Andrew Fuller

Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) was baptized into the Baptist congregation at Soham in 1769. He soon found himself involved in a High Calvinist controversy that eventually placed him in the role of pastor at a very young age. His study of scripture and his reading of Jonathan Edwards and others led him to an evangelical Calvinist position, and his influential work, The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation (1785) was the fruition of that study. He subsequently influenced numerous ministers among the Particular Baptists to follow his evangelical emphasis, a movement that became known as “Fullerism.” He left Soham in 1782 for the Baptist church at Kettering, where he remained the rest of his life. He became one of the leaders of the Northamptonshire Association, along with Robert Hall, Sr., John Ryland, Jr., and John Sutcliff. With these men and others, he founded the BMS in 1792, and became its first secretary, a post he held until his death. Despite devoting much of his time and effort to the work of the BMS, Fuller, through his pen, was a key defender of orthodox Calvinism against the claims of High Calvinism, Antinomianism, Socinianism, and infidelity, most notably in his major work, The Calvinistic and Socinian Systems Examined and Compared as to Their Moral Tendency (1793).  Without question, Fuller was one of the leading evangelicals of his day and his legacy in regards to the BMS remains to this day. His first wife, Sarah Gardiner Fuller, formerly of Burwell and the Soham church, died on August 23, 1792, after a three-month illness during the last of her many pregnancies. They were married on December 23, 1776 (AG Fuller 18); of their eleven children, eight died in infancy or early childhood, including the child that precipitated her own death. She suffered from dementia the last few months of her life (see his letter to her father, Mr. Gardiner, dated August 25, 1792, in AG Fuller 59-62). Fuller’s second marriage was to Ann Coles (d. 1825) of Maulden, Bedfordshire, daughter of the Baptist minister William Coles (1735-1809). Coles was converted in his late teens and called to the ministry, studying with John Butterworth at Coventry before removing to Northampton to work with John Collett Ryland in 1756. After preaching in churches around Northampton for a year, he began ministering to the Baptist congregation at Newport-Pagnell in July 1758, where he remained for 10 years. He settled at Maulden in October 1768, preaching until his health forced his resignation in 1805. Ryland adds some further comments from a letter by Fuller to him in early January 1795, in which Fuller writes, “I bless God for the prospect I have of an increase of happiness. It is no small satisfaction that every one of our relations was agreeable; that there are no prejudices to afford ground for future jealousies. Two days after our marriage we invited about a dozen of our serious friends to drink tea and spend the evening in prayer; which they did, and Mr. Coles concluded” (292-93). Robert Fuller  (1782-1809), Fuller’s eldest son, would be the source of considerable grief to Fuller, as the entries in his diary for 1800 and 1801 reveal. For a more complete introduction to the life of Fuller and his works, along with a fully annotated text of Fuller's diary (transcribed from the MS at Bristol Baptist College) and a calendar of his library, see The Diary of Andrew Fuller, ed. Michael McMullen and Timothy Whelan, vol. 1, The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, gen. ed. Michael A. G. Haykin (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016). Among the numerous works on Fuller, see J. W. Morris, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, 2nd ed. (London: Wightman and Cramp, 1826);  John Ryland, Jr., The Work of Faith; Baptist Magazine 9 (1817), 122-127; E. F. Clipsham, “Andrew Fuller and Fullerism: A Study in Evangelical Calvinism,” Baptist Quarterly 20 (1963–1964), 99-114; 146-154; 214-15; 268-176; Peter J. Morden, Offering Christ to the World: Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) and the Revival of Eighteenth Century Particular Baptist Life. Studies in Baptist History and Thought, vol. 8 (Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2003); Tom J. Nettles, “Andrew Fuller (1754-1814),” in The British Particular Baptists, ed. Michael A. G. Haykin, 5 vols. (Springfield, MO: Particular Baptist Press, 1998-2019), 2:97-141.