The Godly Man's Picture - Part 2

This is part two of our series on Puritan divine Thomas Watson’s attributes of a godly man from his 1666 book, A Godly Man’s Picture Drawn With a Scripture Pencil. A godly man is:

1. A man who prizes Christ. “Put a glass under a still (water container) and it receives water out of the still, drop by drop,” Watson writes. “So those who are united to Christ have the dews and drops of his grace distilling on them. Well, then, may Christ be admired by all those who believe.”
2. A man who is an evangelical weeper. What is meant by ‘evangelical weeping?’ Watson says a man who weeps in an evangelical way sheds tears over indwelling sin, over clinging corruption, over the notion that he is not more holy, over God’s amazing love for him, because, in some sense, the sins he commits are worse than the sins of others. Watson calls it “sorrow of the soul.”
3. A man who loves the Word of God. Watson said a godly man loves: the counseling part of the Word, as it is a directory and rule of life, he loves the threatening part of the Word and the consolatory part of the Word—the promises.
4. A man who has the Spirit of God residing in him. “I conceive that the Spirit is in the godly, in whom he flows in measure,” Watson writes. “They have his presence and receive his sacred influences. When the sun comes into a room, it is not the body of the sun that is there but the beams that sparkle from it. Indeed, some divines have through that the godly have more than the influx of the Spirit, though to say how it is more is ineffable, and is fitter for some seraphic pen to describe than mine.”
5. A man of humility. “He is like the sun in the zenith, which when it is at the highest, shows lowest,” he writes. “St. Augustine calls humility the mother of the grace.” But Watson also warns of the existence of a false humility: “A man may be humbled and not humble. A sinner may be humbled by affliction. His condition is low but not his disposition. A godly man is not only humbled but humble. His heart is as low as his condition…A humble man is always preferring bills of indictment against himself. He complains, not of his condition, but of his heart.”
6. A man of prayer. “As soon as grace is poured in, prayer is poured out…Prayer is the soul’s traffic with heaven. God comes down to us by his Spirit, and we go up to him by prayer.”
7. A man of sincerity. In modern parlance, he is what he is. Watson writes, “A godly man is plain-hearted, having no subtle subterfuges. Religion is the livery a godly man wears and this livery is lined with sincerity.”
8. A heavenly man. “Heaven is in him before he is in heaven...A person may live in one place, yet belong to another…A godly man is a while in the world, but he belongs to the Jerusalem above. That is the place to which he aspires. Every day is Ascension Day with a believer.” He lines out six ways a man is to be heavenly: In his election, his disposition, his communication, his actions, his expectation and his conduct.
9. A zealous man. “Grace turns a saint into a seraph. It makes him burn in holy zeal. Zeal is a mixed affection, a compound of love and anger. It carries forth our love to God and anger against sin in the most intense manner.”

You can read the first part here . We'll conclude the series tomorrow.