On “Farewell Sunday” in August of 1662 countless Puritan “non-conformist” pastors delivered last sermons as a result of The Great Ejection. Thomas Watson, that rich and racy preacher, offered two farewell messages to the St. Stephen’s, Walbrook congregation. In the second he gave “twenty directions . . . as advice and counsel with you about your souls.” Here they are in brief. What a window into faithful ministry.

20 Directions to Church Members

1. Keep constant hours every day with God.
2. Get good books in your houses.
3. Have a care of your company.
4. Have a care whom you hear.
5. Follow after sincerity.
6. As you love your souls, be not strangers to yourselves.
7. Keep your spiritual watch.
8. You that are the people of God, often associate together.
9. Get your hearts screwed up above the world.
10. Trade much in the promises.
11. To all you that hear me, live in a calling.
12. Let me entreat you to join the first and second tables of the law together, piety to God, and equity to your neighbor.
13. Join the serpent and dove together, innocence and prudence.
14. Be more afraid of sin than of suffering.
15. Take heed of idolatry.
16. Think not the worse of godliness because it is reproached and persecuted.
17. Think not the better of sin because it is in fashion.
18. In the business of religion serve God with all your might.
19. Do all the good you can to others as long as you live.
20. Every day think upon eternity.

Read all this and more in Sermons of the Great Ejection.