wished to keep their consciences sound and know how to act in their callings. In this sense, his work was a kind of popular health manual for the soul. Sixteenth-century ministers frequently saw themselves as doctors of the soul and used medical analogies to describe their work. Troubles of conscience were held to have certain very definite causes and certain equally definite cures. Then, as now, it was the complicated cases that aroused the greatest interest. A successful physician of the soul like Perkins could expect a large reading public (just as some famous modern doctors do) when he explained the ways in which he worked.
In offering guidance for his fellow Christians, Perkins believed that it was not enough to preach the great principles of the gospel and leave the small issues of conduct to take care of themselves. As his pupil Ames remarked, “through the neglect of this husbandry, a famine of godliness hath followed in many places, and out of that famine a grievous spiritual plague.”9 There seems no reason to doubt that Perkins was attempting to fill a gap in spiritual direction about which Romanists had waxed scornful. One T. Hill, in A Quatron of Reasons, published in 1600, contrasted the way in which Catholics had the advantages of being guided by priests expert in cases of conscience, whereas a Protestant did not meddle with these matters of conscience, “but freighteth his ship only with faith, and never beateth his brain about sins, for that he thinketh none to be imputed to such Predestinated, as they all ween themselves to be, which causeth the people their followers to be utterly ignorant of the nature, differences, and quality of sins, and consequently nothing fearful, or stayed by conscience to commit the same.”10 Hill exaggerates, but when a generation later we find Ames commenting on the lack of Protestant case-divinity prior to Perkins, it becomes obvious that Perkins’s contemporaries felt that he was performing a real service to the Church of God when he wrote on this aspect of theology.
The final thing which Perkins set out to do was to set out a theory of pastoral care which would make it unnecessary for theological students to read Roman manuals of casuistry, which contained many serious errors. They gave too much power to the priest, they taught the validity of implicit faith, denied the need for assurance, insisted on yearly confession to the priest of all mortal sins on pain of damnation if the command was neglected, distinguished sins into mortal and venial, and, worst of all, taught that men could satisfy for the temporal punishment due to their sins. It was only the Word of God that could bind and direct conscience correctly. What was probable and conjectural, what was based on the conceits and opinions of men could only lead to despair and damnation.
Conscience and the Word of God
Perkins’s theory of conscience was intimately related to his casuistry, and he appears to have written the first systematic treatise on conscience in English—A discourse of conscience, printed in 1596. I shall not say more about this than the minimum necessary to explain the methods which Perkins used for comforting and informing troubled consciences.
Conscience works by means of a syllogism. Perkins illustrated from the mind of a murderer. His theoretical understanding knows the natural law that every murderer is cursed. His practical understanding tells him: you are a murderer. With the major and minor premises of the syllogism thus supplied, the conclusion should follow in his conscience automatically—therefore I am cursed. Unfortunately, the Fall has corrupted the working and judgment of conscience so that neither the premises nor the conclusion may be given to the mind. Though the conscience was placed in our reason as the voice of God, determining of things done, telling us, as it were, what God thought of our actions, it was an exceedingly sensitive organ. Perkins likened it to the eye of the soul which became blinded if wounded often enough by acts of insubordination against its judgments. It was to be found in every man in varying degrees of sensitivity, even in the veriest atheist. All the writers of the period speak in terms of awe of the horrors of conscience which were a foretaste of the judgment of God. Perkins taught that they caused swooning, feverish heat, and rising of the entrails to the mouth,11 terrors which could only be assuaged by the blood of Christ12 assuring a man that his sins no longer stood between him and God.
This brings me to the relation of conscience and the Word of God. Since conscience was from God, only He could bind it and guide it to its true end. This He did through His Word. By contrast, human laws, oaths, and duties only bound insofar as they agreed with the Word of God. The Word was a gift to sinful men to guide them in a sinful world. Men should only do what God commanded and do nothing where there was no warrant in the Word. Perkins believed that there was no action that could eventuate, for which there was not sufficient guidance set down in Scripture: “All actions that please God, must be done in faith; therefore all actions that please God, must have some ground and direction in the word of God, without which word of God there can be no faith.”13 Certainly this attitude could lead to a new kind of legalism and scrupulosity, every bit as bad as the kind the Reformers had sought to escape from, if interpreted in a very literalistic kind of way which saw the Scripture as a lawbook. Hooker was quite right to attack some of the manifestations of this spirit among the Puritans,14 but Perkins was too balanced to fall into some of the excesses of his contemporaries.
If the Bible played such an important part in the direction of conscience, it was clearly very important to set down some principles of interpretation. The distinction between law and gospel was fundamental. Ministers must preach the law to wake erring consciences to their true situation. Again and again Perkins emphasized the dangers of a superficial pastor failing to bring the sinner to see himself as he was before God. Only when the sinner was truly humbled should the gospel be applied. Otherwise the wounded conscience could not be healed, but would still retain some of the germs of sin and shortly fester again. Nor had Perkins any time for the pastoral care which was based on the theory that all men would be saved. Salvation could only be found within the covenant founded by Christ and this salvation could only be received by repentance and faith. Without faithful preaching of the law men would not be able truly to repent. Perkins himself was noted for the way in which his sermons mixed law and gospel, so that sinners were humbled and the humble healed.
When Perkins used the word “law” he meant the moral law which was summed up in the Decalogue, not the ceremonial law or the civil law of the Jews. This moral law was a republication of the law of nature and thus served not only to remind the sinner of his responsibilities, but also to guide the believer in his ethical decisions. Law bound both positively and negatively, but it was the gospel which was completely binding on the believer, for in this God had shown us perfect righteousness, demanding faith that excluded doubt. Consequently, Perkins did not need to spend any great attention on the problems of erring or doubting consciences. Men either had a good or a bad conscience. There could be no doubt about the Word binding. The task of conscience was simply to discern obligations as set forth in the Word.
Perkins discussed what the believer should do when there was a seeming clash between the precepts of the Word, or when there was no clear biblical injunction. In the former case Perkins suggested that commandments of the first table (the first four) took precedence over commands from the second table. Thus when the state commanded something contrary to the worship of God, we were to obey God rather than men. Alternatively, the summary of Christ helped us to decide the priority of obligations. If our neighbor’s house caught fire while we were on the way to church, it would not be a sin to fight the fire rather than worship God, because service of our neighbor was equally a way of serving God.
Where there was no clear definition in the Word, Perkins advised taking the safer course rather than run the risk of falling into sin. Roman casuists tend to regard this counsel as dangerous, leading to rigorism, but the solution to this problem which was adopted by contemporary Roman casuists like Medina led to the laxity of the following century which Pascal so rightly castigated. Within the context of Perkins’s theology, the dangers latent in rigorism (i.e., the risk of Pharisaic unreality and self-righteousness) were nonexistent. Perkins held that the best we could do was incapable of pleasing God. Our status with God depended on the work of Christ, not on our ethical achievements.
A more important question to ask is whether Perkins’s attitude to Scripture ran the risk of degenerating into legalism, as many modern writers would feel. Certainly there are risks in Perkins’s tendency to see Scripture as a kind of moral lawbook, but I would point out that in the context of his whole theology this is not the whole story. To begin with, the Holy Spirit enables us to do what God commands in the Word. Perkins saw the Bible as a charter of liberty, giving a good conscience, rather than as a code of restricting practices. Then, second, an examination of some of his cases shows that he does not give cast-iron solutions to every scruple. He attempts to set forth the scriptural principles on which right actions should be based, leaving a great deal of leeway to the individual conscience in making decisions.
Take for instance his discussion of the case whether it was right to flee in time of persecution. He insists that every case must be decided according to circumstances. Tertullian was wrong to say that flight was never justified. Perkins cited Matthew 10:25 (“When they persecute you in one city, flee into another”) and the examples of Jacob, Moses, and Paul, to justify his position. He then looked at the contention that since persecution was sent by God it should be borne. Using the analogy of illness in which it was valid to use every possible means of cure, Perkins held that it was valid to flee in certain circumstances: when there was no hope of doing good, when one was expelled by the authorities, when one withdrew only for a time, when after due consideration one decided that one did not possess the strength to stand, when God offers a lawful way out, or when the persecution is personal and flight will bring peace to the church. Clearly in all these there was plenty of room for the exercise of personal judgment, a factor which Perkins himself recognized to be of vital importance when he insisted that the pastor in such a situation must be sure he is acting from moderation of mind.15 If, on the other hand, we are taken by the authorities, escape is illegal, as also when God cuts off the means of escape, or when we are bound by our calling. In no circumstances must we do evil that good may come.16 This example shows that Perkins’s casuistry was more in the nature of a moral compass than a detailed plan of action binding in all circumstances.
If Perkins used Scripture to resolve cases, in contrast to the human authorities used by Roman casuists, he also rejected their distinction between mortal and venial sin. He felt, like all the other Reformers, that it was pastorally pernicious to deny the seriousness of some kinds of sin. Yet clearly it was equally senseless to put murder on the same level as some minor fault. He gave a careful discussion of the various types of sin, according to their origin and circumstances, going into greater detail than other Reformed scholars, like Peter Martyr and Ursinus, who had also attempted to draw some kind of distinction between the various kinds of sin. His position can best be summed up in the principle that “though every sin of itself be mortal, yet all are not equally mortal.”17 He went much further than Romanists were prepared to go, in that he defined sin as whatever wanted conformity to the law of God, “whether it be with the consent of will or no.”18 An erring conscience was no excuse. Sin was sin and must be recognized as such.
Even when a person had grasped the structure of conscience, the varying kinds of sin, and the way in which problems ought to be resolved, there was still a great danger of wrong diagnosis. It was essential to be able to distinguish between a genuinely afflicted conscience and what was curable by medicine. In this connection Perkins discussed the ways in which the disease of melancholy could be distinguished from an afflicted conscience. Even in the sixteenth century it was desirable for ministers to be able to recognize the boundaries between medicine and what was distinctively spiritual, just as today being able to recognize curable mental disorders is an important part of the minister’s task, so that he does not apply the wrong medicine. Perkins also discussed the various types of affliction which the Christian could be expected to meet and suggested the methods appropriate to the cure of each.
In all cases the application of the law receives emphasis. Worldly sorrow for sin was not enough. Men must be sorry because they have sinned against God and repent for distinct sins. Without this feeling of humility, Perkins believed that the healing promises of the gospel could have no effect. He lists certain conditions which should be observed if the application of the promises of the gospel is to bring relief: the comfort must still contain some admixture of the law; if the grief of sinners is great, they must on no account be left alone in case they fell into despair; they must learn to submit themselves to the judgments of the wise; they must not be told of the fearful accidents which had befallen those in like case, lest they be cast into despair; and the minister must bear patiently with all their perversities and not expect speedy results, because sin is often very deeply rooted.19
Perkins’s Ethical Teaching
Having briefly examined the aims and methods by which Perkins sought to comfort afflicted consciences, I want to conclude with a quick look at some of the treasures in the contents of his treatise on casuistry. It was characterized by brevity, order, and simplicity, falling neatly into three sections—man as man, man in relation to God, and man in relation to other men. Many of the cases were discussed in other earlier works, and it seems hardly accurate to accuse Perkins of declension from Reformed truth, simply because he had ordered his material! It is the contents of Perkins’s Cases of conscience which illustrate most clearly the basic differences between Protestant and Roman casuistry. Perkins ignores the complicated legal issues about the sacraments and their validity which occupy so much space in Romanist treatments, discussing instead matters which at first sight would seem to have little relation to ethics at all. He saw very clearly that ethics and theology are inseparable and would have no time for those moderns who cry for a “simple gospel” and would gladly relegate theology to the rubbish heap, believing that the Christian ethic can get on well enough without it.
Thus in his section on man as man, Perkins discusses three things—what a man must do to be saved, how men are assured of their salvation, and how we can be restored to God’s favor when we have fallen. Judging by his constant reference to the problem of assurance, Perkins regarded it as the greatest “case” of all. Some scholars have seen in Perkins’s interest in feelings a fall into subjectivism which led ultimately to the excesses of pietism, but when this emphasis is seen in the context of his whole theology, it is clear that the decisive emphasis is on the sovereignty of God. To those who do not know what assurance and joy relationship to Christ conveys to the believer, the doctrine of assurance will always seem rather peculiar. For myself, I believe Perkins was right to spend so much energy on discussing the various sides of this “case.” If a man is assured of God’s favor to him in Christ, he is able to live victoriously in whatever state he finds himself. Perkins’s theology was eminently practical (he defined theology as “the science of living blessedly for ever”), and his whole teaching on the living of the Christian life is based on the good conscience which comes from being assured of God’s favor in Christ.
In his second section, Perkins again discussed matters theological rather than ethical in the narrow sense, bringing out very clearly the way in which ethics is founded in God and our relation to Him in Christ. Under man’s relation to God he discussed the existence of God, the divinity of Christ, the authority of the Scriptures, and the nature of worship. Clearly Perkins was interested in producing an educated people, not just a group in clerical leading strings dependent for their thinking upon the ministry. It is a sad commentary on the dreary moralizing that so often passes for preaching these days that it is rare indeed for it to be related meaningfully to the fundamentals of the faith as Perkins sought to do here. Most people today regard the question of God’s existence as a rather abstract issue. For Perkins it stood at the heart of theology and ethics. He disclaimed any intention to answer sophistical quibbles.
Rather my purpose is, in showing that there is a God, to remove, or at least help an inward corruption of the soul, that is great and dangerous, whereby the heart and conscience by nature denieth God and his providence. “If the removal of the heart means the death of the body” that opinion that taketh away the Godhead, doth in effect rend and pluck out the very heart of the soul.20
His final section on the relation of men to men is concerned with the nature of the virtues. Perkins’s treatment owes something to Aristotelian ethics, but is basically biblical. Unfortunately this section is not complete. Perkins seems to have died near the end of his series of sermons. However, enough remains to give a fairly complete idea of the kind of approach that he adopted. He discussed six virtues—prudence, which was found in the mind, and those which were found in the will, clemency, temperance, liberality, justice, and fortitude.21 He defined virtue as “a gift of the spirit of God, and a part of regeneration whereby a man is made fit to live well.”22 The virtue of a Christian was quite different from the virtue of a heathen. This latter was due to God’s restraining grace, and not to the regenerating Holy Spirit. Perkins rejected the ideal of the mean as a guide to virtue, as well as some of the Aristotelian virtues. Magnanimity, for example, was to him a vice, tempting men to leave their calling and to eschew humility.
His discussion of prudence shows how deeply his ethics had been influenced by the insights of the Reformers into the biblical message. Two cases were discussed in this section—how a man should practice prudence, or wisdom, and whether a man may lawfully and with good conscience use “policy” in the affairs of this life.23
Prudence, said Perkins, begins in the fear of God, as one lives in the presence of God, obeying Him, discerning truth from falsehood, and resolutely following the best in all things. He summed up the practice of prudence in nine rules. First of all, a man must above all things in the world provide for his own salvation and the forgiveness of his sins. Second, we must be watchful against our spiritual enemies, for Satan is strong and subtle in his suggestions. Third, every man must measure himself by his own strength, and do nothing beyond his ability, a principle which is far from rigorism. Linked with this is the need for confining our activities to those for which God has called us, and choosing only the actions which are good and true. Perkins’s seventh rule was that things of profit and pleasure must give place to things that belong to virtue and honesty. Following prudence also meant that we should not trust the fair pretences of men without careful trial. His two final rules are perhaps the most interesting. He suggested that we should adapt ourselves to the times in which we live insofar as this agrees with the Word and keeping a good conscience. This is a perennial problem for the Christian and we need constantly to be examining what we present as the faith in case we are either moving too slowly or too fast. Perkins was very realistic and was content to have something of his ideal rather than nothing.
If we cannot do the good things that we desire, in that exquisite manner that we would, we must content ourselves with the mean; and in things which are good, and to be done, it is the safest course to satisfy ourselves in doing the less, lest in venturing to do the more, which cannot be, we grow to the extremity, and so fail or offend in our action.24
Perkins saw the problem of usury in this light, maintaining that it was better that it should be restrained if it could not be eradicated altogether. Is this the kind of attitude we should be content with in matters which we regard as serious social problems? The balance between realism and idealism in the Christian life is very necessary, even if few manage to achieve it.
Perkins’s teaching on temperance shows that the best Puritan practical divinity was far from the gloomy asceticism with which it is usually associated in the popular mind. Certainly Perkins is full of warnings about the dangers of indulgence and becoming enslaved to the things of this world by concentrating on the gift rather than on the Giver. But we must not ignore the equally frequent passages in which he insists that the gifts of God must be used with joy because of the liberty purchased for us by Christ, though this joy must always be in the Lord and presupposes a regard for the glory of God and the good of our neighbors. Perkins even speaks of using meats not simply for the satisfying of our hunger and the quenching of our thirst, “but also freely and liberally, for Christian delight and pleasure.”25 We should receive the creatures as tokens of our reconciliation to God, and being content with what He had given us, we can treat our table as “a lively sermon to us, of God’s special providence over our bodies” and “as every creature serves our use, even so we should consecrate ourselves to God, and serve Him with both our souls and bodies.”26
The fine flower of Perkins’s casuistry appears in his little treatise on equity, called Epieikia, published in 1604. He saw this virtue as the very marrow of the commonwealth, applying at all levels of society, teaching men when to moderate the extremity of the law and when to enforce it. To follow equity in our dealings with other people meant bearing the infirmities of others and interpreting their actions in the best possible light, for “the more a Christian is rooted in true love, the more infirmities he will pass by.”27 This attitude is not an easy-going tolerance which accepts anything because it has no standards, but is grounded in the attitude of God to sinful men. If God was to deal with us as we deserved, exacting our full debt to him, we would be prostrated by the horrors of conscience and cast into the fires of hell. But in fact God treats us with mercy: “Shall the Lord deal thus moderately with thee, for thy many, and so great sins, and wilt thou deal so hardly with thy brother, in his few small offences against thee?”28 It is our mercy to others that shows what God’s mercy is like to other men.
In brief compass I have attempted to survey Perkins’s casuistry. When we read his work, several centuries after he wrote it, there might be questions we would like to raise about the methods and contents of his casuistry. But we can scarcely disagree with his aim of so instructing his hearers and readers that they were able to live responsible lives, expressing the deepest insights of the Reformed faith in conduct characterized by joy, service, and love. Perkins’s balanced judgments, deep pastoral insight, and sensitivity to the needs of his day, produced not only books that are still worth the reading, but many imitators, both Puritan and Anglican, in the seventeenth century. In the words of Ames, “left he behind many affected with that study; who by their godly sermons (through God’s assistance) made it to run, encrease, and be glorified throughout England.”29