Rev. Andrew FULLER
(1754-1815).
Dialogues, Letters, and Essays, on
Various subjects. To which is annexed an Essay on Truth.
Hartford, Ct.: published
by Oliver D. Cooke. J. Seymour of New York, printer, 1810. 12mo signed in sixes
(7 x 4 1/8 inches), pp. [1-]6-258; [i]-‘iv’ i.e. [ii]. Contemporary marbled sheep,
spine gilt with light brown
lettering-piece (scuffed).
Provenance:
Carnvile (?) Social Library (early inscription to front endpaper); Maine
Wesleyan Seminary and Female College (1860 or later, bookplate); A.F. Chase
(signature to title page).
Andrew
Fuller (6 February 1754 – 7 May 1815) was an
English Particular
Baptist minister and theologian. Known as a promoter of missionary work, he also took part in theological
controversy. Fuller was born in Wicken,
Cambridgeshire, and settled at Kettering,
Northamptonshire. During his life, Fuller pastored two
congregations – Soham (1775–1782) and Kettering (1782–1815), which
is now the Fuller
Baptist Church, He died on 7 May 1815 at Kettering. His son, J.
G. Fuller established a printing company in Kettering, and took William
Knibb as an apprentice. Knibb later became a
Baptist missionary in Jamaica.[1]
Fuller is
best known in connection with the foundation of the Baptist
Missionary Society, to which he for the most part devoted his
energies.[2] His work in promoting the missionary enterprises of the
Baptist church began about 1784. A sermon published by him then, The Nature and Importance of Walking by Faith, with an appendix A Few Persuasives to a General Union in Prayer for the Revival of Religion, indirectly stimulated the movement. The Baptist Missionary
Society (initially "Particular Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel
among the Heathen")[3] was formed at Kettering in 1792. William
Carey, impressed by Fuller's work The Gospel Worthy of all Acceptation, became the first missionary. Fuller took on the
work at home.[4]
Fuller, a Particular
Baptist, was a controversialist in defence of the governmental
theory of the atonement against hyper-Calvinism on the one hand and Socinianism and Sandemanianism on the other. Abraham Booth accused him of giving
up true Calvinism.[5] Fuller debated
theology with the General Baptist Dan Taylor,
but they remained on good terms.[6]
According to Christianity
Today, "'Tall, stout and muscular, a famous wrestler in his
youth,' this self-taught farmer’s son became a champion for Christ, 'the most
creatively useful theologian' of the Particular Baptists. His book The
Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, 1785, restated Calvinist theology for
Baptists influenced by the Evangelical
Revival. His Doctorate of
Divinity was bestowed by Brown University, Rhode Island."