‘Puritane’ was often an ‘odious’ slur against faithful Christian witness and a learned preaching ministry. Some of what we take for granted today – such as the importance of sitting under biblical preaching and a faithful ministry – was maligned by many in that day as a cause for disgrace.

‘Puritan’ has been co-opted by many Reformed evangelicals to mean ‘whatever I think is good, noble, and true’. So, Edwards becomes a Puritan because of his Reformed piety and maybe Ryle also. Definitely Piper. And obviously Packer. And, well, if you keep it up, maybe you too.

Then somewhere along the way, we pushed that understanding back into the 16th-17th C. English Reformed Church, shattering what some are now recognizing as the Elizabethan doctrinal consensus. But this popular, though sometimes scholarly, tendency must be challenged. William Perkins presents us with the ideal test case.

Perkins was a Reformed Orthodox theologian and among the chief apologists of the late Elizabethan Church of England. Much like Richard Hooker, though more popular, Perkins was a defender of the faith as defined by the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.

We particularly remember Perkins for his works of practical divinity and pastoral ministry, those works seeing translations in French, Dutch, German, Welsh, Czech, Hungarian, and Spanish. But we also remember Perkins as the father of English Puritanism, news which would no doubt come as a shock to him.

Perhaps our memory here is flawed. Puritanism is a notoriously difficult movement to define. But the argument against the Puritanism of Perkins is strong enough that we need only give brief consideration to a definition, and then observe whether or not that definition is suitably applied to him.

William Perkins does not conform to the technical definition of a Puritan

Richard Baxter, reflecting on England’s recent past, helps us develop the vital distinction between the rubbish popular definition of Puritanism and its technical definition:

Within a few miles about us, were near a dozen more Ministers that were near Eighty years old apiece, and never preached; poor ignorant leaders, and most of them of Scandalous Lives: only three or four constant competent Preachers lived near us, and those (though Conformable all save one) were the common Marks of the People’s Obloque and Reproach, and any that had but gone to hear them, when he had no Preaching at home, was made the Derision of the Vulgar Rabble, under the odious Name of a Puritane

‘Puritane’ was often an ‘odious’ slur against faithful Christian witness and a learned preaching ministry. Some of what we take for granted today – such as the importance of sitting under biblical preaching and a faithful ministry – was maligned by many in that day as a cause for disgrace. To be a competent preacher, or to attend competent preaching, was sufficient cause for the reproach of ‘Puritane’. This use of the word was venomous and had little to do with the geographically and ecclesiologically delimited Elizabethan Puritan Movement.

So, if we were to follow out the popular use of the slur, the magisterial Reformers were ‘Puritane’. This popular definition would also make Richard Hooker, John Whitgift, and King James VI and I a ‘Puritane’. Why? Because they all believed that godliness matters and that, therefore, England needed to have a learned ministry. But this demonstrates the failure of the popular definition. For, alas, Richard, John, and James were all anti-Puritans, though episcopal Calvinists and ‘particularly godly’.

Contrary to some of its early modern haters and 21st C. enthusiasts, Puritanism was a grassroots movement, with its theological ressourcement in Reformed Orthodoxy in particular and the Christian tradition in general. Its organic source and historical context was none other than the Church of England. The dual priorities of external order and practical divinity were forged together into an intentionally internal reform movement. The Elizabethan Puritan Movement’s roots ran deep, deeper than the abilities of either Archbishops Whitgift or Bancroft to pluck up from the English Reformed garden.

As we briefly noted above, Reformed piety is often identified as the all-important mark of a Puritan, and this is why many are quick to identify Perkins as a Puritan. But the Puritans did not have the monopoly on Reformed piety. Nor were they the only godly, Sabbath-keeping, anti-Papist, ‘experimental Calvinists’ in Elizabethan England.

So, the experimental mark is not alone definitive. Or, rather, it is not only the experimental use of the first two marks of the true church which constitute a Puritan. When we lean solely on its godly flavor, we cast a net large enough to catch the most unlikely of fellows.

But Elizabethan Puritanism also strove for a third mark of the true church, which is the external government of the church according to Scripture alone. The Puritans did not long for the further reformation of just any church but for the further reformation of the established Church of England after the model of ‘the best reformed churches’. For this reason, Puritans were also referred to as disciplinarians, attacking not only Bishops and non-preaching ministers but also the traditional liturgy, vestments, oaths, holy days, and the wedding ring. These are the points that earn the Puritan the title ‘non-conformist’ – though in some individuals there was a cautious conformity, or pseudo-conformity, but even this variant had its expiration date.

If there were to be an argument in favor of Perkins’s Puritanism, it could not be found in his works but only in his life. There are two events which link him directly to Puritanism, one in 1587 and another in 1589. The first concerns controversial points allegedly made in a sermon on the practice of communion, and the second his presence at a debate over a proposed ‘Presbyterian’ book of discipline.

We can pass quickly over the first event. Perkins denied the disgraceful allegations but did acknowledge causing some worry. There were no further complaints made and no penalties were rendered. This episode was a mere moment of youthful pulpit indiscretion. Even the current Archbishop of Canterbury John Whitgift could be considered a Puritan if we were to isolate certain events early in his career. In that case, early Whitgift would be more the Puritan than early Perkins.

The second episode is more troublesome for our thesis. Elizabethan Puritanism had something like a classis movement, incredibly difficult for the authorities to pin down, which was at some points more ‘Presbyterian’ and at others more ‘Congregational’. Puritanism valued external order, but it existed in instability. The movement had urgent need of a book of discipline, a platform to unite around theoretically, and a discipline to enact if the opportunity were to legally present itself.