About the Author

Publisher's Description

Thomas Watson’s book, A Body of Divinity is one of the first books published by the Banner of Truth Trust. This book has been one of the best sellers and consistently the most useful and influential of our publications. There are several reasons for this:

1. The subject of the book. It deals with the foremost doctrinal and experimental truths of the Christian Faith.
2.  The means of instruction used. It is based on the Westminster Assembly’s Shorter Catechism, in which the main principles of Christianity that lie scattered in the Scriptures are brought together and set forth in the form of question and answer. This Catechism is unsurpassed for its ‘terse exactitude of definition’ and ‘logical elaboration’ of the fundamentals.
3. The style of the author. Watson conveys his thorough doctrinal and experimental knowledge of the truth in such an original, concise, pithy, pungent, racy, rich and illustrative style that he is rightly regarded as the most readable of the Puritans.

Endorssement

~The Body of Practical Divinity~ is a great classic systematic theology of Reformed Protestantism. The author Thomas Watson was a Puritan divine and offers an erudite systematic theology for the Christian believer from a Reformed-Puritan perspective. The crux of the volume is soteriology (which is the doctrine of salvation according to Jesus Christ.) Not surprisingly, he makes it clear that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone. Watson is rigorously Scriptural in his exegesis, and he enunciates the textual meaning and gives substantive amplification to the Word of God. He explains the Doctrines of God, Divine Sovereignty, Salvation, Sin, and the Trinity with remarkable clarity. His thinking is sound and Scriptural. Puritan theology sets the diadem of our salvation on Christ, and Christ alone, and it is solely on the basis of his meritous work that we are saved. The body of the text is not at all archaic, as it has a fluid feel and is easy to read. The great Prince of Preachers, C.H. Spurgeon, opined of Watson's book, as being "one of the most precious of the peerless works of the Puritans." Soli Deo Gloria!