Andrew Fuller
1754–1815
English Baptist theologian whose answer to hyper-Calvinism freed the movement to send William Carey to India.
In his own words
But it is manifest that all men are capable of the latter; it must therefore follow, that nothing but the depravity of their hearts renders them incapable of the former. Some writers, as hath been already observed, have allowed that sinners are the subjects of an inability which arises from their depravity; but they still contend that this is not all; but that they are both naturally and morally unable to believe in Christ; and this they think agreeable to the scriptures, which represent them as both unable and unwilling to come to him for life. But these two kinds of inability cannot consist with each other, so as both to exist in the same subject, and towards the same thing. A moral inability supposes a natural ability. He who never in any state was possessed of the power of seeing, cannot be said to shut his eyes against the light. If the Jews had not been possessed of natural powers, equal to the knowledge of Christ's doctrine, there had been no justice in that cutting question, and answer, Why do ye not understand my speech? Because ye cannot hear my word. A total physical inability must of necessity supersede a moral one. To suppose, therefore, that the phrase, No man can come to me, is meant to describe the former; and, Ye will not come to me that ye may have life, the latter; is to suppose that our Saviour taught what is self-contradictory.
Quoted verbatim from the library, as an answer would quote it.
What we hold of him
The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation
Classic
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