The nature of Baptist identity has come to a place of critical importance in Baptist studies. What exactly constitutes a Baptist? Tom Nettles seeks to answer this fascinating question through examining the lives of some of the most high profile and influential Baptists in history. The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky has a library loaded with Baptist materials including a rich archival collection, which Tom found indispensable for this book. Nettles establishes a clearly identifiable profile of Baptists. He looks at many influential spokesmen for Baptist lives who embraced the bible as an unerring divine revelation. From John Spilsbury to William Carey we are taken on an enlightening journey through the origin and expansion of the Baptist Church. Tom Nettles has produced a book that is wonderfully informative and, through its profiles of God honouring historical figures, should serve us encouragement to all Christians today. Tom Nettles has produced a book that is wonderfully informative and, through its profiles of God honouring historical figures, should serve us encouragement to all Christians Today.

Tom Nettles has written this biography of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the famous 19th century preacher and writer. It covers his life, ministry and also his theology. He draws on material from The Sword and Trowel, the magazine of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, where C H Spurgeon ministered.

This volume of essays focuses on the thought of John Gill, the doyen of High Calvinism in the transatlantic Baptist community of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Among the topics covered are Gill's trinitarian theology, his soteriological views, his Baptist ecclesiology, and his use of Scripture. Other papers are more focused, examining, for instance, his clash with the Arminian Methodist leader John Wesley over the issues of predestination and election, a clash that decisively shaped Wesley's perspective on Calvinism.
The tercentennial of Gill's birth in 1997 is a fitting occasion to issue this study of a man whose systematic theology and exposition of the Old and New Testaments formed the mainstay of many eighteenth-century Baptist ministers' libraries and who has never been the subject of a major critical study.