How to Read Howie’s Memoirs, and Why They Remain Valuable Today
James Dodson
John Howie’s Memoirs should not be read merely as private devotional recollections, nor simply as an antiquarian curiosity attached to the better-known author of The Scots Worthies. They ought rather to be read as a rare window into the lived religion of the later Covenanter remnant: the religion of conscience, covenant, Scripture, household discipline, testimony-bearing, and death. In Howie, we do not merely see a man recording his feelings. We see a soul reasoning before God under the pressure of affliction, temptation, ecclesiastical defection, bodily weakness, family responsibility, and public covenant obligation.
The first rule for reading the Memoirs is that Howie’s religion is covenantal, not merely experiential. Modern readers may be tempted to classify the book as a specimen of “experimental religion,” and that is true as far as it goes. But it is not experimental religion detached from the public cause of Christ. Howie’s inward exercises are continually interpreted in relation to Scripture, vows, covenants, testimony, church communion, family duty, national defection, and the visible cause of Christ in Scotland. His fears and consolations are not free-floating religious impressions. They are the motions of a conscience bound to God’s revealed truth and to the covenanted attainments of the Reformation.
This is why Howie’s introspection, though sometimes severe, must not be dismissed as mere melancholy. He does, at points, almost drown in self-suspicion. He fears presumption; he fears that comforts may be delusions; he fears that sin has broken his frame and that death may overtake him before his case is clear. Yet even here, the governing movement of the soul is not despair but appeal. He flees to the Word, to the Psalms, to the blood of Christ, to the promises, to covenant mercy, and to the intercession of the Redeemer. His conscience is tender, perhaps at times excessively burdened, but it is not lawless. It does not invent its own religion. It submits its case to the Lord’s own Word.
The second rule is that the household portions of the Memoirs must be read as ecclesiastical material. Howie’s family exercises are not merely domestic devotions in the sentimental sense. They are household catechesis ordered toward visible profession. The questions proposed to his children before admission to the Lord’s table show a complete framework of Covenanter piety: belief in the Scriptures as the Word of God and the only infallible rule of faith and practice; confession of God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Ghost; conviction of sin and misery; approbation of the covenant of grace; personal avouching of God as portion, Christ as Surety and Redeemer, and the Spirit as Guide and Sanctifier; ownership of baptismal vows; admission to the Lord’s Supper; separation from evil company; and resolution to take up the cross and follow Christ.
That passage alone gives the Memoirs lasting value. It shows how the testimony was transmitted in a household. Covenant theology was not left in books, courts, or public declarations. It descended into the family. It shaped parental duty, communion preparation, catechesis, personal vows, and the moral formation of children. Howie’s household religion was therefore a nursery of visible church order. It was not a substitute for the church, but it prepared souls to stand visibly and intelligently within the church’s profession.
The third rule is that Howie must be read as a witness to the post-Revolution Covenanter conscience. The Memoirs show that the Revolution settlement was not received by the faithful remnant as the full restoration of the Covenanted Reformation. Howie’s concern is not a vague dissatisfaction with ministers or outward arrangements. He is troubled by defection from sworn attainments, by silence concerning public sins, by deficient testimony, and by the loss of the covenanted pattern of Reformation. He knows that ordinances and church privileges are precious; but he also knows that they must not be purchased at the expense of truth.
This principle is among the strongest in the book. Howie sees that communion, peace, and outward religious comfort are all desirable in their proper place. Yet they cannot be obtained by denying, concealing, or minimizing truth. The least denial of truth is, in principle, a denial of Him who is Truth. That does not mean that every defect immediately requires the same degree of separation; Howie is careful to weigh matters, pray over them, and consider the Lord’s direction. But he understands that visible communion must be governed by truth, not merely by convenience, respectability, affection, or desire for peace.
This makes the Memoirs valuable for reading later Covenanter history. They show what testimony-bearing meant when the age of public martyrdom had passed into a more obscure period of ecclesiastical trial. The question was no longer only whether one would die on a scaffold. The question was whether one would preserve the testimony amid weariness, reproach, domestic difficulty, bodily frailty, disputes among professors, and the temptation to rest in outward ordinances without the power of godliness. Howie’s Memoirs reveal the continuity between the martyr period and the remnant period: the outward circumstances changed, but the same cause of Christ remained.
The fourth rule is that the reader should attend to Howie’s theological discriminations. He is not merely an emotional or devotional writer. In the dispute concerning Mr. Steven, for example, Howie distinguishes moral necessity from natural or physical necessity in divine punishment. He grants that sin morally deserves punishment, but he resists the notion that God punishes sin as naturally as fire burns. That is an important theological distinction. It protects divine justice from being reduced to an impersonal mechanism. God’s justice is not a blind physical process. It is the holy, personal, moral judgment of the living God.
Likewise, when Howie speaks of Christ’s mediatorial power, covenant, testimony, repentance, sanctification, and public defection, he shows a mind trained by the older Reformed and Covenanter writers. He is not producing scholastic disputation, but he is thinking within a doctrinal world shaped by Scripture, the Confession, the Covenants, the martyrs, and the approved practical divines. The Memoirs therefore show how doctrine lived in the conscience of an ordinary but serious Covenanter.
The fifth rule is that Howie should be read with sympathy, but not without judgment. There are places where his introspection may seem excessive. His bodily afflictions, weakness, and melancholy appear to intensify his spiritual fears. A reader should not imitate every motion of his soul as though all were equally exemplary. Yet neither should one despise him for this. The very weakness of the man becomes part of the value of the book. The Memoirs show how grace works in a frail vessel. They teach that true religion does not require natural strength, confident temperament, or outward success. It requires cleaving to Christ, fleeing to the promises, submitting to Scripture, mourning over sin, and resolving to stand for truth.
This is one reason the book remains valuable today. Modern religion often mistakes ease for peace, sentiment for spirituality, and outward association for communion with Christ. Howie forces the reader back to more searching questions. Is my religion merely formal? Have I rested in outward privileges without the power of godliness? Have I sought peace at the expense of truth? Have I brought my family under the discipline of Scripture? Have I owned my baptismal and covenant obligations? Have I trembled at sin? Have I fled to Christ as my only righteousness and strength? Have I counted the cause of Christ dearer than reputation, comfort, or worldly advantage?
The Memoirs are also valuable because they restore the connection between personal piety and public testimony. In much modern evangelicalism, inward devotion and public faithfulness are severed. A man may be considered deeply spiritual while having little concern for the church’s public testimony, the terms of communion, the purity of worship, or the covenanted obligations of nations and churches. Howie knew no such division. For him, secret prayer, family worship, Psalm-singing, communion preparation, covenant renewal, and testimony against defection belonged to one life. The Christian was to be whole: before God in secret, before his family in duty, before the church in profession, and before the world in witness.
The book also teaches the value of the Psalms in experimental religion. Howie’s soul is repeatedly interpreted, steadied, reproved, and comforted by the Psalter. The Psalms are not ornaments to his devotion; they are the language of his case. He sings them in distress, in fear, in hope, in thanksgiving, in sickness, and in preparation for death. This shows the older Covenanter instinct: the Psalms are the church’s inspired vocabulary for the whole range of spiritual experience. They teach the believer how to complain lawfully, hope soberly, confess honestly, praise reverently, and die believingly.
Finally, Howie’s Memoirs are valuable because they teach the reader how to die. Much of the work is written under the shadow of death. Howie repeatedly considers whether he is prepared to depart, whether his sins are pardoned, whether Christ is his, whether his family is committed to God, and whether his testimony is clear. This is not morbid curiosity. It is Christian realism. The great question is not merely how to live comfortably, but how to live and die in Christ. Howie’s final concern is union with Christ, covenant mercy, forgiveness through the blood of the Redeemer, and admission into the heavenly Jerusalem, where all sighing and sorrow shall flee away.
Therefore, Howie’s Memoirs should be read slowly, devotionally, historically, and ecclesiastically. They should be read as the record of a conscience under covenant. They should be read alongside the history of the persecuted Covenanters, the Revolution settlement, the continuing testimony, and the older practical divines. They should be read not as a polished system, but as experimental Covenanter theology under pressure.
Their value today is precisely that they resist modern superficiality. They call the reader to seriousness without theatricality, to tenderness of conscience without antinomian softness, to public testimony without pride, to family religion without sentimentality, to ordinances without compromise, and to Christ without rival. In Howie, we see a weak man clinging to a strong Saviour; a private Christian burdened by public truth; a father bringing his household before God; a Covenanter refusing to buy peace by surrendering testimony; and a dying pilgrim looking beyond the present wilderness to Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, and Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant.