It is not likely that he would write in support of Cardinal Beaton's policy, and the dialect is an exaggerated form of Latinized Middle Scots, differing materially from the language of the Compendious Book.

The earliest known edition of the Compendious Book of Psalms and Spiritual Songs (of which an unique copy is extant) dates back to 1567, though the contents were probably published in broad sheets during John Wedderburn's lifetime.

Francis Hyett's Florence (London, 1903) is more recent and compendious; the author is somewhat Medicean in his views, and frequently inaccurate.

The catalogue of his printed and published works is to be found in his Compendious Rehearsal, as well as in his letter to Archbishop Whitgift.

According to him, whatever inferences we make, certain or uncertain, are mere economies of thought, adapting ideas to sensations, and filling out the gaps of experience by ideas; whatever we infer, whether bodies, or molecules, or atoms, or space of more than three dimensions, are all without distinction equally provisional conceptions, things of thought; and " bodies or things are compendious mental symbols for groups of sensations - symbols which do not exist outside thought."