Thomas Watson
English Puritan minister ejected from his parish in 1662.
Thomas Watson was an English Puritan minister, educated at Cambridge, who served as rector of St. Stephen's, Walbrook in London from 1646 until the Great Ejection of 1662, when more than two thousand Puritan ministers were forced out of the Church of England for refusing to conform to the restored Anglican liturgy under Charles II. Watson continued to preach privately, often in danger of arrest. His major works, including A Body of Divinity (published posthumously in 1692), have remained in print and in use across the Reformed and Calvinist traditions for over three hundred years. Watson's prayers reflect the Puritan instinct for theological precision combined with deep personal devotion: careful in doctrine, fervent in spirit, and unflinching in self-examination before God.
This is the traditional attribution; modern scholarship is divided. See the prayer page for details.