Christmas Evans & Sandemanianism 2: Faith & Life

But it was not such practices, however eccentric they must have seemed to the majority of Nonconformists that caused Sandemanianism to become a ‘rock of offence and a stone of stumbling.’ No, it was the Sandemanian view of the nature of saving faith. In the words of William Williams, Pantycelyn: ‘[…] it sets naked faith as the chief thing, believing without power, making little of convictions and a broken heart.’[1] Returning to Fuller, who together with Lloyd-Jones, I needs must make heavy use of in this doctrinal section:

‘The foundation of whatever is distinguishing in the system seems to relate to the nature of justifying faith. This Mr. S[andeman] constantly represents as the bare belief of the bare truth; by which definition he intends, as it would seem, to exclude from it every thing pertaining to the will and the affections, except as effects produced by it.’[2]

Saving faith, Sandeman insisted, meant that: ‘Every one who obtains a just notion of the work of Christ, or whose notion corresponds to what is testified of him, is justified and finds peace with God simply by that notion.’[3] And, when a certain Pike, who professed to follow Sandeman, defended Sandeman by saying that he had been misunderstood and in fact meant a ‘hearty persuasion’, not bare assent, was slapped down.[4] All emotional persuasions prior to the acceptance of the facts about Christ were rejected, even shunned.[5]


[1] Cited in D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, ‘Sandemanianism’, in The Puritans: Their origins and Successors (Edinburgh, 1987), p.175.
[2] Andrew Fuller, ‘Strictures on Sandemanianism,’ Works (Harrisonburg, Virginia, 1988), vol.ii, p.566.
[3] Cited in Andrew Fuller, ‘Strictures on Sandemanianism,’ Works (Harrisonburg, Virginia, 1988), vol.ii, pp.566-7.
[4] Cited in Andrew Fuller, ‘Strictures on Sandemanianism,’ Works (Harrisonburg, Virginia, 1988), vol.ii, p.566.
[5] Eifion Evans, Daniel Rowland and the Great Evangelical Awakening in Wales (Edinburgh, 1985), p.339; Tim Shenton, Christmas Evans: The Life and Times of the one-eyed Preacher of Wales (Darlington, 2001), p.155.