The Works of Watson: Publisher’s Preface

What follows is from the ‘Publisher’s Preface’ to our forthcoming five-volume edition of The Works of Thomas Watson.

The Banner of Truth Trust was founded in 1957, and early in the following year the Trust published its first books. Thomas Watson’s Body of Divinity was one of them. At that time the book and its author were little known. In an issue of the Banner of Truth magazine (Nov. 1957), the editor, Iain H. Murray, enthusiastically informed readers of the new titles that were soon to come from the press: ‘Watson’s Body of Divinity,’ he wrote, ‘contains some of the richest doctrinal and experimental material to be found anywhere amongst the Puritans.’ And then he asked, ‘Who can estimate how much we have suffered individually and as a nation for neglecting our unsurpassed seventeenth-century literature!’

The book when published carried an interesting note on its copyright page: ‘The unabridged but revised version of Watson’s Body of Divinity, published in 1890,¹The revised edition by Rogers was first published in 1869, and was reprinted often. has been followed in this reprint. ‘This present edition, though a comprehensive work in itself, does not contain the whole of Watson’s sermons on the Catechism; it is the Publishers’ wish to reprint the remainder if warranted by public demand.’ Many contemporary voices decried the idea of republishing the books of seventeenth-century Puritans in the middle of the twentieth century. But the founders of the Trust believed that such were needed, and if made available, would be avidly read by Christians whose spiritual appetite was being whetted by the kind of preaching they had heard from the minister of Westminster Chapel, London, Dr D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. The trustees’ wishes were soon to be fulfilled, and in a manner ‘exceeding abundantly above all they could ask or think’; for not only was Watson’s Body of Divinity to be reprinted many times in the succeeding years,²Reprinted (cloth): 1958, 1960, 1965 (revised), 1970, 1974, 1978, 1992, 1997, 2012, 2017, 2020, 2024; (paperback): 1983, 1986, 1992, 1997, 2000, 2008, 2011, 2015, 2018 [special], 2021). but alongside it was soon to appear the two other parts of Watson’s sermons on the Catechism, The Ten Commandments (1959)³Reprinted 1959, 1965 (revised), 1970, 1976, 1981, 1986, 1990, 1995, 1999, 2002, 2009, 2013, 2021, 2025. and The Lord’s Prayer (1960).⁴Reprinted 1960, 1965 (revised), 1972, 1978, 1982, 1989, 1993, 1999, 2009, 2012, 2015, 2020, 2024. In 1971 the Trust also reprinted Watson’s sermons on The Beatitudes.⁵Reprinted 1975, 1980, 1985, 1989, 1994, 2000, 2007, 2014 (retypeset), 2020.

The hunger for more of Watson’s writings led to the inclusion of a number of them in the Banner’s Puritan Paperbacks series. The first to appear was A Divine Cordial (1963),⁶Now published under the title All Things for Good. followed by The Doctrine of Repentance (1987), The Godly Man’s Picture (1992), The Lord’s Supper (2004), The Great Gain of Godliness (2006), and Heaven Taken by Storm (2025).

The seven decades that have passed since the beginning of the Trust’s work has witnessed a remarkable growth of interest in the writings of the English Puritans. In acknowledgment of this, the Banner of Truth is issuing The Works of Thomas Watson. It is amazing to think that this will be the first time that Watson’s ‘concise, racy, illustrative, and suggestive’⁷See Spurgeon’s description of Watson’s writings on p. xiii. treatises and sermons will appear in a uniform set of volumes, similar to those produced in former generations for the works of several of his contemporary Puritan authors, such as John Owen, John Flavel, and Thomas Brooks, which have also been reprinted by the Trust. It should be said, however, that not every work that bears the name ‘Thomas Watson’ has come from the pen of the minister of St Stephen’s, Walbrook. In particular, two works, The Witnesses Anatomized, and Jerusalem’s Glory, do not appear to belong to our Thomas Watson, when judged on the basis of internal and external evidence. We are grateful to Dr Chad Van Dixhoorn for his expert insight and helpful advice regarding this matter.

This new production has followed the editorial policy of George Rogers, principal of Spurgeon’s Pastors’ College, who prepared the 1869 edition of Body of Divinity (see his comments on p. xx — reproduced below for the sake of this article). Where it was thought necessary, translations of foreign words and phrases have been added, as well as footnotes to elucidate the text. May the ‘happy union of sound doctrine, heart-searching experience, and practical wisdom’ make these volumes useful to all who read them.

The Grey House
Edinburgh
January 2026

The Editorial Policy of George Rogers (from page XX of Volume I of The Works of Thomas Watson):

‘All editions extant which we have seen, abound in errors and imperfections. These have been rectified, not entirely we fear, but in a degree as nearly approaching to accuracy as in revision of another’s composition could be expected. No alteration of sentiment has been made, but every shade of the author’s meaning has been scrupulously retained. The style has been modernised, so far as could be done without detracting from its own peculiar characteristics. Long sentences have been divided into two or three, where it could be done without injury to the clearness or force of the signification. Modern words have been substituted for such as had become obsolete; Latin quotations restored to their correct form, as far as their sources could be ascertained; and divisions of subjects more perspicuously arranged. The whole, in fact, has been rendered more readable, and consequently more attractive and intelligible, which in our estimation far outweighs all the supposed advantages that could arise from perpetuating the crudities and vulgarities, as they now appear to us, of former times. By popularizing ancient works, their readers are multiplied and their meaning may often be more readily apprehended.’

The Works of Thomas Watson: