The Collected Edition · English Puritan · 1620–1686
The Complete Works of Thomas Watson in Modern English
Thomas Watson was among the most widely read of the English Puritans — preacher at St Stephen’s Walbrook, London, until the Act of Uniformity silenced him in 1662. This is his surviving body of work in 21 volumes, including A Body of Divinity, The Ten Commandments, The Beatitudes, and The Doctrine of Repentance — rewritten in modern English, every volume free to read online in full.
The centrepiece
The Body of Divinity Trilogy
Watson preached the Westminster Shorter Catechism through at St Stephen’s Walbrook and the sermons were gathered into three volumes. Together they became the standard popular exposition of the catechism for over two centuries.
The contents
All 21 volumes
Every volume is free to read online in full (PDF and EPUB included), and every book page carries a free sample of the text. The trilogy is above; the treatises, sermons, and posthumous collections follow.
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All Things for Good
Can God really bring good from tragedy, suffering, and sin? Watson shows how all things—even afflictions—work together for the good of those who love God.
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The Doctrine of Repentance
Watson's treatise on gospel repentance, built around the six ingredients he says it is compounded of — sight of sin, sorrow, confession, shame, hatred, and turning from it.
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The Godly Man's Picture
What does a true Christian look like? Watson paints a portrait of genuine godliness through 24 marks that distinguish real believers from mere professors.
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Heaven Taken by Storm
Watson's stirring call to spiritual earnestness. Based on Christ's words that "the violent take it by force," this work challenges believers to pursue God with passion.
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The Art of Divine Contentment
How to be content in any circumstance. Watson reveals the secret of satisfaction that doesn't depend on changing your situation but on changing your heart.
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The Beatitudes
Thomas Watson's 1660 sermons on the eight beatitudes of Matthew 5, read as the steps of a ladder to blessedness: poverty of spirit, mourning, meekness, hunger for righteousness, mercy, purity, peacemaking, and persecution.
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A Christian on the Mount
Watson's treatise on meditation, built on Psalm 1:2, distinguishing it from memory and from study across eighteen short chapters, followed by its companion piece, A Christian on Earth Still in Heaven.
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The Christian's Charter
A twenty-two chapter exposition of 1 Corinthians 3:21–23 — "all things are yours" — itemizing the world, life, death, things present, and things to come as the believer's.
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Religion Our True Interest
Twenty-two chapters on Malachi 3:16 — "they that feared the LORD spake often one to another" — written for a time of apostasy.
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The Mischief of Sin
Four chapters on Psalm 106:43 — "and were brought low for their iniquity" — on how sin brings both individuals and nations low.
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The Saint's Spiritual Delight
Watson on Psalm 1:2 — "But his delight is in the law of the Lord." Nine chapters on what that delight is, how it separates a child of God from a hypocrite, and how to come by it.
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A Plea for the Godly
Watson on Proverbs 12:26 — "The righteous is more excellent than his neighbour" — a defence of the godly against the scorn of their own age.
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The Lord's Supper
Watson's 1665 treatise on the sacrament — the institution opened, transubstantiation refuted, and five uses drawn from the Lord's Table.
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Select Sermons
Eleven sermons by Watson, including "The Pastor's Farewell," the valediction on Philippians 4:9 he preached to St Stephen's Walbrook before his ejection in 1662.
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Select Sermons of Thomas Watson, Volume 2
Five sermons, opening with "God's Anatomy upon Man's Heart" on Hebrews 4:13 — a fast-day sermon preached while England was still at war with itself.
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Occasional and Funeral Sermons
Thirteen sermons Watson preached on particular occasions, opening with "A Plea for Alms," a charity sermon dedicated to Sir Richard Chiverton, Lord Mayor of London.
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Watson's Remains
Seven sermons gathered after Watson's death, opening on Job 14:14 — "All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come."
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Watson's Gems
Short sayings drawn from across Watson's works, arranged under forty-five topics from Afflictions and Angels to Truth and the World.
The work itself
What modernizing actually means
The same passage from the preface to The Mischief of Sin, as it stands in the original printing and as it reads now. Watson’s argument is untouched; the marginal Latin is brought into the sentence, and the citations are set the way a reader expects them.
Not long since there was a complaint that the Springs grew low: Sure I am the floods of sin are risen, even to a Deluge. There is a Generation among us, of whom I may say as Oecumenius, they militate against Religion; they are so prodigiously prophane, that they esteem the Bible a Fable, and would jeer all Holiness out of the world. * Non percussit Ismael fratrem gladio, sed scommate. Calvin. The Prince of the Air, now worketh in the children of disobedience, Ephes. 2. 2. in our Saviours time, many mens Bodies were possessed with the Devil, but now their souls are possessed.
Not long ago there was a complaint that the springs ran low. I am certain the floods of sin have now risen to a deluge. There is a generation among us of whom I may say, as Oecumenius said, that they wage war against religion. They are so monstrously profane that they account the Bible a fable, and would jeer all holiness out of the world. As Calvin noted, Ishmael struck his brother not with a sword but with a sneer. The Prince of the Air now works in the children of disobedience (Eph 2:2). In our Savior’s time many men’s bodies were possessed by the devil, but now their souls are possessed.
About the collection
Why Watson is still read
Watson’s reputation rests on a single skill: he could take the systematic theology of the Westminster Standards and put it in language a London tradesman would follow on a Sunday morning. He was not an original theologian and did not claim to be. What he did was translate — and that is why his exposition of the Shorter Catechism outsold the work of subtler men for two hundred years.
The method is consistent across everything here. Watson takes one verse, states a doctrine from it, proves the doctrine, answers the objections a reasonable person would raise, and closes with uses — what to do about it. He builds by stacking numbered points, and almost every point carries an illustration drawn from trade, farming, medicine, the law courts, or the sea. It is the reason a 350-year-old sermon still moves at a readable pace.
The collection divides into three parts. The Body of Divinity trilogy covers the catechism entire. The practical treatises take up single subjects — contentment in The Art of Divine Contentment, meditation in A Christian on the Mount, spiritual earnestness in Heaven Taken by Storm. The sermon volumes gather what he preached at Walbrook and on public occasions, including the farewell sermon of 1662.
For a fuller account of his life, see the Thomas Watson author page.
Common questions
- Who was Thomas Watson?
- Thomas Watson was an English Puritan preacher and writer, born in 1620 and educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he took his BA in 1639 and his MA in 1642. He became rector of St Stephen's Walbrook in the City of London in 1646 and preached there for sixteen years. He was briefly imprisoned in 1651 for his part in Christopher Love's conspiracy to restore the monarchy, and was ejected from his living in 1662 under the Act of Uniformity. After the Declaration of Indulgence in 1672 he was licensed to preach again, sharing a lecture at Crosby Hall with Stephen Charnock. He died in 1686.
- What are Thomas Watson's best known books?
- His most widely read work is A Body of Divinity, an exposition of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which together with The Ten Commandments and The Lord's Prayer forms a three-volume set covering the whole catechism. Also widely read are All Things for Good, on Romans 8:28; The Doctrine of Repentance; The Godly Man's Picture, which sets out twenty-four marks of a genuine Christian; and The Beatitudes, his exposition of the Sermon on the Mount.
- Are these editions really free?
- Yes. Every volume is free to read online in full with a free account, and the PDF and EPUB come with it — no payment, no paywall. Each book page also carries a substantial free sample of the text so you can read before you download.
- How do these editions differ from the original text?
- Watson's argument and structure are preserved exactly; the language is what changes. Seventeenth-century spelling, punctuation, and sentence construction are brought into modern English, the Latin and Greek that Watson set in the margins is carried into the sentence in English, and scripture references are normalised to a modern form — "Ephes. 2. 2." becomes "Eph 2:2". Nothing is abridged or summarised.
- Why isn't Jerusalem's Glory included?
- Because we do not believe it is by this Thomas Watson. Jerusalem's Glory (1661) is signed "By Thomas Watson, a Lover of Peace" — a self-description the Walbrook minister never uses in any of the thirty other Watson texts in the surviving printed record, where he identifies himself by his charge. It shares a private symbolism with another 1661 "Lover of Peace" tract, The Witnesses Anatomiz'd, which was sold by the radical-sectarian bookseller Giles Calvert; and its subject, sectarian reunion, is not the practical divinity Watson wrote for twenty years. Some modern collections include it. We do not have the confidence to.
- Is the Body of Divinity trilogy complete here?
- Yes — all three volumes are available: A Body of Divinity, The Ten Commandments, and The Lord's Prayer. Watson's exposition of the Lord's Prayer covers the preface and six petitions and ends with the sixth, "Deliver us from evil"; no printing of the work contains a section on the closing doxology.
Why it costs nothing
Watson gave it away first
Watson published these sermons because the people who heard them asked for them in print. They have been reprinted, abridged, and re-set for three and a half centuries by people who wanted them read rather than owned.
We are keeping that going. Every volume here is free to read online in full, and every book page carries a free sample so you can read before you take a copy.