Author: Rippon, John
Genre: Biography
Tags: Baptist / Baptists
Series:
Rick Shrader‘s Review:
Biographies of good men are always a rich find in used bookstores. This is a reprint of the biography of John Gill (1697-1771), written by his successor, John Rippon. Both men pastored the London church that would become known by a later successor, Charles Spurgeon. Gill was one of those voluminous writers and the first Baptist to put a systematic theology in print, Body of Divinity. “Formulas and articles of faith, creeds, confessions, catechisms, and summaries of divine truths, are greatly decried in our age; and yet, what art or science soever but has been reduced to a system? . . . . And why should Divinity, the most noble science, be without a system?” He was a strict Calvinist, then known as “Particular” Baptists, while standing firm for believer’s baptism and local church communion. His father was an English “Dissenter” (separating from the Church of England) and so was Gill as well as Rippon. They are both buried in Bunhill Fields, still known as “The Dissenter’s Graveyard” (where one can still visit today and see their markers), along with other Baptists such as John Bunyan.