When biblical ignorance ruled - like today
William Perkins’s convictions on the ministry of God’s word are best known through his preaching manual, The Arte of Prophecying, which became a standard textbook on the subject. The volume articulated a thoroughly Protestant understanding of the nature and authority of Scripture and rooted itself in a thoroughly Reformed hermeneutic. The book also featured a fountain of homiletical advice, as Perkins detailed his method of sermon development and delivery. More than any other, the popularity of this book explains Perkins’s enduring significance in the decades and even centuries after his death. Perkins’s business was the ministry of the word, and it extended far beyond his sermons . He carried this commitment to the word into every genre of his writing. This consistency evidences his convictions concerning Scripture itself as well as the nature of his goals as a reformer. It is not an overstatement to say the systematic interpretation of the Bible and the presentation of its results