This biographical information about Abraham Booth (1734-1806) comes from the Baptist History Homepage:
Rev. Abraham Booth was born in Blackwell, Derbyshire, England, May 20,
1734. At ten years of age he was first made to feel a deep concern for
his salvation. At twenty-one he was baptized among the General or
Arminian Baptists. They encouraged him to preach among them. While
engaged in ministering to a church at Kirbywood House he at first was a
bitter enemy of "personal election and particular redemption," and he
printed a poem "in reproach" of these doctrines. When it pleased God to
open his eyes to see the whole truth he began to plan a work that would
commend the doctrines of grace, and when he was about thirty-three years
old he published his "Reign of Grace." Speaking of his Arminian
poem, he says, "As a poem, if considered in a critical light, it is
despicable; if in a theological view, detestable; as it is an impotent
attack on the honor of divine grace, in respect to its glorious
freeness, and bold opposition to the sovereignty of God, and as such I
renounce it."
His "Reign of Grace" was published through the persuasions
of Mr. Venn, a distinguished Episcopal clergyman, who took copies
sufficient to enable the author to pay the printer: The publication of
this work was the cause of Mr. Booth's removal to London. He was
ordained pastor of the Prescott Street church in that city Feb. 16,
1769. In this field of labor Mr. Booth was eminently useful, and
obtained a celebrity which will never perish.
He was a man of vast reading in his own language and in Latin, and
he was justly reputed one of the most learned men of his day. His
friend Dr. Newman says, "As a divine he was a star of the first
magnitude, and one of the brightest ornaments of the Baptist
denomination to which he belonged. Firm in his attachment to his
religious principles, he despised the popular cant about charity, and
cultivated genuine candor, which is alike remote from the laxity of
latitudinarians and the censoriousness of bigots." His "Reign of Grace," and indeed all his works, will continue to instruct and delight the Christian world till the end of time.
He was instrumental in founding Stepney College, which has been such a blessing to the British Baptist churches.
Mr. Booth was a man of strict integrity, of great devoutness, and
of a large knowledge of the divine Word. Few men have served the cause
of God by their writings, sermons, counsels, and example more
effectively than Abraham Booth. He died January 27, 1806, in his
seventy-third year, after a pastorate of thirty-seven years in London.
He was the author of eight works, besides a number of printed sermons;
some of these works have passed through many editions.
The following is taken from Booth's most popular work, The Reign of Grace:
" … that Sovereign Being who has an absolute right to do what he will
with his own, having determined to create man and to leave him to the
freedom of his own will, foreseeing he would certainly fall; of his
free distinguishing love, chose a certain number out of the apostate
race of Adam, and ordained them to a participation of grace here, and to
the enjoyment of glory hereafter” (Abraham Booth, The Reign Of Grace).
Says Booth: “…and to leave him to the freedom of his own will, foreseeing he would certainly fall.” That’s in agreement with the Wicked Westminster Confession:
" ... being left to the liberty of their own will” (WCF 4.2).
Yea, indeed, Booth (and the WCF framers) perversely labored under the
delusion that the Sovereign Creator “unGods” Himself by “sovereignly”
leaving the creature to his own sovereignty.
“Oh your perversity! Shall the former be counted as the
clay? For shall the work of its maker say, He did not make me? Or shall
the thing formed say to him who formed it, He does not understand?”
(Isaiah 29:16).
Abraham Booth (and the WCF men) have confounded Potter and
clay; Creator and creature. For in their scheme the “Sovereign Clay” is the ultimate
metaphysical cause of its own fall, and the ultimate creator and former
of its own demise.
