This treatise is an echo of Scripture teaching how God’s will and man’s will work in their respective spheres, and with each other working from his text, Matthew 23:37-38. This work is designed to humble the creature in realizing that God’s free grace is that which enables man to believe the Gospel. And it also teaches that man’s free will is actually a slave to his desires. Perkins' covers the will of God looking at both God’s sovereignty and God’s good pleasure in light of Jerusalem’s unwillingness to repent. He also covers the will of man in four important areas: in the garden before the fall, after the fall, in light of and after regeneration, and glorified in heaven. This is not a scan or facsimile and has an active table of contents for electronic versions.

The Christian Church has no shortage of revered figures and saints, but it is difficult to find one that had a more decisive impact on the course of the Church's history than Augustine of Hippo. Augustine was a bishop of Hippo Regius in Africa, but his works, sermons and writings helped hold the Church together even as the Western Roman Empire was in its death throes, to the extent that every major branch of Christianity recognizes him today. The Catholic Church has venerated him as a saint and a Doctor of the Church, Orthodox Christians also consider him a saint, and Protestants and Calvinists cite him as one of the fathers and inspirations of the Protestant Reformation. In many respects, Augustine has provided the theological bedrock for Christians for nearly 1600 years, and as theologian John Leith noted in 1990, "Augustine, the North African of Berber descent, is today the spiritual father of multitudes who are remote indeed from him racially, politically, and culturally." Augustine's voluminous writings also had the effect of making him one of antiquity's most influential philosophers. Though he will always be remembered within the context of Christianity, Augustine studied the works of Virgil, Cicero, and the ancient Greek philosophers, providing a critical bridge between religious and secular philosophy that would in turn inspire St. Thomas Aquinas and similar thinkers. In addition to framing the concept of original sin, it was Augustine who first wrote at length on the theory of just war. Paul Henry, S.J. noted, "In the history of thought and civilization, Saint Augustine appears to me to be the first thinker who brought into prominence and undertook an analysis of the philosophical and psychological concepts of person and personality. These ideas, so vital to contemporary man, shape not only Augustine's own doctrine on God but also his philosophy of man..." On Grace and Free Will, Augustine's doctrine about the liberum arbitrium or free will and its inability to respond to the will of God without divine grace, is interpreted (mistakenely according to Roman Catholics) in terms of Predestination: grace is irresistible, results in conversion, and leads to perseverance.

There are some persons who suppose that the freedom of the will is denied whenever God's grace is maintained, and who on their side defend their liberty of will so peremptorily as to deny the grace of God. This grace, as they assert, is bestowed according to our own merits. It is in consequence of their opinions that I wrote the book entitled On Grace and Free Will. This work I addressed to the monks of Adrumetum, in whose monastery first arose the controversy on that subject, and that in such a manner that some of them were obliged to consult me thereon. The work begins with these words: "With reference to those persons who so preach the liberty of the human will."

William Perkins (1558 ¿ 1602) was a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and a famous Cambridge theologian. He was one of the foremost leaders of the Puritan movement in the Church of England before the Westminster Assembly and was a mentor to such astute puritans as Jeremiah Burroughs. He was a celebrated divine who wrote voluminously on a number of important theological and practical topics including a number of works on God¿s grace. The Works of William Perkins have not been published until now in these individual treatises.This treatise is an echo of Scripture teaching how God¿s will and man¿s will work in their respective spheres, and with each other working from his text, Matthew 23:37-38. This work is designed to humble the creature in realizing that God¿s free grace is that which enables man to believe the Gospel. And it also teaches that man¿s free will is actually a slave to his desires. Perkin¿s covers the will of God looking at both God¿s sovereignty and God¿s good pleasure in light of Jerusalem¿s unwillingness to repent. He also covers the will of man in four important areas: in the garden before the fall, after the fall, in light of and after regeneration, and glorified in heaven.This is not a scan or facsimile.

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Grace and Freedom addresses the issue of divine grace in relation to the freedom of the will in Reformed or "Calvinist" theology in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century. It focuses on the work of the English Reformed theologian William Perkins, especially his role as an apologist of the Church of England, defending its theology against the Roman Catholic polemic, and specifically against the charge that Reformed theology denies human free choice. Perkins and his Reformed contemporaries affirm that salvation occurs by grace alone and that God is the ultimate cause of all things, but they also insist on the freedom of the human will and specifically the freedom of choice in a way that does not conform to modern notions of "libertarian freedom" or "compatibilism." In developing this position, Perkins drew on the thought of Reformers such as Peter Martyr Vermigli and Zacharias Ursinus, on the nuanced positions of medieval scholastics, and several contemporary Roman Catholic representatives of the so-called "second scholasticism." His work was a major contribution to early modern Reformed thought both in England and on the continent. His influence in England extended both to the Reformed heritage of the Church of England and to English Puritanism. On the continent, his work contributed to the main lines of Reformed orthodoxy and to the piety of the Dutch Second Reformation.