Andrew Fuller and Antinomianism

In retelling the story of the English Particular Baptist community in the late eighteenth century, scholarly attention has generally focused on the way that pastor-theologians like Andrew Fuller (1754–1815) and John Ryland, Jr. (1753–1825) sought to promote the revival of the denomination and played a vital role in the genesis of the modern missionary movement, in which their mutual friend William Carey (1761–1834) became something of an iconic celebrity. The pathway to renewal and mission necessitated a literary demolition of what was a regnant theological narrative in far too many Baptist circles, namely, that of High Calvinism, which gloried in eternal justification and rejected the free offer of the gospel. Alongside this battle against what Fuller bluntly called “false” or “hyper” Calvinism,”[1] however, there was also a concerted attempt to rid the denomination of what was once described in 1790 as “the baneful and pernicious poison of Antinomianism.”[2] Nearly thirty-five years later at John Ryland’s funeral, the preacher on the occasion, Robert Hall, Jr. (1764–1831), recalled that one of the extremes against which Ryland was “most solicitous to guard the religious public,” was “Antinomian licentiousness … which he detested as an insult … on the majesty and authority of the law.”[3]