Andrew Fuller was one of the most significant and influential Baptist theologians in late eighteenth-century trans-Atlantic evangelicalism. His writings were vital in explicating classical Christianity in the context of the British Enlightenment and crafting a missional theology for global Christianity. Fuller’s sermons, apologetic works, commentaries, letters and diaries are presented in their entirety for the first time in this series of critical editions.
The following excerpt comes from the “Editor’s Introduction.”
The early part of the twenty-first century saw a great renaissance in Andrew Fuller studies. Since that time, scholarly interest in Fuller, the “elephant of Kettering,” has continued to grow and is at an all-time high.1 This volume reproduces two correspondences in which Fuller made lasting theological contributions. Between the years 1793 and 1800, Fuller entered into a public debate with William Vidler that deeply affected the theological landscape of British Baptists. From 1796 to 1806, he entered into another exchange of letters, this time with Abraham Booth, on the nature of the atonement and imputation, which would prove to be one of the most influential of his career. This debate with Booth is among the most extensively researched and studied parts of the Fuller corpus. By contrast, scholarship addressing Fuller’s interaction with Universalism in general—and his public dispute with William Vidler in particular—is virtually non-existent.2 This volume will cover these two seminal but differing debates: one dealing with the Christological overtones of the nature of the atonement, and the other with its soteriological implications. I will first deal with the correspondence between Fuller and Vidler, which commenced earlier, before moving on in the second part of this work to the exchanges between Fuller and Booth.
1 Letters to Mr. Vidler on Universal Salvation
The historic literary fray concerning the debate between Andrew Fuller and William Vidler, in the words of Vidler’s anonymous biographer, touches upon “one of the most important controversies which divided the Christian world” in Fuller’s day.3 It continues to be a topic of significance for theological discussion in our time as well.4
Consequently, in this volume I intend to shed light on this controversy and to pave the way for others to mine further this underappreciated yet significant part of Fuller’s corpus.
In the aftermath of the seventeenth-century Puritan epoch, the insistent emphasis on rationality ushered in the Enlightenment era.5 The social and religious climate in England during the eighteenth century was a multi-faceted movement that, at its core, rejected the classical Christian understanding of human sinfulness and the need for redemption through Jesus Christ. The established Church of England had be come largely Latitudinarian. Furthermore, Socinianism, Universalism, and Unitarianism also took hold in certain segments of General Baptist life, until New Connection General Baptists began to forcefully confront these ideas as being opposed to historic Christianity.6 Living in such a theological climate, Fuller was concerned that there was a great deal of unbelief in the established as well as the nonconforming church. Despite his own disagreements with the ecclesiastical structures of the magisterial Reformers, Fuller reminisces about the confessional gospel of the sixteenth-century past:
“In the earlier times of the Reformation, whatever defects might exist with respect to church government and discipline, the doctrine of salvation by the cross of Christ was much more generally preached and believed than at present. Since the great principles of evangelical truth (alike clearly stated in the Articles of the Established Church and in the catechisms and confessions of Dissenters) have been relinquished, and a species of heathen morality substituted in their place, the nation has been almost heathenized.”7
This sermon was preached on May 6, 1801 at the Annual Meeting of the Bedford Union, around the time Fuller penned his last letter to William Vidler. The sermon embodies Fuller’s frustration with the lack of confessionalism in his country. He worries that England is on the verge of being “heathenized” and abandoning the message of “salvation by the cross of Christ.” He was convinced that nothing less than the Gospel itself was at stake in his debate with Universalism and Unitarianism.8 This was cause for great alarm for the Kettering pastor, and it helps explain why Fuller’s eight letters to Vidler were so heated.
1.1 William Vidler’s early life and his conversion from Calvinism to Universalism
William Vidler (1758 – 1816) was born on May 4, 1758 at Battle, Sussex in England.9 As the youngest of ten children born to John Vidler and Elizabeth Bowling, he grew up as an apprentice to his father, learning the trade of a mason and bricklayer. Even as a lad, young Vidler had a great thirst for reading but was kept out of school due to his poor physical health. According to the Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography, Vidler’s lack of formal education and his weak body did not deter him from playing “a significant role in establishing institutional features that British Unitarians continue to use.”10 However, Vidler began his ministry as neither a Unitarian or a Universalist. In fact, at the outset of his career under, the tutelage of George Gilbert, Vidler “dedicated his life to his Lord”11 and became a member of an independent Calvinist church. He commenced to become a “lay-preacher” in that tradition in April 1777. Thomas Purdy, a Baptist minister at Rye, persuaded Vidler of the necessity for believer’s (or credo) baptism, and Purdy baptized him in January 1780.
Subsequently, a small Particular Baptist church at Battle called Vidler to be their pastor. As he assumed that responsibility, he also continued in his vocation as a stonemason. Vidler’s congregation quickly grew from 15 to 150 people. Clearly Vidler’s studious mind was better suited to speaking and writing than to crafting stones. As Vidler preached, he began to question the message and content of the Calvinistic theology he had been taught. As early as 1784, his diary records his questioning of several classical Christian doctrines: “I have lately had some serious thoughts of the God Head of Christ and the eternity of hell torments.”12 Three years later, in 1787, while in the process of shifting his theological position, Vidler writes in his diary: “I read Dr. Gill’s Works, and received the principles of Calvinism, which I preached Calvinism for sixteen years, during which time my heart with its feeling of love, and my head, with its cold unfeeling creed, were at perpetual variance.”13
In May of 1791, Vidler made several journeys among Baptist churches to raise funds for building a chapel. During those travels, he came into contact with many General Baptists, as well as a few Universalists. He also met Elhanan Winchester (1751-1799), one of the leading Universalists of his generation. Winchester had become a national spokesman for Universalism on both sides of the Atlantic. He had developed an effective itinerant preaching ministry on the Eastern seaboard of America, as well as at his church in Parliament Court, Artillery Lane in London. Vidler had already begun to be uncomfortable with many traditional doctrines of the church, but his questioning be came more intense under the influence of Winchester’s writings—particularly his work entitled The Universal Restoration, Exhibited in Four Dialogues between a Minister and His Friend (1788), also commonly known as Dialogues on the Universal Restoration. This treatise had an even greater impact than Winchester’s preaching ministry. In December 1792 Vidler publicly confessed that he, too, was a Universalist. This created a rift in his congregation, but Vidler was able to remain as pastor. In the summer of 1793, however, his Baptist association withdrew their fellowship from his church in Battle.
After being dismissed by his local Baptist association, Vidler adhered even more closely to Winchester. He began to assist him at the Universalist Chapel in Parliament Court. When Winchester left London for America in 1794, never to return, Vidler succeeded him as the primary leader of Universalism in England. He continued in his pastoral position at his church in Battle in a part-time capacity for two more years. From the end of 1796, however, Vidler became a full-time Universalist missionary and evangelist. A significant vehicle for his ministry was the writing, publication, and dissemination of numerous books and articles.14 As Vidler came into close contact with Scottish Universalists, his leadership and influence expanded beyond England to Scotland.15
- For a history and basic bibliography of Fuller studies, see Nathan A. Finn The Renaissance in Andrew Fuller Studies: A Bibliographic Essay” in SBT 17, no.1 (Spring 2013): 44–61. For the latest scholarship on Fullerism, see The Journal of Andrew Fuller Studies, a peer-reviewed, biannual scholarly periodical that commenced in 2020. For a biography, see Peter J. Morden, The Life and Thought of Andrew Fuller (1754–1815) (SEHT; Milton Keynes: Paternoster Press, 2015); for Fuller’s theology, see Michael A. G. Haykin, ed., ‘At the Pure Fountain of Thy Word’: Andrew Fuller as an Apologist (SBHT 6; Carlisle:
Paternoster Press, 2004). ↩︎ - Only one full chapter-length article has been published to date; see Barry Howson “Andrew Fuller and Universalism,” in At the Pure Fountain, 174–202. ↩︎
- “Memoir of the Late Rev. W. Vidler,” The Monthly Repository 12 (March 1817): 129 ↩︎
- For a broader treatment of Vidler and Anglo-American Universalism, see Michael J. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism, vol.1 (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), 569–607. McClymond argues for a classical exclusivist position. See also Matthew Levering’s critique of Origen’s Universalism in Predestination: Biblical and Theological Paths (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 38–44. The pro-universalist position has been articulated by the Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart in That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell & Universal Salvation (New Heaven: Yale University Press, 2019). See also the articulation of the evangelical universalist position in Robin A. Parry and Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, A Larger Hope? Universal Salvation from the Reformation to the Nineteenth Century, vol. 2 (Eugene: Cascade, 2019). ↩︎
- For seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century backgrounds, see John Coffey and Paul Lim, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); and David W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1992). ↩︎
- One of Fuller’s congenial yet Arminian adversaries was Dan Taylor (1738–1816). Along with other New Connection General Baptists, Taylor countered the growing trends towards Socinianism and Unitarianism within General Baptism; see Richard T. Pollard, Dan Taylor (1738–1816), Baptist Leader and Pioneering Evangelical (MBH 9; Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2018), 65–104 and 187. For a broader background, see Frank Rinaldi, The Tribe of Dan: The New Connexion of General Baptists 1770–1891. A Study in the Transition from Revival Movement to Established Denomination (SBHT; Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2009). ↩︎
- Andrew Fuller, “Sermon VII. ‘God’s Approbation of Our Labours Necessary to the Hope of Successes'” (1801), in WAF 1:185. ↩︎
- For historical survey of Universalism in Britain, see Geoffery Rowell, “The Origins and History of Universalist Societies in Britain, 1750–1850,” JEH 22, no. 1 (1971): 38–43; for wider contexts, see Richard Bauckham, “Universalism: A Historical Survey,” Themelios 4, no. 2 (January 1979): 48–54. ↩︎
- For Vidler’s life and thought, see “Memoir of the late Rev. W. Vidler,” The Monthly Repository 12 (February 1817): 65–72; “Memoir of the late Rev. W. Vidler,” The Monthly Repository 12 (March 1817): 129–136; “Memoir of the late Rev. W. Vidler,” The Monthly Repository 12 (April 1817): 193–200; Alexander Gordon,
“Vidler, William,” in Dictionary of National Biography vol. 58 (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1899), 302–3; for a history of the Battle Baptist Church as relates to its first pastor, see F. W. Butt-Thompson, The History of the Battle Baptist Church: With a Biography of William Vidler, Baptist & Universalist, Its First Pastor (Hastings: Burfield & Pennells, 1909). ↩︎ - Andrew Hill, “William Vidler,” Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography (Unitarian Universalist History & Heritage Society, June 13, 2013), http://uudb.org/articles/williamvidler.html. ↩︎
- F. W. Butt-Thompson, “William Vidler,” BQ 17, no. 1 (January 1957): 3. ↩︎
- Butt-Thompson, “William Vidler” 5. ↩︎
- “Mr. Eaton’s Funeral Tribute to the late Rev. W. Vidler,” in The Christian Reformer; or New Evangelical Miscellany, vol. 2 (Hackney: Sherwood Neely and Jones, 1816), 473. ↩︎
- The Designs of the Death of Christ (London: T. Gillet, 1795); A Letter to Mr. Samuel Bradburn, and All the Preachers, in the Methodist Connection (London: E. Brown, 1796); Testimony of Respect to the Memory of Elhanan Winchester, Preacher of the Universal Restoration (London: I. Gillet, 1797); A Sketch of the Life of Elhanan Winchester (London: T. Gillet, 1979); God’s Love to his Creatures (London: W. Burton, 1799); Letters to Mr. Fuller on the Universal Restoration (London: William Burton, 1803). Vidler edited and published new editions of Paul Siegvolk’s The Everlasting Gospel (London: H. Fry. 1795), and Winchester’s Dialogues on The Universal Restoration with a Memoir of its Author (London: W. Berton, 1799). He also published Nathaniel Scarlett’s A Translation of the New Testament from the Original Greek (1798). In his bookshop, he sold Jeremiah Joyce, Courage and Union in a Time of National Danger (London: J. Taylor, 1803). ↩︎
- See Charles A. Howe, “British Universalism, 1787–1825: Elhanan Winchester, William Vidler and the Gospel of Universal Restoration,” Unitarian Historical Society Transactions 17 (1979): 4. ↩︎
The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller Volume 10: Apologetic Works is available for purchase from De Gruyter.
Author’s Perspective: Andrew Fuller and the Search for a Faith Worthy of All Acceptation
Dr. David Rathel discusses his upcoming publication on Andrew Fuller.
