Abraham Booth

Booth, Abraham (1734-1806) was born at Blackwell, near Alfreton, Derbyshire, where he worked as a farm laborer throughout his youth. Though he never received a formal education, he acquired enough learning to open his own school at Sutton-in-Ashfield in 1758, shortly after his marriage. He had been baptized in 1755 and became associated with the Baptists in Nottinghamshire. He switched from an Arminian position to a strict Calvinistic one, and in 1768 published his famous work, The Reign of Grace. Shortly after this, the church at Little Prescot Street, Goodman’s Fields, London, called Booth to be their pastor, and he was ordained on 16 February 1769, remaining there until his death in 1806. Among his other published works are An Apology for the Baptists (1778), Paedobaptism Examined (1784), Essay on the Kingdom of Christ (1788), Commerce in the Human Species (1792), Glad Tidings to Perishing Sinners (1796), and Pastoral Cautions (1805). See Ernest A. Payne, “Abraham Booth, 1734-1806,” Baptist Quarterly 26 (1975-1976), 28-42; Robert W. Oliver, “Abraham Booth (1734-1806), in The British Particular Baptists, ed. Michael A. G. Haykin, 5 vols (Springfield, MO: Particular Baptist Press, 1998-2019), 2:31-55.