Supplying Andrew Fuller’s pulpit

By Michael A.G. Haykin

When Andrew Fuller was serving as the secretary of the BMS he would be away from his pulpit up to three months a year. I have often wondered who supplied his pulpit before he had an unordained assistant by the name of John Keen Hall. In a publication entitled The Preacher; or Sketches of Original Sermons (Philadelphia: J. Whetham & Son, 1842), which contains an essay by Fuller on how to compose a sermon, it is mentioned that “several members of [Fuller’s] church were successfully employed in village preaching, and occasionally supplied destitute congregations in the neighbourhood” (“Preface”, p.iv). These men could have easily supplied Fuller’s pulpit.

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Michael A.G. Haykin is the director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. He also serves as Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Haykin and his wife Alison have two grown children, Victoria and Nigel.

A Missionary Vision of the Glory of God

By Dustin W. Benge

David Brainerd (1718–1747) yearned for the salvation of Native Americans scattered along the colonial trails of America and farther west. From 1742 to 1747 he toiled among tribes in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Initially he saw little to encourage him and seriously considered abandoning his labors among them altogether. But in time the situation reversed itself, and scores of Native Americans came to know Christ. Brainerd’s poor health, however, eventually forced him to abandon his missionary efforts, and at age twenty-nine he died.

Brainerd spent his last days in the home of his celebrated friend, Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758). Before his death, Brainerd consented to leave his diary with Edwards for publication. That volume has had an untold impact on the lives of others because it reveals Brainerd’s devotion, earnestness, sincerity, and self-denying spirit.

Missionaries such as Henry Martyn (1781–1812), William Carey (1761–1834), and Jim Elliot (1927–1956) have spoken of the great inspiration they received from reading Brainerd’s diary. These are some of the last entries Brainerd made:

This day, I saw clearly that I should never be happy, yea, that God Himself could not make me happy, unless I could be in a capacity to “please and glorify Him forever.” Take away this and admit me into all the fine havens that can be conceived of by men or angels, and I should still be miserable forever. . . . Oh, to love and praise God more, to please Him forever! This my soul panted after and even now pants for while I write. Oh, that God might be glorified in the whole earth! . . . Was still in a sweet and comfortable frame; and was again melted with desires that God might be glorified, and with longings to love and live to Him. . . . And oh, I longed to be with God, to behold His glory and to bow in His presence!

It is clear that Brainerd’s desire was to magnify God’s glory before the world. He also looked forward to his earthly departure because he longed to see the glory of God in heaven. What exactly does the phrase "the glory of God" refer? It is the sum of who God is—the sum of his attributes and divine nature. Throughout history, God has endeavored to show all men and women His glory.

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Dustin W. Benge (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) serves as Associate Pastor and Pastor for Family Ministries at Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, AL. Dustin is a junior fellow of the Andrew Fuller Center and lives with his wife, Molli, in Mobile.

 

Unfolding the Word of God

By Evan D. Burns

Andrew Fuller loved to stare long and hard at Scripture in deep meditation and study.  His pastoral methods were marked by providing good food for his flock and by protecting them from contaminated food.  Fuller despised false doctrine, and he was quick to engage those who promoted such error.  One way he protected his flock from confusion and uncertainty was by expounding difficult and seemingly contradictory passages in Scripture.  In a large section in the first volume of his Works called “Passages Apparently Contradictory,” Fuller would take a couple of verses with ostensible contradictions and clarify their coherence having considered each of their historical, literary, and theological contexts.  As he did this for his people, he modeled how ministers today can help their flocks have more confidence in the Word of God and more certainty in its inerrancy, infallibility, and sufficiency.  The Serpent loves to ask, “did God really say….?”  If we, like Fuller, would not rest till we had a satisfactory understanding of how the hard texts fit together, those entrusted to our care would have their eyes opened to wonderful things in God’s law.  “The unfolding of your words gives light; it imparts understanding to the simple” (Ps 119:130).  The first two conflicting texts in his “Passages Apparently Contradictory” are:

“And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.”—John 5:40.

“No man can come to me except the Father, who hath sent me, draw him….  It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me”

“Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not: and he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.”—John 6:44, 45, 64, 65.

The following points demonstrate Fuller’s durable cogitation of difficult texts and how he could plainly harmonize without being too complex or too simplistic:

First, There is no way of obtaining eternal life but by Jesus Christ….  Secondly, They that enjoy eternal life must come to Christ for it….  Thirdly, It is the revealed will of Christ that everyone who hears the gospel should come to him for life….  Fourthly, The depravity of human nature is such that no man, of his own accord, will come to Christ for life….  Fifthly, The degree of this depravity is such as that, figuratively speaking, men cannot come to Christ for life….  Sixthly, A conviction of the righteousness of God’s government, of the spirituality and goodness of his law, the evil of sin, our lost condition by nature, and the justice of our condemnation, is necessary in order to our coming to Christ….  Lastly, There is absolute necessity of a special Divine agency in order to our coming to Christ….  Upon the whole, we see from these passages taken together, first, if any man is lost, whom he has to blame for it—himself; secondly, if any man is saved, whom he has to praise for it—God.[1]

[1]Andrew Gunton Fuller, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Volume 1: Memoirs, Sermons, Etc., ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 667-69.

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Evan D. Burns (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is on faculty at Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and he lives in Thailand with his wife and twin sons.  They are missionaries with Training Leaders International.

"Being Baptist": An AFCBS Conference in Sarnia, Ontario

On June 1, 2013, Dr. Michael A. G. Haykin will be leading a conference on the theme of "Being Baptist: Reflections on a History" at Sovereign Grace Community Church in Sarnia, Ontario.

Conference Schedule: 9:30–10:30am    Where did Baptists come from? 10:50–11:50am  Baptists and the challenge of the age of reason 1:00–2:00pm      Revival and the Baptists in the 18th century 2:20–3:15pm       Samuel Pearce: a Baptist hero

Contact Information: Sovereign Grace Community Church, Sarnia, ON Pastor Glenn Tomlinson 365 Talfourd Street, Sarnia, ON N7T 1R1 tel. 519-344-6100 email: glenntomlinson@cogeco.ca

Boston Not Jerusalem

By Ryan Patrick Hoselton

The Boston Marathon bombing represents a society that is worlds apart from the Boston inhabited by the Puritan Increase Mather (1639-1723). Abhorrent evils perpetrated in any city—like the Newtown shooting, 9/11, and the Oklahoma City bombing—raise the very human question: why? Each generation has to wrestle with new and complicated manifestations of wrongdoing. Increase Mather had no category for making sense of how two Chechen brothers could plant explosives at a massive annual foot-race. However, perhaps his response to the calamities of Boston in his day could help us gain perspective on the city’s recent catastrophe.

In many ways, modern-day Boston has failed to live up to Mather’s lofty aspirations for the city. Mather, the former minister of the historic Second Church and President of Harvard from 1685-1702, planned for Boston to become the new Jerusalem—God’s holy society on earth. But even in his day, Boston was far from heaven. The seventeenth-century New Englanders intimately knew suffering. The reason many of them came to New England was to flee religious persecution. If they survived the long voyage, they faced the threat of frequent and devastating plagues.

But it was the attacks from the native New England tribes that evoked one of Mather’s fullest reflections on the evil of his times, An Earnest Exhortation to the Inhabitants of New-England (1676).[1] In this treatise, Mather blamed the tragedies on the sins of Boston’s citizens: “What shall we say when men are seen in the Streets with monstrous and horrid Perriwigs, and women with their Borders and False Locks…whereby the anger of the Lord is kindled against this land (9)!” He’s just getting warmed up. He listed Boston’s iniquities and warned that unless the citizens reform their lives, “New-England hath not seen its worst dayes.” For Mather, Boston’s prosperity and its demise was contingent on its righteousness before God. Thus, his solution for eradicating Boston’s suffering was to recruit its citizens to significant moral reform.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking (or should be thinking if you’re not): so far, Mather is not helping us understand evil today! But briefly give him a little grace. As a result of these events, Mather ministered to many hurting people: “Is it nothing that Widdows and Fatherless have been multiplyed among us?” He wanted to see evil and its effects eliminated just as much as those impacted by the Boston Marathon bombings. However, no earthly city could ever be righteous enough to completely evade adversity—all of mankind is fallen. His solution was geographically misguided.

Mather placed his hope in the right city, but he located it in the wrong place. Revelation 21:2-4 describes how the new Jerusalem will come:

And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’

Boston is not the New Jerusalem—it does not exist on earth. The events from last week’s race testify to the sad reality that evil still afflicts the city four-hundred years later. Ever since Babel, mankind has had the tendency to rely on the kingdoms that we can construct. We like our societies because they reflect us rather than God. However, despite our best efforts, we cannot create the righteous kingdom that will bring us peace.

Mather was right that God will entirely eradicate all evil and its consequences in his new Jerusalem. However, this is not a city that mortals can build.  Instead, we must rest our hopes for peace on the King of the new Jerusalem, Jesus Christ, who will lovingly assemble this city for his people.

[1]Increase Mather, An Earnest Exhortation to the Inhabitants of New-England (Boston: John Foster: 1676). You can access the full text here: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/etas/31/

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Ryan Patrick Hoselton is pursuing a ThM at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He lives in Louisville, KY with his wife Jaclyn, and they are expecting their first child in August.

 

When Research Interests Collide

By Dustin Bruce

Every historian knows the rare joy of finding an unsuspected link to his or her primary research interest when engaging in a secondary research project. This recently happened to me as I found mentions of and quotations from Andrew Fuller (my primary research interest) in 19th century Baptist newspapers. Though the findings were not directly applicable to the project I was working on, I learned a great deal about Fuller’s reception among 19th century Baptists in the South and filed the articles away for later use.

To illustrate how 19th century Baptist papers were using Fuller, I would like to mention two articles taken from the Baptist Recorder, the North Carolina state paper. My main reason for highlighting the Baptist Recorder is the ease of doing research in the paper’s online database. Researching most state papers involves hours spent gazing at a microfilm machine, but here the Biblical Recorder has been digitized and rendered fully searchable from the years 1834-1970.

The first article I would like to highlight is entitled “Did Judas Partake of the Lord’s Supper” and appears in a June 29, 1844 issue of the Biblical Recorder.[i] In this article, the author addresses the question posed in the title by examining Fuller’s opinion on the topic. We learn a great deal about the esteem in which Fuller was held by the author’s remarks. He states, “Andrew Fuller, whose opinion, on all theological subjects, is entitled to great consideration, has answered this question in the negative.” He then follows with a summary of Fuller’s argument, capping the article off with a direct quotation taken from his works.[ii] Nearly thirty years after his death and across the Atlantic Ocean, Fuller’s opinion carried weight with Baptists of North Carolina.

The second article I would like to highlight comes from the September 9, 1885 issue and is entitled, “To What Causes in Ministers may Much of Their Want of Success be Imputed?”[iii] In this article, the author cites relevant portions of Fuller’s Memoirs[iv] in an effort to show “how little the world has changed in some respects in a hundred years.” After discussing the 1785 minister’s meeting associated with this piece, the author cites Fuller’s three main points to answer the question presented in the title. His answer is as follows:

1st. The want of personal religion; particularly the neglect of close dealing with God in closet prayer.

2nd. The want of reading and studying the Scriptures more as Christians for the edification of our souls. We are too apt to study them merely to find out something to say to others without living upon the truth ourselves. If we eat not the book, before we deliver its contents to others, we may expect the Holy Spirit will not much accompany us.

3rd. The want of being emptied of self-sufficiency. In proportion as we lean upon our own gifts or parts or preparations, we slight the Holy Spirit; no wonder that, being grieved, he should leave us to do our work alone. Besides when this is the case, it is, humanly speaking, unsafe for God to prosper us, especially those ministers who possess considerable ability.

Recognizing the religious climate had undergone some changes, the author added two more reasons of his own: a lack of ministerial sympathy for God’s people and the presence of a spirit of fear among ministers. Yet, it is clear that the name and ministry of Andrew Fuller resonated with at least a portion of the readership of the Biblical Recorder in 1885.

Fuller’s ministry remains just as instructive for Baptists today as it was for North Carolina Baptists in the 19th century. I look forward to the next time my primary research interest and my secondary research interests collide.

[i]Anemond, “Did Judas Partake of the Lord’s Supper,” The Biblical Recorder, vol. IX, no. 26, June 29, 1844: 2.

[ii]Andrew Gunton Fuller, “The Presence of Judas at the Lord’s Supper,” The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Volume 3: Expositions – Miscellanies, ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 473-74.

[iii]J.R. Jones, “To What Causes in Ministers may Much of Their Want of Success be Imputed?,” The Biblical Recorder, vol. 51, no. 10, September 9, 1885: 1.

[iv]Andrew Gunton Fuller, “Memoir,” The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Volume 1: Memoirs, Sermons, Etc., ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 47.

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Dustin Bruce lives in Louisville, KY where he is pursuing a PhD in Biblical Spirituality at Southern Seminary. He is a graduate of Auburn University and Southwestern Seminary. Dustin and his wife, Whitney, originally hail from Alabama.

John Witherspoon’s “Qualities of Most Importance” for the Minister

By Dustin W. Benge

In his first sermon as president of the College of New Jersey (1768–94; now Princeton University), John Witherspoon (1722–1794) affirmed that "true religion in the heart is of far greater importance to the success and efficacy of the ministry than eminence or gifts."[1] He enlarged on it, for example, in his Lectures on Eloquence. He had no hesitation as to what ought to be at the beginning of the list of "the qualities of most importance"[2] for the preaching of the gospel:

1. Piety – To have a firm belief of that gospel he is called to preach, and a lively sense of religion upon his own heart.

2. It gives a man the knowledge that is of most service to a minister. Experimental knowledge is superior to all other, and necessary to the perfection of every other kind. It is indeed the very possession, or daily exercise of that which it is the business of his life, and the duty of his office, to explain and recommend. Experimental knowledge is the best sort in every branch, but it is necessary in divinity, because religion is what cannot be truly understood, unless it is felt.

3. True piety will direct a man in the choice of his studies. The object of human knowledge is so extensive, that nobody can go through the whole, but religion will direct the student to what may be most profitable to him, and will also serve to turn into its proper channel all the knowledge he may otherwise acquire.

4. It will be a powerful motive to diligence in his studies. Nothing so forcible as that in which eternity has a part. The duty to a good man is so pressing, and the object so important, that he will spare no pains to obtain success.

5. True religion will give unspeakable force to what a minister says. There is a piercing and penetrating heat in that which flows from the heart, which distinguishes it both from the coldness of indifference, and the false fire of enthusiasm and vain-glory. We see that a man is truly pious has often esteem, influence, and success, though his parts may be much inferior to others, who are more capable, but less conscientious. If, then, piety makes even the weakest venerable, what must it do when added to the finest natural talents, and the best acquired endowments?

6. It adds to a minister’s instruction, the weight of his example. It is a trite remark, that example teaches better than precept. It is often a more effectual reprimand to vice, and a more inciting argument to the practice of virtue, than the best of reasoning. Example is more intelligible than precept. Precepts are often involved in obscurity, or wrapped by controversy; but a holy life immediately reaches, and takes possession of the heart.

…observe, as the conclusion of the whole, that one devoted to the service of the gospel should be really, visibly, and eminently holy.

                [1] John Witherspoon, The Works of John Witherspoon (Edinburgh, 1815), 5:160.

                [2] John Witherspoon, "Ministerial Character and Duty" in The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon (Philadelphia: William W. Woodward, 1800), 2:285.

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Dustin W. Benge (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) serves as Associate Pastor and Pastor for Family Ministries at Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, AL. Dustin is a junior fellow of the Andrew Fuller Center and lives with his wife, Molli, in Mobile.  

The Eye of True Wisdom

By Evan D. Burns

In a sermon on Proverbs 14:8, Andrew Fuller looked long and hard at the virtue of godly wisdom.  He extracted many helpful principles from this verse, and one of the most insightful comments he made was how to use the Word of God in getting wisdom.  He says that the Word functions in two main ways in teaching us wisdom.  It shows us what the destructive end will be of folly, from which wisdom deters us.  Moreover, he makes an amazing observation about wisdom—the eye of wisdom should not chiefly look to the negative consequence of folly in order to avoid it; rather, the eye of wisdom should zealously fix its sight on Christ who is worthy of its gaze.  Such Christ-enamored wisdom is cultivated through meditation and prayer.

We shall read the oracles of God: the doctrines for belief, and the precepts for practice; and shall thus learn to cleanse our way by taking heed thereto, according to God’s word. It will moreover induce us to guard against the dangers of the way. We shall not be ignorant of Satan’s devices, nor of the numerous temptations to which our age, times, circumstances, and propensities expose us. It will influence us to keep our eye upon the end of the way. A foolish man will go that way in which he finds most company, or can go most at his ease; but wisdom will ask, “What shall I do in the end thereof?” To understand the end of the wrong way will deter; but to keep our eye upon that of the right will attract. Christ himself kept sight of the joy that was set before him. Finally, as holy wisdom possesses the soul with a sense of propriety at all times, and upon all occasions, it is therefore our highest interest to obtain this wisdom, and to cultivate it by reading, meditation, prayer, and every appointed means.[1]

 [1]Andrew Gunton Fuller, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Volume 1: Memoirs, Sermons, Etc., ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 465-66.

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Evan D. Burns (Ph.D. Candidate, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is on faculty at Asia Biblical Theological Seminary, and he lives in Thailand with his wife and twin sons.  They are missionaries with Training Leaders International.

Two new works on Covenant Theology in its Baptist expression

By Jeff Robinson

One of the theological questions I have been asked most often during my first 24 months as pastor has been some version of this query: Do Baptists believe Covenant Theology or is that just a Presbyterian thing? My answer (which is consistently “Yes, Baptists have historically believed Covenant Theology that obviously differs a bit from our Presbyterian brethren”) has puzzled some and made others curious enough to launch your own study of my conclusion. But my dear friend Mike Gaydosh at Solid Ground Books in Birmingham, Ala., the city where my family lives, has recently published two books that will provide plenty of grist for that mill and will provide substantive historical and biblical answers to the question of Baptists and their relationship to Covenant Theology.

The first work is titled The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology: A Comparison Between Seventeenth-Century Particular Baptist and Paedobaptist Federalism by Pascal Denault. The point of pressure separating the Baptist and non-Baptist version of Covenant Theology is, of course, the subjects (the who?) of baptism. In the concise span of 140 pages, Denault’s work provides a brilliant historical, biblical and theological defense of believer’s baptism and provides an excellent overview of the consistent, biblical Covenant Theology which the Calvinistic (Particular) Baptists of 17th century England espoused. Denault surveys British Particular Baptists who held to Covenant Theology such as Benjamin Keach and John Gill and also shows biblically how paedobaptists misinterpret the continuity between the promises given to Abraham in the OT and baptism in the NT and arrive at the conclusion that baptism replaces circumcision as the sign of membership in the covenant people of God. The author traces the points at which historic Baptists and their fellow Puritans parted ways on issues of the continuity and discontinuity between the old and new testaments and argues forcibly that Baptists more consistently held to a biblical version of Covenant Theology.

Edited by Earl M. Blackburn, the second work, Covenant Theology: A Baptist Distinctive, is a multi-author work and includes chapters from contributors such as Justin Taylor, Fred Malone and Walter Chantry. Like the Denault book, this work is brief in compass (161 pages, including three appendices) and each of the five well-written chapters examines a separate issue related to the covenants of Scripture, ranging from baptism to the question of the existence of a covenant of works. Blackburn opens with an excellent overview of Covenant Theology and Malone follows with a discussion of biblical hermeneutics and Covenant Theology. This work, like Denault’s book, offers a well-done overview of the Baptist version of Covenant Theology and I heartily recommend them both for your spring or summer reading.

To order, see the Solid Ground Christian Books website at http://www.solid-ground-books.com/index.asp. Phone: (205) 443-0311.

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Jeff Robinson (Ph.D., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is Senior Pastor of Philadelphia Baptist Church. Jeff is the author of the forthcoming book, The Great Commission Vision of John Calvin. Jeff is also a fellow of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies.

A Family History of Sabbatarianism

By Dustin Bruce

Hearing bits of anecdotal family history is one of the most interesting parts of holiday gatherings. When aspects of family history intersect with theological concepts, I find them even more fascinating. Recently I enjoyed learning of the Sabbatarian practices my grandparents experienced as children in the early twentieth-century rural south.

Growing up in a devout Baptist family, my grandfather was not allowed to work or attend any worldly amusements on the Lord’s Day. Slight exceptions were made to allow for some cooking and feeding of animals. Work was not allowed, but the Sabbath was not to be spent frivolously. Fishing and hunting, common pastimes in rural Alabama, were simply out of the question. 

It is interesting to note how quickly the practice of keeping the Lord’s Day has faded from the church culture. Area churches that would have encouraged Sabbath keeping just 70 years ago likely have no current members who give the concept much thought. The shift away from Sabbatarianism has been so swift and decisive that my grandfather’s childhood experience in this area more closely resembles that of Andrew Fuller’s than my own.

In an 1805 letter to a friend, Fuller defends the practice of keeping the Lord’s Day. Responding to doubts as to its observance, Fuller asks, “If the keeping of a Sabbath to God were not in all ages binding, why is it introduced in the moral law, and founded upon God’s resting from his works. If it were merely a Jewish ceremonial, why do we read of time being divided by weeks before the law?”[1]Fuller possessed a theological conviction that compelled him to set apart the Sabbath as a holy day to the Lord. He instructs, “The first day then ought to be kept as the Lord’s own day, and we ought not to think our own thoughts, converse on our own affairs, nor follow our own business on it.”

One wonders if Fuller first learned this Sabbatarian practice as a child growing up in the home of Particular Baptist parents. Like my grandfather’s mother, Fuller’s mother may have prevented him from hunting or fishing or attending to other worldly amusements, setting an early example of keeping the Lord’s Day.

Anecdotal family history is interesting, but should also be instructive. Like other types of history, learning of the religious beliefs and practices of those who form my family tree should cause me to reflect on whether I am being more or less faithful in my Christian walk. Feel free to share any interesting examples of your family’s religious history in the comments below.

[1] Andrew Gunton Fuller, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Volume 3: Expositions—Miscellaneous, ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 828.

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Dustin Bruce lives in Louisville, KY where he is pursuing a ThM in Church History at Southern Seminary. He is a graduate of Auburn University and Southwestern Seminary. Dustin and his wife, Whitney, originally hail from Alabama.

Fuller’s Three Classes of Religious Dissenters

By Dustin Bruce

Often when considering the English Reformation, we distinguish only between those who remained within the newly formed Church of England and those who dissented from it. In “A Brief Statement of the Principles of Dissent,” Andrew Fuller reminds us that “as all dissent is expressive rather of what is disapproved than of what is embraced, it is natural to suppose that the objects of disapprobation will be different in different persons.”[1]

Fuller goes on to distinguish three classes of dissenters:

  1. Those who disagree with the theology of the Church of England.
  2. Those who approve of the theology, but desire further Reformation within the English Church.
  3. Those who approve of the theology, but reject the establishment of a nation church in principle.

Concerning the first class of dissenters, Fuller speaks of those who abandoned the Church of England due to some unorthodox beliefs or practice. For Fuller, disagreement with the doctrine of these dissenters provides no justification for persecuting them. None who hold respect for private judgment and the authority of Christ “can forbear to regret that the Reformation should at so early a period have been stained with blood.”

The majority of Puritans and Nonconformists form the second class of dissenters. These men did not take issue with the establishment of a national church, but desired a national church with a Presbyterian form of government, which they found “more agreeable with the Scriptures.”

For the third class of dissenters, the primary objection to the Church of England was not one of theology, but of the very existence of a national church. Fuller states,

“The temporal power of bishops, the imposition of ministers, to the exclusion of the free election of the people, the mixture of godly and manifestly ungodly characters at the Lord’s table, the corruption of worship, the total want of discipline, and all other deviations from primitive Christianity, appeared to them to be no more than might be expected, if circumstances admitted it, to grow out of a national establishment. They, therefore, peaceably withdrew from its communion, with the view of forming churches on the plan of the New Testament.”

To this third class of dissenters belongs the Independents and the Baptists. Both holding to a form of congregational church government, the Baptists further dissented from the Independents by rejecting the practice of infant baptism.

Interestingly, Fuller makes two points of application for the third class of dissenters.

  1. “If the government should even offer to make theirs the established religion, however they might be obliged to them for their kindness, they could not accept it without relinquishing their first principles relative to church government.”
  2. “Neither can they, without relinquishing the first principles of the system by which they are distinguished from other Christians, persecute any man for his religion, whatever that religion be. They may think and speak of men according to their true character; they may refuse all religious connexion with them; they may expose their principles to just abhorrence; but their hand must not be upon them.”

[1] Andrew Gunton Fuller, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Volume 3: Expositions—Miscellaneous, ed. Joseph Belcher (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 1988), 459.

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Dustin Bruce lives in Louisville, KY where he is pursuing a ThM in Church History at Southern Seminary. He is a graduate of Auburn University and Southwestern Seminary. Dustin and his wife, Whitney, originally hail from Alabama.

“Heart-Piercing Conviction” in Logan County, Kentucky

By Dustin W. Benge

James M’Gready (1763–1817) was born in Pennsylvania and later settled in North Carolina with his father. After theological training for ministry, he became a Presbyterian pastor and leader during the Second Great Awakening. In 1796, M’Gready left his North Carolina home for southern Kentucky. He was called to serve the congregations of Gaspar River, Red River, and Muddy River in Logan County, Kentucky. In the summer of 1798, he reported “some movement” among the congregations in Logan County. He describes the event as “a very general awakening.” The spirit of prayer deepened and twelve months later it was apparent that a powerful work of conversion was in progress. During a communion service at Red River at the end of July 1799, “many of the most bold and daring sinners of the country were brought to cover their faces and weep bitterly.” A month later the same “heart-piercing conviction” was also evident during services at Gasper River. Some individuals were reported to have been so overcome with emotion that they fell to the floor. Much more was to follow.

M’Gready writes, “The year 1800 exceeds all that our eyes ever beheld on earth. All the blessed displays of Almighty power and grace, all the sweet gales of the divine Spirit, and soul-reviving showers of the blessings of Heaven which we enjoyed before, and which we considered wonderful beyond conception, were but like a few scattering drops before a mighty rain, when compared with the overflowing floods of salvation, which the eternal, gracious Jehovah has poured out like a mighty river, upon this our guilty, unworthy country. The Lord has indeed shewed [sic] himself a prayer-hearing God: he has given his people a praying spirit and a lively faith, and then he has answered their prayers far beyond their highest expectations.”

For more information on James M’Gready and his ministry, please visit here.

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Dustin Benge serves as the senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Jackson, Kentucky. He is also a PhD candidate at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and a junior fellow at The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. Dustin and his wife, Molli, live in Jackson.

Summarizing the Life of Robert Hall Sr. (1728–1791)

By Nathan A. Finn

Robert Hall Sr. is hardly a household name among contemporary Baptists, but I think he ought to be. He played a critical role in pushing back against the hyper-Calvinism that deadened much of Particular Baptist life during the middle decades of the eighteenth century. He also significantly influenced a group of younger pastors who later succeeded him in fame and influence, including Andrew Fuller, John Ryland Jr., and William Carey.

One of Hall’s early biographers was J.W. Morris, who also wrote a biography of Fuller. Morris wrote a paragraph in his biography that I believe perfectly summarizes the life and influence of Robert Hall Sr.

With Hall originated the disposition to examine into the inordinate pretensions of Hypercalvinism [sic], which had long passed as the undoubted test of orthodoxy, particularly in the baptist [sic] connection, where [John] Gill and [John] Brine had been considered as the true conservators of the doctrines of grace. The rural pastor at Arnsby broke the spell, and awakening a spirit of enquiry, which gradually effected the revival of those primitive principles, which gave new life and energy to the ministry of his brethren, and prepared the way for the Mission to the East. He gathered around him all the talent that existed in the neighbourhood, gave an impulse and a direction to religious sentiment and feeling, and a distinguished eminence to that part of the denomination to which he more immediately belonged. Others moved in a wider sphere, and were engaged in more active services, but wisdom and prudence dwelt with him, and all their activities were stimulated and guided by his counsels.

See J.W. Morris, “Memoir of the Rev. Robert Hall, Arnsby, Leicestershire,” in The Complete Works of the Late Rev. Robert Hall, ed. J.W. Morris (London: W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 1828), p. 38.

I’m on a mission to re-acquaint contemporary Baptists with Robert Hall Sr. If you want to know more about him, check out the audio from my lecture “Robert Hall Sr.: Andrew Fuller’s Mentor,” which I delivered at the 2012 annual conference of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. If you want to read Hall’s most important writing, check out the new edition of Help to Zion’s Travellers (BorderStone, 2011), which I edited and for which I wrote an introductory essay. Help to Zion’s Travellers was an early broadside against hyper-Calvinism and a key document in helping to pave the way for the evangelical renewal of the Particular Baptists in the waning years of the eighteenth century.

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Nathan A. Finn is associate professor of historical theology and Baptist Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also an elder at First Baptist Church of Durham, NC and a senior fellow of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies.

Two Recent Books by AFCBS Junior Fellow Dustin Benge

By Steve Weaver

Dustin Benge, one of the contributors to this blog (and Junior Fellow of the Andrew Fuller Center), has recently published two books featuring devotional selections from the writings of two of the greatest theologians in the history of the church. Benge's first book provided daily devotions from the sermons of Jonathan Edwards and was published by Reformation Heritage Books (sample pages here). Don Whitney (Associate Professor of Biblical Spirituality at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) has said the following about this volume.

"Few Christian writers could be mentioned in the same breath with Jonathan Edwards when it comes to heart-stirring devotional writing that is theologically rock-solid. Dustin Benge has done the church a great service by compiling these God-glorifying, Christ-exalting, Gospel-centered, soul-enriching excerpts from some of Edwards’s magnificent, but lesser-known sermons. Read edifying passages from Edwards like this every day for awhile, and you’ll be the better for it."

A second work by Benge, which was also published by Reformation Heritage Books, provides a selection of 150 prayers by John Calvin (sample pages here). These prayers were previously only available in Calvin's voluminous Old Testament commentaries. Benge has now made these prayers accessible to a new generation through his diligent efforts. Steven J. Lawson, author of The Expository Genius of John Calvin, had this to say about the volume.

 “Dustin Benge has done the church a great service by compiling this generous selection of prayers by the great Genevan Reformer, John Calvin. Extracted from his luminous Old Testament Commentaries, these fervent intercessions reveal the warm piety that accompanied this theological genius. Calvin’s personal logo was an open hand, holding a heart, extended upward to God with the words, ‘My heart I offer to Thee, Lord, promptly and sincerely.’ This book clearly demonstrates such singular devotion to God. Here is Calvin’s high doxology, arising upward from his high theology. And here is his exaltation of God, ascending from sound exegesis and exposition. By reading these prayers, I have no doubt but that your own heart will be likewise inflamed.”

You can listen to an MP3 lecture by Benge on the prayers of John Calvin which was delivered at an AFCBS mini-conference a couple of years ago. You can read Benge's continuing reflections on biblical spirituality at the new blog "Tinkers & Saints" which he maintains along with fellow AFCBS contributor and Junior Fellow Dustin Bruce.

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Steve Weaver serves as a research assistant to the director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies and a junior fellow of the Center. He also serves as senior pastor of Farmdale Baptist Church in Frankfort, KY. Steve and his wife Gretta have six children between the ages of 2 and 13.

The poor estate of English roads in the 18th & early 19th centuries

By Michael A.G. Haykin

In an early nineteenth-century French gazetteer, there is an interesting comment on the state of the roads in London: “Les rues de Londres sont mal pavées; les grandes routes ne le sont point du tout” (Méthode abrégée et facile pour apprendre la Géographie [Lyon: Blache et Boyet, 1806], 222). Putting aside the possibility of French bias when it comes to all things English, this is a fascinating comment that, if it is borne out by other sources, would illumine the challenges of getting around eighteenth-century London.

Of course, the poor repair of roads in general in eighteenth-century England is a factor that explains the isolation of Nonconformist causes in the land. And here is a good example of how geographical knowledge can be invaluable to historians.

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Michael A.G. Haykin is the director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. He also serves as Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Haykin and his wife Alison have two grown children, Victoria and Nigel.

Some memories of John Codman about Andrew Fuller

By Michael A.G. Haykin

John Codman (1782–1847) was an American Congregationalist minister who graduated from Harvard in 1802. His grandfather, also John Codman (1719–1792), was converted under and nourished by the preaching of George Whitefield and Gilbert Tennent. After his graduation from Harvard, the younger Codman decided to study in Scotland and made the trip across the Atlantic in July and August, 1805—the voyage took a month. While on board ship Codman read what he called “an excellent little pamphlet by Andrew Fuller, on the question, “What shall I do to be saved?” This must have been Fuller’s The Great Question Answered, a 19th century copy of which I have published by the American Tract Society and that was kindly given me in 2008 by Nathan Harmon, when he was studying at SBTS.

Codman later met Fuller with John Ryland at an ordination in the fall of 1805. He described Fuller to a correspondent as “our much admired Andrew Fuller” and observed after this meeting that the English Baptists were “highly intelligent and respectable, and they unite with the most evangelical sentiments the true spirit of charity.” (William Allen, Memoir of John Codman, D.D. [Boston, MA: T.R. Marvin and S.K. Whipple & Co., 1853], 12, 20, 35, 45).

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Michael A.G. Haykin is the director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. He also serves as Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Haykin and his wife Alison have two grown children, Victoria and Nigel.

Free Andrew Fuller Biographies Available Online

By Nathan Finn

For those interested in reading more about the life of Andrew Fuller, numerous biographies are available online for free. Several of these are nineteenth-century works available through Google Books. For example, see the following:

John Ryland Jr., The Work of Faith, the Labour of Love, and the Patience of Hope, illustrated; In the Life and Death of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, Late Pastor of the Baptist Church at Kettering, and Secretary to the Baptist Missionary Society, From its Commencement, in 1792 (Charlestown: Printed by Samuel Etheridge, 1818).

J. W. Morris, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, Late Pastor of the Baptist Church at Kettering, and First Secretary to the Baptist Missionary Society, First American, from the last London edition, ed. Rufus Babcock (Boston: Lincoln and Edmonds, 1830).

Andrew Gunton Fuller, Men Worth Remembering: Andrew Fuller (London: Houghton and Stoddard, 1882).

In addition to these biographies on Google Books, the Baptist History Homepage, maintained by Jim Duvall, includes numerous shorter biographies of Fuller. Most of these sources are nineteenth-century dictionary entries and obituaries. Both Google Books and the Baptist History Homepage also include numerous primary sources written by Fuller.

In terms of more recent electronic biographical resources, last summer Desiring God published John Piper’s Andrew Fuller: I Will Go Down If You Will Hold the Rope! (Desiring God, 2012). The book, based upon Piper’s 2007 biographical address on Fuller at the Desiring God Conference for Pastors, is available for free in EPUB, MOBI, and PDF formats.

On the Andrew Fuller Center website, you can read Michael Haykin’s biographical essay on Fuller, titled “‘A Dull Flint’: Andrew Fuller— Rope-Holder, Critic of Hyper-Calvinism & Missionary Pioneer.” This essay will be published as a chapter in Haykin’s forthcoming book “Ardent Love to Jesus”: English Baptists and the Experience of Revival in the Long Eighteenth Century (Bryntirion Press, 2013).

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Nathan A. Finn is associate professor of historical theology and Baptist Studies at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also an elder at First Baptist Church of Durham, NC and a senior fellow of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies.

One Anglican view of Dissent

The Rev. William Cole, the subject of yesterday’s post, was not too atypical of many Anglican ministers in the eighteenth century: he was not overly interested in his parish, and he had no love for Dissent. As he told Horace Walpole in 1780: “It is a matter of astonishment to me in this enlightened age to observe the intolerant spirit of the Dissenters. I am sure we want no proof that if the Catholics are bigots, the fanatics [i.e. the Dissenters] of this island are on a par with them…”  (Letter to Horace Walpole, July 2, 1780 in Horace Walpole’s Correspondence with The Rev. William Cole, ed. W.S. Lewis and A. Doyle Wallace [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1937], II, 226). He did know some Dissenting ministers first-hand. Robert Robinson (1735–1790), the well-known Baptist minister of Cambridge, called upon him in December 1777. Cole later described Robinson as “an ingenious man, as his publications prove” (Letter to Horace Walpole, March 29, 1778 in Horace Walpole’s Correspondence with The Rev. William Cole, ed. Lewis and Wallace, II, 71–72). Robinson’s ingenuity, however, could not have been striking enough to change Cole’s opinion of Dissenters!

Antiquarian or historian?

The Rev. William Cole (1714–1782), the parish minister of Milton, not far from Cambridge in old England, was deeply interested in the preservation of the past. His passion for transcribing church registers of the Anglican Church, we are told, was “a particular excitement” for him.  Sadly, he was nowhere near as excited about his parishioners. (Horace Walpole’s Correspondence with The Rev. William Cole, ed. W.S. Lewis and A. Doyle Wallace. [New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1937], I, xxv–xxvi, xxviii). In sum, he was an antiquarian, for whom the past provided an escape from the present. This is quite different from a true historian, for whom the past, while valued for its own sake, can never be divorced from the present.

The 259th anniversary of Andrew Fuller’s birthday and his place in the dictionaries

After the death of Andrew Fuller in 1815, one of his friends, Robert Hall, Jr., the son of Fuller’s mentor, the elder Robert Hall, was dining with a John Greene not far from the place of Fuller’s birth in the fens of East Anglia. “Do you remember, sir,” Hall asked Greene, “what occurred at his [i.e., Fuller’s] birth?” Greene, who was a lot younger than either Hall or Fuller, had no idea what Hall was referring to. “Why, sir,” Hall told him, “the fen-ditches were all convulsed, the earth shook to its very centre, and the devils ran frightened to one corner of hell”![1] Greene appears to be the only source for these curious remarks, a kind of Gothic description of the impact of Fuller’s thought on his fellow Baptists, and more broadly, on the world of Evangelical thought and action. Such is a right estimate of the impact and importance of Fuller in his day, as a variety of dictionary entries over the past century bear witness. I spent three hours today, from roughly 4:30pm to about 7:30pm, photocopying a variety of dictionary entries on Fuller that bespoke his significance, from the famous eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (1910) to a recent piece by Jeffrey Anderson in The Encyclopedia of Christian Civilization (2011).  A couple of entries stood out.

First, that by E.F. Clipsham in the new Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), in which an early figure in the renaissance of Fuller studies affirmed that Fuller was “unquestionably one of the outstanding evangelical leaders of his day.” The other was by an older Baptist historian, the renowned Albert Henry Newman, who rightly noted in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia (1908–1914) that Fuller’s impact “on American Baptists has been incalculable.”

Good cause to remember this dear brother and thank God for Andrew Fuller (which a number of us did at the Bristol Grille here in Louisville yesterday afternoon—see previous post).

[1] John Greene, Reminiscences of the Rev. Robert Hall, A.M. in Olinthus Gregory and Joseph Belcher, eds., The Works of the Rev. Robert Hall, A.M. (New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1854), 26–27, n.§.