The Incomparableness of God

George Swinnock is one of the easiest Puritan authors to read. He is theological yet his doctrine is expressed in vivid fashion and, while he is practical, his counsel is marked by a keen sensitivity to the doctrines taught in Scripture. Thomas Manton commended his work as coming ‘from one both of a good head and heart.’ In this exposition of Psalm 89:6, which looks at the incomparable being, attributes, works, and word of God, Swinnock is not content to let the truth lie on the surface of the mind. He drives it home to the heart, using powerful arguments, colourful illustrations, and personal applications. His great desire is for the reader to come to know, enjoy and love the incomparable God of the Bible. ‘He who knows God aright is fully satisfied in him; when he once drinks of the “fountain of living waters,” he thirsts no more after other objects.’

George Swinnock was born in Maidstone, Kent in 1627, and having lost his father while a little boy. He was brought up in the home of his uncle Robert Swinnock, sometime mayor of Maidstone, in an environment saturated in the Puritan tradition of prayer and family worship. After graduation from Cambridge he remained as chaplain at New College until his appointment as a Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford in 1648. Two years later he became Vicar of Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire where he served until 1660 when he was appointed Vicar of Great Kimble in Buckinghamshire.

Deprived of his living in the Great Ejection of 1662, for the next decade Swinnock served as chaplain in the family of Richard Hampden of Great Hampden in Buckinghamshire. Following the Declaration of Indulgence he returned, in 1672, to minister in his home town of Maidstone, where he died in November 1673.