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Blacksmith, A. John Witherspoon, D.D. A letter from…to the ministers and elders of the Church of Scotland…L. 1759. — William Cushing, Initials and Pseudonyms: A Dictionary of Literary Disguises (1885), Vol. 1, p. 36.
Before John Witherspoon came to America to serve as President of Princeton, and before he signed the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation, Witherspoon served as a minister of the Church of Scotland. In 1759, while serving as the pastor of Laigh Kirk, Paisley, he published a work under a pseudonym, A.T., supposedly a blacksmith, aimed at reforming contemporary worship: A Letter From a Blacksmith to the Ministers and Elders of the Church of Scotland. Interestingly, the anonymous but learned blacksmith with a heartful desire to see reform in the Church of Scotland references the Ecclesiastical Characteristics, which Witherspoon himself authored in 1753.
The work challenges officers of the church to amend the manner of worship in regards to defects in the public reading of the Scriptures, singing of Psalms, the manner of the administration of the Lord’s Supper, prayer, and preaching. He aims to show that such worship as was achieved by the Reformers had degenerated in the author’s day, and also that set forms of public prayer, which he argues were used by John Knox and others, would be more helpful than the extemporaneous prayers then currently employed.
Witherspoon’s Letter From a Blacksmith has recently been added to Log College Press. It is an intriguing read, especially knowing who the author was - a minister, not a blacksmith, who was in fact, writing to his colleagues. Witherspoon also later served as the convening Moderator of the 1789 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, which adopted a revised Directory of Worship. Take time to explore this fascinating early work by Witherspoon here.
As noted in a later (June 8, 2021) blog post - Postscript on Witherspoon:
Last month we published a blog post on “John Witherspoon’s Letter From a Blacksmith.” An alert reader reached out to us to let us know that the attribution of Witherspoon as the author of this anonymously-published 1759 letter is disputed and far from clear. As a result of our friend’s helpful information, and following further research, we have removed that letter from Witherspoon’s page. It is unknown for certain who wrote it. But in the meantime, we have also added many more works by Witherspoon, including the preface to the Bible noted above. Thank you to our friend for reaching out to help us clarify this point.
