Sutcliffe's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Joseph Sutcliffe (1762–1856) was born at Baildon in Yorkshire and became a Methodist preacher as a young man. John Wesley himself appointed him to the Redruth circuit in Cornwall in 1786, and two years later Sutcliffe carried Methodism to the Scilly Isles. He was a lifelong student and a prolific writer, and he lived to ninety-four. The commentary was the labor of his old age: he compiled it from decades of study notes and published it in London in 1835, in his seventy-fourth year.

The title page promises "copious notes, theological, historical, and critical; with improvements and reflections at the end of each chapter," and that is what the reader gets. Sutcliffe does not comment on every verse. He picks the verses that need explanation, gives them a note that is often surprisingly full, and then closes each chapter with reflections that turn its teaching toward the reader's own heart and conduct. The SwordSearcher module covers all sixty-six books in about 7,300 entries; since the notes are selective, the commentary panel's next and previous entry buttons are the natural way to move through them.

His address to the reader, written as he finished the work, is worth quoting:

Standing now on the verge of a protracted life, when the opinions of men fade away as the declining shadow on the dial, the truths of this blessed book constitute my only hope and confidence. I do more than believe these truths. I have long tested and proved them a sufficient support, under all the vicissitudes of life, and often in the more searching light of an approaching eternity. The recondite studies of the critic and the commentator are nothing in comparison of that eternal life which the scriptures reveal; and which the Holy Spirit, ever answering to the word of God, opens as a fountain of living water in the soul of the believer.

His note on the first beatitude shows the warmth of the whole:

Blessed are the poor in spirit. These characters are justly noticed first, because they most of all feel their need of a Saviour. They renounce their sins, lay their boasting in the dust, and come as mendicants to the house of mercy. Here the rich man identifies himself with the poor, with the most abject and weak, and the learned man leaves the pride of science behind. They renounce all confidence in an arm of flesh, in vows and resolutions. These are the men who are heirs of promises, who experience an instantaneous conversion, and rush into the kingdom of heaven by the violence of faith and prayer.

Sutcliffe stands in the Wesleyan tradition with Wesley, Clarke, Benson, and Coke, all of whom are in the SwordSearcher library, but he is less known than any of them, and readers who discover him usually wonder why.