Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 17:1 (Spring 2013)
Article: The Promise Of The Spirit, The Grand Encouragement In Promoting The Gospel: A Circular Letter To The Churches Of The Northamptonshire Baptist Association (June 1810)
Author: Andrew Fuller

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SBTJ 17:1 (Spring 2013) p. 36

The Promise Of The Spirit, The Grand Encouragement In Promoting The Gospel: A Circular Letter To The Churches
Of The Northamptonshire Baptist Association (June 1810)1

Andrew Fuller

edited by

Michael A. G. Haykin

Michael A. G. Haykin is Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He is also Adjunct Professor of Church History and Spirituality at Toronto Baptist Seminary in Ontario, Canada. Dr. Haykin is the author of many books, including “At the Pure Fountain of Thy Word”: Andrew Fuller As an Apologist (Paternoster Press, 2004), Jonathan Edwards: The Holy Spirit in Revival (Evangelical Press, 2005), and The God Who Draws Near: An Introduction to Biblical Spirituality (Evangelical Press, 2007), and Rediscovering the Church Fathers: Who They Were and How They Shaped the Church (Crossway, 2011).

Dear brethren,

In our last public letter, we addressed you on the work of the Holy Spirit.2 In this we would direct your attention to the promise of the Spirit as the grand encouragement in promoting the spread of the gospel.

We take for granted that the spread of the gospel is the great object of your desire. Without this it will be hard to prove that you are Christian churches. An agreement in a few favourite opinions, or on one side of a disputed subject, or even a disagreement with others, will often induce men to form themselves into religious societies, and to expend much zeal and much property in accomplishing their objects. But this is not Christianity. We may be of what is called a sect, but we must not be of a sectarian spirit, seeking only the promotion of a party. The true churches of Jesus Christ travail in birth for the salvation of men. They are the armies of the Lamb, the grand object of whose existence is to extend the Redeemer’s kingdom.

About eighteen years ago God put it into the hearts of a number of your ministers and members to do something for his name among the heathen,3 the effect of which has been to give an impulse to those labours for the attainment of the same object in our several stations at home. The success which has followed is sufficient to induce us to press forward in the work, and to search after every direction and every consideration that may aid our progress.

The influence of the Holy Spirit is by some disowned, by others abused; and even those who are the subjects of it, from various causes, enjoy much less of it than m...

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