Oct 7, 2023

Thomas Watson

I stole a matchbox car from a store when I was a child. It’s one of my earliest memories of violating conscience. It brought me no pleasure to play with this pilfered car. Only when I secretly returned it to its rightful place did my conscience rest. When I admitted this theft in a sermon years ago, a mother told me later that I traumatized her son to imagine his pastor as a common criminal. Conscience is that inner voice that tells us when we have done something right or wrong.

If you have read other entries about Puritans in Prayers from the Cloud, Thomas Watson’s (1620-1686) story will sound familiar to you. It parallels accounts of other English Puritans kicked out of their churches for noncompliance with the Act of Uniformity of 1662. Their conscience forbade them to sign the edict, effectively banishing thousands of Puritan pastors from their churches. Puritans regarded the conscience as the God-shaped faculty in the heart that monitored people’s thoughts and behavior. One Puritan wrote, “Conscience is God’s deputy in the soul.” Another said, “The conscience is either the greatest friend or the greatest enemy in the world.” Puritans looked to Scripture as a trustworthy guide to direct the conscience.

In the preamble to the Presbyterian constitution, The Book of Order, are listed historic founding principles dating back to 1789. Consider what is written about the conscience, “God alone is Lord of the conscience and hath left it free, from the doctrines or commandments of men, which are, in anything, contrary to his Word.” Did you catch that? In the span of a single sentence, the constitution affirms God as Lord of our conscience, recognizes the importance of submitting our conscience to Scripture and validates that only God’s Word has the right to bind our conscience.

Thomas Watson prayed a remarkable prayer a month before his expulsion from his church. He didn’t manipulate his farewell prayer to deride his detractors. Instead, he invites God to search his own conscience in bringing him to true self-awareness:

O Lord, all our springs are in Thee. It is good for us to draw nigh
to thee through Jesus Christ.
Thou art all fullness,
the quintessence of all sweetness,
the center of all blessedness.
Thou art the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Thou art our light;
Thou givest us these blessed opportunities
of enjoying communion with thyself,
God blessed forever.

These mercies are forfeited mercies.
We have abused the blessing of thy house,
and we have grieved thy blessed Spirit.
Therefore, it is just with thee
to deprive us of these comforts,
and to make us know the worth
of these mercies by the want of them.

Lord, we desire to judge ourselves,
that we may not be condemned with the world.
Righteous art thou, O Lord,
and just in all thy judgments.
We confess we are unworthy
to have any converse with so holy a God.
We are polluted dust and ashes,
not worthy to tread thy courts
and it is of thy mercy that we are not consumed.
How often we pluck fruit from the forbidden tree!
We have sinned presumptuously,
against the clearest Light, the dearest love.
Always have we sinned…
Yet thou hast shown mercy to us…

Rev. Dr. Peter James served 42 years as the senior of Vienna Presbyterian Church in Vienna, VA — 21 years in the 20th century and 21 years in the 21st century. He retired in 2021 and now serves as Pastor-in-Residence at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

Even as a pastor, prayer came slowly to Pete. Read Pete’s story.