Westminster Abbey, London · forwarded to Parliament 22 October 1647 · approved by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in July 1648 · 196 questions.

The neglected one. Most Presbyterians can recite the first question of the Shorter Catechism; comparatively few have read the Larger through. That is a pity, because Schaff's judgment on it is not extravagant: a masterpiece of catechetical skill, superior to any similar work, setting out a complete system of divinity in popular form.¹

Where the Shorter compresses, the Larger expands. It asks the same first question and gives essentially the same answer, then spends nearly twice as many questions doing what the Shorter had no room for — above all in its treatment of the Ten Commandments, which is the fullest and most searching in any confessional document in the English language.

The Making of It

When the Long Parliament summoned the Westminster Assembly in 1643, it asked for a directory for catechizing alongside the Confession of Faith. Herbert Palmer produced a first draft. Robert Baillie and the other Scottish commissioners found it disappointing, and a committee was formed in December 1643 to start again.

The work went slowly, and in January 1647 the Assembly made the decision that produced the two books we have: one catechism could not serve both a minister in a pulpit and a child at a kitchen table. The divines also resolved to build the catechism on the Confession they had just completed rather than on the Apostles' Creed, which is why the Larger reads as systematic theology rather than as an expanded creed.

Through 1647 the Assembly went through it question by question. It was forwarded to Parliament on 22 October, a month before the Shorter followed.

Anthony Tuckney

Schaff attributes the Larger Catechism chiefly to Anthony Tuckney, Professor of Divinity and Vice-Chancellor at Cambridge, and Master of Emmanuel College. Tuckney had succeeded John Cotton at Boston in Lincolnshire, and he was among the ablest of the divines — the man to whom the Assembly turned when a piece of work had to be done properly.

He drew on the catechetical literature already in use: James Ussher's Body of Divinity, and probably the compendium of John Wolleb of Basel. That inheritance shows in the Larger's confidence. It is not an experiment; it is the distillation of a century of Reformed catechizing by a man who had done a great deal of it himself.

The Shape of the Work

The division is the same as the Shorter's, and the same as the Confession's underlying logic:

The first part moves from the being and decrees of God through creation, providence, the covenant of works, the fall, sin and misery, the covenant of grace, the person of the Mediator and his estates of humiliation and exaltation, effectual calling, justification, adoption, sanctification, and the communion in glory the church enjoys with Christ now, at death, and at the resurrection.

The second part opens with the moral law, works through the Decalogue at length, treats the aggravations of sin and what every sin deserves, and then turns to faith, repentance, and the outward means of grace — the Word read and preached, the sacraments, and prayer — closing with the Lord's Prayer petition by petition.

The Exposition of the Commandments

This is the glory of the book, and the reason to own it even if you use the Shorter for teaching.

The Larger sets out eight rules for interpreting the moral law before it begins, and then takes each commandment in turn, asking two questions of each: what duties are required, and what sins are forbidden. The answers are long, densely scriptural, and uncomfortably specific.

The result is an exposition that refuses every escape route. The sixth commandment requires not merely that we abstain from killing but that we preserve life — our own and our neighbour's — by patient bearing, forgiveness, comfort to the distressed, and protection of the innocent, and it forbids sinful anger, envy, and the neglect of lawful means for preserving life. The eighth commandment reaches to idleness, wastefulness, oppressive contracts, and being uncharitable in judgments about another's estate. The ninth requires the loving of a good name, the defence of the innocent, and a charitable construction of a neighbour's words and deeds, and forbids the receiving of an evil report as much as the spreading of one.

No Christian reads these questions with composure. That is exactly what they were written to accomplish: the Larger Catechism uses the law in its first and third uses at once, driving the reader to Christ and then showing him the shape of gratitude. Nothing in Puritan literature searches the conscience more thoroughly, and the later Puritan practical writers — Watson, Flavel, and Baxter among them — are working in a field this catechism had already ploughed.

Preparing for the Lord's Table

The other passage that has done lasting good is the treatment of the sacraments, and particularly the questions on how a believer should prepare to receive the Lord's Supper, how he should conduct himself at the table, and what he should do afterward. The catechism also addresses the person who comes to the table and finds no comfort there, telling him not to stay away but to bewail his unbelief and press forward.

Those questions have been the backbone of communion preparation in Presbyterian churches for centuries, and they are the reason many pastors who catechize children on the Shorter preach the Larger to adults. They also contain some of the warmest pastoral writing the Assembly produced — which is worth saying, because the Larger has an undeserved reputation for coldness.

Schaff's Verdict, and a Fair Reply

Schaff praised the Larger Catechism generously and then delivered a criticism that has followed it ever since. It is over-minute, he said, and loses itself in a wilderness of details.

He is not wrong about the density. Question 145, on the sins forbidden in the ninth commandment, is a single paragraph of extraordinary length. Nobody memorises this book, and it was never meant to be memorised.

But the criticism assumes the wrong purpose. The Larger is not a failed Shorter. It is a minister's instrument, written so that a pastor preaching through the commandments would have the whole field mapped before him, and so that a serious Christian could find where a particular duty is treated and follow the proofs. Judged as a reference work for teaching — which is what the Church of Scotland approved it as — the detail is the point rather than the fault.

What is fair in Schaff's complaint is that the Larger has been read less because of it, and that the loss falls where the church can least afford it: in the practical application of the law to ordinary life, which is precisely what the Larger does better than anything else in print.

Historic Significance

It is a doctrinal standard of Presbyterian churches worldwide. Approved by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in July 1648, ratified by the Scottish Parliament, and carried with Presbyterianism across the world, it stands alongside the Confession and the Shorter Catechism in the constitutions of Presbyterian bodies to this day.

It contains the fullest confessional exposition of the moral law in English. No other Reformation or post-Reformation standard treats the Ten Commandments at this depth. For any pastor preaching the Decalogue, it remains the first place to look.

It shaped Puritan practical divinity. The tradition of searching, applicatory preaching that runs through Watson, Flavel, Baxter, and Owen has its confessional counterpart here, and the later devotional literature is unintelligible without it.

It is the interpretive key to the Shorter. Where a Shorter answer is compressed to the point of obscurity, the Larger almost always says the same thing at length. Anyone teaching the Shorter should keep the Larger open beside it.

Resources for Study

Catechisms