The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & MissionarySmith, George
Religion
The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & Missionary
Smith, George
Carey, William, 1761-1834; Missions -- India
The Baptists, who had stood alone as the advocates of toleration,
religious and civil, in an age of intolerance which made them the
victims, had subsided like Puritan and Covenanter when the Revolution
of 1688 brought persecution to an end. The section who held the
doctrine of "general" redemption, and are now honourably known as
General Baptists, preached ordinary Arminianism, and even Socinianism.
The more earnest and educated among them clung to Calvinism, but, by
adopting the unhappy term of "particular" Baptists, gradually fell
under a fatalistic and antinomian spell. This false Calvinism, which
the French theologian of Geneva would have been the first to denounce,
proved all the more hostile to the preaching of the Gospel of salvation
to the heathen abroad, as well as the sinner at home, that it professed
to be an orthodox evangel while either emasculating the Gospel or
turning the grace of God into licentiousness. From such "particular"
preachers as young Fuller and Carey listened to, at first with
bewilderment, then impatience, and then denunciation, missions of no
kind could come. Fuller exposed and pursued the delusion with a native
shrewdness, a masculine sagacity, and a fine English style, which have
won for him the apt name of the Franklin of Theology. For more than
twenty years Fullerism, as it was called, raised a controversy like
that of the Marrow of Divinity in Scotland, and cleared the ground
sufficiently at least to allow of the foundation of foreign missions in
both countries. It now seems incredible that the only class who a
century ago represented evangelicalism should have opposed missions to
the heathen on the ground that the Gospel is meant only for the elect,
whether at home or abroad; that nothing spiritually good is the duty of
the unregenerate, therefore "nothing must be addressed to them in a way
of exhortation excepting what relates to external obedience."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account