commentary

A Body of Practical Divinity

1692 · 101 entries

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By

Thomas Watson

Dates

first published 1692

Tradition

reformed, presbyterian

Also called

A Body of Divinity

Follows

A Body of Practical Divinity, Consisting of above One Hundred Seventy Six Sermons on the Lesser Catechism Composed by the Reverend Assembly of Divines at Westminster. With a Supplement of some Sermons on several Texts of Scripture, Thomas Parkhurst’s printing, 1692 (Burke Library, Union Theological Seminary) (London); Wing W1109, ESTC R32148 · the scan (PDF) , from ProQuest

Transcribed

From EEBO-TCP A65285Checked against a copy at ProQuest: every heading and every sermon’s first and last page, twenty pages drawn at random, and each prose part’s first and last page, word by word; the TCP’s I for the printing’s italic J throughout, by Claude, for cco3, 2026-10-29

License

Public domain

Notes

Thomas Watson (c. 1620–1686), ejected from St Stephen’s Walbrook in 1662, preached these sermons on the Shorter Catechism (its “Preliminary Discourse” announces the catechising “the next Lord’s Day”); they were printed after his death “from his own Hand-Writing”, with a testimony by William Lorimer and a recommendation signed by William Bates, John Howe and twenty-four other ministers, and a supplement of five sermons on other texts. Later printings divide it as A Body of Divinity, The Ten Commandments and The Lord’s Prayer. Each entry is one of its sermons as the printing sets it, its text Markdown, its margin notes footnotes; four (083–086) begin where the printing sets a catechism question in black letter in the middle of one. Its questions are the catechism’s it treats, by its subject: Watson prints the first twenty-one, numbered his own way, and few after; he treats no question 32, 91 or 107 (his Lord’s Prayer ends with the sixth petition). An entry the printing heads only with its text is titled by its running head. The front matter and the supplement are prose/; the title page, the index of matters and Parkhurst’s catalogue of books are left out. Imported from EEBO-TCP A65285 by scripts/import-tcp.mjs (--kind commentary --sermons), keeping its spelling and its marks for what it couldn’t read (•, 〈◊〉, 〈…〉, and 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 for Greek and Hebrew), but where the scan was read. EMENDATIONS.md gives the conventions (the TCP sets I for the printing’s italic J, here J) and every correction. The printing’s page numbers jump from 144 to 201 (printed “101”), 300 to 331, 544 to 801 and 880 to 965 with nothing wanting. The PDF is ProQuest’s scan of EEBO’s film, with ProQuest’s credit line taken off each page: the text was checked on it, and it is sharper than archive.org’s free scan of the same film (bim_early-english-books-1641-1700_a-body-of-practical-divi_watson-thomas_1692).

On

Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647)

Download

watson1692.json · 2.8 MB