‘Waiting on the Spirit of Promise’ is a study of the life and ministry of Abraham Cheare (1626-1668), containing selections from Cheare’s works, and rescuing an important seventeenth-century English Baptist from obscurity. Cheare has been overshadowed byother more celebrated Baptist contemporaries, but as the pastor of the Particular Baptist work in Plymouth, Devon, Cheare played a key role in the advance of the Baptist cause in the West Country in the 1650s. His ‘Sighs for Sion’ is an excellent illustration of early Baptist piety. With the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Cheare, like many other Dissenters, suffered arrest for his refusal to give up preaching. Cheare’s prison writings reveal both a sturdy faith in God and a deep-seated piety. Despite the fact that he was incarcerated in a series of