John Gill

John Gill was born on November 23, 1697, in Kettering, Northamptonshire, England. His father was a wool merchant and a deacon in the Baptist church of the town. As a boy, he showed a remarkable gift for study. He attended the grammar school in Kettering and was an eager student of Latin and Greek. At the age of eleven, he had mastered the classics so well that he was said to know most of the Latin authors. He was forced to leave school because a rule of the school required that all pupils attend the services of the Church of England, and his parents objected. He continued to study on his own, and he learned Hebrew.

He was converted in his youth and was baptized at the age of nineteen. He was called to the ministry and began to preach. In 1719, at the age of twenty-two, he was called to be pastor of the Baptist church at Horsleydown, in Southwark, London. It was a small and struggling congregation, but under his leadership it grew. He remained its pastor for more than fifty-one years, until his death. The church later moved to Carter Lane and was known as the Carter Lane church. It was the ancestor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, where Charles Spurgeon later preached.

He was a great scholar. He had a mastery of Hebrew, Greek and the rabbinic literature, and he devoted his life to the study of the Bible. He wrote an enormous work, An Exposition of the Old and New Testaments, which was published in nine large volumes between 1746 and 1763. It was a verse-by-verse commentary on the whole Bible, and it drew on the Jewish commentators as well as the church fathers. It was the first commentary on the whole Bible written by a Baptist, and it was used for generations. He also wrote A Body of Doctrinal Divinity and A Body of Practical Divinity, which set out his theology in full. His learning was so great that the University of Aberdeen gave him an honorary doctorate in 1748.

He was a Calvinist of a strict kind. He held that God's election is unconditional and that the gospel is not to be offered to all indiscriminately. He taught that the sinner is called to believe, but that the free offer of grace to the unconverted is not warranted by Scripture. This view, called High Calvinism, came to be known as Gillism, and it had a deep effect on the Baptists of his day. It discouraged evangelism, and the Baptist churches in the eighteenth century grew slowly. Later Baptists, such as Andrew Fuller and William Carey, took issue with his view and called for a more active approach to missions.

He was a plain and humble man, though he was not an eloquent preacher. His sermons were thoughtful and thorough. He was said to have been a gentle man, a faithful pastor and a good father. He cared for his flock and took an interest in the poor. He was well liked by his congregation. He was a man of great diligence. He published many works in addition to his commentaries and left an immense legacy of writing.

He died on October 14, 1771, in Camberwell, London, at the age of seventy-three. His influence continued among the Baptists. Charles Spurgeon, who was in his line of succession, honored him as a great scholar. His life shows that a man of deep learning can serve a church over a long time, and that a ministry of study may bear fruit in generations to come.