Celebrating Andrew Fuller's 259th Birthday

Today is Andrew Fuller's 259th birthday. Yesterday, a group of Southern Seminary students and alumni associated with the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at Southern gathered with the Center's Director, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin to commemorate Fuller's birthday with a special lunch. We had great food and fellowship. No doubt Fuller and his friends (men such as John Sutcliff, William Carey, Samuel Pearce, John Ryland, Jr., and Robert Hall, Jr.) enjoyed similar fellowship two hundred years ago. The topics of discussion included this year's annual conference (scheduled for September) on Fuller and His Controversies (speakers to include Paul Helm, Mark Jones, Nathan Finn, and Tom Nettles) and the Andrew Fuller Works Project (for which there is exciting progress being made). And, of course, we had cake to celebrate Fuller's birthday!

You can celebrate Fuller's birthday today by familiarizing yourself with the content of this website. You should find plenty to keep you busy today and beyond. Sorry, no cake provided!

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin. 

On writing history

Trying to write the history of the modern day is extremely difficult: the closeness of the events distorts one’s vision and then there is the overwhelming amount of sources. Robert Louis Stevenson’s observation is surely right: “The obscurest epoch is today” (cited Charles Nicholl, Traces Remain: Essays and Explorations [London: Penguin Books, 2011], xvii). A few years ago, the renowned English historian Linda Colley suggested the best century—she called it “God’s century”—to study was the 18^th century (David Snowman, “Linda Colley”, History Today, 53, no.1 [January 2003], 18). The sources for this period are abundant but not so much as to overwhelm the researcher. Of course, anyone who spends an enormous amount of time in Andrew Fuller must be biased and it didn’t take much to convince me Colley was spot-on.

Recommending Priscilla Wong on Anne Steele

In September of 2011, with the kind help of Rev. Malcolm Watts, I made the trek on a rainy Sunday from Salisbury, England, to the nearby village of Broughton, Hampshire. The latter is a village situated roughly mid-way between Salisbury and Winchester. I was looking for a house, a chapel, and a grave. All were associated with Anne Steele (1717–78), the daughter of William Steele, the pastor of the Calvinistic Baptist chapel in Broughton. We soon found the Baptist chapel in Broughton easily enough. Sadly, it has been closed. The house where she lived, known as “Grandfathers,” in Rookery Lane, was more difficult to find, but eventually it was located. Her grave took even longer, as it is to be found in the Anglican parish church—somewhat unusual as she was a Baptist. Anne was converted in 1732 and baptized the same year. She grew to be a woman of deep piety, genuine cheerfulness and blessed with a mind hungry for knowledge. She never married, although there were two proposals of marriage—one from none other than the Baptist pastor and hymn-writer Benjamin Beddome (1717–95). Anne, however, made a conscious choice to remain single.

Anne’s singleness gave her the time to devote herself to poetry and hymn-writing, a gift with which the Lord had richly blessed her. About ten years before her death, sixty-two of her hymns were published in a Baptist hymnal entitled A Collection of Hymns Adapted to Public Worship (1769), whose editors were John Ash and Caleb Evans. This hymnal gave her hymns a wide circulation throughout Baptist circles, and, in time, her hymns became as well known in Baptist circles and beyond as those of Isaac Watts, John Newton, or William Cowper. They played a part in revitalizing areas of the Calvinistic Baptist cause throughout England.

In the past few areas a number of studies of Steele have appeared, of which the latest is Priscilla Wong’s Anne Steele and her Spiritual Vision (Reformation Heritage Books, 2012). This is a slim volume, but it provides the interested reader with a great overview of some of the central spiritual themes of Anne’s hymns. Warmly recommended.

Another New Book by Dr. Haykin: Joy Unspeakable and Full of Glory: the Piety of Samuel and Sarah Pearce

Joy Unspeakable and Full of Glory: the Piety of Samuel and Sarah Pearce (Joshua Press, 2012). Pearce was described by his friend Andrew Fuller as another Brainerd. He was one of the intimate circle of friends that included Fuller, John Sutcliff and William Carey. This book examines the piety of Samuel and his wife Sarah through their letters.

From the Publisher: Joshua Press

Classics of Reformed spirituality series

Series editor: Michael A.G. Haykin

Samuel Pearce, a young eighteenth-century English pastor, was described by his friend and biographer Andrew Fuller as “another Brainerd”—a referenceto the celebrated American missionary David Brainerd. Pastor of Cannon Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, England, during the tumultuous 1790s, and a close friend of pioneer missionary William Carey, Pearce played a key role in the early days of the Baptist Missionary Society. In the providence of God he died at just thirty-three, but in the eyes of many of his contemporaries, he seemed to have condensed a lifetime of holy and joyful ministry into a single decade.

His marriage to Sarah Hopkins was one of deep love and mutual respect, and she joined him in his passion for the salvation of sinners—both at home and abroad. Through excerpts from Samuel and Sarah’s letters and writings, we are given a window into their rich spiritual life and living piety.

SPECS

• ISBN 978-1894400480
• Binding Paperback
• Page count 248 (i-xviii + 230)
• Width 5.5"
• Height 8.5"
• Spine .625"

Posted by Steve Weaver, Research Assistant to the Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies, Dr. Michael A.G. Haykin.

Samuel Davies on friendship

In his State of Religion among The Protestant Dissenters in Virginia (Boston, 1751), Samuel Davies helps us understand what friendship meant for some eighteenth-century Evangelicals. He is talking about the aim of this tract, and what he will and will not communicate to his readers. He notes: “I have always tho’t it an Instance of Imprudence pregnant with mischievous Consequences, when Persons in such Cases unbosom themselves to Mankind in general, with the unguarded liberties of intimate Friendship.” (p.4). How did Samuel Davies understand friendship? It was a context in which “intimate” friends could share completely and fully with one another—unbosoming themselves to one another with complete liberty. But such was not for public consumption. It occurs to me that, there is wisdom here for how one ought to conduct oneself with regard to social media.

The seminary and piety: a surrejoinder

If we define a faithful minister of the Word along the lines of Acts 6, a man devoted to the Word and prayer, it seems to me that in the twentieth century faithful orthodox seminaries have done fairly well in training men in one half of this equation: the Word. But what of the other? Well, I think many leaders in former generations expected these things to be caught by osmosis even though Jesus responded positively to the disciples’ request that he teach them how to pray. Spirituality needs to be “taught” and handed on. And while all professors in a seminary need to approach their specific subjects with an answerable spiritual frame, it is not wrong for some to focus on spirituality. Given the fact that spirituality and spiritual formation are increasingly huge engagements for both our larger cultural “moment” and within the boundaries of the Church, it is not unrealistic to ask certain men to specialize in the praxis of spirituality and the history of biblical spirituality.

As an historian, I feel the latter is very important: during the course of the twentieth century for a variety of reasons many of those who loved the Scriptures as the inerrant Word of God and faithfully upheld biblical orthodoxy failed to pass on the rich piety of their forebears in the Reformation, Puritan, Pietist and early Evangelical traditions. And surely this is one of the reasons why certain communities within the broad stream of twentieth-century English-speaking Evangelicalism became enamoured of the Spirit and talked as if they were the first to discover him since the Pentecost: they looked around and saw a tradition that seemed to have little place for piety, experience, and dare I say it, rapture (no I am not talking about an eschatological item!). Incidentally, here is where a man whom Carl has been writing about in recent days, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, is so helpful: his balance of Word and Spirit is admirable (re other matters Carl has raised about the Doctor, this is not the place to go into those, though I agree with Carl that the recent collection of essays on the Doctor is by and large a welcome addition to the books on that remarkable servant of God).

Maybe, I need to take up Carl’s offer and we can do a book together on this subject of the seminary and piety—and maybe Dr Lucas, if he is so inclined, could also be involved!

Baptists and knowing the times

For Baptists, faithfulness to the Gospel in England during the period from 1660 to 1688 meant outright conflict with the Anglican Church and inevitably persecution and imprisonment for Baptist leaders. Not surprisingly, this produced a legacy of animosity between the two bodies of churches: to the Baptists, the Church of England was a false church; to the Anglicans, Baptist congregations were guilty of the sin of schism. Fifty years after the Act of Toleration, when revival began to come to the Church of England, Baptists understandably viewed things through the prism of their history of dealings with the Anglicans and either acted as if the revival was a “flash in the pan,” as we say, or rejected it out of hand. Far too many Baptists sought to hold the line against the revival, and one of the results was hyper-Calvinism, and Andrew Fuller’s famous quip that the Calvinistic Baptist denomination would have become “a very dunghill in society” (Works [1845], III, 478) if God had not brought renewal into their ranks. Nota bene: this revival of the Baptists did not take place till the 1780s, a full fifty years after the revival began in Anglican ranks.

There is a tremendous lesson in all of this: the form that our loyalty to the Gospel takes can never be divorced from the historical circumstances in which we find ourselves and thus we need to be astute as possible in “knowing the times.”

William Carey and William Ward, and being indebted to the Moravians

At time it appears that the debate about whether or not William Carey is rightly called the Father of the modern missionary movement is a seemingly endless palaver: of course, anybody who has read anything about the eighteenth-century awakening knows the Moravians were there first. But it was Carey’s name that was remembered through the long century that followed. Yet, it should never be forgot—though one fears many of the Victorian admirers of the English Baptist did forget—that Carey and his colleagues knew the extent of their debt to the Moravians. As William Ward exclaimed in 1801, after reading some Moravian missionary journals: “Thank you, Moravians! Ye have done me good. If I am ever a missionary worth a straw, I shall owe it to you, under our Saviour.” (Periodical Accounts, 2 [Clipstone, 1801], no.VII, 5).

Fuller's memoirs of Pearce a demonstration of an Edwardsean principle

If, as Jonathan Edwards maintained in his Religious Affections (1746), “the essence of all true religion lies in holy love,” then Andrew Fuller’s Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel Pearce, A.M. (1800) is a biographical demonstration of this proposition, for, as Fuller asserted, “the governing principle in Mr. Pearce, beyond all doubt, was holy love.”

Two Quotes from Oliver Hart

Two quotes from Oliver Hart (1723–95), the first Baptist theologian of the South, that deeply resonate with me:

 “Grant, O Lord!... [w]hen I go to thy house to speak for thee, may I always go full fraught with things divine, and be enabled faithfully and feelingly to dispense the word of life.... Teach me to study thy glory in all I do.” (Oliver Hart, Diary, entry for August 5, 1754)

“If I had not been willing to endure the scoff of the world, I should never have made an open profession of the religion of Jesus; much less should I have become a preacher of his much-despised gospel.” (Oliver Hart, Dancing Exploded [1778])

Being defined by Benjamin Beddome

From the first time that he preached at the gathering of the Midland Association of Baptist churches in the 1740s, Benjamin Beddome was active till 1789. But he only appears to have written the Circular Letter once, and that was in 1765. The “masthead” that usually encapsulated the confession of the Association was replaced by a unique element that year which seems to have come from Beddome’s pen. Beddome identified himself and his fellow Baptists as those “maintaining the doctrines of free grace, in opposition to Arminianism and Socinianism: and the necessity of good works, in opposition to Libertinism and real Antinomianism.” There is more that needs to be said, of course, on other occasions, but this is very nice and succinct. Who are we? We are those who maintain the doctrines of free grace and affirm the necessity of good works. The phrase “the necessity of good works” coming hard on the heels of the statement “doctrines of free grace” obviously qualifies the term “necessity”: necessary proof of true conversion but not needed for justification.

Is the study of Andrew Fuller and Fullerism worthwhile?

Why devote a significant amount of one’s academic career to focus on a figure, namely, Andrew Fuller, who is nowhere near as well known as say, Athanasius, Anselm, Calvin, Owen of Edwards? Is it worth doing? A comment by the great historical theologian Geoffrey Bromiley has never left me in the many years since I read it: As a Christian academic, pour your energy into what is worthwhile. Is the study of Fuller and Fullerism worthwhile? The unequivocal answer is yes! Fuller exemplifies for me the best in Baptist thought and piety. He was rigorous in defence of the Christian faith and an unashamed Baptist (he did, after all, argue for a closed communion over against his close friends William Carey and William Ward). He knew that piety was the vital fire to ignite the coals of doctrine. His love for his family and friends was remarkable: Carey’s three words when he heard of his death sum it all up, “I loved him,” he said. He was catholic and reformed in the best sense of those terms, and could well be described as a reformed catholic theologian, as Owen and Benjamin Keach have recently been so described. He was the main disseminator of Edwardsean theology in the UK in the nineteenth century, and true to his mentor, Edwards, passionately missional. Little wonder, Spurgeon rightly commented to his son that Fuller was the greatest theologian the Baptists had in the nineteenth century.

Did he get everything right? No. But that does not diminish from his greatness. Spending time elucidating his thought is time indeed well spent.

Why I love Pearce, Carey, Fuller, and their friends

Why do I love Samuel Pearce and William Carey and Andrew Fuller? For the very same reason that William Ward did:

“I cannot describe to you what pleasure I feel in communion with brethren Pearce, Fuller, and the Northamptonshire ministers in general; I love them, not only because of their views of the gospel, but on account of their being thoroughly given up, in heart and soul to Jesus Christ, and to promote the eternal welfare of their fellow creatures.”

More on Beddome

I hope to teach a doctoral course on the piety of Benjamin Beddome this fall. Here is the syllabus course description. Would appreciate prayer that the course would both inform and inspire:

“This course entails an advanced study in the history of piety in the English Particular Baptist community during the “long” eighteenth century (1688–1815). The special focus of the study is the life, ministry, and written corpus of Benjamin Beddome (1717–1795), pastor of the Baptist cause in Bourton-on-the-Water from 1740 till his death. His piety will be examined via his pastoral ministry, catechism, hymns, and sermons. The main goal of the course is to deepen the student’s ability to understand historic Baptist piety in situ and as a vehicle of spiritual and ecclesial ressourcement.”

William Vidler, eighteenth-century Universalist

Just read F.W. Butt-Thompson’s study of William Vidler (1758–1816), a nemesis of Andrew Fuller, and by successive degrees a Calvinistic Baptist who turned Universalist and then Unitarian. His church, Butt-Thompson tells us, eventually became “an Ethical Society without any distinct Christian bias” [Transactions of the Baptist Historical Society 1 (1908), 42–55, quote at page 54]. I am looking forward to Chris Chun’s treatment of the controversy between Vidler and Fuller—that has so much contemporary significance—at ETS this November in San Francisco.

Newton on doing controversy--needed now as much as ever

Over at Tom Hicks' blog, Life in Christ,he cites some portions of a John Newton letter regarding controversy. Am always amazed at that saint's wisdom! No wonder he is well described as the letter writer par excellence of the Great Awakening. See here: http://lifeinchrist-tom.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-should-we-treat-our-opponents-in.html?spref=fb and follow the link to the whole letter here on the OPC website: http://www.opc.org/nh.html?article_id=217. We live in perilous days when there be dragons abroad, and it is so easy for the snarkiness latent in some of our Evangelical tradition to emerge when confronting these dragons. I deem Newton's letter a sane corrective.

The "AnaBaptist" meeting-house in Charleston

This past week my wife and I visited Charleston, South Carolina, for the third time. It is a city that we love. I was speaking on the 400^th anniversary of the KJB at Charleston Southern University, their Staley Lectures. It was a great honour to be there, to speak on the KJB, and renew old friendships, with Dr Peter Beck, and make new ones, with the brothers in the Religion Dept. especially. Among the places we visited was the Charleston Museum, where they had an exhibit for the sesquicentennial of the Civil War. A number of things caught my attention: a collection of snuff boxes reminded me of the one that Andrew Fuller passed around at the founding of the Baptist Missionary Society to collect monies for that; George Washington’s baptismal cup; and a confederate soldier’s uniform in which you could see the bullet hole that killed the wearer when he was literally shot through the heart by a sniper.

There was also a map entitled “A plan of Charles Town from a Survey of Edw^d Crisp Esq in 1704.” On the map there was a building, marked S, which designated the locale of what was called the “AnaBaptist” meeting-house. This was, of course, the first building of what is now the First Baptist, the mother church of the SBC.

There was no indication of the religious affiliation of Crisp. But it was probably not Baptist. Rarely did the Baptists term themselves Anabaptists. They did not wish to be identified with those denominated by that term in the 16^th century. Nor did they admit to what the term designated: they were not re-baptizers, for they believed that anything but believers’ baptism by immersion was not a true baptism.

Baptist ministers in the 18th century: a further reflection

Standing at the far left of the picture of the Baptist ministers we have been considering is Samuel Pearce (1766-99), one of my Baptist heroes. Immediately to his right is William Steadman (1764-1837), who played a central role in Baptist renewal in the North of England. Steadman far outlived Pearce, but the two had been close friends during their time together at Bristol Baptist Academy, where they both studied in the late 1780s. Whoever drew this picture must have known of their friendship for their being placed together is not fortuitous. It corresponds to two other groups of friends that we will consider at a later point. Pearce was widely known to be a friend of Andrew Fuller and John Ryland, both sitting in the picture, but the friendship with Steadman was not as widely known, which makes this point quite interesting.

Baptist Ministers in the 18th Century: ruminations on a picture

(Click on photo to enlarge)

This is quite a well-known picture that depicts many of the luminaries of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth- century English Baptist community. Recently, Cody McNutt, a PhD student at SBTS, pointed out to me the central place held by Robert Hall, Jr (1764-1831) in this picture. Cody is doing a much-needed thesis on Hall and that is why his attention was drawn to Hall's place in the picture.

The seated figures in the front row--(from l. to r.) William Carey, Joseph Kinghorn, John Ryland, Jr., Andrew Fuller, and John Foster--were all remarkable figures, but the creator of this portrait seems to have wanted to highlight Hall. He is standing in a posture that surely bespeaks the preacher with a Bible in his right hand. And if the Baptists of that era were about anything it was preaching. As a means of grace, it was second to none as a way of communicating God's will and presence. All of the men in the picture were preachers (except for Foster, who tried to preach but failed miserably in it--his forte was the written essay), why highlight Hall in this regard? Does it reveal the conviction that Hall represents the cream of Baptist preaching? There is no doubt, for many of that era, Hall was the greatest of a great generation of preachers.

Kinghorn also has a book, probably a Bible, but by having him seated it seems he has been depicted in a more prayerful, meditative pose. This depiction of Kinghorn is dependent on the A. Robertson painting of Kinghorn (1813). This painting was popularized through an engraving by the engraver W. Bond. And upon close inspection, Dan Taylor (directly behind Hall and the only bewigged figure in the picture--also one of only two General Baptists, the other is J.G. Pike, on Taylor's left) is also holding a book--probably a Bible? But one has to look very closely to see it. He is definitely overshadowed by Hall.

This is a fascinating picture and a tremendous window into Baptist thinking of that day. Thinking about Hall's place in this picture has sparked further thoughts about the figures in this picture, which I hope to share later.

Caleb Evans and being a good historian

I first came across the name of Caleb Evans around 1977–78 when I was studying for my comprehensive exams for my Th.D. at the University of Toronto. In Church History at that time we were given 100 questions, in four groups of 25 questions apiece, covering the entire range of Church History. We prepared ourselves on five out of each category, thus twenty and then eight of these were chosen for written exams and also, if need be, oral exams.

One of the questions I was studying had to do with historiography. And it was while preparing for it that I came across this statement by the Welsh Baptist leader Caleb Evans (1737–91)[1]: “Every Christian ought to be a good historian.”[2] I forget now where I found it—it was not a Baptist work, I know that—but I have never forgotten this statement. It is so good and so true. It was not for another ten years or so that I discovered anything more about who Evans was. He is probably mostly remembered today as the key Baptist leader who "crossed swords" with John Wesley over the American Revolution. Evans' critique of Wesley drew responses from two key Methodist lieutenants, John Fletcher and Thomas Olivers. But I will ever remember Evans for this statement about history!

Before making this statement, Evans says this about the purpose of history: “The study of History is one of the most improving as well as entertaining studies, the human mind can be engaged in. It extends our views, elevates our minds, blots out our narrow prejudices, and from a just and comprehensive view of the past, enables us to improve and enjoy the present moment, and prepare for the future.”[3]

---

[1] Evans, though Welsh, could not understand the Welsh language.

[2] The Remembrance of Former Days (2^nd ed.; Bristol: William Pine, 1778), 24. This was a Fifth of November sermon.

[3] Remembrance of Former Days, 24.