A glorious book (a golden book) that has to be realized

There is a book that is so good, like a masterwork by Bach or Mozart, that gets lost in the vast mix of Puritan works, and also is often described as simple, as in for beginners, but that is like saying Mozart's 41st symphony is for beginners, whatever that means.

I speak of Thomas Watson's A Body of Practical Divinity. It's made up of 3 vols. Body of Divinity, Lord's Prayer, and Ten Commandments. See excellent ebook editions of them from Monergism at the bottom of this page here.

They're all three linked at the bottom of that page. For an example read Watson describe the Kingdom of God in the book The Lord's Prayer. In the contents the link is: 'Secondly, The kingdom of heaven implies a glorious fruition of all good.' Read through that. Imagine if any other religious tradition had such a work (such a teaching!), imagine how it would be their golden book.

There truly are three unique folk classics of the Puritan era. I haven't seen this as clearly as lately.

1. Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyan
2. Human Nature In its Fourfold State - Thomas Boston
3. A Body of Practical Divinity - Thomas Watson

(The A.V. 1611 could be included in that, as a translation, it has 'folk' qualities as well, meaning, at the level of the people in tune with the seasonal and daily rhythms and activities of the natural world...that plainness and common-sense and deep, simple understanding, with not the absence of poetry and vision and power.)

This 'folk' quality of Watson's book is really what causes people to classify it differently from other doctrinal works. That 'simple' or beginner's work quality. Again, like saying a masterwork by Bach or Mozart is simple.