Willison, John. An Example of Plain Catechising, upon the Assembly's Shorter Catechism. Pittsburgh: Published by Patterson & Hopkins. | S. Engles & Co. Printers, 1812. [12556]
Full brown leather, front board & ffep detached, rear board almost detached, spine chipped with loss, 7 x 4 1/4 inches. [i]-xii, [13]-331; text counted and complete. Page 238 is misnumbered as 382; pages are toned, some dark, some with dark stains - the title page presents the worst of the staining. Poor. Hardcover.
Title continues: Humbly Offered, As an help for instructing the Young and Ignorant in the knowledge of the Principles and Duties of the Christian Religion, with the grounds thereof, and that in a very comprehensive manner. With a Preface, briefly demonstrating the Truth of the Christian Revelation, and the Unreasonableness of Infidelity. By the Rev. Mr. John Willison, Minister of the Gospel in Dundee.
This book of Bible doctrine greatly expands the Westminster Shorter Catechism with each question of the Catechism having additional questions and answers to more firmly explain and impress upon the mind the truths that it teaches.
Rev. John Willison (1680-1750), influential evangelical minister of the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian), supported revivals & sympathetic to the Seceders.
"His devotional works were among the most widely read during the century; his support of and participation in the Cambuslang and Kilsyth revivals (which latter commenced after his sermon on the way back from Cambuslang) were regarded by many as a guarantee of their evangelical orthodoxy; and he launched a reasoned and systematic attack on the system of ecclesiastical patronage which he saw as leading to a corrupt ministry and the rise of those theological trends which have come to be known as Moderatism...Sympathetic to the Seceders and an admirer of their stern opposition to patronage, and commitment to scriptural principles, which he felt were being neglected in many quarters in the Established Church, he fought unsuccessfully for their restoration, though he felt their secession to be misguided...Willison's writings provide a major starting point for the understanding of the theological and spiritual preoccupations of evangelical thought in the later eighteenth-century Scottish church." - J. R. McIntosh, Dictionary of Scottish Church History & Theology.
