John Sutcliff 

John Sutcliff (1752-1814) was born in Yorkshire. As a young man he was influenced by John Fawcett and Dan Taylor. He studied at Bristol Academy, 1772-1774, serving as a supply preacher at Trowbridge during part of his time at Bristol. After preaching at Shrewsbury for six months and Cannon Street, Birmingham, for another six months, he accepted the pastorate of the Baptist congregation at Olney early in 1775, remaining there until his death in 1815. Influenced, as were so many other English Baptist ministers at this time, by the writings of Jonathan Edwards, he reprinted Edwards’s Humble Attempt (Northampton, 1789) and led the effort to promote an evangelical Calvinism among the Particular Baptist churches of the Midlands. He was a founding member of the BMS Committee, which explains why so many of his letters in this collection involve BMS matters, especially the letters from Andrew Fuller and John Ryland, Jr. He had a large library of his own and was actively involved in promoting printed Baptist materials throughout the world. He kept a “residential academy” for many years at Olney, much like Fawcett’s in Hebden Bridge. See Sutcliff Centenary. Baptist Chapel, Olney, June 22nd, 1914, (Northampton: n.p., 1914; Michael A. G. Haykin, One Heart; idem, “‘A Habitation of God, through the Spirit’: John Sutcliff (1752-1814) and the Revitalization of the Calvinistic Baptists in the late Eighteenth Century,” Baptist Quarterly 34 (1991-1992): 304-319; idem, “John Sutcliff (1752-1814),” ed. Haykin, British Particular Baptists, 3:21-41; “Sutcliff’s Academy at Olney,” Baptist Quarterly 4 (1928-1929), 276-279; Hayden, Continuity and Crisis, 246.