Baptist HistoryLesson 11

Decline and Dr. Gill

1689 Glorious Revolution

Act of Toleration

Challenges to Religion Overall

A. Deism

Deism:The view that God created the universe but has not been involved with it after finishing creation

B. Latitudinarian Theology

Reason coupled with the Holy Spirit is sufficient for all religious activity

Decline of General Baptists

Introverted and petty concerns

Unpaid and untrained ministry

SocinianismSocinianism:

The view of Faustus Socinus (1539-1604) that denied the divinity of Christ and the penal-substitution view of the atonement

Salters Hall Debate (1719)

Socinianism/Unitarianism/Arianism

DISSENT WAS FACING A CRISES

Decline of Particular Baptists

“Had matters gone on but for a few more years, the Baptists would have become a perfect dunghill in society” Andrew Fuller

220 churches in 1700-1710 150 churches in 1750!

Undue inward focus

Churches excessively focused on the maintenance of their congregational life M A G Haykin

“a garden enclosed” Song of Solomon 4:12

Controversies over more or less Minor Issues

1. Singing!

2. Closed verses open membership & communion

“ We…are not in full accord among ourselves.”

Negative attitudes toward the Evangelical Revival

Opposition to ‘Enthusiasm’

Three Prominent Particular Baptists of the 18th Century

John Gill (1697-1771)

Andrew Fuller(1754-1815)

William Carey(1761-1834)

b. Nov. 23,1697 Kettering/Midlands

Converted age 12

Baptized Nov 1, 1716

1718 married Elizabeth Negus (d. 1764)

1719 Horselydowns, Southwark, London

“My eminent predecessor, Dr. Gill, was told, by a certain member of his congregation who ought to have known better, that, if he published his book, The Cause of God and Truth, he would lose some of his best friends, and that his income would fall off. The doctor said, ‘I can afford to be poor, but I cannot afford to injure my conscience;’ and he has left his mantle as well as his chair in our vestry.”

MANTLE Controversy

The Cause of God and Truth (1735-38)

Part One: answers to Whitby’s misuse of 60 scriptures

Part Two: positive presentations of 62 scriptures affirming the doctrines of grace

Part Three: Defense of doctrines in respect to Whitby’s arguments

Part Four: review Patristic writers (pre-Augustinian)

Wednesday evening lectures at Great Eastcheap Hall (1729-1756)

A Treatise on the Doctrine of the Trinity (1731)

Emphasis on confession

Wrote exposition of every verse in the bible!

“He was always at work; it is difficult to know when he slept, for he wrote 10,000 folio pages of theology” CHS

CHAIR

1647 DD from University of Aberdeen

PULPIT

Gill was a Baptist but not a sectarian

Contributions of Gill:

Active confrontation of doctrinal infidelity

Exposed anti-supernaturalism of the latitudinarian party

Maintained issues of sin and its condemnation and corruption and the necessity and efficacy of grace in an age of relativism

Was Gill a Hyper Calvinists?

[Hyper-Calvinism] “is that school of supralapsarian 'five-point' Calvinism which so stressesthe sovereignty of God by over-emphasizing the secret over the revealed will of God andeternity over time, that it minimizes the responsibility of sinners, notably with respect tothe denial of the use of the word "offer" in relation to the preaching of the gospel; thusit undermines the universal duty of sinners to believe savingly in the Lord Jesus with theassurance that Christ actually died for them; and it encourages introspection in thesearch to know whether or not one is elect.”

1) Eternal justification – because God has already chosen who will be saved, thenlogically they are already justified from before the foundation of the world.

2) Rejection of moral responsibility – because sinners are totally depraved, they have no real moral freedom and are thus not responsible to repent and believe in the gospel.

3) Denial of the free offer of the gospel – because the non-elect cannot believe inChrist, there is no obligation to call upon all people to repent of their sins andtrust Christ for their salvation

4) Requirement of a “warrant” – because only the elect will believe, they must have a “warrant” or conviction that they are indeed among the elect before they have a right to trust Christ.

5) Denial of the universal love of God – because God hates sin, and the non-elect are hopelessly and permanently lost in sin, God hates the non-elect and only shows love to his elect.