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| William Carey |
Baptist prayer, theology and action
Baptists at the close of the eighteenth-century, caught a vision for God’s purposes on a world scale through one Baptist minister in particular, William Carey. His contemporaries thought the apostolic mandate was addressed only to the apostolic age, when it had been duly fulfilled. However strange such thinking seems to us, the modern missionary movement in Protestant churches began against this background in the 1770s and 1780s. Three Baptist ministers first, challenged their churches about their objectives in prayer, then their understanding of the Gospel, and finally posed the need for all Christians to be actively with God on His mission. Let me introduce these three, John Sutcliff, Andrew Fuller and William Carey.
[1] John Sutcliff calls the Association to Prayer
John Sutcliff first become acquainted when Sutcliff, after training at Bristol Baptist College, formed a deep friendship with Fuller, both sharing a passion for mission. Sutcliff was born in Hebden Bridge, Yorkshire, on 9 August 1752, and went to the Wainsgate Baptist Church, where he was baptized by his minister, John Fawcett, on 18 May 1769. In February 1772 he made his way to Bristol Academy to be trained for the ministry by Hugh and Caleb Evans. He was admitted to ‘transient communion’ at Broadmead, Bristol, on 9 February 1772, having walked all the way from Yorkshire so that the money saved could be spent on books for further study! After training he moved to Olney in 1775 and after due trial as pastor, he was ordained there on 7 August 1776.
As soon as Sutcliff’s ministry began it was called in question by some members, a situation which persisted from 1777 to 1784. By consistently visiting all those who disagreed with him, he gradually won over most of them to his own position. In 1784 he introduced the idea of a regular prayer meeting for the revival of religion, at home and abroad, at the Northamptonshire Baptist Association meeting. In a book, Revd Jonathan Edwards, had pleaded for a regular hour every month to be given to concerted prayers for the revival of religion. Edwards had published this plan in America in An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God’s People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and the Advancement of Christ’s Kingdom in 1747. Sutcliff had experimented at Olney with days of prayer for specific purposes in 1779, 1782 and 1783. After preaching at the Northamptonshire Baptist Association meeting in 1784 he proposed the Association churches should have prayer meetings to pray for revival on a monthly basis: a root which eventually bore fruit in the formation of the Baptist Missionary Society, 1792.
Sutcliff’s motion at the 1784 Association meeting, read:
‘...respecting meetings for prayer, to bewail the low estate of religion, and earnestly implore a revival of our churches, and of the general cause of our Redeemer, and for that end to wrestle with God for the effusion of his Holy Spirit, which alone can produce the blessed effect, it was unanimously RESOLVED, to recommend to all our churches and congregations, the spending of one hour in this important exercise, on the first Monday in every calendar month. We hereby solemnly exhort all the churches in our connection, to engage heartily and perseveringly in the prosecution of this plan …’
What was the object of such prayer?
‘That the Holy Spirit is to be poured down on our ministers and churches, that sinners may be converted, the saints edified, the interest of religion revived, and the name of God glorified. At the same time remember, we trust you will not confine your requests to your own congregations, or to our own immediate connection; let the whole interest of the Redeemer be affectionately remembered, and the spread of the Gospel to the most distant parts of the habitable globe be the object of your most fervent requests.... Surely we have enough love to Zion to set apart one hour at a time, twelve times a year, to seek her welfare.’ [NBA, Circular Letter, 1784, p.12]
The Midland and the Yorkshire Baptist Associations by 1786, had come to share this growing concern for mission.
Sutcliff also had considerable influence on William Carey in the 1780s, when Carey became a member at Olney Baptist Church from July 1785 until November 1787, so that Sutcliff and his church might test Carey’s gift for Baptist ministry. At first Olney were not prepared to commend him, so he received further training from Sutcliff who taught him the basics of Greek, Hebrew and Latin. Eventually Carey’s preaching found acceptance with the Olney congregation and he was commended by them ‘to preach the Gospel wherever the providence of God might lead him’. Carey began as pastor at Moulton in 1787, with John Sutcliff and Andrew Fuller preaching at his ordination on 1 August 1787. [For Sutcliff see, M Haykin, One Heart and One Soul, Evangelical Press, 1994]
[2] Andrew Fuller proposes a new theology for Baptists
The founding of the Baptist Missionary Society came after long discussions among the Northamptonshire Association ministers. Two of them were John Ryland, jnr, trained by his father who had been taught at Bristol Academy, and another Bristol student, John Sutcliff. Both had a significant influence on the two self-taught ministers who conceived the Missionary Society, William Carey and Andrew Fuller. This group of Baptist ministers all valued the writings of Revd Jonathan Edwards, particularly his account of the Great Awakening in New England, and his publication of the Journal of David Brainerd. [For Edwards, see, Jonathan Edwards: A Life, George Marsden, Yale, 2003]
Andrew Fuller challenged the extreme Calvinism of John Gill which had resulted in dry, arid, non-invitation preaching in the churches with his book, The Gospel Worth of All Acceptation, or the Duty of sinners to believe in Jesus Christ, (1785). Fuller had read a tract by Abraham Taylor, The Modern Question, which claimed that the ‘eternal God does by his word make it the duty of poor unconverted sinners who hear the Gospel preached or published, to believe in Jesus Christ’.
Fuller, in the first part of his book, stated it was the duty of all who hear the Gospel to trust in Christ with faith, placing their personal trust in Christ’s promises. The second part comprised arguments to prove that faith in Christ is the duty of all who hear the Gospel. Unconverted sinners are commanded, exhorted and invited to believe in Christ for salvation. The Gospel requires obedience, and such obedience includes saving faith. Scripture ascribes want of faith in Christ to man’s depravity, and God has threatened the most awful punishments on sinners for their not believing in Christ as Saviour and Lord.
‘I believe it is the duty of every minister of Christ’ wrote Fuller, ‘plainly and faithfully to preach the Gospel to all who will hear it … I therefore believe free and solemn addresses, invitations, calls and warnings to be not only consistent, but directly adapted, as means, in the hand of the Spirit of God to bring them to Christ. I consider it as part of my duty which I could not omit without being guilty of the blood of souls.’ Fuller’s own independent judgment was that faith was not a person being persuaded he had an ‘interest’ in Christ, but a coming to Christ, believing in Him, and therefore being changed.
When Fuller came to the Northamptonshire Baptist Association at Olney in the spring of 1776, he met Sutcliff for the first time. Immediately they established a deep rapport with each other and with the young John Ryland. The success of Fuller in breaking through was his ability to provide a complete and comprehensive theological answer to the ‘modern question’ in his book, The Gospel Worthy of all Acceptation. [For Fuller, see Peter J Morden, Offering Christ to the World: Andrew Fuller, 1754-1815, Paternoster, 2003]
[3] Enter William Carey with an Enquiry
Fuller went to the Association Meeting, held at Olney Baptist Church, on 5 June 1782. The meetings were well attended for the fire of revival was smouldering in many hearts. A window had to be taken out of the Meeting House, and an improvised pulpit placed within the chapel, so that the crowds who gathered might hear. Looking at Fuller from the yard as he preached, was a young man from Hackleton, William Carey. Carey had been three years converted, but was not yet baptized – that would be next year – 1783.
Pearce Carey tells the story of his grandfather on this occasion thus:
‘Carey’s first experience of an Association day was a thing of remembrance. No leader knew him, nor gave him a thought. He was one of the least of the concourse thronging the Olney meeting-house and yard … Carey had never seen Fuller before and would fain have thanked him. He had never witnessed such a day’s religious zeal. With not a penny in his pocket he could buy no food, and except for a glass of wine at a friend of Mr Chater’s, he fasted. But his mind and spirit had a feast. He would have been amazed had he foreseen how fiery a chariot this Association was to become, with himself its charioteer.’
In 1784 the Association met in Nottingham, and Fuller preached on Walking by Faith, which when printed became Seven Persuasives to an Extraordinary Union in Prayer for the Revival of Real Religion added. Fuller urged prayerfulness by considering
[1] Christ’s readiness to hear and answer prayer;
[2] what the Lord has done in times past in answer to prayer;
[3] the present religious state of the world;
[4] what God has promised to do for his church in times to come;
[5] if we have any regard to the welfare of our countrymen, connection and friends, to let this stimulate us in this work;
[6] that what is suggested is so very small; and
[7[ lastly, it will not be in vain, whatever the immediate and apparent issue of it.
Carey was a poverty stricken shoe-maker, employed by one of Fuller’s deacons, Thomas Gotch. One day Gotch met Carey as he came to collect some shoe-leather and uppers to work on the next week. Gotch asked Carey how much he earned from his shoe-making, each week. Carey replied it was about 10 shillings a week. ‘Well now,’ said Gotch, with a twinkle in his eyes, ‘I don’t mean you to spoil any more of my leather, but get on as fast as you can with your Latin, Greek and Hebrew, and I’ll allow you ten shillings a week from my private purse!’
Fuller had told Gotch of Carey’s proposal for a discussion at the Ministers’ meeting: ‘Whether the command given to the apostles to teach all the nations was not binding on all succeeding ministers to the end of the world.’ Fuller notes that Carey constantly raised this issue, but his fellow ministers, ‘mostly regarded it as a wild impracticable scheme and gave him no encouragement. Yet he would not give it up, but talked with us one by one, till he had made some impression.’ Just as Fuller had proved the Gospel COULD be preached to all, so Carey demanded its corollary, the Gospel MUST be preached to all.
When the Northamptonshire ministers met in Clipstone, at Easter 1791, Fuller preached on a striking text from Haggai 1.2, ‘This people say, the time is not come, the time that the Lord’s house should be built’. The sermon was concerned with the dangerous tendency of delay in the concerns of religion: a powerful address in the context of all the praying that had been going on for revival over seven years. Fuller said:
‘We pray for the conversion and salvation of the world, and yet neglect the ordinary means by which these ends have been accomplished. It pleased God, by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believed … Ought we not then at least to try by some means to convey more of the good news of salvation to the world around us than has hitherto been conveyed?’
At this ministers meeting Carey demanded action from his colleagues, but they remained cautious. He moved that something should be done that day, ‘relative to the formation of a Society for the propagation of the Gospel among the heathen’. The other ministers had been compelled to consider such action, because Carey had constantly advocated it. However, it still seemed to them too great an undertaking, and utterly beyond their reach. To gain time and to satisfy Carey, they urged him to revise a manuscript he had prepared on the subject and put it into print. Thomas Potts, a deacon at Cannon Street, Birmingham, gave £10 to pay for the printing of Carey’s Enquiry.
Carey wrote in the introduction,
‘as our blessed Lord has required us to pray that his kingdom may come, and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven, it becomes us not only to express our desire of that by words, but to use every lawful method to spread the knowledge of his name.’
Christ’s commission to the apostles was still binding on the Church, despite others that we should concentrate upon our countrymen; and others that God would himself have responsibility to bring the heathen the Gospel. Next Carey surveyed missionary endeavour from the New Testament to the present, urging this was still the primary responsibility of ministers, who must exert themselves in this task.
Carey suggested a way forward: the first, and most important was prayer, fervent and united, recognising that Sutcliff’s Association prayer-call had been significant. However, ‘we must not be contented with prayer, without exerting ourselves in the use of every means for obtaining those things we pray for’. He put forward a SOCIETY idea, with a competent committee to administer it. But there was still reluctance. In despair Carey grabbed hold of Fuller’s arm and cried out: ‘Is nothing again to be done?’
Fuller was deeply moved. It was agreed that the Plan for such a Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Heathen be prepared for the October meeting at Kettering. Carey preached his challenging sermon at Nottingham, Expect great things FROM God, attempt great things FOR God, and world mission among Baptists was on its way. Carey willingly translated vision into action by himself sailing with Dr John Thomas in 1793, for India, never to return to these shores. [ For Carey, see S P Carey, William Carey, London, 1923]
Many things can be learned from this part of our Baptist story, but for me it is important because it reveals what in the present could be called ‘a Baptist Spirituality’, which is useful for to-day. It illustrates our interdependence as Baptist Christians. These ministers needed each other. One was a man of prayer, one a man with theological insight, the third a man with a determination to put a vision into practice. When prayer, theology and action come together to seek the mind of Christ, as each one brings a vital gift and shares it with their friends, so God’s will could be known and done
ROGER HAYDEN
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