Who Was Andrew Fuller? The Baptist Pastor Behind William Carey

Biography Theology Missions Evangelism

Andrew Fuller was an English Baptist pastor and theologian who lived from 1754 to 1815. A farmer's son with no college training, he served two village churches in eastern England, first at Soham and then for more than thirty years at Kettering. His book The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation argued that every sinner who hears the gospel is called to believe in Christ, and it helped free English Baptists from a cold teaching that kept them from preaching to the lost. In 1792 he helped found the Baptist Missionary Society, which sent William Carey to India, and he ran it as its secretary until he died.

Here's a fuller look at his life, what he taught, and which of his books to start with.

A farm boy in Cambridgeshire

Fuller was born in 1754 in Cambridgeshire, in the fen country near the small town of Soham, where his family farmed. He grew up strong and practical, and people who met him later often remarked that he looked more like a blacksmith than a scholar. He had only a village education. Everything else he learned, he taught himself.

The Baptist church in Soham held to what's often called high or hyper-Calvinism. It taught, rightly, that salvation is all of God's grace. But it went further and taught that preachers shouldn't call the unconverted to repent and believe, because a sinner had no warrant to come to Christ until he saw some sign that God was already at work in him. Young Fuller was troubled about his soul for a long time under that teaching, unsure whether he was allowed to come to Christ at all. When he did come, in his mid-teens, he came simply as a sinner trusting the Savior, and that experience stayed with him.

Pastor at Soham, then Kettering

The Soham church made him its pastor in 1775, when he was barely twenty-one. There he began to wrestle with the question that shaped his life: is it a sinner's duty to believe in Christ, and should a minister press that duty on everyone? He studied the Bible, and he read the Puritans and the American theologian Jonathan Edwards, and he came to believe the answer was yes.

In 1782 he moved to the Baptist church at Kettering, in Northamptonshire, and stayed there for the rest of his life. He was a faithful pastor. For years he preached through books of the Bible on Sunday mornings, and his Expository Discourses on the Book of Genesis came from those sermons. His dedication to his church in that book looks back on more than twenty years together.

The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation

Fuller wrote out his conclusions in The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, published in 1785. It's a careful, patient book. He held firmly to God's sovereign grace, but he showed from Scripture that sinners are commanded, invited and urged to believe, and that unbelief is their sin, not merely their misfortune. If faith is a duty, then every sinner is welcome to come:

If faith in Christ be the duty of the ungodly, it must, of course, follow, that every sinner, whatever be his character, is completely warranted to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of his soul.
The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, Concluding Reflections

He also made clear that true faith isn't mainly about feeling sure of our own safety. It looks at Christ:

The grand object on which faith fixes, is the glory of Christ…
The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, Part I

The book drew critics on both sides, and Fuller answered them in further writings. But it changed the preaching of many Baptist churches. Ministers began to offer Christ freely again, and the churches began to grow.

The mission to India

The same conviction led straight to missions. If the gospel is to be offered to every sinner, then it must be carried to every nation. Fuller's friend William Carey, a shoemaker and pastor, pressed that point on the Baptist ministers of the region. On October 2, 1792, in a house in Kettering, a small group of them formed the society that would send Carey to India the next year. Fuller became its secretary.

For the next twenty-two years he carried that work alongside his church. He wrote the letters, raised the money, traveled through England and Scotland to preach for the mission, defended it in print, and kept up a steady correspondence with the missionaries in India. The story is often told that the men at home promised Carey they'd "hold the rope" while he went down into the mine. Fuller held it longer and harder than anyone.

Friends and controversies

Fuller wrote against the errors of his day. He answered Deism, Socinianism and Sandemanianism in books of their own. But he was also a warm friend. His closest companion in the mission was Samuel Pearce, the young pastor in Birmingham who longed to go to India himself. When Pearce died of consumption in 1799, Fuller wrote his memoir from his letters and journals. He thought Pearce's short life taught a lesson:

There is undoubtedly a way of rendering a short life a long one, and a long life a short one, by filling or not filling it with proper materials.
Memoir of Rev. Samuel Pearce, Concluding Reflections

He grieved, too, over church members who drifted away from Christ, and he wrote The Backslider for them. It begins where every fall begins:

All backsliding from God originates in a departure of heart from him: herein consists the essence and the evil of it.
The Backslider, On the General Nature and Different Species of Backsliding

American colleges gave him honorary doctorates, Princeton in 1798 and Yale in 1805, though he'd never been to a university. Worn out by years of work for the mission, he died at Kettering in 1815.

What he taught

Fuller's teaching comes down to a few plain convictions:

Salvation is wholly of God's grace, through the death of Christ.
That gospel is to be offered freely to everyone, and everyone who hears it is bound to believe it.
Unbelief is sin, because it refuses what God has said about His Son.
A church that believes these things will preach to the lost at home and send missionaries abroad.

His influence on Baptist preaching was so large that his view came to be called "Fullerism." Spurgeon's evangelistic preaching a generation later stood in the same line.

Why he's still read

Fuller is still read because he shows that a strong belief in God's sovereignty and an urgent, open invitation to sinners belong together. Pastors read him to learn how to preach the gospel to everyone. Ordinary readers find him plain, honest and full of good sense, the kind of writer who answers the question you were actually asking.

Where to start

TheWay Library has four of his books, all free to read. Start with The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, his most important book. If you're struggling in your own walk with God, read The Backslider, a short and searching book that ends with the way back. For a picture of the missionary spirit in a pastor's life, read his Memoir of Rev. Samuel Pearce. For his preaching, try the Expository Discourses on Genesis.

Our guide to Andrew Fuller's books explains each one, and our collection of Andrew Fuller quotes gathers his best lines. You'll find all his books on the Andrew Fuller author page. For more on calling sinners to Christ, see our list of the best Christian books on evangelism.