Echoing Beza, Perkins insisted
that those in doubt of their inward baptism “need not to ascend up into the
heavens to learn the truth.” They had rather to “descend into our own hearts
& look whether Christ have given us his spirit.” In what part of the heart
was the activity of Christ’s spirit most likely to be experienced? In the regenerate
conscience. “Let us ransack our own consciences,” Perkins said, “and there make
search whether we feel the spirit of Christ crying in us, Abba, Father.”
He concluded, “If we find this in our hearts, it is an evident and infallible
sign that Christ continually makes intercession for us in heaven” (Perkins, An
Exposition of the Symbol, Works 1:255). Where a late-medieval Christian
might naturally turn to the rituals of the institutional church, followers of Perkins
would turn within, “ransacking” their consciences for signs of God’s favor. (Baird
Tipson, Inward Baptism: The Theological Origins of Evangelicalism [Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2020], 101-2)
