Thomas Watson's book The Doctrine of Repentance highlights how Christians ought to take things such as the Bible, God, sin, and holiness seriously.

Source: The Banner of Truth, 1993. 4 pages.

The Importance of Seriousness in the Christian Life

No generation of Christians lived the Christian life more earnestly than the English Puritans. The major reason for this is that their preachers consistently led their people to hold lofty views of God and of our duty to him on earth. In this article the writer illustrates this aspect of the Puritan pulpit by special reference to an important book recently republished by the Trust The Doctrine of Repentance by Thomas Watson.

The seventeenth-century represented a pinnacle as far as spiritual writing is concerned; it produced books suffused with Scripture and 'precise' in their application to the souls of men. To the same degree that this century is weak, the seventeenth century was strong. Their writings served to stimulate the Christian's quest for vital, meaningful religion. Their works lie behind the Great Awakening in the colonies of New England and the Evangelical Awakening in these islands. Their mantle was cast over such giants as M'Cheyne, Bonar, Ryle, Spurgeon, and in our own century, John Murray, Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones and some others still alive.

What makes the Puritans so wonderfully attractive is that they were, and remain, eminently practical. They ministered to a land that, despite being in possession of a form of godliness (inherited from the Reformation a hundred years previously) was still largely superstitious and blind. It was common in the early seventeenth century for those professing to be Protestants (due to Act of Parliament) to be saying their 'Hail Marys' openly. The people were ignorant and needed to be taught. This the Puritans did. Having experienced the persecutions of the years 1660-88 (the last great persecution in England) they knew how to minister to other believers in their troubles. Living in troubled days, characterised by increasing superstition helps to make the Puritan books even more relevant, robust and rewarding than their modern counterparts. Several features can be isolated from a perusal of Thomas Watson's little book, The Doctrine of Repentance, published by the Trust, which helps to illustrate what it is about such books that makes them essential reading for every Christian who wants to grow in grace.

1. God is to Be Taken Seriously🔗

Watson is pleading with sinners to repent, reinforcing his argument with characteristic insights into the nature of God's immutability: 'God has enacted a law in the High Court of heaven that no sinner shall be saved except the repenting sinner, and he will not break his own law. Though all the angels should stand before God and beg the life of an unrepenting person, God would not grant it ... Though God is more full of mercy than the sun is of light, yet he will not forgive a sinner while he goes on in his guilt...' 1

God, according to the Puritans is not to be trifled with; he is to be taken with extreme seriousness. It is the missing jewel in so much modern worship which is neither serious, nor can it be taken seriously. Waving hands, mindless repetitions of trite phrases, ludicrous prophecies and confusion about sick­ness and disease combine to make the apostle's observation correct: 'Will they not say that you are out of your mind?' (1 Corinthians 14:23). God complained in Old Testament times that the false prophets were causing his people 'to err by their lies, and by their lightness' (Jeremiah 23:32).

David Clarkson, who preached at John Owen's funeral service, could write about the seriousness of 'ordinary' public worship — not the mindless, emo­tional extravagances of modern renewal movements — in these words: 'The most wonderful things that are now done on earth are wrought in the public ordinances. Here the dead hear the voice of the Son of God, and those that hear do live ... Here he cures diseased souls with a word ... Here he disposes Satan ... Wonders they are, and would be so accounted, were they not the common work of the public ministry.' 2 Taking seriously the fact that God is present when we worship him is a lesson the Puritans would have us learn. It would cure our church of so much of its current ills.

2. The Bible is to Be Taken Seriously🔗

For Thomas Watson, the Bible as a whole and in all its parts, was the utterance of God: God's Word set down in writing, his mind disclosed for our instruction. 'Think in every line you read,' says Watson in another of his books, 'that God is speaking to you.'3 One need only casually glance through any Puritan book and see the copious use of Scripture references to see with what meticulous care they sought to 'prove' every idea from the Scriptures. The book begins and ends with a text of Scripture.

The English Puritans' consummate achievement was at the level of the Christian life: experiencing communion with God in the family, in the church and in personal life. This could only be done by a thorough adherence to the Scriptures. The label often attached to the Puritans was 'precisionists'. Richard Rogers was once out riding when he was overtaken by the Lord of the Manor who proceeded to deride and ridicule the Puritans, saying, 'Why so precise?' 'Because, Sir,' replied Rogers, 'we serve a precise God.' 4

Two doctrines come into sharp focus in the writings of the Puritans: the doctrines of Scripture and grace. These were the formal and material princi­ples of the Reformation and the Puritans, who as the heirs of that spiritual revival, continued to emphasise their importance. The Puritan belief in inerrancy was not in need of the same kind of defence as today, but their assumption of this position is everywhere apparent. Always reverent to the very words themselves, they were also master craftsmen in using the Scripture for the purpose of illustration. To cite just a few: 'After Paul's shipwreck', Watson writes, 'he swam to shore on planks and broken pieces of the ship. In Adam we all suffered shipwreck, and repentance is the only plank left us after shipwreck to swim to heaven.' 5Then again, he writes: 'Auricular confession is one of the Pope's golden doctrines. Like the fish in the Gospel, it has money in its mouth.' 6 And those who agree in their heads with God's assessment of sin, but fail in practice to turn from it are 'half-turned ... like Ephraim, who was a cake baked on one side and dough on the other' (Hosea 7:8).7 Reading the Puritans is one of the best ways of getting to know your Bible!

3. Sin is to Be Taken Seriously🔗

In the third of twenty characterisations of what sin is, Thomas Watson writes: 'Sin is an injury to God. It violates his laws. Here is crimen laesae majestatis (grievous high treason). What greater injury can be offered to a prince than to trample on his royal edicts...' 8 Nor is it sufficient to think merely in general terms. Elsewhere, he insists that in true confession (a necessary requirement in biblical repentance) there must be a confession of particular sins. 'As it is with a wounded man', he says, 'who comes to a surgeon, and shows him all his wounds — here I was cut in the head, there I was shot in the arm — so a mournful sinner confesses the several distempers of his soul.' 9 Later he mentions a similar 'precision' when he insists that in turning away from sin (again, a necessary ingredient in repentance) there must be a turning away from all sin. 'He that hides one rebel in his house is a traitor to the Crown, and he that indulges one sin is a traitorous hypocrite.' 10

It is further illustrated in the opening preface of Watson's book: 'How happy it would be if we were more deeply affected with sin, and our eyes did swim in their orb. We may clearly see the Spirit of God moving in the waters of repentance, which though troubled, are yet pure. Moist tears dry up sin and quench the wrath of God. Repentance is the cherisher of piety, the procurer of mercy ... It is better to go with difficulty to heaven than with ease to hell. What would the damned give that they might have a herald sent to them from God to proclaim mercy upon their repentance? What follies of sighs and groans would they send up to heaven? What floods of tears would their eyes pour forth? But it is now too late ... O that we would therefore, while we are on this side of the grave, make our peace with God! Tomorrow may be our dying day; let this be our repenting day.' 11

Sin, which is a state of defilement, depravity and death was never so eloquently and painfully revealed as by preachers like Watson; they had searched their own hearts and found them wanting. Passionate as he is for the souls of men and women – the Puritans were true evangelists – Watson was painfully aware that sin has rendered the unbeliever unable to respond to the gospel. 'Ministers', he writes, 'knock at the door of men's hearts, the Spirit comes with a key and opens the door.' 12 Watson could write: 'When the soul is going out of the body, it should swim to heaven on a sea of tears.' 13

It is the consuming passion of the Puritans that they preached to a people largely unconverted with such authority and conviction. It is a singular sign of God's approval that their ministry was blessed in the way it was. One gains the impression in reading the best Puritans that they were ever conscious of the preciousness of time. Speaking of the need to repent speedily, Watson gives the following reason: 'because there are three days that we may soon expect: A day when the gospel may expire (citing Isaiah 29:10, 'the spirit of deep sleep is poured out upon you'), the day a man's personal day of grace may expire, and the day when life may expire.'14'What security have we that we shall live another day?' he asks. 'We are marching apace out of the world. We are going off the stage. Our life is a taper soon blown out. Man's life is compared to the flower of the field which withers sooner than the grass (Psalm 103:15). Our age is as nothing (Psalm 39:5). Life is but a flying shadow. The body is like a vessel filled with a little breath. Sickness broaches the vessel; death draws it out. O, how soon may the scene alter! ... How dangerous it is to adjourn repenting when death may so suddenly make a thrust at us. Say not that you will repent tomorrow.' 15 A sense of urgency in evangelism and living for God is some­thing we desperately need today. The Puritans can help us recapture what the Bible means by 'redeeming the time because the days are evil'.

4. Holiness is to Be Taken Seriously🔗

Thomas Watson's doctrine of grace, as for all the Puritans, insists upon the absolute necessity of repentance: He opens his treatise with the following lines: '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.' 16 Then, after a lengthy and detailed examination of the nature of true repentance and the most fearful warnings to those who remain unrepentant, he comforts the true penitent: 'A repenting condition is a pardoned condition. Christ said to that weeping woman, "Thy sins, which are many, are forgiven" (Luke 7:47). Pardons are sealed upon soft hearts. O you whose head has been a fountain to weep for sin, Christ's side will be a fountain to weep for sin (Zechariah 13:1). Have you repented? God looks at you as if you had not offended. He becomes a friend, a father. He will now bring forth the best robe and put it on you. God is pacified toward you and will, with the father of the prodigal, fall upon your neck and kiss you. Sin in Scripture is compared to a cloud (Isaiah 44:22). No sooner is this cloud scattered by repentance than pardoning love shines forth ... When a spring of repentance is open in the heart, a spring of mercy is open in heaven.' 17

In a day when antinomianism abounds (the view that the directions of the law of God are no longer needed for Christians to grow in holiness) the Puritans were insistent: 'If Moses is sent to the gallows then holiness dies with him.' If the 'grace' we have received does not help us to keep the law, we have not received grace. As the Puritan, Samuel Bolton, once put it: 'The law sends us to the gospel, that we may be justified, and the gospel sends us to the law again to enquire what is our duty being justified.' 18 The Puritans would have no part with the view that advocates that a man may get to heaven no matter if he repents or not. It is not enough simply to have 'faith' in Jesus Christ unless that faith is accompanied by repentance. In order to avoid the charge of legalism in their use of the law in the Christian life, the Puritans knew how to discriminate between true Christians and hypocrites. The unrepentant, gospel-hardened sinner had to be warned, yet the people of God needed assurance. Assurance, the Puritans taught, is something the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of his people. It is never something to be given by preachers. Repentance is necessary, but Watson was always conscious of the presence of indwelling sin; the discontentment of Romans 7 and the spiritual fight of faith against the world, the flesh and the devil were never far away for Watson. And Christians need assurance just as unbelievers need warning. There is a whole universe of difference between 'living in sin' and 'falling into sin'.

'A hard heart', says Watson, 'is a receptacle for Satan. As God has two places to dwell in, heaven and a humble heart, so the devil has two places he dwells in, hell and a hard heart. It is not falling into water that drowns, but lying in it. It is not falling into sin that damns, but lying in it without repentance: "having their consciences seared with a hot iron" (1 Timothy 4:2).' 19 'In true repentance', he says elsewhere, 'the heart points directly to God as the needle to the North Pole.' 20 Watson meets the objections of a tender conscience: "'what if my sins are so great?" Do not make them greater by not repenting. Repentance unravels sin and makes it as if it had never been'. What if I relapse into sin after I have received forgiveness? 'But to the comfort of such as have relapsed into sin more than once, if they solemnly repent, a white flag of mercy shall be held forth to them. Christ commands us to forgive our trespassing brother seventy times seven in one day, in case he repents (Matthew 18:22). If the Lord bids us do it, will not he be much more ready to forgive upon our repentance? What is our forgiving mercy to his? This I speak', Watson adds, 'not to encourage any impenitent sinner, but to comfort a despondent sinner that thinks it is vain for him to repent and that he is excluded from mercy.' 21

The Puritans knew that the Bible was the unalterable rule of holiness and would never let themselves, or their hearers, forget it. Thomas Watson manages in this book on the doctrine of repentance to be conscientious without becoming obsessive, law-honouring without becoming legalistic. Anxious to know 'the true bounds of Christian freedom', he manages at the same time to avoid lurches into licence. Constant, disciplined meditation upon Scripture made Watson the great Puritan divine he was. The hallmark of his life and ministry was his service in the things of God. How greatly this emphasis is needed today!

Endnotes🔗

  1. ^ Watson, The Doctrine of Repentance (Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), p.59.
  2. ^ David Clarkson, Works, vol. 3 (Banner of Truth Trust, 1988), pp.193-194.
  3. ^  Thomas Watson, A Body of Divinity (Banner of Truth Trust, 1958), p.25.
  4. ^ Packer, Among God's Giants (Kingsway, 1991), p.149.
  5. ^ Watson, The Doctrine of Repentance, p.13.
  6. ^ Ibid., pp.36-37. 
  7. ^ Ibid., p.57.
  8. ^ Ibid., p.107.
  9. ^ Ibid., p.30.
  10. ^ Ibid., p.54.
  11. ^ Ibid., pp.7-8.
  12. ^ A Body of Divinity, p.154.
  13. ^ The Doctrine of Repentance, p.28.
  14. ^  Ibid., pp.89-90. 
  15. ^ Ibid., p.90.
  16. ^ Ibid., p.7.
  17. ^ Ibid., p.97.
  18. ^ Samuel Bolton, The True Bounds of Christian Freedom (Banner of Truth Trust, 1964), p.71.
  19. ^ Ibid., p.62.
  20. ^ Ibid., p.55.
  21. ^ Ibid., p.79.

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