The Great Cloud of Witnesses · The Puritans & Pietists
Thomas Watson
1620–1686 · English
The Puritan who could say more in one sentence than most preachers say in a paragraph.
The life
Thomas Watson preached at St Stephen's Walbrook in London for about sixteen years, and his hearers packed the place. He was jailed in the Tower in 1651 for his part in a plot to bring Charles II back to the throne — a Puritan who wanted a king, which tells you he was harder to categorize than the label suggests. When the Act of Uniformity came in 1662 he was ejected anyway, and went on preaching in private houses and halls wherever he could gather people quietly. After the Great Fire he took a hall in Crosby House and preached there for years.
His writing is the reason he is still read: short, plain, and packed, with images a farmer or a shopkeeper could carry home. A Body of Divinity, gathered from his lectures on the Westminster Shorter Catechism, was published after his death and has never been out of print for long since.