The Bride of Christ: The Life of Andrew Fuller
THE LIFE OF ANDREW FULLER (1754-1815)
It is 1815, and two men are dining together. One is a younger man named John Greene, the other is the celebrated preacher-orator, Robert Hall, Jr. They are reminiscing about a recently deceased friend. “Do you remember, sir,” Hall asked Greene, “what occurred at his birth?” The younger man had nothing to offer. “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
A slightly less melodramatic yet no less positive assessment comes from Charles Spurgeon, who wrote in this way to our subject’s son, who was the editor of his works and author of a sketch of his life and career:
I have long considered your father to be the greatest theologian of the century, and I do not know that your pages have made me think more highly of him as a divine than I had thought before. But I now see him within doors far more accurately, and see about the Christian man a soft radiance of tender love which had never been revealed to me either by former biographies or by his writings. You have added moss to the rose, and removed some of the thorns in the process.2
More recently described by Michael Haykin as that rare thing, “a first-class theologian,”3 and identified by Timothy George as “the most influential Baptist theologian between John Bunyan and the present day,”4 this man who apparently scares the devils to a corner of hell and yet sheds a soft radiance of tender love is Andrew Fuller, and he was born on 6th February 1754 in the village of Wicken, Cambridgeshire, a wide place in the road in the fenlands of East Anglia.
About two and a half miles from Wicken, visible across the fields, is the larger town of Soham. There Fuller attended church with his parents – Dissenters by birth, Baptists by conviction – under Pastor John Eve, a hyper-Calvinist. The Fuller family moved to Soham when Fuller was seven years old.
Hyper-Calvinism (or high Calvinism) of the Eve variety had brought Baptist churches to a low ebb. One element of the high Calvinist system was the insistence that the Scriptures invite only those sinners who are properly aware of their sin to turn to Christ. As a result, sinners were not warned or entreated from the pulpits to flee to the Saviour, with obvious consequences. Looking back, Fuller could say that “I therefore never considered myself as any way concerned in what I heard from the pulpit.”5 He eventually came to give this assessment: “Till of late, I conceive, there was such a portion of erroneous doctrine and false religion among us, that if we had carried matters a little further, we [the Baptists] should have been a very dunghill in society.”6
But this is to get ahead of ourselves, for this hyper-Calvinism was the atmosphere in and doctrine under which Fuller grew up, in an environment and a community where softness could not thrive and hard work was a necessary virtue. This upbringing contributed much to Fuller’s constitution and character. For example, he once said to a friend,
My father was a farmer, and in my younger days it was one great boast among the ploughmen that they could plough a straight line across the furrows or ridges of field. I thought I could do this just as well as any of them. One day, I saw such a line, which had just been drawn, and I thought, “Now I have it.” Accordingly, I laid hold of the plough, and, putting one of the horses into the furrow which had been made, I resolved to keep him walking in it, and thus secure a parallel line. By and by, however, I observed that there were what might be called wriggles in this furrow; and, when I came to them, they turned out to be larger in mine than in the original. On perceiving this, I threw the plough aside, and determined never to be an imitator.7
This intensity and vigour seems typical of Fuller throughout his life. He was a headstrong young man. Lying, cursing and swearing became particular habits, though rarely without fear, for as the lad grew he began to experience powerful convictions of sin. Once, for example, singing profane songs with other boys around a smith’s fire, he was struck by the thought of the words, “What doest thou here, Elijah!” and left immediately, though angered with God that he would not let him alone to enjoy his sinful pleasures.
From the age of about fourteen, Fuller experienced a spiritual rollercoaster ride which left him thoroughly queasy. At times he would be reading Bunyan’s Grace Abounding or Pilgrim’s Progress and some of Ralph Erskine’s Gospel Sonnets, coming under intense impressions of the sinfulness of sin and making determinations to leave it. Within days, even hours, he would return to his old ways like a dog to its vomit. Some of these feelings would have been considered among the high Calvinists as evidences of grace at work, but Fuller concluded later that the lack of fruit revealed that “the great deeps of my heart’s depravity had not yet been broken up, and . . . all my religion was without any abiding principle.”8 Increasingly torn in two directions, by the time he was fifteen he was “more and more addicted to evil,”9 a strong and athletic youth given to great risk-taking, games of chance, and dangerous sports – an adrenaline junkie. Wrestling was a particular attraction, and it was said that – to the end of his days – Fuller always looked people up and down on meeting them, giving the impression of calculating whether or not he could throw them. It was a habit of appraisal that some of his later theological adversaries might have taken as a warning.
Those earlier impressions had at first left Fuller suspecting that he was a converted but now backsliding believer. By 1769, still living wickedly but in great fear of hell, he realised that such an assumption was an abuse of God’s mercy. Again, high Calvinists – persuaded that only convinced sinners were invited to Christ – often pursued a ‘warrant’ to believe that a person would be accepted by Christ (that warrant was usually a great conviction of sinfulness, and great mental anguish). Despite all his miseries, and crippled by the system within which he was operating, Fuller was convinced he lacked such a warrant. In November 1769, Fuller walked out alone, wrestling in himself, wrestling with God:
I was like a man drowning, looking every way for help, or rather catching for something by which he might save his life. I tried to find whether there were any hope in the divine mercy – any in the Saviour of sinners; but felt repulsed by the thought of mercy so basely abused already. In this state of mind, as I was moving slowly on, I thought of the resolution of Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.”10 I paused, and repeated the words over and over. Each repetition seemed to kindle a ray of hope, mixed with a determination, if I might, to cast my perishing soul upon the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, to be both pardoned and purified; for I felt that I needed the one as much as the other.11
Coming to Christ like Esther going into the presence of Ahasuerus, he had not before realised that the only warrant he needed was Christ’s invitation to come. Now at last he found true peace, and the fifteen year old laid aside all his old sinful pursuits. Indeed, under the influence of godly older men, he used to leave the village during the holidays to avoid the temptation to join in with the tearaways among whom he had once been so prominent. Persuaded that believer’s baptism was “the primitive way,” he was baptized in April 1770, and joined the Soham church under John Eve. He was sixteen years old.
Not long after this, the church was divided by a doctrinal question, and Fuller was unwittingly in the midst of it. The young man had challenged a member who had become drunk, and the man had responded that he had no power to keep himself from sin. Fuller responded robustly, was rebuffed on account of his alleged youthful naïveté, and went to consult Eve, who confirmed Fuller’s approach. Although the drunkard was soon excluded, the matter was taken up as an abstract question as to whether or not someone had the power to do the will of God and keep themselves from sin. Fuller sided first with Pastor Eve, and then drifted back toward the more consistent hyper-Calvinists who claimed that men (presumably, even converted men) could not keep themselves from sin. In October 1771, Pastor Eve resigned from his charge. Though never looking back on this period without grief, Fuller recognised that these contentions sent him to his Bible to read, think and pray in way he had not found necessary before, and planted the seeds which subsequently flowered in his mature understanding of God’s grace at work.
But Eve’s departure prompted further developments. After he left, the preaching of the word was undertaken largely by an older man called Joseph Diver (d. 1780) who had been baptised at the same time as Fuller and had become one of his closest friends. One Saturday in November 1771, Fuller was privately pondering a passage of Scripture. The following morning, as he made his way to the meeting place, he received a message from Diver: “Brother Diver has by accident sprained his ancle, and cannot be at meeting to-day; and he wishes me to say to you, that he hopes the Lord will be with you.”12 The Lord helped him and he was asked to speak again. On this second occasion he did so badly – at least, in his own eyes – that he subsequently avoided efforts to persuade him to public speaking for a year. He later lamented that he spent the years from 1771 to 1774 “to so little purpose,”13 without the kind of investment and mentoring that might have profited him.
Nevertheless, Fuller’s spiritual gifts became increasingly evident, and he was called by the church to preach the gospel at the end of 1774, subsequently called as pastor in January 1775, and ordained in the church on 3rd May 1775 (the same year that the church joined the Northamptonshire Association). Robert Hall Sr., minister of Arnsby (1728-1791), preached at Fuller’s ordination and was something of a mentor to the young man.
As the pressures of preaching and pastoring increased, so Fuller spent more time studying and reading, wrestling with the questions which still perplexed him. Robert Hall Sr. recommended “Edwards on the Will” to the young pastor as a means of coming to fixed conclusions about the previous controversy in the church. Unfortunately, Fuller started with the wrong Edwards14 (he did not realise his mistake until 1777). He read a number of different pamphlets and books. He compared John Gill (1697-1771) and John Bunyan (1628-1688) but initially came down toward the side of Gill. He also began to wade into John Owen (1616-1683) and found there a definite and distinct difference between the Calvinism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the Calvinism of the early eighteenth century that he had, to this point, largely inherited.
Further pressure developed when, in 1776, Fuller met John Ryland Jr. (1753-1825) and John Sutcliff (1752-1814). Ryland was already substantially convinced of high Calvinism’s error regarding the free offer of the gospel, and as Fuller and his friends read and studied the works of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) and others, they grew together toward greater light. These men, together with others such as Samuel Pearce (1766-1799) and William Carey (1761-1834), would become and remain Fuller’s closest companions. Fuller often relied heavily on Sutcliff on practical issues, considering that he “excelled in practical judgement.”15
But despite these promptings from outside, it was largely alone that Fuller struggled with these questions, taking all things to the touchstone of God’s word. He developed as a theologian by wrestling through issues prayerfully with an open Bible, and these early years helped him form many of his most deeply-held convictions. It was perhaps thinking of how such circumstances would necessarily stir him up that he would later write to William Carey, “I am a dull flint, you must strike me against a steel to produce fire.”16 Being self-taught, he lacked some of the finer academic disciplines: when given a D.D. by the Baptist College of Rhode Island, USA, he remarked, “Now I must learn Latin in order to read it.”17
On 23rd December 1776 Fuller married Sarah Gardner. During 1777 and 1778 he began to draw up a treatise on the subject of the free offer of the gospel, feeling the need to come to a carefully considered and fixed opinion. Through this labour Fuller came to a final rejection of high Calvinism, and drew up a corresponding defence of his own position, which he completed in its approximate final form about 1781 (see below). With his own conclusions established from Scripture and his conscience liberated, an immediate and necessary impact on his preaching followed.
Fuller had come to believe that faith in Christ is the duty of all who hear, or who have opportunity to hear, the gospel.18 Discussing the nature of saving faith, Fuller demonstrated – to use Michael Haykin’s summary – that “faith is fixed not on one’s interest in being saved by Christ, but on Christ and his willingness to save all who cry to him for mercy and pardon.”19 Fuller demonstrated his contention from the Scriptures before answering objections. Haykin identifies two main practical implications of Fuller’s work. Firstly,
Sinners have every encouragement to trust in the Lord Jesus for the salvation of their souls. They do not need to spend time dallying to see if they are among God’s elect or if God is at work in their hearts by his Spirit. Moreover, they can no longer sit at ease under the sound of the gospel and excuse their unbelief by asserting that faith is the gift of God.20
In Fuller’s language, “If faith in Christ be the duty of the ungodly, it must of course follow that every sinner, whatever be his character, is completely warranted to trust in the Lord Jesus for the salvation of his soul.”21
“Secondly,” says Haykin, “ministers of the Word must earnestly exhort their hearers to commit themselves to Christ, and that without delay – anything less was unbiblical and contrary to the example of Christ and his apostles.”22 I hope that these conclusions appear self-evident, yet I wonder if some Particular Baptists and other Reformed evangelicals today might fall short of their practical embrace? Do we have such confidence in the gospel that, on the one hand, we do not feel the urge to cloud it about with carnal paraphernalia, and on the other, simply to declare it in all its simple and potent glory to sinners of all kinds in the expectation of their salvation?
With his mind and heart at rest, and his tongue set free, Fuller had no particular desire to go into print. However, largely at the prompting of his friends, and after ten years wrestling with the issue, he eventually did so, publishing The Gospel Worthy of all Acceptation in 1784.23 (We should note in passing that a second and significantly revised edition of this work, published in 1801, employed language that suggested a shift toward a governmental view of the atonement.24 Fuller did not abandon his commitments to a particular redemption by a penal substitutionary atonement, but the influence of certain New England theologians, following the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius, did make itself felt in this later edition in ways that are undeniably unhelpful. Despite legitimate questions about certain language and illustrations, I believe that Fuller’s commitment to Scripture kept him personally from error at this point, but those who followed him were not always so careful.)25
Here Fuller demonstrated that a man can be – must be – at once a Calvinist and a true evangelical. Such sentiments as these caught Fuller in a crossfire between high Calvinists and Arminians. Many other Baptists, who could not accept what is still sometimes called ‘duty-faith’, ostracised Fuller, the church he served, and his friends. Fuller was, by conviction, a Particular or Calvinistic Baptist, saying, “I do not believe everything that Calvin taught, nor any thing because he taught it; but I reckon strict Calvinism to be my own system.”26
Some years after first publishing The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, responding by letter to a friend who had sent him two sermons delivered in 1799 by a preacher called William Wales Horne, Fuller wrote as follows:
In calling the doctrine defended by Mr. Horne false Calvinism I have not miscalled it. In proof of this, I appeal to the writings of that great reformer, and of the ablest defenders of his system in later times – of all indeed who have been called Calvinists till within a hundred years. Were you to read many of Calvin’s sermons, without knowing who was the author, you would be led, from the ideas you appear at present to entertain, to pronounce him an Arminian; neither would Goodwin, nor Owen, nor Charnock, nor Flavel, nor Bunyan, escape the charge. These men believed and preached the doctrines of grace; but not in such a way as to exclude exhortations to the unconverted to repent and believe in Jesus Christ. The doctrine which you call Calvinism (but which, in reality, is Antinomianism) is as opposite to that of the Reformers, puritans, and nonconformists, as it is to that of the apostles.
We do not ask you to relinquish the doctrine of salvation by grace alone: so far from it, were you to do so we would, on that account, have no fellowship with you. We have no doubt of justification being wholly on account of the righteousness of Jesus; nor of faith, wherever it exists, being the free gift of God. . . . But we ask you to admit other principles, equally true, and equally important as they are; principles taught by the same inspired writers, and which, therefore, must be consistent with them.27
Fuller’s diary entries from this period reveal a man of deep personal piety, strong conviction of sin, genuine humility, eminent desire for holiness, ardent love for the lost, true affection for the people of God, and an abiding concern for the glory of God, a portrait borne out by various anecdotes. For example, his son speaks of a coach journey to Portsmouth, during which two evidently godless young men thought they could have some fun by asking their serious companion if he were travelling to the town for the same low ends as themselves: “Mr. Fuller, lowering his ample brows, and looking the inquirer full in the face, replied in measured tones, ‘Sir, I am a man that fears God.’ Scarcely another word was uttered during the remainder of the journey.”28
But let us return to our subject. In October of 1782, after much soul-searching, Fuller accepted a call to pastor a church in Kettering, Northamptonshire. John Ryland remarked that some men govern nations with less care than Fuller exercised over moving from one local church to another. He was ordained as the pastor at Kettering in October 1783, where Robert Hall Sr. preached once more, this time on 2 Timothy 4.22: “The Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Grace be with you. Amen.”
On this occasion, as was typical of Baptist ordination at the time, Fuller delivered a personal confession of faith. Although the confession is worth reading in its entirety, Article 15 offers a particular window into his heart:
I believe it is the duty of every minister of Christ plainly and faithfully to preach the gospel to all who will hear it; and as I believe the inability of men to spiritual things to be wholly of the moral, and therefore of the criminal kind, and that it is their duty to love the Lord Jesus Christ and trust in him for salvation though they do not; I therefore believe free and solemn addresses, invitations, calls, and warnings to them to be not only consistent, but directly adapted, as means, in the hand of the Spirit of God, to bring them to Christ. I consider it as a part of my duty which I could not omit without being guilty of the blood of souls.29
Fuller was a pastor of the Kettering church from 1782 until his death in 1815. It should be remembered, as we consider some of the other strings to the man’s bow, that for over thirty years he sought to be a faithful, active, loving pastor of Christ’s flock. Even if we acknowledge suggestions that his pastoral ministry might sometimes have suffered because of his commitment to other labours, there is little evidence that this was the case. Fuller considered mournfully that he never did see the kind of revival of religion that he desired and prayed for, yet during his pastorate the membership doubled, and over one thousand hearers were attending his ministry by its close. He had the heart of a true shepherd: one little notebook contains a list entitled, “Families who attend at the Meeting, August, 1788.” It includes the reminder, “A Review of these may assist me in praying and preaching.”
Fuller and his friends felt increasingly the pressure of the gospel on their souls. In April 1784, Ryland read Jonathan Edwards extended treatment of Zechariah 8.20-22 – “Thus says the LORD of hosts: ‘Peoples shall yet come, inhabitants of many cities; the inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, “Let us continue to go and pray before the LORD, and seek the LORD of hosts. I myself will go also.” Yes, many peoples and strong nations shall come to seek the LORD of hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the LORD’” – calling the saints to concerted prayer for the revival of true religion and the extension of Christ’s kingdom.30 His enthusiasm spread to Fuller and Sutcliff.
In June 1784 Fuller was due to preach to the annual meeting of the Northamptonshire Association Baptist churches. Travelling from Kettering to Nottingham, he met with floods so deep they came up to the saddle of his horse. Urged on by a local who knew the area and told him, “Go on, sir, you are quite safe!”, Fuller arrived safely, and preached on 2 Corinthians 5.7: “We walk by faith, not by sight.” The impression left by his reading of the Humble Attempt was evident:
Let us take encouragement, in the present day of small things, by looking forward, and hoping for better days. Let this be attended with earnest and united prayer to him by whom Jacob must arise. A life of faith will ever be a life of prayer. O brethren, let us pray much for an outpouring of God’s Spirit upon our ministers and churches, and not upon those only of our own connexion and denomination, but upon “all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours.”31
After this sermon, and urged on by Sutcliff, the association took up a monthly concert of prayer, asking,
Who can tell what the consequences of such an united effort in prayer may be! Let us plead with God the many gracious promises of his word, which relate to the future success of his gospel. He has said, “I will yet for this be enquired of by the house of Israel, to do it for them, I will increase them with men like a flock” (Ezekiel 36:37). Surely we have love enough for Zion to set apart one hour at a time, twelve times in a year, to seek her welfare.32
However, as life in the churches was being stirred up, Fuller faced battles in his own. On 30th May 1786, Fuller’s daughter, Sally, died at the age of six and a half years. This was one of several deaths close to the man at the same period, but surely the most painful, and it is a measure of his sensitivity of soul that within a few days his diary entries dry up, only a few torn leaves indicating the heart trouble of the following months. The diary does not open again until 3rd October, 1789:
For above a year and a half I have written nothing. It has seemed to me that my life was not worth writing. Two or three years ago my heart began wretchedly to degenerate from God. Soon after my child Sally died, I sunk into a sad state of lukewarmness; and have felt the effects of it ever since. I feel at times a longing after the lost joys of God’s salvation; but cannot recover them. I have backslidden from God; and yet I may rather be said to be habitually dejected on account of it than earnestly to repent of it. I find much hardness of heart, and a spirit of inactivity has laid hold of me. . . . [After recording some sermon preached:] These subjects have tended sometimes to make me long after that joy and peace in believing which I have heretofore found. But joy of heart is a feeling I cannot yet recover.33
The climb out of this period of spiritual dullness and desolation was painfully slow and difficult, but the Lord was upholding and helping his servant. Indeed, it was over the same period that the concert of prayer was taking hold to the extent that a new edition of The Humble Attempt was published. Neither was this the only development. At an association meeting on 27th April 1791 John Sutcliff preached powerfully from 1 Kings 19.10 on “Jealousy for the Lord of Hosts Illustrated”; Fuller delivered an equally pungent address on “The Pernicious Influence of Delay” from Haggai 1.2, in which he claimed that a procrastinating spirit cripples the saints.
It must be remembered that since the mid-1780s William Carey had been engaged in holy agitation concerning the question of Baptist missions to the unconverted. Momentum was slow to build, and though these two sermons had a deep influence – causing Fuller, Sutcliff, Carey and other to spend much of the night in prayerful discussion – delay in the matter of missions went on as counsels for caution prevailed.
Early the following year, 1792, Carey published his Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians, to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, a treatment of Matthew 28.18-20. At the association meeting in May 1792, Carey preached from Isaiah 54.2-3 – “Enlarge the place of your tent, and let them stretch out the curtains of your dwellings; do not spare; lengthen your cords, and strengthen your stakes. For you shall expand to the right and to the left, and your descendants will inherit the nations, and make the desolate cities inhabited” – with two main divisions: that we should expect great things and attempt great things.34 Again, the Spirit gripped the hearts of those present, but as the meetings drew to a close the enthusiasm seemed to find no outlet, and it appeared that the whole project would again fizzle out. With a measure of desperation, Carey turned to Fuller and asked what could be done.
Fuller, himself impatient of delays, together with the rest of the gathering, finally appointed a day the following October to form a Baptist society for the propagation of the gospel among the heathen. Thus it was that on 2nd October 1792 what would become known as the Baptist Missionary Society was formed. These were the men to whom Carey bound himself, saying, “I will venture to go down [the spiritual gold mine of India] if you will hold the rope.” Fuller was the Secretary of the Society until his death. Some measure of his commitment can be seen from the lengthy trips to Scotland he undertook in 1799, 1802, 1805, 1808, 1813 to raise funds for the Society.
Personal tragedy kept pace with Fuller. Between these two seminal meetings, he had gone through a further agonising experience. His wife, Sarah (b. 1756), while pregnant with another child, had fallen prey to insanity. With occasional intervals of sweet though demanding clarity, she was often persuaded that Fuller was her jailor rather than her husband. He wrote to Sarah’s father:
It is true she never ceased to love her husband. “I have had,” she would say, “as tender a husband as ever woman had; but you are not my husband!” She seemed for the last month really to have considered me as an impostor, who had entered the house, and taken possession of the keys of every place, and of all that belonged to her and her husband. Poor soul! for the last month, as I said, this and other notions of the kind have rendered her more miserable than I am able to describe! She has been fully persuaded, that she was not at home, but had wandered some where from it; had lost herself, and fallen among strangers. She constantly wanted to make her escape, on which account we were obliged to keep the doors locked, and to take away the keys. “No,” she would say to me, with a countenance full of inexpressible anguish, “this is not my home . . . . you are not my husband . . . . these are not my children. Once I had a good home . . . . and a husband who loved me . . . . and dear children . . . . and kind friends . . . . but where am I now? I am lost! I am ruined! What have I done? Oh! what have I done ? Lord, have mercy upon me!” In this strain, she would be frequently walking up and down, from room to room, bemoaning herself, without a tear to relieve her, wringing her hands, first looking upwards, then downwards, in all the attitudes of wild despair! You may form some conception what must have been my feelings, to have been a spectator of all this anguish, and at the same time, incapable of affording her the smallest relief.35
There did follow one last brief period of lucidity before a sudden final plunge into senselessness. Sarah gave birth to a daughter on 23rd August 1792, and died a few hours later. The child, called Bathoni, survived less than a month. Such was the anvil upon which one of the architects of the Baptist mission was being painfully forged.
Later in 1792 Fuller published another substantial volume, begun some time in 1791, entitled The Calvinistic and Socinian Systems Examined and Compared, as to their Moral Tendency. This was a devastating broadside against Socinianism, a heresy rejecting the doctrine of the Trinity and specifically the deity of Christ, usually expressed as Unitarianism of some form. Those seeking a response to this error are still well-served by this book.
Early in 1793, taken up with preparations for Carey’s departure, Fuller was struck with temporary partial paralysis (he thought that it was “a slight paralytic stroke, probably occasioned by great fatigue, care, and much writing”36). Though he substantially recovered, the episode left him with a semi-permanent headache, often and particularly brought on by intense study. In June of that year, after many tribulations, Carey finally sailed for India. In 1794 Fuller married again, this time to Ann Coles, the daughter of a Baptist minister.
We clearly discern a man of unusual energy, unwearied diligence and forthright determination. His favourite divine maxim was, “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might” (Ecc 9.10). When his wife graciously mentioned the burdens that they bore together, he replied, “Ah, my dear, the way for us to have any joy, is to rejoice in all our labour, and then we shall have plenty of joy.” When she complained of his lack of recreation, he answered, “Oh no: all my recreation is a change of work.” When she was concerned he would wear out, he responded, “I cannot be worn out in a better cause. We must work while it is day,” or with his favourite verses from Ecclesiastes.37 History is silent as to whether or not the second Mrs Fuller won national prizes for patience, but one suspects that she would have been in with a shout if entered in competition. Here is her testimony to Ryland:
There was a degree of bluntness in his manner, which yet did not arise from an unsociable or churlish disposition; but from an impatience of interruption in the grand object of his pursuit. In this sense he seemed not to know his relations or nearest friends. Often when a friend or acquaintance on a journey has called, when they had exchanged a few words, he would ask, “Have you any thing more to say? (or something to that effect,) if not, I must beg to be excused;” at the same time asking them to stay, and take some refreshment if they chose. Yet you know, dear Sir, he had a heart formed for the warmest and sincerest friendship with those whose minds were congenial with his own, and who were engaged in similar pursuits, and I never knew him to be weary of their company.38
One gets the sense from this and other reports of a genuine affection and real cooperation between husband and wife. Other evidence suggests that Fuller was a father deeply invested in the well-being of his children, labouring prayerfully and practically for their blessing in every sphere of life.39
However, Fuller’s brusqueness came out at other times. On one occasion, a young preacher called F. A. Cox had preached with Fuller, and was then invited to dine with him and his friends. Cox was invited to sit with Fuller at the head of the table but – being young and timid – attempted to decline. Cox reported that Fuller “knitted his brows” and, in a manner that “no one would wish to tempt a second time,” said, “Come, sir, I like every man to take his proper place; what do you hesitate for?” After dinner, Sutcliff took Cox aside, and the young man admitted he had been a little hurt by Fuller’s manner. Sutcliff replied: “Well, don’t be disconcerted or discouraged. It is his manner; he does not mean anything unkind; he really loves you. My brother Fuller serves me just the same: he speaks, on a sudden, perhaps very harshly; but I know him, and let it pass; and he will soon be as confiding and affectionate as ever.”40 Something of the force of Fuller’s character can be gauged from the fact that Cox was vividly recording those events some forty years after they occurred.
Other family pressures continued. In 1796 his eldest son, Robert, was proving unreliable to the point of not being able to take and hold any employment. After a series of misadventures, news reached Fuller that his son, aboard a vessel, had been tried for desertion and sentenced to a severe punishment, under which he died. A few days later reports were received that this was all a lie. Robert eventually died off Lisbon in 1809, having begged his father’s forgiveness and shown some hopes of repentance, although there was then no certainty of his having been in Christ. However, in 1845, long after Fuller’s death, Robert’s half-brother, Andrew Gunton Fuller, was preaching in Scotland. A deacon in the congregation identified himself afterwards as having known Robert in his last days. This man testified that there was real evidence of Robert’s having been genuinely converted.
Fuller did not engage much in polemics while in the pulpit but was obliged to contend for the truth out of it. He published The Gospel Its Own Witness in 1799, the definitive eighteenth century Baptist response to Deism (largely an answer to Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason). October of that year saw the death of Samuel Pearce, one of Fuller’s closest friends. Before the end of the year Fuller had published a profoundly moving memoir of his friend. Pearce excelled as a preacher, in which calling his heavenly eloquence and burning passion earned him the nickname, “the seraphic Pearce.”
Illustrative of Pearce’s character is the occasion in 1794 on which, when preaching at a five o’clock service one morning at the opening of a Baptist meeting house (the early hour designed to accommodate farm labourers), he seemed about to stop and then started again. Fuller later asked why his sermon was so oddly structured, and discovered that a man had slipped in wearily at the end of the service, and Pearce was concerned lest this be the first and last time he should hear the gospel. Forgetting the possibility that his brother ministers would think little of his homiletical skills, he started again at the end for the sake of the one man: “with the hope of doing him good,” said Pearce, “I resolved at once to forget all else, and, in despite of criticism, and the apprehension of being thought tedious, to give him a quarter of an hour.”41 Such were the men to whom Fuller was closest, and their mutual esteem of one another bears testimony to their quality of spirit.
“Seraphic” was not an adjective which anyone would have applied to Fuller himself. J. W. Morris – whose relationship with Fuller, it must be remembered, was fairly rocky – describes Fuller the preacher. Taking into account the ambivalence of Morris’s perspective, the portrayal reads well, and captures something of Fuller’s pulpit solemnity and integrity:
In entering the pulpit he studied very little decorum, and often hastened out of it with an appearance of precipitation; but while there he seldom failed to acquit himself with honour and success. His attitude, too, was sufficiently negligent. Not aware of its awkwardness, in the course of his delivery he would insensibly place one hand upon his breast, or behind him, and gradually twist off a button from his coat, which some of his domestics had frequent occasion to replace. This habit was in process of time much corrected, and many other protuberances were smoothed away by the improvement of his taste, and the collisions of society; but certainly in these respects he was not the exact model of an orator.
His presence in the pulpit was imposing, grave, and manly; tending to inspire awe, rather than conciliate esteem. His general aspect was lowering and cloudy, giving indications of a storm, rather than affording hopes of serenity. Yet there was nothing boisterous, loud, or declamatory; no intemperate warmth, or sallies of the passions; all was calm, pathetic, and argumentative, overcast with a kind of negligent grandeur. He was deeply impressed with his subject, and anxious to produce a similar impression on his hearers.
To an acute and vigorous understanding were united a rich and fertile imagination, an even flow of feeling, seldom rising to an ecstasy, and an awful sense of eternal realities; these, accompanied with an energetic manner of speaking, supplied every other defect, and gave to his ministry an unusual degree of interest. He could never be heard but with satisfaction: if the heart were not at all times affected, yet the judgment would be informed, and the taste gratified, by an unexpected display of some important truth, ingeniously stated, and powerfully applied. His own ideas were strong and lucid, and he had the faculty of placing them in the clearest light: if he failed to produce conviction, he was rarely deficient in evidence.42
By the early 1800s Fuller was known and respected in English evangelical circles as a leading theologian. By now he embodied “strict [and Baptist] Calvinism” to such an extent in his writings that it became known as “Fullerism.” His output remained prodigious. He was responsible for the circular letter of the Northamptonshire Association in 1810, a whirlwind tour of the Scriptures in which he sought to convince his readers of their desperate need of the Holy Spirit in the work of evangelism. That year also saw the publication of his Strictures on Sandemanianism, which were, under God, used to break the great Welsh preacher Christmas Evans free of the hold that Sandemanianism got on his soul. According to Evans, while reading this volume he “saw the Rhinoceros of Edinburgh beginning to give way, notwithstanding the strength and sharpness of his horn, before the elephant of Kettering, and confess that faith is of a holy nature.”43 Evans confessed:
He undoubtedly subverted Sandemanianism in its main point, namely, faith taking place in the soul, without the regenerating power of the Spirit, or the Spirit imparting light to the soul, as the cause of it. The Strictures on Sandemanianism are the principal of Mr F’s works, which evince him to be the greatest man of his age in powers of mind.44
But the elephant of Kettering did not have limitless strength. He suffered from a fever from April through to October of 1811, being unable to preach for three months. In 1812 he was in London for the twentieth anniversary meetings of the Baptist Missionary Society. With an inherent dislike of pomp and circumstance, Fuller was not happy with the idea of the London celebrations, and was, besides, deeply concerned for the future of the Society. Fuller had high hopes for the ministerial usefulness of an eminently talented nephew of his, Joseph Fuller, but he died in March of 1812 aged only eighteen years. Later that year Fuller made a tour of Wales, with the Mission still very much on his heart. He preached to a vast outdoor congregation but many ministers, suspicious of his doctrine, retired to the chapel so as to avoid hearing him. It was only the reports of gospel progress in India that modified their opinions, and from that time on Fuller’s works were highly valued in South Wales.45
The East India Company was consistent and persistent in its assault on missions. As a result, Fuller spent much of early 1813 in London, petitioning personally and in writing for greater freedom for the missionaries. His productions are masterpieces of apologetic literature. Here he was allied with William Wilberforce who – despite his own ill-health, but with the weight of half a million signatures behind him – spoke for three hours in the Commons on 22nd June 1813 in support of the evangelisation of India. The critical vote was eventually carried.
But time was marching on, and this band of brothers was being whittled down. Sutcliff preached his final sermon on 27th February 1814, dying on 22nd June the same year. On 28th June Fuller preached his dear friend’s funeral sermon, but was himself unwell. By September and October of that year, Fuller was suffering from an inflammation of the liver that left him able to preach only twice in the period. Always seeking an opportunity to improve a situation, he used the time to write a memoir of Sutcliff that was published with the funeral sermon. His letters show his awareness of the situation: “Death has swept away all my old friends; and I seem to stand expecting to be called away soon. It matters not when, so that we be found in Christ.”46 To another correspondent he said, “Brother Sutcliff’s last end was enviable: let mine be like his. Death has been making havoc of late among us. . . Almost all my old friends are either dead or dying. Well, I have a hope that bears me up, and it is through grace. In reviewing my life I see much evil. God be merciful to me a sinner!”47
Three months before his death, Fuller was at his desk upwards of twelve hours a day. He maintained a massive correspondence but he was becoming increasingly weak. Even now he showed a measured and deliberate approach: he never burned the candle at both ends, but was always a steady worker – like Carey, a plodder. Fuller achieved his goals by starting his work each day at a reasonable time, finishing at a reasonable time, and working consistently, methodically, and without wasting a moment during the appointed hours.
Yet for all his labours, he knew where his confidence lay. As his weakness increased he began to dictate farewell letters. When one of his deacons expressed his confidence in the enviable prospect immediately before him, he accepted the testimony, but assured the man, “If I am saved, it will be by great and sovereign grace,” and – says Ryland – he repeated those last words “very emphatically” – “by great and sovereign grace.”48
He preached his last sermon on Sunday 2nd April 1815 – a service followed by the Lord’s supper – from Isaiah 66.1-2:
Thus says the Lord: “Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool. Where is the house that you will build me? And where is the place of my rest? For all those things my hand has made, and all those things exist,” says the Lord. “But on this one will I look: on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit, and who trembles at my Word.”
The sermon was marked for its solemnity and earnestness. He had three points: “God’s approval of poverty of spirit, or genuine humility: of contrition of spirit, or true repentance: of tenderness of spirit, or a godly shrinking from sin and temptation.”49 The preacher “‘seemed absorbed in the contemplation of a crucified, risen, and exalted Redeemer’. It was an affecting scene – the pastor dying on his feet, worn out by excessive labour: the people, many of them his own children in the Lord, affectionate, anxious, and weeping for sorrow and foreboding fears.”50
As his end approached, so his faith increased. When Ryland heard that Fuller had testified to a brother minister, “My hope is such that I am not afraid to plunge into eternity,” he declared it the most characteristic expression his friend might have uttered.51
As the morning of Sunday 7th May 1815 dawned, the sixty one year old Fuller was grieved that he had not the strength to go and worship his God with his people. He spent his last half-hour seemingly engaged in prayer, though the only words which could be distinctly heard were, “Help me!” He died, said his friend Mr Toller, an Independent minister, “as a penitent sinner at the foot of the cross.”52
John Ryland fulfilled Fuller’s last request of him by preaching his funeral sermon from Romans 8.10: “And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” Robert Hall Jr. – who gave Fuller that glowing testimony we noticed earlier – was called upon to deliver the oration, but this renowned preacher felt utterly dissatisfied with his efforts, and never allowed his words to be published. Fuller’s son found Hall after the burial, leaning against a mantelpiece in the home, his frame racked with uncontrollable tears. Later, Hall wrote of Fuller with typical floridity:
He had nothing feeble or indecisive in his character; but to every undertaking in which he engaged he brought all the powers of his understanding, all the energies of his heart; and if he were less distinguished by the comprehension than the acumen and solidity of his thoughts, less eminent for the gentler graces than for stern integrity and native grandeur of mind, we have only to remember the necessary limitation of human excellence.53
Within a few years of Fuller’s death the Baptist Missionary Society had begun to lose some of its distinctive theology and piety, and ruptures were beginning to develop. The organisation became increasingly independent of the churches and their pastors. John Ryland passed into glory in 1825, having faithfully carried the flame of thoroughly evangelical Calvinism among the Baptists for the balance of his life. It was, however, Andrew Fuller’s death that stopped William Carey pining for England: the home country without his closest friend and most committed ropeholder held little attraction to the godly missionary. Carey was called home in 1834, the last of that great circle of friends to pass over the river, but at last reunited with them in the presence of their Lord and Saviour.
Andrew Fuller’s was a life consecrated to the service of Christ, the good of the church, and the extension of the kingdom of God. Though he did not always enjoy the sweetest frames of mind and heart, his character was marked by eminent godliness. Considered by William Wilberforce to be “the very image of a blacksmith,” Fuller had no formal theological training, yet through faithful perusal of Scripture he came to be – and was appreciated as – a theological giant. Perhaps it was this that gave him his remarkable capacity for independent thought and his utter commitment to truth. As we have seen, he was able to say with sincerity, “I do not believe every thing that Calvin taught, nor anything because he taught it; but I reckon strict Calvinism to be my own system.”54
Fuller was never a polished or sophisticated man. His son tells the story of how, “one evening, having composed a tune, not remarkable for its scientific structure, he carried it for the inspection of a musical friend. ‘It’s in a flat key, sir,’ observed his friend. – ‘Very likely,’ replied Mr. F. in a plaintive tone, ‘very likely; I was born in a flat key.’”55 He loathed display and ostentation, evidencing a true humility. His was a genuine and sincere humanity, and he lived beset by normal doubts and fears, often wrestling with matters in the depths of his own heart. Despite his occasional periods of declension, trust in God marked his life – another of his favourite divine maxims was Proverbs 3.5-6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct your paths.”
Fuller was not always the initiator of a course of action, but once his commitment was gained his drive was unparalleled and his momentum seemingly unstoppable. His theological acumen was unsurpassed among his friends, and they recognised his pre-eminence in this. He clothed their convictions with Biblical thinking, demonstrating that true concern for the lost and endeavour for Christ always grow out of solid theology. He knew, too, the connection between crisp Scriptural theology and devotion to the cause of Christ. As he pondered his death, he wrote to Ryland:
We have some, who have been giving out, of late, that ‘If Sutcliff, and some others, had preached more of Christ, and less of Jonathan Edwards, they would have been more useful.’ If those who talk thus, preached Christ half as much as Jonathan Edwards did, and were half as useful as he was, their usefulness would be double what it is. It is very singular, that the Mission to the East should have originated with men of these principles; and without pretending to be a prophet, I may say, if ever it falls into the hands of men who talk in this strain, it will soon come to nothing.56
He was a man and a minister of tireless action and faith. Sermons on the pernicious influence of delay and walking by faith were not empty orations but living principles by which he himself was governed. He was not easily swayed by obstacles, but marked by commitment, earnestness, and endeavour. He once fondly reminisced of enjoying “several pipes” in the company of Ryland’s students, before offering the following counsel:
It is of vast importance for a minister to be decidedly on the side of God, against himself as a sinner, and against an apostate world. Nor is it less important that he have an ardent love to Christ, and the gospel of salvation by free grace. I wish they may so believe, and feel, and preach the truth, as to find their message an important reality, influencing their own souls, and those of others. Let them beware of so preaching doctrine as to forget to declare all the counsel of God, all the precepts of the word. Let them equally beware of so dwelling upon the preceptive part of Scripture, as to forget the grand principles on which alone it can be carried into effect. We may contend for practical religion, and yet neglect the practice of religion.57
Here we see faith and life blended sweetly together, a love for the Bible as truth to be both believed and lived. He counselled outgoing missionaries,
Be very conversant with your Bibles. The company we keep, and the books we read, insensibly form us into the same likeness. I love to converse with a Christian, whose mind is imbued with the sentiments of the Scriptures. I find it advantageous to read a part of the Scriptures to myself before private prayer, and often to turn it into prayer as I read it. Do not read the Scriptures merely as preachers, in order to find a text, or something to say to the people; but read them that you may get good to your own souls. Look at the Saviour as he walks, as he walks before you; and then point others to him. John i. 35.58
His was a character to demand veneration where it might not at first inspire love. Where it did inspire love – as it did among a number of close friends – it was of a deep and abiding sort. Gilbert Laws suggests that the best tribute to Fuller comes from his own mother, who survived her son. Informed by one of her other children that in the passing of Andrew they had lost a great man, Fuller’s mother expressed her surprise. Assured that Andrew had written many books which were highly esteemed, the old lady replied, “Well, well, I don’t know much about that; he never said anything to me about what people thought of them. I know that he was a good man, and a good son to me.”59
His imperfections – and imperfections there were – are in themselves evidence of a vigorous, earnest man who lived life fully rather than merely existed, who always had something at hand, who was always entirely committed to the glory of God and the spread of the kingdom of Christ. Paul Brewster argues that the felt weight of Fuller’s obligations fuelled a lack of readiness to delegate certain responsibilities, contributing to his relative diversion from his primary family commitments (remember his wife’s concerns) and local church duties.60 But we should acknowledge that Fuller was setting out to practice what he preached, writing in one circular letter, “If we were in a proper spirit, the question with us would not so much be, What must I do for God? as, What can I do for God? A servant that heartily loves his master counts it a privilege to be employed by him, yea, an honour to be intrusted with any of his concerns.”61 The principle is sound, if the application is not always simple. If Fuller is a warning to us that we must seek to burn on rather than burn out, he is also an exhortation to us at least to burn rather than merely to splutter.
In a day of lukewarmness and spinelessness in which men applaud toothless sophistication over principled gumption, when men of God all too readily indulge in ecclesiastical politicking, I would suggest that Fuller shows the kind of man and the kind of ministry, the kind of theology and the kind of commitment, the kind of activity and the kind of preaching, that the church needs as much as – if not more than – ever. Fuller reminds us that genuine light breeds real heat; that true doctrine promotes zealous activity; that out of a lively faith comes an earnest life. He demonstrates a truly evangelical Calvinism, a gospel which gives us a reason to go, and something to say when we get there.
We have the same God in heaven, the same truth in our hands and hearts, and the same Spirit at work in our midst. With the same faith and humility, with the same conviction and determination, could we not accomplish something of the same labour to the glory of our sovereign Lord? Let us continue to pray – in our churches, in our homes, in our times of private devotion, in regular and extraordinary meetings for intercession – that God would work once more, and would raise up such men to accomplish his glorious and gracious purposes in our needy times, men who can at once be a holy terror to vicious devils and a genuine delight to true saints.
At the heart of such a life and the core of such a character must be a whole-souled commitment to the Lord Jesus, a man who could face death and its outcome with a stable confidence:
I know whom I have believed, and that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day. I am a poor guilty creature; but Christ is an almighty Saviour. I have preached and written much against the abuse of the doctrine of grace; 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. With this hope, I can go into eternity with composure. Come, Lord Jesus! come when thou wilt! Here I am; let him do with me as seemeth him good!62
May God help us so to believe, so to speak, so to live, and – unless Christ returns first – so to die.
Notes:
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.§.
2. Quoted by Gilbert Laws, Andrew Fuller: Pastor, Theologian, Ropeholder (London: Carey Press, 1942), 127.
3. Michael A. G. Haykin (ed.), ‘At the Pure Fountain of Thy Word’: Andrew Fuller as an Apologist (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2004), ix.
4. Endorsement of Peter J. Morden, Offering Christ to the World: Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) and the Revival of Eighteenth Century Particular Baptist Life (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2003).
5. Andrew Fuller, ed. Andrew Gunton Fuller, Complete Works (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications,1988), 1:2. In addition to the three-volume Sprinkle edition, the Banner of Truth publishes a cheaper single-volume edition. It is fair to say that none of these are pocket-sized volumes.
6. Works, 3:478.
7. Works, 1:111.
8. Works, 1:4.
9. Works, 1:4.
10. Job 13.15.
11. John Ryland Jr., The Work of Faith, the Labour of Love, and the Patience of Hope illustrated in the Life and Death of the Reverend Andrew Fuller (London: Button & Son, 1816), 28-29. This is taken from a letter written to Ryland by Fuller.
12. Ryland, Fuller, 47.
13. Ryland, Fuller, 49.
14. He began with an Anglican Calvinist from Cambridge called Dr John Edwards who wrote a volume called Veritas Redux.
15. Fuller, Works, 1:353. The quote is from Fuller’s funeral sermon for Sutcliff.
16. Quoted by Michael Haykin in “‘A dull flint’: Andrew Fuller – Rope Holder, Critic of Hyper-Calvinism & Missionary Pioneer.” PDF, source unknown.
17. H. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1987), 182.
18. The heading of Part II of Fuller’s The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation.
19. Michael Haykin, One Heart and One Soul: John Sutcliff of Olney, His Friends and His Times (Darlington: Evangelical Press, 1994), 143.
20. Haykin, One Heart and One Soul, 146.
21. Fuller, Works, 2:383.
22. Haykin, One Heart and One Soul, 146-7.
23. A second edition followed in 1801. There are substantial differences between the two editions, primarily arising from his treatment of particular redemption, but the essential issue was the same in each edition.
24. In this system, the death of Christ becomes less the punishment of a substitute in the place of his people and more a demonstration of God’s moral government of the universe.
25. Helpful discussions of this issue can be found in Robert W. Oliver, History of the English Calvinistic Baptists 1771-1892 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2006), 89-111 and 149-172, and Paul Brewster, Andrew Fuller: Model Pastor-Theologian (Nashville, TN: B&N, 2010), 65-108 and 163-165.
26. Fuller, Works, 1:77; also found in Ryland, Fuller, 567. The notion of being a ‘strict Calvinist’ should not be confused with being part of that denomination called Strict Baptist.
27. Fuller, Works, 3:583.
28. Fuller, Works, 1:111.
29. Ryland, Fuller, 106.
30. The full title is “An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God’s People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and the Advancement of Christ’s Kingdom on Earth,” in Jonathan Edwards, Works (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1974), 2:278-312.
31. Fuller, Works, 1:131.
32. Quoted in Haykin, One Heart and One Soul, 164. Haykin suggests that Sutcliff himself drafted this call to prayer.
33. Fuller, Works, 1:55-56.
34. Hence the famous epigram, “Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God.”
35. Fuller, Works, 1:59-60.
36. Letter to John Fawcett, quoted by Haykin, One Heart and One Soul, 230.
37. Ryland, Fuller, 475-6.
38. Ryland, Fuller, 476.
39. For a helpful overview of Fuller’s family life, see Michael Haykin’s lecture on “Andrew Fuller: A Christian Father and Husband” at http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=717132311150, accessed Fri 23 Aug 13.
40. Haykin, One Heart and One Soul, 271-2.
41. Haykin, One Heart and One Soul, 237-8.
42. John W. Morris, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Rev. Andrew Fuller (Boston: Lincoln & Edmands, 1830, repr. Forgotten Books, 2012), 68.
43. Quoted in Tim Shenton, Christmas Evans: The Life and Times of the One-Eyed Preacher of Wales (Darlington: Evangelical Press, 2001), 178.
44. Quoted in Shenton, Christmas Evans, 179.
45. Gilbert Laws, Andrew Fuller: Pastor, Theologian, Ropeholder (London: Carey Press, 1942),103.
46. Ryland, Fuller, 541.
47. Ryland, Fuller, 541.
48. Ryland, Fuller, 547.
49. In R.L. Greenall, ed., The Autobiography of the Rev. John Jenkinson, Baptist Minister of Kettering and Oakham (Victor Hatley Memorial Series, vol.3; Northampton, Northamptonshire: Northamptonshire Record Society, 2010), 22¬–23, quoted by Michael Haykin at www.andrewfullercenter.org/blog/2013/05/andrew-fullers-final-sermon-vintage-fuller, accessed Thu 30 May 13.
50. Laws, Andrew Fuller, 120.
51. Ryland, Fuller, 550.
52. Ryland, Fuller, 557.
53. Quoted in Laws, Andrew Fuller, 123.
54. Ryland, Fuller, 567.
55. Fuller, Works, 1:112.
56. Ryland, Fuller, 545-6.
57. Ryland, Fuller, 379-80.
58. Ryland, Fuller, 258.
59. Laws, Andrew Fuller, 125.
60. Paul Brewster, Andrew Fuller: Model Pastor-Theologian (Nashville, TN: B&N, 2010), 161-162.
61. Fuller, Works, 3:320.
62. Ryland, Fuller, 545.
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