Common Weal Press: new books

Christian Economy, by William Perkins

2026-11-08T00:00:00Z

William Perkins wrote this short book on the Christian household in Latin; it was published in English in 1609, after his death, as Christian Oeconomie (“economy” then meant the running of a home).

It covers marriage, raising children and running a household, with the clear, numbered style that made Perkins so widely read.

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Of Temptation, by John Owen

2026-11-08T00:00:00Z

In the garden of Gethsemane Jesus told his sleepy disciples, “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation.” Owen asks what it means to “enter into” temptation, and how anyone can avoid it.

Temptation, he says, is less about one dramatic moment than a slow drift: an opportunity, a mood, a little self-confidence. He shows how to notice it early and what to do when you do. A short book and a companion to The Mortification of Sin.

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A Divine Cordial, by Thomas Watson

2026-11-08T00:00:00Z

Thomas Watson wrote this in 1663, the year after he was put out of his London pulpit with some two thousand other ministers. As Paul wrote letters when prison kept him from preaching, he says, he hoped to be useful by writing: to make the godly joyful, and to show them that their crosses would be turned into blessings.

He shows how the best things (God's attributes, promises and mercies) and the worst (affliction, temptation, desertion, even sin) work together for the good of those who love God and are called, and then what it is to love God and to be called. Short chapters, homely pictures and a great deal of comfort. It is better known today as All Things for Good.

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The Secret Key of Heaven, by Thomas Brooks

2026-11-08T00:00:00Z

First printed as The Privie Key of Heaven, this is Thomas Brooks on closet prayer: prayer alone with God, as Jesus taught in Matthew 6:6, “enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret.” Brooks treats it as a duty every Christian owes, not an extra for the especially devout.

He gives twenty reasons for it, among them that Christ himself prayed alone, that in secret we may open our hearts freely to God, and that secret duties have an open reward. Then he answers the usual objections, gives counsel on how to pray in the closet (often, with the heart, and without trusting in the duty itself), and warns against what crowds it out: sloth, worldly business and secret sins.

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Of Domestical Duties, by William Gouge

2026-11-03T00:00:00Z

William Gouge was preaching through Paul's letter to the Ephesians when he came to its words about husbands and wives, children and parents, servants and masters. He took them one relationship at a time and asked: what does each owe the other, day to day?

The result is one of the fullest books ever written on Christian family life, covering choosing a spouse, love in marriage, raising and educating children, and the duties of servants and masters to one another. It is long, so this edition comes in four volumes; each one stands on its own.

It is also a window into everyday life in 1620s London, with its households, apprentices and servants.

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The Death of Death in the Death of Christ, by John Owen

2026-11-03T00:00:00Z

When John Owen wrote this book, in his early thirties, many in England were teaching that Christ died for every person alike, and that whether anyone is saved depends finally on them. Owen held that this made what Christ purchased “not salvation, but a salvability,” where Scripture shows the cross accomplishing what the Father and the Son had agreed upon from eternity.

So he goes back to the Bible and asks what the Father, the Son and the Spirit meant to do at the cross, and what Christ's death really won: not a chance of salvation for everyone, but redemption, reconciliation and new life for all his people. Then he answers, one by one, every argument and text brought against him. It is long and close, and it has been the classic statement of its side of the question ever since.

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The Glorious Feast of the Gospel, by Richard Sibbes

2026-11-03T00:00:00Z

In Isaiah 25 the prophet describes a great feast on a mountain, with the richest food and the finest wine, where God swallows up death for ever and wipes away every tear. Richard Sibbes preached on these few verses and saw in them the whole good news of the gospel.

There are nine sermons, taking the verses in order: the feast itself, which is Christ and all his benefits, and how to come to it hungry; the veil over the nations taken away; death swallowed up; the tears and the reproach God's people bear now, both to be ended; and the waiting people who say at last, “Lo, this is our God.” Sibbes sees the promise begun at Christ's first coming and finished at the last day.

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Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices, by Thomas Brooks

2026-11-03T00:00:00Z

Brooks lists the “devices” that tempt people: making sin look small, showing the bait and hiding the hook, telling us we can repent later, pointing us to the bad examples of good people. For each one he gives several “remedies,” short and memorable answers.

Brooks works from Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 2:11, “we are not ignorant of his devices.” He takes the devices in groups: those that draw us into sin, those that keep us from holy duties, and those that keep believers in sadness and doubt. Then come the snares laid for different kinds of people, from the great and the learned to the ignorant, and an appendix on the devices that keep sinners from coming to Christ at all. He ends with ten helps against all of them.

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The Mortification of Sin, by John Owen

2026-11-03T00:00:00Z

“If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” John Owen preached on this one verse, Romans 8:13, to the students of Oxford, and turned the sermons into a short book about the daily fight with sin.

Owen is honest that sin can't simply be managed or hidden: it has to be put to death, and only the Spirit of God can do it. He is just as practical about how: watching for the warning signs, refusing to make peace with it, and filling the mind with Christ. It is the most read of all his books.

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Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, by John Bunyan

2026-11-03T00:00:00Z

Before he wrote The Pilgrim's Progress, Bunyan wrote down his own spiritual journey. It is not a tidy success story. He describes years of fear, temptation and voices in his head, of reading a Bible verse one day and feeling hope, and the next day being sure he was lost.

Readers who have struggled with anxiety or doubt often find this book unexpectedly modern. It is short, numbered in small paragraphs, and easy to read a little at a time.

Bunyan kept adding to the book for the rest of his life. This edition follows his own words as he left them in the last edition printed before he died (1688), checked against the first (1666), in modern spelling. The cover shows a dream he describes: poor Christian women sitting in the sun on a mountain, a wall between him and them, and one narrow gap in it, which he says was Christ.

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The Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan

2026-11-03T00:00:00Z

A man named Christian, weighed down by a heavy burden on his back, sets out on foot for the Celestial City. On the way he sinks in the Slough of Despond, fights the monster Apollyon, is put on trial at Vanity Fair, and is locked in the dungeon of Giant Despair.

Bunyan wrote much of it in prison. It is an adventure story, an allegory of the Christian life, and one of the most influential books ever written in English. This edition includes both parts: Christian's journey, and the later journey of his wife Christiana and their children.

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The 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith, by The Particular Baptists

2026-11-03T00:00:00Z

A confession of faith is a summary of what a church believes, written down so anyone can read it. This one covers the Christian faith in thirty-two short chapters: Scripture, God, creation, Christ, salvation, the Christian life, the church and the last things.

First printed in 1677 and publicly signed in 1689, it is still the confession of many Baptist churches around the world. It is compact, clear and easy to look things up in.

This edition also includes two catechisms, short questions and answers for learning the faith: the Baptist Catechism (1695) and An Orthodox Catechism (1680).

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The Anatomy of Simon Magus, by Anonymous

2026-11-03T00:00:00Z

In Acts 8, Simon Magus, a magician in Samaria, offered the apostles money for the power to give the Holy Spirit, and Peter told him that the gift of God could not be bought. The church named the sin after him: simony, making merchandise of the free gifts of God, whether a post in the church, the Word, the sacraments or ordination.

In England in 1700 such things were still bought and sold, church posts above all, though few called it simony. This anonymous author wrote to lay the sin open: what it is, the ways it is committed, why it does such harm, and what the Bible and the law say about it. This edition adds translations of the Latin, a foreword, and a guide to the abbreviations.

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The Crook in the Lot, by Thomas Boston

2026-11-03T00:00:00Z

“Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked?” Thomas Boston took this verse from Ecclesiastes 7:13 and wrote about the “crooks” in everyone's lot: illness, loss, disappointment, the things in life that won't come straight however hard we try.

He wrote from experience, after years of family illness and the deaths of several of his children. The book is gentle and honest, and has comforted readers in hard times for nearly three hundred years.

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Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, by Jonathan Edwards

2026-11-03T00:00:00Z

On a summer day in 1741 Jonathan Edwards stood up in a church in Enfield, Connecticut, and preached this sermon. Before he had finished, people were crying out so loudly that he had to stop.

It is remembered for its vivid images: a spider held over a fire, a flood held back by a dam, a bow bent with the arrow aimed at the heart. Edwards used them to wake his hearers to their danger, and then to plead with them: Christ “has thrown the door of mercy wide open,” and now is the time to come in.

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All of Grace, by Charles Spurgeon

2026-11-03T00:00:00Z

“The object of this book is the salvation of the reader,” Spurgeon begins. It does not come to make a demand, he says, but to bring something: the good news that God justifies the ungodly, freely, by grace through faith in Christ, who is both just and the justifier.

Then he takes up what holds seekers back, one short chapter at a time: What is faith? What if I can do nothing? How does repentance come? What if I believe and then fall away? He answers each plainly from Scripture, and the whole book can be read in an evening or two.

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