Gerald Priest on John Gill

In an article for the Detroit Baptist Theological Seminary Journal on Andrew Fuller's Response to the "Modern Question"—A Reappraisal of the Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, Dr. Gerald Priest writes:

What troubled Robert Hall and certainly Andrew Fuller was the fact that, for all his assertions of proclaiming the gospel to everyone, Gill undervalued the general call when insisting upon the effectual call. As E. F. Clipsham put it, “Gill...went to great lengths to explain away the meaning of ‘all’ wherever it occurs in connection with the universal proclamation of the gospel, and studiously avoided the direct commands and exhortations in the Bible [for all men] to repent and believe on Christ and be saved.” Since Gill believed that Christ died only for the elect, then the “all” of Scripture should be interpreted as all the elect (or those justified from eternity past), not all the world.

Gerald L. Priest, "Andrew Fuller's Response to the "Modern Question"—A Reappraisal of the Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation," DBSJ 6 (Fall 2001): 50.