John Gill (1697–1771) was a Baptist pastor at Horselydown (also spelled "Horse-lie-down")/Goat Yard Baptist Church in London. Because of his parents' Nonconformity (they were part of those English that would not conform to the laws of the Church of England), his formal education was cut short at a young age. However, he was so in love with learning that he taught himself through books to acquire a greater knowledge than most people in his time. Horselydown, of which he took over the pastorate in 1719, had previously been pastored by Benjamin Keach (Feb. 29, 1640–1704). Benjamin Keach was a notable Baptist during the second half of the seventeenth century and had been involved in two major controversies. First, he was engaged regularly in debates with the "Baxterians" whom he and most other Puritans considered Arminians. Some of his most substantial works were on the eternal Covenant of Grace. Second, Keach was convinced by Scripture that "manmade" hymns should be sung in the worship services (i.e. churches shouldn't exclusively sing Psalms). Further, Benjamin Keach was one of the men who called together the General Assembly of 1689, where the Second London Baptist Confession was formally adopted by the Particular Baptists.
Following in those shoes would be a daunting task, but John Gill was the right man to do so. In his years as pastor at Horselydown, John Gill wrote a masterful commentary and engaged in crucial work to keep Baptists orthodox while the rest of Europe seemed to be taken by Enlightenment thought. John Gill is still the only man in the history of the Christian church to have written a commentary on every verse in the Bible, and in it you see keen engagement with not only Reformed Christian thought but patristic and Jewish thought as well.
At the end of his life (in 1770), John Gill finally got around to writing a systematic theology. He called it, as many others did in his time a Body of Divinity. It exists in two parts, as A Body of Doctrinal Divinity and A Body of Practical Divinity. In this work, Gill shows his mastery as a Christian theologian, organizing and executing the work in a roughly similar manner to the Protestant Scholastics before him. I have not been able to find someone in the Particular Baptist tradition to have written such a substantial systematic theology (Dagg's Manual of Theology is about half the length of Gill's work, and Boyce's Abstract of Systematic Theology is shorter still; more recent Baptists who have written Systematics are usually demonstrably outside the Particular Baptist tradition).
Sometime following John Gill, the church was renamed "New Park Street Chapel" and in the 1850's, a young Baptist pastor, Charles Haddon Spurgeon took over the pulpit. It was renamed the Metropolitan Tabernacle, and today a faithful preaching ministry remains in pastor Peter Masters.
For the foreseeable future (perhaps a few years), I will be working through Gill's Body of Divinity chapter by chapter, and I will be recording myself doing an "expositional reading," or "exegetical reading," to share on YouTube. If you would like to follow along, you may read a digital version at CCEL here. You can purchase the Logos version here. You can purchase a complete set of his works (commentaries, Body of Divinity, and Cause of God and Truth), or any part of that here. You can also buy Body of Divinity here or here. I will be posting my videos on this page below.
Body of Divinity
Doctrinal
Book 1
Of the Being of God: Video Outline
Of the Holy Scriptures:
1. Divine Authority: Video
2. Perfection: Video
3. Perspicuity: Video
4. Necessity: Video