CONTENTS
First Principles
THE MAKING OF A GREAT THEOLOGIAN: REMEMBERING ANDREW FULLER by Michael A.G. Haykin
Why should we remember Andrew Fuller (1754– 1815) two centuries after his death in Kettering in the English Midlands? Well, near the beginning of the funeral sermon that the Calvinistic Baptist John Ryland, Jr., preached for Andrew Fuller in 1815, Ryland described Fuller as “perhaps the most judicious and able theological writer that ever belonged to our denomination.” Although Fuller was one of Ryland’s closest friends, his judgment is by no means a biased one. For instance, Joseph Belcher, the editor of the 19th-century American edition of Fuller’s collected works, believed that Fuller’s works would “go down to posterity side by side with the immortal works of the elder president Edwards [i.e., Jonathan Edwards, Sr.].” And Charles Haddon Spurgeon, at the close of the 19th century, described Fuller as “the 66 | CREDO MAGAZINE | APRIL 2015
greatest theologian” of his century, while A.C. Underwood, a Baptist historian writing in the middle of the next century, was of the opinion that he was the soundest and most useful theologian that the English Calvinistic Baptists had ever had. What reasons did these men, in different times and places, have for so highly valuing Fuller and his works? CONVERSION The youngest son of Robert Fuller, a farmer, and Philippa Gunton, Andrew was born on February 6, 1754, at Wicken, a small agricultural village in Cambridgeshire in East Anglia. It is noteworthy that numbered among both his paternal and