Andrew Fuller (1754‒1815) may well have been the most widely-travelled Baptist leader of his day. When he took on the secretaryship of what became the Baptist Missionary Society, he ended up travelling throughout the British Isles. To represent the mission and raise funds for its missionaries, he visited Scotland five times. There were also frequent visits to the North of England, often on his way to Scotland; Wales, the Midlands and the Cotswolds; the West Country and East Anglia; and, of course the metropolis of London. All came within the ambit of his ministry. He only went to Ireland once, though, and he found Dublin not to his liking (a pity, in my opinion). In addition, he corresponded regularly with a more than a score of Baptist leaders not only in the British Isles, but also in America, West Africa, the West Indies, and, of course, India. We have well over a thousand of his letters. And then there is the vast amount of his published books and articles, and the fact that his theological opponents in East Anglia coined the term “Fullerism.” It was Geoffrey Nuttall, who has deeply influenced my writing, who once commented that it is very few men who get a theological movement named after them!
All of this leads me to make this statement:
He that would know the workings of the Particular Baptist mind at the close of the long eighteenth century, and the throbbings of its heart, must give his days and nights to the study of Andrew Fuller.[1]
[1] Here, I utilize similar remarks made by the 19th-century American historian George Bancroft (1800‒1891) about Jonathan Edwards, which is cited by Vincent Tomas, “The Modernity of Jonathan Edwards,” The New England Quarterly 25, no. 1 (March 1952): 60.
I’m sorry if this was addressed in a previous posts, but do you have recommendations for Fuller writings or good Fuller biographies? Would love to see how God worked through him but our church bookstore doesn’t have any of his stuff sadly.