William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament

Expository Notes, with Practical Observations, on the New Testament was written by William Burkitt (1650–1703), vicar of Dedham in Essex. The notes on the Gospels were published in 1700 and the rest of the New Testament in 1703, the year he died. The work stayed in print for two centuries; C. H. Spurgeon called it a "goodly volume" and recommended its "attentive perusal."

Burkitt was a working pastor, and his commentary reads like one. He rarely stops to argue about the Greek. He walks through a passage saying, in effect, "observe this, and note that," and turns each observation toward the conscience of the reader. The opening of his note on John 3:16:

Here observe, 1. The original source and fountain of man's salvation; and that is, God's free and undeserved, his great and wonderful love. God so loved the world; he doth not say how much, but leaves it to our most solemn raised thoughts; it is rather to be conceived than declared; and admired rather than conceived.... Observe, 2. The greatness of the gift by which God evidenced and demonstrated the greatness of his love to a lost world. He gave his only begotten Son: that is, he delivered him out of his own bosom and everlasting embraces. Now this will appear a stupendous expression of God's love, if we consider that God gave him who was not only the greatest, but the dearest person to him in the world, even his own Son: that he gave him for sinners; that he gave him for a world of sinners; that he gave him up to become a man for sinners; that he gave him up to be a sacrifice for the sin of sinners.

Burkitt usually treats a passage as a whole rather than commenting on every verse separately, so each note is attached to the verse where that section of his exposition begins, and the commentary panel's next and previous entry buttons move through them in order. The SwordSearcher module covers all twenty-seven New Testament books in more than 3,200 entries. It is a good companion to a heavier commentary: read Gill or Poole for the exegesis, then Burkitt for the application.

By William Burkitt. Expository Notes on the New Testament, 1703.