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| Charles Haddon Spurgeon |
https://www.facebook.com/sing.f.lau/posts/10215101875275752
November 25, 2019
Dr John Gill, D.D
Dr John Gill
by Charles Haddon Spurgeon, in his Commenting and Commentaries.
A very distinguished place is due to DR.
GILL.[8] Beyond all controversy, Gill was one of the most able Hebraists of his
day, and in other matters no mean proficient. When an opponent in controversy
had ventured to call him "a botcher in divinity", the good doctor,
being compelled to become a fool in glorying, gave such a list of his
attainments as must have covered his accuser with confusion. His great work on
the Holy Scriptures is greatly prized at the present day by the best
authorities, which is conclusive evidence of its value, since the set of the
current of theological thought is quite contrary to that of Dr. Gill.
No one in these days is likely to be censured
for his Arminianism, but most modern divines affect to sneer at anything a
little too highly Calvinistic: however, amid the decadence of his own rigid
system, and the disrepute of even more moderate Calvinism, Gill's laurels as an
expositor are still green. His ultraism is discarded, but his learning is
respected: the world and the church take leave to question his dogmatism, but
they both bow before his erudition. Probably no man since Gill's days has at
all equalled him in the matter of Rabbinical learning. Say what you will about
that lore, it has its value: of course, a man has to rake among perfect
dunghills and dust heaps, but there are a few jewels which the world could not
afford to miss.
Gill was a master cinder sifter among the
Targums, the Talmuds, the Mishna, and the Gemara. Richly did he deserve the
degree of which he said, "I never bought it, nor thought it, nor sought
it."
He was always at work; it is difficult to say
when he slept, for he wrote 10,000 folio pages of theology. The portrait of him
which belongs to this church, and hangs in my private vestry, and from which
all the published portraits have been engraved, represents him after an
interview with an Arminian gentleman, turning up his nose in a most expressive
manner, as if he could not endure even the smell of freewill. In some such a
vein he wrote his commentary.
He hunts Arminianism throughout the whole of
it. He is far from being so interesting and readable as Matthew Henry. He
delivered his comments to his people from Sabbath to Sabbath, hence their
peculiar mannerism. His frequent method of animad-version is, "This text
does not mean this", nobody ever thought it did; "It does not mean
that", only two or three heretics ever imagined it did; and again it does
not mean a third thing, or a fourth, or a fifth, or a sixth absurdity; but at
last he thinks it does mean so-and-so, and tells you so in a methodical, sermon
like manner.
This is an easy method, gentlemen, of filling
up the time, if you are ever short of heads for a sermon. Show your people
firstly, secondly, and thirdly, what the text does not mean, and then
afterwards you can go back and show them what it does mean. It may be thought,
however, that one such a teacher is enough, and that what was tolerated from a
learned doctor would be scouted in a student fresh from college.
For good, sound, massive, sober sense in
commenting, who can excel Gill? Very seldom does he allow himself to be run
away with by imagination, except now and then when he tries to open up a
parable, and finds a meaning in every circumstance and minute detail; or when
he falls upon a text which is not congenial with his creed, and hacks and hews
terribly to bring the word of God into a more systematic shape. Gill is the
Coryphaeus of hyper-Calvinism, but if his followers never went beyond their
master, they would not go very far astray.
+++++++++++
Taken from here:
http://www.romans45.org/spurgeon/misc/c&cl1.htm
