November 2007 - Protestant Reformed Churches in America

Preparatory Grace in the Puritans
vation, but also to allow for man’s active participation, however
under the ministry of the law.” 7 Man could participate, but only
as far as the law of God is concerned. By a careful consideration
of the law of God he could bring himself to see his own guilt and
misery under sin and in this way prepare himself to desire mercy.
These works of preparation, which “bring under, tame and subdue
the stubbornness of man’s nature, without making any change
at all,” include “accusations of the conscience … fears and terrors
arising thence … and the apprehending of God’s anger against
sin.” 8 However, adds Perkins,
although they go before to prepare a sinner for his conversion following,
yet they are no graces of God, but fruits both of the law,
being the ministry of death, as also of an accusing conscience. 9
Perkins, then, believed that God “universally invites the sinner
to ‘prepare,’ and then he particularly enables the elect to ‘compose.’”
10
In another work, A Grain of Mustard Seed or the Least Measure
of Grace That Is Or Can Be Effectual To Salvation, Perkins
urges the sinner to “labor to see and feel thy spiritual poverty”
and “labor to be displeased with thyself.” 11 If a man has “some
little feeling of his wants [what he lacks], some weak and faint
desire, some small obedience,” writes Perkins, “he must not let
this spark of grace go out.” He gave this warning in a section of
the same work entitled, “The Foresaid Beginnings of Grace Are
Counterfeit Unless They Increase.” 12
Of all the advocates of preparatory grace among the Puritans,
Perkins sought most to minister to the troubled consciences of
7. Song, Theology, pp. 136-137.
8. Song, Theology, p. 139.
9. Song, Theology, p. 139.
10. Song, Theology, p. 137.
11. William Perkins (Ian Breward [ed.]), The Courtenay Library of
Reformation Classics, vol. 3, The Work of William Perkins (The Sutton
Courtenay Press: England, 1970), p. 406.
12. Perkins, Work, p. 405.
November 2007 61