The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & MissionarySmith, George
Religion
The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & Missionary
Smith, George
Carey, William, 1761-1834; Missions -- India
Soon after the Charter victory had been gained "that fierce and fiery
Calvinist," whose dictum Southey adopted, that the question in dispute
is not whether the natives shall enjoy toleration, but whether that
toleration shall be extended to the teachers of Christianity, Andrew
Fuller, entered into rest on the 7th May 1815, at the age of sixty-two.
Sutcliff of Olney had been the first of the three to be taken away[25]
a year before, at the same age. The scholarly Dr. Ryland of Bristol
was left alone, and the home management of the Mission passed into the
hands of another generation. Up to Fuller's death that management had
been almost ideally perfect. In 1812 the Committee had been increased
by the addition of nineteen members, to represent the growing interest
of the churches in Serampore, and to meet the demand of the
"respectable" class who had held aloof at the first, who were eager
that the headquarters of so renowned an enterprise should be removed to
London. But Fuller prevailed to keep the Society a little longer at
Kettering, although he failed to secure as his assistant and successor
the one man whose ability, experience, and prudence would have been
equal to his own, and have prevented the troubles that
followed--Christopher Anderson. As Fuller lay dying, he dictated a
letter to Ryland wherein he thus referred to the evangelical doctrine
of grace which he had been the one English theologian of his day to
defend from the hyper-calvinists, and to use as the foundation of the
modern missionary enterprise:--"I have preached and written much
against the abuse of the doctrine of grace, but that doctrine is all my
salvation and all my desire. I have no other hope than from salvation
by mere sovereign, efficacious grace through the atonement of my Lord
and Saviour: with this hope I can go into eternity with composure. We
have some who have been giving it out of late that if Sutcliff and some
others had preached more of Christ and less of Jonathan Edwards they
would have been more useful. If those who talk thus had preached
Christ half as much as Jonathan Edwards did, and were half as useful as
he was, their usefulness would be double what it is. It is very
singular that the Mission to the East originated with one of these
principles, and without pretending to be a prophet, I may say if it
ever falls into the hands of men who talk in this strain (of
hyper-calvinism) it will soon come to nothing."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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