Eminent Christians: 8. William Fraser

In an article that appeared in a 1999 issue of the National Post entitled “Scotland’s Gifts to Canada,” author David Olive noted that “few countries have felt the impact of the Scottish diaspora more powerfully than Canada.” He went on to list sixteen Scottish pioneers who came to Canada in the 18th and 19th centuries and made enormous contributions to this country. What is striking about Olive’s list, though, is the omission of any Christian leaders. And yet the majority of the Scottish emigrants who crossed the Atlantic were deeply religious individuals and passionate about their Christian faith. Consider the eminent Gaelic-speaking Highlander William Fraser (1801-1883), who emigrated to Glengarry County, Ontario, in 1831. Converted in 1817 in the Scottish Highlands, Fraser had studied for a couple of years in the 1820s, and then became for a period of time an itinerant preacher. He appears to have had “a herculean physical frame.” Trekking over the wildest of hillsides in all types of weather would have built up further reserves of physical fortitude and stamina, which would serve Fraser in good stead later during his pastorate in the Ottawa Valley.

Between the last quarter of the eighteenth century and 1870 various waves of emigration swept over the Gaelic-speaking Highlands which transplanted entire communities of Highlanders to the American continent. It has been estimated that during this period some 185,000 Scots left their homeland for Canada. Among them was William Fraser. While many of those who emigrated did so for land and worldly aspirations, the motivation that led Fraser to Canada was the opportunity to expand the Kingdom of Christ.

Fraser arrived at Breadalbane Baptist Church in the Ottawa Valley in the summer of 1831. But things were not well in the church and by 1834 Fraser had become quite despondent. A fellow Scotsman and Baptist minister by the name of John Gilmour visited him in the summer of 1834 and sought to encourage him. There must be fire in the pulpit, Gilmour admonished his friend, before there will be a blaze among the congregation. Fraser evidently took this admonition to heart. Fraser threw himself back into the work at Breadlabane. That fall and winter, the year 1834, there was a large-scale awakening throughout the region around Breadalbane. Between August and December, 1834, Fraser baptized fifty-eight new converts. By the fall of 1835 over one hundred had been converted and brought into the membership of the Breadalbane church.

Fraser also took extensive preaching tours throughout Glengarry county, often preaching in Gaelic since many of the settlers in this region were from the Highlands. In the Breadalbane church itself Sunday services were held in both Gaelic and English, the services following each other with only a few minutes’ interval. Both services together would take three hours, and sometimes more on special occasions.

Ever the pioneer church planter, Fraser made the decision to leave Breadalbane in 1850 and head west to Illinois. But he got no further than Bruce County. Initially, he lived on a farm adjoining Kincardine, where he held services in his own home in Gaelic and English. Eventually he moved to Tiverton, where he gathered a congregation of Baptists. When Fraser resigned this pastorate due to age and infirmity in October, 1875, the church membership stood at 354, a figure which would not have included members dismissed to form other Baptist churches in the area or those who might either have died or moved away from the district altogether. It is an amazing feat given the fact that Tiverton at the time was but a small village. About twenty years later, T.T. Shields preached some of his first sermons in this church.

Fraser died in 1883 after he had gone out to Manitoba to evangelize a community of Gaelic-speaking Highlanders. The trip proved too much for the old man. To his last breath the kingdom of Christ and its extension were his passion.

Eminent Christians: 7. Thomas Cranmer

As a Calvinistic Baptist I owe a significant debt to early Anglicanism. My seventeenth-century forebears learned much of their Reformed theology from Reformed ministers in the Church of England and it was in the heart of that body that they were nurtured on the spirituality of the Reformation. And in the earliest days of that state Church no figure exercised as great an influence as the “reluctant martyr” Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), the first Reformed Archbishop of Canterbury. Kenneth Brownell, an American who is pastoring in the U.K., has argued that Thomas Cranmer’s influence on the English-speaking Protestant world has been greater than any other figure except his contemporary John Knox (d.1572), and the eighteenth-century preachers George Whitefield (1714-1770), John Wesley (1703-1791) and Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). “Few men,” Brownell writes, “did more to shape English Protestant spirituality and to drive into the soul of a nation the fundamentals of Protestant Christianity.” [Kenneth Brownell, “Thomas Cranmer: Compromiser or Strategist?” in The Reformation of Worship. Papers read at the 1989 Westminster Conference (London: The Westminster Conference, 1989), 1].

Cranmer’s greatest achievements came during the reign of Edward VI (r.1547-1553). By the end of 1547, the Evangelicals around Edward who were being led by Cranmer had, amongst other reforms, enshrined justification by faith alone in the Church’s official statements. Clerical marriage had been approved. Key Continental Reformers had been invited to come to England to help in the Reformation there, men such as the Strasbourg Reformer Martin Bucer (1491-1551), who went to Cambridge, Peter Martyr (1500-1562)—an Anglicized form of Pietro Martire Vermigli—who went to Oxford, and Jan Łaski (1499-1560), a Polish Reformer.

And in line with the aims of the Reformation throughout Europe, the worship of the church had been reformed. Cranmer’s work in regard to the latter is probably best seen in The Book of Common Prayer of 1552, which was intended to be the “basis of reformed Protestant worship,” [Diarmaid MacCulloch, “The Myth of the English Reformation”, Journal of British Studies, 30 (1991), 7-9] and which, as Peter Toon has recently noted, is “a near perfect embodiment of the principle of justification by faith.” [“Remembering Thomas Cranmer on the anniversary of his martyrdom” (http://listserv.episcopalian.org/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0203d&L=virtuosity&D=1&H=1&O=D&F=&S=&P=1422].

One gets a marvellous insight into the heart of Cranmer’s Reformed thought by looking at his written prayers. Consider this portion of a prayer from the Communion service in which Cranmer trumpets forth that salvation is by Christ alone:

“Almighty God our heavenly Father, which of thy tender mercy didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ, to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption, who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world, and did institute, and in his holy Gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that his precious death, until his coming again; hear us O merciful Father we beseech thee…” [The First and Second Prayer Books of King Edward the Sixth (London/Toronto: J.M. Dent & Sons/New York: E.P. Dutton, 1910), 389; I have modernized the language].

The declaration that Christ’s death is “a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction” for sin undercuts the entire theological edifice of mediæval Roman Catholicism. For that edifice—with its understanding of the mass as a re-presentation of Christ’s sacrificial death for sin, both that of the living and of the dead in purgatory; with its indulgences and its rosaries and its pilgrimages and its relics—was built on the supposition that humanity can do something to earn salvation. But Cranmer was convinced that all human endeavours to make appeasement for our sins and gain merit in the eyes of God are utterly futile. Due to the fact that, in Cranmer’s words elsewhere, “all men be sinners and offenders against God, and breakers of his law and commandments, therefore can no man by his own acts, works, and deeds…be justified and made righteous before God.” [An Homily of the Salvation of Mankind by Only Christ our Saviour from Sin and Death Everlasting in T.H.L. Parker, ed., English Reformers (The Library of Christian Classics, vol.26; Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1966), 262]. Christ’s peerless death is alone sufficient to appease the wrath of God against human sin and cleanse those who put their trust in him from all unrighteouness.

Little wonder then that Cranmer was of the conviction that salvation by Christ alone and justification by faith alone “is the strong rock and foundation of Christian religion: this doctrine all old and ancient authors of Christ’s Church do approve: this doctrine advanceth and setteth forth the true glory of Christ, and suppresseth the vainglory of man: this whosoever denieth is not to be reputed for a Christian man, nor for a setter forth of Christ’s glory, but for an adversary to Christ and his gospel, and for a setter forth of men’s vainglory. (Homily of the Salvation of Mankind in Parker, ed., English Reformers, 266-267).

Here Cranmer identified what lay at the heart of the Reformation. The one side relied solely on the all-sufficiency of Christ’s death—“a setter forth of Christ’s glory” he calls each individual in this camp. The other side, which denied this biblical truth, Cranmer is convinced cannot be described as Christian, but must be seen as opposed to Christ and “a setter forth of men’s vainglory.”

Within a year or so of the publication of the 1552 edition of the Book of Common Prayer the unbridgeable gulf between these two sides would plunge England, and Cranmer personally, into turmoil and bloody strife as the Roman Catholic successor of Edward VI, his oldest half-sister Mary I (r.1553-1558), sought to destroy the Evangelicals in England and Wales. Cranmer himself would give his life for being a “setter forth of Christ’s glory.” But like Cranmer’s fellow bishops, Hugh Latimer (c.1485-1555) and Nicholas Ridley (c.1500-1555), who were burned at the stake in October, 1555, Cranmer, when he died a martyr in March 1556—450 years ago this month—lit a candle for the gospel in England that could not be easily put out.

Eminent Christians: 6. Patrick of Ireland

On St. Patrick’s Day what else would an Irish Christian historian post about, but St. Patrick! Here is a post that appeared first on Irish Reformation and is reprinted here with some emendations. The fall of the Western Roman Empire—its impact on Britain

When Patrick was born, the Romans had been in Britain for roughly 350 years. South of Hadrian’s Wall they had crisscrossed the land with a network of Roman roads. Urban centres of importance, such as York, Gloucester and London had been developed and dotting the countryside lavish villas had been built by upper class Romanized Britons. Among these wealthy Britons there grew to be an appreciation of and desire for Roman culture, and consequently they sought to ensure that their children received a proper Roman education.

At the close of the fourth century, however, the comfortable world of the Romanized British upper class was about to be shattered, never to be restored. During the last quarter of that century the Empire had suffered a number of severe body blows which would precipitate the total collapse of imperial rule in the West in the following century. Those momentous events were naturally not without impact on Roman Britain.

In the summer of 407 Constantine III, a usurper who had been elevated to imperial power by the legions in Britain, crossed the Channel, ostensibly to repel the barbarians. The legions would never return. In the years that followed, the British sought to organize their own defence against Saxon raiders from the east and hit-and-run attacks by Irish pirates from the west. But with the departure of the legions, economic and cultural decay started to set in. In the words of R. P. C. Hanson: “Towns began to be deserted, villas abandoned. No more coins were minted… The Roman system of education probably collapsed.” [The Life and Writings of the Historical Saint Patrick (New York: The Seabury Press, 1983), 7].

But what did not collapse or leave with the Roman legions was the Christian witness on the island.

The British Church

While Patrick’s writings constitute some of the earliest literary evidence from an actual member of the British Church, there is written testimony going back to the second century regarding the presence of Christianity in the British Isles. The second-century Christian authors, Tertullian and Origen, both mention the existence of Christians in Britain, thus testifying to the fact that Christianity in Britain “was sufficiently well-founded and its membership sufficiently large that Christians in North Africa and Alexandria would know of its existence.” [Joseph F. Kelly, “The Origins of Christianity in Britain: The Literary Evidence” (Unpublished paper, May, 1983), 4-5].

How Christianity first came to the shores of Britain is impossible to determine. W.H.C. Frend has plausibly suggested that it was brought thither by merchants or by soldiers garrisoned in Britain. [“Romano-British Christianity and the West: Comparison and Contrast” in Susan M. Pearce, ed., The Early Church in Western Britain and Ireland (Oxford: B.A.R., 1982), 6].

When we turn to material evidence we find that archaeological excavations have brought to light villas that contain distinctly Christian mosaics. Archaeologists have uncovered Christian places of worship from the 4th and 5th centuries. The most interesting of these is perhaps at Lullingstone in Kent. There a villa was found that had been built towards the end of the 1st century A.D. and substantially expanded near end of the 2nd century by a man of some distinction and wealth. Near the end of the 2nd century the villa was suddenly deserted. The owner appears to have left in a hurry. “After lying derelict for over 50 years, it was reoccupied by a new family in the last quarter of the third century. …Then, about 360-70, the owner became a Christian, and part of the villa was converted to Christian use.” It was destroyed by fire in the early 5th century [Roger J.A. Wilson, A Guide to the Roman Remains in Britain (London: Constable and Company Ltd., 1975), 52-53].

The early life of Patrick

Such is the context into which the life and career of Patrick must be placed, if it is to be properly appreciated. Now, the dates of Patrick’s birth and death have been, and still are, the subject of much debate. Hanson has put forward a fairly convincing argument in favour of placing Patrick’s birth c.389 and his death some 70 years later c.461, but he admits that these dates possess no finality. [R.P.C. Hanson and Cecile Blanc, Saint Patrick: Confession et Lettre à Coroticus (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1978), 18-21]. For other perspectives on Patrick’s dates, see E.A. Thompson, Who Was Saint Patrick? (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1985), 166-175. For a strong argument in favour of a later dating, see David N. Dumville, Saint Patrick, A.D. 493-1993 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1993), 29-33].

What is certain is that Patrick is a product of Britain in the late fourth century and his missionary activity in Ireland falls mostly within the first half of the fifth century.

The broad outline of Patrick’s career is fairly plain. At the beginning of his Confession he tells us of his family background and how his life at home was traumatically interrupted—Confession 1:“I am Patrick, a sinner, most unlearned, the least of all the faithful, and utterly despised by many. My father was Calpornius, a deacon, son of Potitus, a presbyter, of the village Bannavem Taburniae; he had a country seat [villulam] nearby, and there I was taken captive. I was then about sixteen years of age. I did not know the true God. I was taken into captivity to Ireland with many thousands of people—and deservedly so, because we turned away from God, and did not keep his commandments, and did not obey our bishops, who used to remind us of our salvation. And the Lord “brought over us the wrath of his anger” [Isaiah 42:25] and “scattered us among many nations,” [Jeremiah 9:16] even “unto the utmost part of the earth” [Acts 13:47] where now my littleness is placed among strangers.” [Trans. Ludwig Bieler, The Works of St. Patrick, St. Secundinus: Hymn on St. Patrick (1953 ed.; repr. New York/Ramsey, New Jersey: Paulist Press, n.d.), 21, altered].

This text gives some indication of the general whereabouts of Patrick’s home: the village Bannavem Taburniae, or, as Máire B. de Paor spells it, Bannaventa Berniae. [Máire B. de Paor, Patrick: The Pilgrim Apostle of Ireland (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 25-26]. Unfortunately this village has not been identified. Nevertheless, it is probable that this village was near the western or southwestern coast of Britain, where it would be within easy striking distance of Irish raiders. More importantly, the mention of his father’s villa (villulam) which was near this village provides solid evidence that Patrick was born into the upper crust of Romano-British society, and was accustomed to wealth and comfort.

Finally, Patrick’s description of himself as “most unlearned” (rusticissimus) is significant. A number of times in his Confession Patrick bemoans the fact that his education was deficient. For instance, in Confession 9 he admits:

“I have not studied like the others, who thoroughly imbibed law and Sacred Scripture, and never had to change from the language of their childhood days, but were able to make it still more perfect. In our case, what I had to say had to be translated into a tongue foreign to me, as can be easily proved from the savour of my writing, which betrays how little instruction and training I have had in the art of words.” (Trans. Bieler, Works of St. Patrick, 23. See also Confession 10, 12, 13, 46, 62).

While Patrick’s contemporaries were becoming progressively skilful in their use of Latin as a literary tool, he was a slave in Ireland, having to speak the language of his captors, Primitive Irish. His education in Latin had been severely curtailed and when, much later in life, he came to write the Confession, he often struggled to express himself clearly.

So, at the age of sixteen Patrick found himself violently torn away from all that was familiar to him and transported as a slave to the west coast of Ireland. As a result of this intensely traumatic experience, Patrick turned to God—Confession 2:

“And there [in Ireland] the Lord opened the sense of my unbelief that I might at last remember my sins and be converted with all my heart to the Lord my God, who had regard for my abjection and mercy on my youth and ignorance.” (Trans. Bieler, Works of St. Patrick, 21).

No longer a rebel, indifferent to the claims of God upon his life, Patrick sought to live a life in daily communion with God—Confession 16:

“After I came to Ireland—every day I had to tend sheep, and many times a day I prayed—the love of God and his fear came to me more and more, and my faith was strengthened. And my spirit was moved so that in a single day I would say as many as a hundred prayers, and almost as many in the night, and this even when I was staying in the woods and on the mountain; and I used to get up for prayer before daylight, through snow, through frost, through rain, and I felt no harm, and there was no sloth in me—as I now see, because the Spirit within me was then fervent.” (Trans. Bieler, Works of St. Patrick, 25).

After six years in this state of captivity, Patrick managed to escape and eventually find his way back to his family in Britain. The period that elapsed between his return to Britain and his going back to Ireland as a missionary is quite obscure. We do know that in this period Patrick had a striking dream in which he sensed a call to return to Ireland to work among the people who had enslaved him (Confession 23-24).

It was also during this time that Patrick may have received some formal theological training in preparation for ordination as a deacon. In the course of this preparation, he became thoroughly familiar with the Latin Bible, so much so that he has on occasion been described as “a man unius libri” (“a man of one book”). [Christine Mohrmann, The Latin of Saint Patrick (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1961), 8].

“Bound by the Spirit”

At the end of this period, that is, around 432, he departed for the part of Ireland where he had been held captive. He would never return to Britain. As he wrote in his Confession 43:

“Wherefore, then, even if I wished to leave…and go to Britain—and how I would have loved to go to my country and my parents, and also to Gaul in order to visit the brethren and to see the face of the saints of my Lord! God knows it that I much desired it; but I am bound by the Spirit [cp. Acts 20:22] who gives evidence against me if I do this, telling me that I shall be guilty; and I am afraid of losing the labour which I have begun—nay, not I, but Christ the Lord who bade me come here and stay with them for the rest of my life, if the Lord will.” (Trans. Bieler, Works of St. Patrick, 35).

And in another text from this same work he could state—Confession 37: “I came to the people of Ireland to preach the Gospel, and to suffer insult from the unbelievers, bearing the reproach of my going abroad and many persecutions even unto bonds, and to give my free birth for the benefit of others; and, should I be worthy, I am prepared to give even my life without hesitation and most gladly for his name, and it is there that I wish to spend it until I die, if the Lord would grant it to me.” (Trans. Bieler, Works of St. Patrick, 32).

These texts reveal a man who has a deep certainty of the will of God for his life: to live out his days in Ireland so that the Irish might come to know God as he had done. In the first text he says that he must do this because he is “bound by the Spirit.” This phrase, “bound by the Spirit” is drawn directly from Acts 20:22, where the Apostle Paul tells the Ephesian elders that he is “bound by the Spirit” to go to Jerusalem, despite the probability that he would experience much suffering there. The Apostle is committed to doing what he perceives as God’s will, no matter the cost. The clear implication in Patrick’s use of this term is that he shares the Apostle Paul’s depth of commitment to Jesus Christ and the extension of his Kingdom.

The legacy

The course of his travels in Ireland is not at all clear from his Confession, but it was probably restricted to the north. His ministry in Ireland was extremely successful, though he certainly had not evangelized the whole of Ireland by the time of his death, which cannot have been long after he wrote his Confession. Patrick speaks of thousands converted through his ministry (Confession 14, 38, 50), including sons and daughters of Irish kings (Confession 41-42). They were converted, he tells us, from the worship of “idols and filthy things.” (Confession 41). It is noteworthy that he speaks of the worship practices of Irish paganism with “scorn and dislike” (Hanson, Historical Saint Patrick, 111).

Yet, his missionary labours were not without strong opposition, presumably from the Celtic Druids in Ireland. In one section of his Confession he says: “daily I expect murder, fraud, or captivity.” [Confession 55 (trans. Bieler, Works of St. Patrick, 38)].

Patrick’s response to these dangers reveals the true mettle of the man: “I fear none of these things because of the promises of heaven. I have cast myself into the hands of God Almighty, who rules everywhere, as the prophet says: ‘Cast thy thought upon God, and he shall sustain thee’.” [Confession 55 (trans. Bieler, Works of St. Patrick, 38)].

The Celtic Church inherited Patrick’s missionary zeal. His spiritual descendants, men like Columba (c.521-597), Columbanus (c.543-615), and Aidan (died 651), partook of this missionary fervour, so that the Celtic Church became, in the words of James Carney, “a reservoir of spiritual vigour, which would…fructify the parched lands of western Europe.” [“Sedulius Scottus” in Robert McNally, ed., Old Ireland (New York: Fordham University Press 1965), 230].

Eminent Christians: 5. Andrew Fuller

Andrew Fuller (1754-1815), an indefatigable and fearless Baptist theologian and minister, was an outstanding figure with qualities that make him one of the most attractive figures in Christian history. Many in his day and after could echo the words of his very close friend William Carey (1761-1834), “I loved him.” In fact, Charles Haddon Spurgeon once described Fuller as “the greatest theologian” of his century. He was converted in November 1769 and baptized the following April. He subsequently joined the Soham church where his family went. Over the course of the next few years, it became very evident to the church that Fuller possessed definite ministerial gifts. Fuller, who was self-taught when it came to theology and who had been preaching in the church for a couple of years, was formally inducted as pastor on 3 May 1775. The church consisted of forty-seven members and met for worship in a rented barn.

Fuller’s pastorate at Soham, which lasted until 1782 when he moved to pastor the Baptist work in Kettering, Northamptonshire, was a decisive period for the shaping of Fuller’s theological outlook. It was during these seven years that Fuller began a lifelong study of the works of the New England divine Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), his chief theological mentor after the Scriptures. It was also in this period of time that he made the acquaintance of Robert Hall, Sr (1728-1791), John Ryland, Jr (1753-1825) and John Sutcliff (1752-1814), who would later become his closest ministerial friends and colleagues.

Battling High Calvinism

Finally, it was during his pastorate at Soham that Fuller decisively rejected High Calvinism (a.k.a. Hyper-Calvinism) and drew up a defence of his own theological position in The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, though the first edition of this book was not published until 1785. Two editions of the work were published in Fuller’s lifetime. The first edition, published in Northampton in 1785, was subtitled The Obligations of Men Fully to Credit, and Cordially to Approve, Whatever God Makes Known, Wherein is Considered the Nature of Faith in Christ, and the Duty of Those where the Gospel Comes in that Matter. The second edition, which appeared in 1801, was more simply subtitled The Duty of Sinners to Believe in Jesus Christ, a subtitle which well expressed the overall theme of the book.

There were a few substantial differences between this first edition and the second edition (1801), which Fuller freely admitted and which primarily related to the doctrine of particular redemption. The work’s major theme remained unaltered, however: “faith in Christ is the duty of all men who hear, or have opportunity to hear, the gospel.” This epoch-making book sought to be faithful to the central emphases of historic Calvinism while at the same time attempting to leave preachers with no alternative but to drive home to their hearers the universal obligations of repentance and faith.

With regard to Fuller’s own ministry, the book was a key factor in determining the shape of that ministry in the years to come. For instance, it led directly to Fuller’s whole-hearted involvement in the formation of the Baptist Missionary Society in October 1792 and the subsequent sending of the Society’s most famous missionary, William Carey (1761-1834), to India in 1793.

Fuller also served as secretary of this society until his death in 1815. The work of the mission consumed an enormous amount of Fuller’s time as he regularly toured the country, representing the mission and raising funds. On average he was away from home three months of the year. Between 1798 and 1813, moreover, he made five lengthy trips to Scotland for the mission as well as undertaking journeys to Wales and Ireland (1804). He also carried on an extensive correspondence on the mission’s behalf.

Other areas of controversy

Fuller also engaged in other vital areas of theological debate. In 1793 he issued an extensive refutation of the Socinianism of Joseph Priestley (1733-1804)—The Calvinistic and Socinian Systems examined and Compared, as to their Moral Tendency. Due to the vigorous campaigning of Priestley, Socinianism, which denied the Trinity and the deity of Christ, had become the leading form of heterodoxy within English Dissent in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Fuller’s rebuttal of Socinianism well displays the Christocentric nature of eighteenth-century Evangelical thought. Fuller ably showed that the early Church made the divine dignity and glory of Christ’s person “their darling theme.”

In 1800 Fuller published The Gospel Its Own Witness, the definitive eighteenth-century Baptist response to Deism, in particular that of the popularizer Thomas Paine (1737-1809). This work was one of the most popular of Fuller’s books, going through three editions by 1802 and being reprinted a number of times in the next thirty years. William Wilberforce (1759-1833), who admired Fuller as a theologian and who once graphically described him as “the very picture of a blacksmith,” considered it to be the most important of all of Fuller’s writings. The work has two parts. In the first, Fuller compares and contrasts the moral effects of Christianity with those of Deism. The second part of the book aims to demonstrate the divine origin of Christianity from the general consistency of the Scriptures.

Responding to eighteenth-century easy believism

Yet another vital controversy in which Fuller engaged was that with the Sandemanians, the followers of Robert Sandeman (1718-1771), who distinguished themselves from other eighteenth-century Evangelicals by a predominantly intellectualist view of faith. They became known for their cardinal theological tenet that saving faith is “bare belief of the bare truth.” In a genuine desire to exalt the utter freeness of God’s salvation, Sandeman had sought to remove any vestige of human reasoning, willing or desiring in the matter of saving faith.

In his Strictures on Sandemanianism (1810) Fuller makes a couple of telling points. First, if faith does concern only the mind, then there would be no way to distinguish genuine Christianity from nominal Christianity. A nominal Christian mentally assents to the truths of Christianity, but those truths do not grip the heart and re-orient his or her affections. Then, knowledge of Christ is a distinct type of knowledge. Knowing him, for instance, involves far more than knowing certain things about him, such as the fact of his virgin birth or the details of his crucifixion. It involves a desire for fellowship with him and a delight in his presence.

The shape of his pastoral ministry

But Fuller was far more than an apologist and mission secretary. Alongside his apologetic works, Fuller exercised a significant pastoral ministry at Kettering. During his thirty-three years at Kettering, from 1782 to 1815, the membership of the church more than doubled (from 88 to 174) and the number of “hearers” was often over a thousand, necessitating several additions to the church building. Perusal of his vast correspondence—today housed in the Angus Library, Regent’s Park College, the University of Oxford—reveals that Fuller was first and foremost a pastor. And though he did not always succeed, he constantly sought to ensure that his many other responsibilities did not encroach upon those related to the pastorate.

Two examples well display his pastoral heart. After Fuller died, there was found among his possessions a small book entitled “Families who attend at the Meeting, August, 1788.” In it he wrote: “A Review of these may assist me in praying and preaching.” Then, among his letters there is one dated 8 February 1812, which was written to a wayward member of his flock. In it Fuller lays bare his pastor’s heart when he writes: “When a parent loses…a child nothing but the recovery of that child can heal the wound. If he could have many other children, that would not do it… Thus it is with me towards you. Nothing but your return to God and the Church can heal the wound.”

Final days

Fuller had remarkable stores of physical and mental energy that allowed him to accomplish all that he did. But it was not without cost to his body. What he called a “paralytic stroke” in 1793 left him rarely free of severe headaches for the rest of his life. And in his last fifteen years he was rarely well. Taken seriously ill in September 1814, his health began to seriously decline. By the spring of the following year he was dying. He preached for the last time at Kettering on 2 April 1815 and died 7 May. He was 62.His funeral was attended by an immense crowd which one estimate put at 2,000 persons.

At Fuller’s request, his old friend, John Ryland, preached the funeral sermon. Based on Romans 8:10, it included a brief account of Fuller’s final days and the following declaration made by Fuller in his last letter to Ryland. “I have preached and written much against the abuse of the doctrine of grace,” Fuller wrote, “but that doctrine is all my salvation and all my desire. I have no other hope than from salvation by mere sovereign, efficacious grace through the atonement of my Lord and Saviour.”

I have never seen anyone dedicate a blog entry to anyone else, as we dedicate books to friends and colleagues. But there is always a first! So I would like to dedicate this entry on one of my favourite theologians to my mother, Theresa Veronica O’Gorman Haykin (1933-1976), who went to be with our Lord Jesus thirty years ago today. Praise the Lord for what Fuller calls “mere sovereign, efficacious grace” that saved her from hell.

Eminent Christians: 4. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

My first reading of Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981) was his book on the sermon on the Mount in the late 1970s. But it was not until I read the first volume of Iain H. Murray’s life of “the Doctor” that I experienced the deep impact of his life and thought [David Martyn Lloyd-Jones. The First Forty Years 1899-1939 (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1982)]. Suffice it to say, that of all the Christian authors and expositors of the twentieth century, none has shaped my thinking as a Christian more than this man and his writing. I believe with all of my heart that what Lloyd-Jones once remarked regarding Jonathan Edwards, that quintessential Evangelical theologian, could be said of Lloyd-Jones himself: “Nothing is more striking than the balance of this man. You must have the theology; but it must be theology on fire. There must be warmth and heat as well as light. In Edwards we find the ideal combination—the great doctrines with the fire of the Spirit upon them.”

Early years

Lloyd-Jones was born in Cardiff, Wales, on December 20, 1899. His earliest experiences of church life were in the Presbyterian Church of Wales, heir to the Evangelical theology and fervent piety of Calvinistic Methodism. The latter was birthed in the fires of the Evangelical revival of the 18th century and nourished on the majestic doctrines of Evangelical Calvinism. Sadly, by Lloyd-Jones’ day, the Evangelical fervour and spirituality of the denomination had largely fallen prey to liberal theology. Instead of Calvinism’s rich and majestic vision of a sovereign God rescuing fallen human beings through the atoning work of his Son, Lloyd-Jones was raised on a tepid diet of faith in social betterment through education and political action.

In his early teens his family moved to London. There, during the momentous days of World War I, he enrolled as a student at the medical school of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, from where he received his M.R.C.S. and L.R.C.P. degrees in July, 1921, and that October his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (M.B.B.S.). For the next three years, Lloyd-Jones worked closely with the physician to the royal family, Sir Thomas (later Lord) Horder (1871-1955), first as his junior house physician, then as his chief clinical assistant. In 1924 came a further honour when he received an important scholarship to study bacterial endocarditis.

Coming to Christ in the mid-1920s

Despite this dazzling rise to prominence in the medical world, Lloyd-Jones was having serious doubts about continuing in his chosen profession. In the words of his grandson, Christopher Catherwood, Lloyd-Jones was “struck by the ungodliness and moral emptiness of many of Horder’s aristocratic patients.” [“Martyn Lloyd-Jones” in his Five Evangelical Leaders (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1984), 55].

He became convinced that the root problem of many of his mentor’s patients was ultimately spiritual. They were seeking to live out their lives with no conscious relationship to the One who had created them and sustained them every moment of their lives. Their need, though, highlighted his own personal need for such a relationship. In Lloyd-Jones’ own words:

“I am a Christian solely and entirely because of the grace of God and not because of anything that I have thought or said or done. He brought me to know that I was dead, “dead in trespasses and sins”, a slave to the world, and the flesh, and the devil, that in me “dwelleth no good thing”, and that I was under the wrath of God and heading for eternal punishment. He brought me to see that the real cause of all my troubles and ills, and that of all men, was an evil and fallen nature which hated God and loved sin. My trouble was not only that I did things that were wrong, but that I myself was wrong at the very centre of my being.” (Cited Murray, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, 1:64).

Lloyd-Jones’ conversion, which he never dated, took place at some point in 1923 or 1924. Attending it was a call and a passion to preach the gospel in his native Wales.

His first talk in Wales was in April, 1925, when he gave an address on “The Problem of Modern Wales” from the pulpit of Pontypridd Baptist Church. He concluded on a note that would be prominent in his preaching throughout his life: “what Wales needs above everything today is…a revival,…a great spiritual awakening such as took place in the eighteenth century under the influence and guidance of the Methodist Fathers.” (Cited Murray, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, 1:89).

Ministry in Wales, 1927-1938

At the end of 1926, he accepted a call to pastor Bethlehem Forward Movement Mission, a Calvinistic Methodist work in Sandfields, Aberavon. A few weeks later, on January 8, 1927, he married Bethan Phillips, whom he had loved for at least nine years prior to their marriage. Martyn and Bethan had a singularly happy marriage. According to their grandson, Christopher Catherwood, they “complemented each other and were able to strengthen each other” throughout their long lives together.

By the mid-1930s Lloyd-Jones’ preaching, characterized by a vigorous Calvinism, commitment to the vital spirituality of eighteenth-century Methodism, and concern for the work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration and revival, had made him known throughout England and Wales. So it was that he came to the attention of G. Campbell Morgan (1863-1945), the well-known minister of Westminster Chapel in London. Hearing Lloyd-Jones preach in Philadelphia in 1937, Morgan determined to have the Welsh preacher called as his assistant.

At the time Lloyd-Jones was seriously contemplating leaving Aberavon. By the latter half of that year he had come to the distinct conviction that his work at Sandfields was over. The physical demands on his ministry were also telling on him and he sensed deeply the need for a change. One possibility was the principalship of the Calvinistic Methodist College in Bala, North Wales. But providentially, this offer of an academic position fell through and Lloyd-Jones went to Westminster on the eve of the World War II. As he would tell his biographer Iain Murray not long before his death, his life had witnessed a succession of events that he himself had never expected or planned on. His move to Westminster Chapel was certainly one of them. It turned out to be a crucial move, for being in the heart of London he was placed in a position to exercise an influence on the state of English-speaking Evangelicalism that would not have been possible if he had stayed in Wales. (Catherwood, “Martyn Lloyd-Jones”, 66).

At Westminster Chapel, 1938-1968

Lloyd-Jones served as Morgan’s associate pastor until the latter’s retirement in 1943. Lloyd-Jones then served as the sole pastor until his own retirement in 1968. The war scattered most of the large congregation that had delighted in Morgan’s preaching. Thus, when the war was over Lloyd-Jones had to rebuild the congregation from around one or two hundred. By the 1950s attendance was often close to two thousand. [For a brief discussion of the numbers that regularly attended the services at Westminster Chapel, see Michael A. Eaton, Baptism with the Spirit: The teaching of Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1989), 14 and 33, n.2].

What drew these people was the clarity of biblical exposition, the spiritual power, and the doctrinal depth of Lloyd-Jones’ preaching. In the words of John Piper: “Like Jonathan Edwards two hundred years before, he held audiences by the sheer weight and intensity of his vision of truth.” [“A Passion for Christ-Exalting Power: Reflections on the Life and Preaching of Martyn Lloyd-Jones” (Audiotape; The Bethlehem Conference for Pastors, Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 30, 1991)].

When Lloyd-Jones had a bout of cancer in 1968, from which he made a full recovery, he took it nevertheless as a sign to step down from the pastorate of Westminster Chapel. The final years of his life were devoted to guest preaching and in particular to writing, preparing his expository sermons for publication.

The impact of his ministry

The impact of his ministry was felt far beyond the congregations that assembled week by week to hear him preach. For instance, his support of such organizations as The Banner of Truth publishing house and the annual ministers’ conference known as The Puritan Conference (later called the Westminster Conference) was vital in the recovery of biblical Calvinism in the world of western Evangelicalism. He was also an influential figure in the Inter-Varisty Fellowship and a key player in the formation of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students.

His final days were typical of the man. Dying of cancer, he had lost the power of speech. On Thursday evening, February 26, he wrote a note for his wife Bethan and their family: “Do not pray for healing. Do not hold me back from the glory.” [Iain H. Murray, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones. The Fight of Faith 1939-1981 (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1990), 747-748]. The following Lord’s Day, March 1, 1981, he entered into that glory, which had been the deepest motivation of his life and ministry.

Further reading

Beyond the books and articles cited above, see also:

• Leigh Powell, “Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981): A Personal Appreciation”, The Gospel Witness, 60, No.2 (April 9, 1981), 8-11; 60, No.3 (April 23, 1981), 7-11.

• Frederick and Elizabeth Catherwood, Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Man and His Books (Bryntirion, Bridgend, Mid Glamorgan: Evangelical Library of Wales/London: Evangelical Library, 1982).

• J. I. Packer, “David Martyn Lloyd-Jones” in Charles Turner, ed., Chosen Vessels: Portraits of Ten Outstanding Christian Men (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Servant Publications, 1985), 108-123.

• D. Eryl Davies, “Dr D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: An Introduction”, Themelios, 25, No.1 (November 1999), 39-53.

Eminent Christians: 3. Charles Wesley

It was John Welsey’s heir apparent John Fletcher who once remarked that next to the Bible “one of the greatest blessings that God has bestowed upon the Methodists…is their hymns.” The central figure behind these hymns, of course, was Charles Wesley (1707-1788), the eighteenth child born to Samuel Wesley and his wife Susanna (née Annesley). He arrived prematurely on December 10, 1707, and apparently spent his earliest days of life wrapped in wool, neither opening his eyes nor raising his voice. But his voice would not always be silent! For fifty years after his conversion in 1738 it would announce, in sermon and in song, the good news of God’s redemption through faith in Christ. The story is told of how Charles, as a young boy, refused an offer of becoming the heir of a wealthy Anglo-Irish cousin, Garret Wesley, since it would remove him from the bonds of his family and friends. Another cousin, Richard Colley, went in Charles’ stead and became Richard Colley Wesley—the grandfather of Marquis Wellesley, who colonized India, and of the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. How much history hung on a small boy’s decision! Yet, Charles Wesley also left a heritage, one more permanent than any empire and more powerful than any army: his hymns.

The pathway to conversion

Charles went up to study at Oxford in 1726. Initially he lived a carefree undergraduate life, intent only on having a good time. But by 1729 he had become quite devout and threw all of his energies into seeking to live the Christian life. But he was not converted; and he was seeking to build his Christian faith and hope of salvation on his good works. Nearly ten years were to elapse before Charles came to Christ on May 21, 1738, Pentecost Sunday.

The key figure in his conversion was Peter Böhler (1712-1775), a German Moravian missionary. Early in that year, while living in London, Charles had fallen ill and had actually come close to death. Böhler came to visit him and spoke to him about his need of salvation. Böhler asked him: “Do you hope to be saved?” When Charles assured him that he did, Böhler enquired further: “For what reason do you hope it?” “Because I have used my best endeavours to serve God,” returned Charles. At such an inadequate response Böhler shook his head sadly and said no more. Charles later admitted that he considered Böhler to be most uncharitable and thought to himself, “What are not my endeavours a sufficient ground of hope? Would he rob me of my endeavours? I have nothing else to trust to.”

Pentecost Sunday, 1738

It was another Moravian by the name of William Holland (d.1761) who gave Charles a copy of Martin Luther’s commentary on Galatians to read. Holland, in fact, has been identified as the one who was reading this commentary on May 24, 1738, at Aldersgate Street when Charles’ brother John Wesley was converted. On May 17, 1738, Charles noted in his diary: “I spent some hours this evening in private with Luther, who was greatly blessed to me, …I laboured, waited, and prayed to feel ‘Who loved me and gave Himself for me’.”

On May 21, Pentecost Sunday, Charles awoke with great expectation. Still confined to bed because of his sickness, he was visited by his older brother John. After John had left, Charles lay back to sleep.

He awoke to hear the voice of a woman (actually the sister of the man in whose house he was staying) saying: “In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, arise and believe, and thou shalt be healed of thy infirmities.” The woman, a Mrs. Turner, had been commanded by the Lord in a dream to convey this message. Charles was physically healed and spiritually converted. Three days later, on May 24, his brother John was also converted.

A very good marriage

Up until 1749 Charles, like his brother, was an itinerant evangelist. But on April 8, 1749, he married Sarah (a.k.a. Sally) Gwynne (d.1822), who was 23 at the time, and whom he had known since 1747 when he visited the home of her father Marmaduke Gwynne, a Welsh Methodist.

A gifted singer and accomplished harpsichordist, Sally was gentle and unselfish. In many ways she and Charles had an ideal marriage. Rightly Charles’ itinerant ministry became less and less because of family responsibilities. Of eight children, they lost five as infants!

They settled first at Bristol, and then in London in 1771, where he became a spiritual father to the burgeoning Methodist movement. He died in 1788.

“Where shall my wondering soul begin?”

Immediately after his conversion, Wesley began writing what would be the first of his 6,000 hymns (another 3,000 are classified as poems). His pen would not be silent for the next fifty years. It works out to be about 10 lines a verse a day for fifty years!

Both Charles and John regarded the hymns as central in nurturing and sustaining the revival. Writing the introduction to A Collection of Hymns, for the Use of the People called Methodists (1780), John Wesley noted that this hymnal is recommended “to every truly pious reader, as a means of raising or quickening the spirit of devotion; of confirming his faith; of enlivening his hope; and of kindling and increasing his love to God and man.”

It is widely thought that Wesley’s first hymn was “Where shall my wondering soul begin?” Charles Wesley’s journal for May 21, 1738, the day of his conversion runs thus:

“At nine, I began an hymn upon my conversion, but I was persuaded to break off for fear of pride. Mr. Bray [a friend], coming encouraged me to proceed in spite of Satan. I prayed Christ to stand by me, and finished the hymn.”

The first two stanzas of ‘Where shall my wondering soul begin?’ well express Wesley’s experience of conversion:

Where shall my wondering soul begin?How shall I all to heaven aspire?A slave redeemed from death and sin,A brand plucked from eternal fire,How shall I equal triumphs raise,Or sing my great Deliverer’s praise?

O how shall I the goodness tell,Father, which Thou to me hast showed?That I, a child of wrath and hell,I should be called a child of God,Should know, should feel my sins forgiven,Blessed with this antepast of heaven!

Characteristics of Wesley’s hymns

Three major characteristics mark Wesley’s hymns.

First, if one studies Charles’ hymns, one is struck first by the fact that a large proportion of the phrases in them come from Scripture or allusions to Scripture texts.

Then, his hymns are suffused with classical Christian dogma and doctrine. They set forth the powerful doctrines of an uncompromising orthodox Christianity. References to the doctrines of the Trinity and the incarnation, the cross and the resurrection abound. As Bernard L. Manning once wrote, Wesley had an “obsession with the greatest things.”

Finally Wesley speaks of a present experience of Christian orthodoxy and of its effects in his life. In his hymns we hear the love-songs of a heart aflame with love to Jesus. As J. I. Packer has rightly remarked about Charles: he is “the supreme poet of love to Jesus in a revival context.”

Eminent Christians: 2. Fanny Crosby

Through such well-known hymns as “Blessed Assurance”, “To God be the glory”, “Jesus, keep me near the cross” and “All the way my Saviour leads me,” Fanny Jane Crosby (1820-1915) has had a profound influence on American Evangelicalism. She was born in the state of New York on March 24, 1820. When she was only six weeks old she was accidentally blinded due to a mistreatment by an ill-qualified doctor. Her father having died when she was but one, she was raised by a godly mother and grandmother. At an early age they encouraged her to memorize Scripture, which would become a rich source of inspiration for her hymns later in her life. It would also help her develop a phenomenal memory. At one point, when she was an adult, she had stored in her mind up to forty poems she had composed before she wrote them down! At the age of fifteen she went to the New York School for the Blind where she lived and later taught till her marriage in 1858 to Alexander van Alstyne (1831-1902). They had one child who died while but an infant. It was also in New York that she found assurance of her salvation while attending an evangelistic meeting at the Methodist Broadway Tabernacle on November 20, 1850.

During the American Civil War, in 1863, Fanny composed her first hymn for a worship service at the Dutch Reformed Church at 23rd Street. The pastor of the church later put her in touch with a composer, William B. Bradbury (1817-1868), with whom she worked for four years. After his death in 1868, she wrote hymns for the largest publishing firm of gospel music of that day, Biglow and Main Company. This proved to be a turning-point in her life. She would later look back and say that it was at that time “the real and most important work of my life” commenced.

During her most productive period of hymn-writing, between 1864 and 1889, she was averaging three or four hymns per week, for which she was paid $2.00 a hymn. Though this remuneration was increased somewhat later in her life, she stayed committed to a frugal lifestyle.

She worked with some of the best tunesmiths of her day, including Robert Lowry, Charles H. Gabriel and D. L. Moody’s co-worker, Ira D. Sankey. There is little doubt that Moody and Sankey’s use of Fanny’s hymns in their evangelistic campaigns were a key reason in the growing popularity of the hymns. Most of her 8,000 or so hymns (estimates of the number of hymns she wrote range up to 9,000) are focused on Christian experience. Today roughly sixty of them are in regular use in hymnals.