Thomas Watson

Life

Watson was born around 1620 and is thought to have come from Yorkshire. He received his BA in 1639 and his MA in 1642 from Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, a college that trained many Puritan ministers. He then lived for a time in the Puritan household of Lady Mary Vere.

In 1646 he took up a post at St Stephen's, Walbrook, in London, serving about ten years as lecturer, with responsibility for preaching, and then six years as rector. During the English Civil War he clearly identified with the Presbyterian position while remaining sympathetic to the monarchy. In 1651 he was implicated, along with Christopher Love and others, in a plot to restore Charles II to the throne, and he was imprisoned. Love was executed, but Watson petitioned for clemency and was released; on June 30, 1652, he was formally reinstated as rector.

After the Restoration, the Act of Uniformity of 1662 came into force, compelling conformity to the prayer book and rites of the established church. Watson refused to comply and was ejected from his parish. Thereafter, as a Nonconformist minister, he continued to preach in private homes and elsewhere despite the risk of imprisonment. In 1672, under the Declaration of Indulgence (a royal declaration granting Nonconformist worship a measure of toleration), he obtained a license to preach and ministered at Crosby Hall in London. Stephen Charnock later joined him, and the two worked together until Charnock's death in 1680. When his health declined, Watson retired to Barnston in Essex, where, according to tradition, he died suddenly while at prayer in 1686.

Ministry and Work

Before the Restoration, Watson had gained a great reputation as a preacher. His best-known work, A Body of Divinity, was published posthumously in 1692. It gathers 176 sermons expounding in order the Shorter Catechism produced by the Westminster Assembly, a brief manual of doctrinal instruction in question-and-answer form. He also left expositions of the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and the Beatitudes, as well as The Doctrine of Repentance, The Art of Divine Contentment, and other works.

Theologically, he held to covenant theology within a Reformed framework. Covenant theology explains the relationship between God and humanity in terms of covenants. Watson emphasized the sanctification of believers in opposition to antinomianism (the view that, by giving priority to grace, treats the moral law lightly), and some scholars have noted that he linked the covenant to the doctrine of repentance. His chief emphases were conversion and godliness.

Influence on the Korean Church

A Body of Divinity has been translated into Korean and published in the World Christian Classics series by CH Books (Christian Digest). His expositions of the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, and the Beatitudes, along with The Doctrine of Repentance and The Art of Divine Contentment, are also available in Korean. Korean theologians have likewise produced studies of his covenant theology.

Assessment

Charles Spurgeon is reported to have regarded A Body of Divinity as one of the finest Puritan works. J. I. Packer also commended Watson's vivid style. He is often described as the most readable of the Puritan writers.

His doctrinal exposition rests on the Calvinist framework of the Westminster Standards. Consequently, on topics such as predestination, his understanding differs from that of Wesleyan theology and the Arminian tradition. Some Korean-language introductions state that he took part in drafting the Shorter Catechism, but no evidence has been found to support this claim.