[A golden chaine: or The description of theologie containing the order of the causes of saluation and damnation, according to Gods word; (Printed by Iohn Legat, printer to the Vniuersitie of Cambridge, 1600)]
William Perkins, born in the year of our Lord 1558 in Marston Jabbett, Warwickshire, did rise from modest origins to become a shining luminary in the reformed Church of England. Educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he attained the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Arts, Perkins was elected Fellow of that College, a station in which he diligently exercised his gifts in the sacred discipline and did greatly profit the students in sound doctrine and holy conversation. Ordained within the ecclesiastical polity of the Church of England, Perkins served faithfully as lecturer at the renowned Church of Great St. Andrew’s, Cambridge. There, by the power of the Spirit, he did powerfully expound the Scriptures, laboring to reform men’s lives and to bring them into the obedience of Christ. His ministry was marked by an extraordinary zeal for experimental divinity, wherein he pressed upon men the necessity of true conversion, effectual calling, and a sanctified walk. Perkins excelled in the art of casuistry, providing godly counsel for tender consciences perplexed with the weight of sin, as demonstrated in his manifold treatises, among which The Golden Chaine and The Arte of Prophesying are eminent. He contended earnestly for the doctrines of grace, upholding predestination, the sufficiency of Christ’s atonement, and the authority of Scripture, all in the service of God’s glory and the edification of His elect. He departed this life in Cambridge in 1602, leaving a legacy both deep and wide, whereby his writings continue to guide souls in the straight and narrow path of godliness.
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Out of the former transgression arises another, namely Original sin, which is corruption engendered in our first conception, whereby every faculty of soul and body is prone and disposed to evil.
Psalm 51:5 — I was born in iniquity, and in sin has my mother conceived me. Genesis 6:5, Titus 3:3 — We ourselves were in times past unwise, disobedient, deceived, serving the lusts and diverse pleasures, living in maliciousness and envy, hateful, and hating one another. Hebrews 12:1 — Let us cast away everything that presses down, and the sin that hangs so fast on.
By this we see, that sin is not a corruption of man’s substance, but only of faculties: otherwise neither could men’s souls be immortal, nor Christ take upon him man’s nature.
All Adam’s posterity is equally partaker of this corruption: the reason why it shows not itself equally in all, is because some have the spirit of sanctification, some the spirit only to bridle corruption, some neither.
The propagation of sin, from the parents to the children, is either because the soul is infected by the contagion of the body, as a good ointment by a musty vessel; or because God, in the very moment of creation and infusion of souls into infants, does utterly forsake them. For as Adam received the image of God, both for himself and others: so did he lose it from himself and others.
But whereas the propagation of sin is as a common fire in a town, men are not so much to search how it came, as to be careful how to extinguish it.
That we may the better know original sin in the several faculties of man’s nature, three circumstances must be considered:
The remnant of God’s image is certain notions concerning good and evil: as, that there is a God, and that the same God punishes transgressions: that there is an everlasting life: that we must reverence our superiors, and not harm our neighbors. But even these notions, they are both general and corrupt, and have no other use, but to bereave man of all excuse before God’s judgment seat.
Romans 1:19-20 — That which may be known concerning God, is manifest in them: for God has showed it unto them. For the invisible things of him, that is, his eternal power and Godhead, are seen by the creation of the world, being considered in his works, to the intent they should be without excuse.
I. Ignorance, namely, a want, or rather a deprivation of knowledge in the things of God, whether they concern his sincere worship, or eternal happiness.
1 Corinthians 2:14— The natural man perceives not the things of the spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. Romans 8:7 — The wisdom of the flesh is enmity with God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.
II. Impotency whereby the mind of itself is unable to understand spiritual things, though they be taught.
Luke 24:45 — Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures. 2 Corinthians 3:5 — Not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to think anything as of ourselves: but our sufficiency is of God.
III. Vanity, in that the mind thinks falsehood truth, and truth falsehood.
Ephesians 4:17 — Walk no more as other Gentiles, in the vanity of your understanding. 1 Corinthians 1:21 — It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching, to save those which believe. Verse 23 — We preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block, but to the Grecians foolishness. Proverbs 14:12 — There is a way which seems good in the eyes of men, but the end thereof is death.