Influence
Although relatively unknown, Perkins has had an influence that is felt by Christians all around the world. Perkins' views on double predestination made him a major target of Jacobus Arminius, the Dutch Reformed clergyman who opposed the doctrine of predestination.
In his lifetime, Perkins attained enormous popularity, with sales of his works eventually surpassing even Calvin's. When he died, his writings were selling more copies than those of many of the most famous of the Reformers combined.
From his position at Cambridge, Perkins was able to influence a whole generation of English churchmen. His pupils include:
- William Ames, Puritan who eventually left England to become professor of theology at Franeker
- John Robinson, the founder of congregationalism in Leiden and pastor of the group which went on to found the Plymouth Colony
- Thomas Goodwin
- Paul Baynes
- Samuel Ward, master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge
- Phineas Fletcher, a poet
- Thomas Draxe
- Thomas Taylor
- James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh
- James Montagu, master of Sidney Sussex and later bishop of Winchester
- Richard Sibbes
Read more about this topic: William Perkins (puritan)
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“The improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence: as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If morality had naturally no influence on human passions and actions, it were in vain to take such pains to inculcate it; and nothing would be more fruitless than that multitude of rules and precepts with which all moralists abound.”
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“The purifying, healing influence of literature, the dissipating of passions by knowledge and the written word, literature as the path to understanding, forgiveness and love, the redeeming might of the word, the literary spirit as the noblest manifestation of the spirit of man, the writer as perfected type, as saint.”
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