Two hundred years ago this year, Andrew Fuller (1754-1815), who normally preached in an expository manner, had his series of sermons on Genesis printed by his friend and fellow pastor, John Webster Morris for the London publisher J. Burditt. I have had a first edition of volume I for a few months now and serendipitously found just recently a first edition of volume II for sale at Aaron’s Books in Salem, Ohio (www.aaronsbooks.com). It just arrived in the post and is in fairly good shape, though it needs rebound. Glanced through it and read a little from Fuller’s sermon on Genesis 45, where Joseph makes himself known to his brethren. At one point Fuller draws an analogy between Joseph’s telling his brothers not to grieve or be angry with themselves (verse 4-8) and “the case of a sinner on Christ’s first manifesting himself to his soul.” Fuller notes that:
“the more he views the doctrine of the cross, in which God hath glorified himself, and saved a lost world, by those very means which were intended for evil by his murderers, the better it will be with him. He shall not be able to think sin on this account a less, but a greater evil; and yet he shall be so armed against despondency, as even to rejoice in what God hath wrought, while he trembles in thinking of the evils from which he has escaped.” [Expository Discourses on the Book of Genesis, interspersed with Practical Reflections (London: J. Burditt, 1806), II, 203].
Contrary to the thinking of some, Fuller was a crucientric theologian, of which the above extract is a good example.