THE ANDREW FULLER WORKS PROJECT
Aim
The aim of this project is to publish a modern critical edition of the entire corpus of Andrew Fuller’s published and unpublished works. It is expected that this edition will comprise at least twelve volumes and take eight to ten years to publish. Discussions with possible publishers are currently underway. With an office at Toronto Baptist Seminary, Toronto, and, it is hoped, one in the United States, The Works of Andrew Fuller Project will also sponsor conferences and other educational enterprises, seeking to make the thought of this eighteenth-century Baptist thinker and his contemporaries available to the public.
Mission Statement and the importance of the project
The controlling objective of The Works of Andrew Fuller Project is to preserve and accurately transmit the text of Fuller’s writings. The editors are committed to the finest scholarly standards for textual transcription, editing, and annotation. They are convinced that transmitting these texts is a vital task since Fuller is a central figure in Baptist history. His writings, not only for their volume, extent, and scope, but for their enduring importance, are major documents in the Baptist story.
From a merely human perspective, if Fuller’s theological works had not been written, William Carey would not have gone to India. Fuller’s theology was the mainspring behind the formation and early development of the Baptist Missionary Society, the first foreign missionary society created by the Evangelical Revival of the last half of the eighteenth century and the missionary society under whose auspices Carey went to India. Very soon, other missionary societies were established, and a new era in missions had begun as the Christian faith was increasingly spread outside of the West, to the regions of Africa and Asia. Carey was most visible at the fountainhead of this movement. Fuller, though not so visible, was utterly vital to its genesis. Moreover, as a missionary statesman, Fuller is still a valuable mentor.
History of Fuller’s Works
Fuller’s writings exist in three states: those published during his lifetime, those issued posthumously, and those still in manuscript (these are mostly letters, a few sermons and a diary). Up until now, scholars and general readers have had to rely generally on a nineteenth-century American edition that has been reprinted by Sprinkle Publications: The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller (1845 ed.; repr. Harrisonburg, Virginia: 1988; 3 vols.). The inadequacies of this edition include its incompleteness, the small font size of the text, and the lack of both critical annotation and adequate indices. A much better text to have reprinted would have been The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller (London: William Ball, 1837), which was published in 5 volumes and is much easier to read. It too though suffers from not being the complete works of Fuller and the lack of both critical annotation and adequate indices. Finally, there is a very rare 8-volume edition published as The Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller (London: B.J. Holdsworth, 1825).
After Fuller’s death, there also appeared two volumes of additional writings, neither of which is readily available today: J. W. Morris, collected, Miscellaneous Pieces on Various Religious Subjects, being the last remains of the Rev. Andrew Fuller and Joseph Belcher, ed.,The Last Remains of the Re. Andrew Fuller (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, [1856]). The editor of this latter piece also brought out a selection of Fuller’s writings entitled The Atonement of Christ, and the Justification of the Sinner (New York: American Tract Society, n.d.).
What is missing from all of these collections is the massive correspondence of Fuller, which reveals the enormous influence that Fuller had in both Baptist circles and other realms of eighteenth-century Evangelicalism. Without the availability of these works, a proper appreciation of Fuller’s impact and achievement cannot be done.
The Works of Andrew Fuller Project will reproduce Fuller’s texts as he wrote them in manuscript or, if he published them himself, as they were printed in the first edition. The annotations that accompany each text will present textual problems and variant readings. In the prefaces and headnotes, the editors will seek to sketch the historical context and intellectual influences.
Participants/editors
Revd. Paul Brewster who serves as the pastor of Barlow Vista Baptist Church in Hampstead, North Carlina, and is a Ph.D. student at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina.
Dr. Crawford Gribben is a lecturer in the Department of English and American Studies, the University of Manchester, Manchester, and is the author of The Puritan Millennium: Literature & Theology, 1550-1682 (Four Courts Press, 2000); The Irish Puritans: James Ussher and the Reformation of the Church (Evangelical Press, 2003); and his and Timothy C. F. Stunt, eds., Prisoners of Hope? Aspects of Evangelical Millennialism in Britain and Ireland, 1800-1880 (Paternoster, 2004).
Dr. Michael A. G. Haykin is the Principal of the Toronto Baptist Seminary and Bible College and Adjunct Professor of Church History at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He is the author of One heart and one soul: John Sutcliff of Olney, his friends, and his times (Evangelical Press, 1994), and The Armies of the Lamb: The spirituality of Andrew Fuller (Joshua Press, 2001).
Dr. Michael M. McMullen is Associate Professor of Church History at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Missouri. He did his doctoral work on Jonathan Edwards at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and at Yale University. He has authored several books, including The Passionate Preacher: Previously Unpublished Sermons by Robert Murray M’Cheyne (Christian Focus) and The Blessing of God: Previously Unpublished Sermons of Jonathan Edwards (Broadman & Holman, 2003). He is also Associate Editor (Church History) for Oxford University Press’ New Dictionary of National Biography (2004).
Revd. Peter J. Morden is the Senior Pastor of Shirley Baptist Church, near Solihull, England. He is the author of Offering Christ to the World: Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) and the Revival of Eighteenth-Century Particular Baptist Life (Paternoster Press, 2003).
Dr. Tom J. Nettles currently serves as Professor of Historical Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He has published several works on the history of Baptist theology, including By His Grace and For His Glory (Baker, 1986).
Dr. Robert W. Oliver is the pastor of a Baptist church in Bradford on Avon, England. His doctoral work was on early English Strict Baptist History. Since 1989 he has also been Lecturer in Church History at the London Theological Seminary and is also currently Adjunct Professor of Church History, Westminster Seminary, Philadelphia (John Owen Centre, London).
Dr. Brian Talbot is the Pastor of Cumbernauld Baptist Church, Scotland. He is the author of The Search for a Common Identity: The Origins of the Baptist Union of Scotland 1800-1870 (Paternoster Press, 2003).
Revd. Nigel Wheeler is a Ph.D. candidate at Queen’s University, Belfast, N. Ireland, where he is doing his doctoral thesis on the ordination sermons of Andrew Fuller.
