Useful for These Times

Useful for These Times—it’s the subtitle of a book by Thomas Watson. We’ve talked about Watson before. He was a Puritan, was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and served for a long time at St. Stephen’s, Walbrook. He was born in 1620 and died in 1686.

During his life, King Charles II initiated the Restoration, and what was restored was not necessarily a good thing. It was the restoration of Anglicanism after a decade of Puritan ascendancy in England. With the Restoration, Watson, like many of his Puritan associates, found himself ejected from his pulpit. But that didn’t stop him from writing and it didn’t actually stop him from preaching.

One of the books that he wrote was published while the Restoration was in full swing. It was published in 1668 and it is titled The Doctrine of Repentance, and the subtitle is Useful for These Times. Of course, repentance is always useful. But there was something about the 1660s that made Watson think that it was time, and timely, to write about repentance.

On the first page of this book, Watson writes in an epistle to the reader: “The two great graces essential to a saint in this life are faith and repentance. These are the two wings by which he flies to heaven. Faith and repentance preserve the spiritual life as heat and radical moisture do the natural. The grace which I am now to discuss is repentance.” He goes on to reference a sermon from John Chrysostom, an early church father who is often considered one of the greatest preachers of the early church.

He also quotes Augustine—but, curiously enough, he calls him not Augustine but Austin. The Puritans did this from time to time, and no one is really sure why they abbreviated Augustine as Austin, but they did. Watson says, “And Austin calls the penitential psalms to be written before him as he lay upon his bed and he did often peruse them with tears.” And then he says this: “Repentance is never out of season. It is as of frequent use as the artificer’s tools or the soldier’s weapon.” Of course, the soldier wants his weapon at the ready all the time, and so the Christian needs repentance at the ready all the time.

What was happening in 1668 that made this a timely book? The brother of Charles II, the future King James II, partook of the Mass and secretly became Roman Catholic, which became public in 1673. Upon ascending to the throne in 1685, James tried to put Catholicism back on the map in England, but that didn’t last long. He was only on the throne until 1688. Also in 1668, William Penn, who later founded Pennsylvania, attacked Trinitarian doctrine and ended up in jail. I’m sure there were other things, but the reality is that repentance is likely useful for all these times.