[WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.]
Having thought it right to leave behind me some account of my _friends_
and _benefactors_, it is in a manner necessary that I also give some
account of _myself_; and as the like has been done by many persons, and
for reasons which posterity has approved, I make no farther apology for
following their example. If my writings in general have been useful
to my cotemporaries, I hope that this account of myself will not be
without its use to those who may come after me, and especially in
promoting virtue and piety, which I hope I may say it has been my care
to practice myself, as it has been my business to inculcate them upon
others.
My father, Jonas Priestley, was the youngest son of Joseph Priestley, a
maker and dresser of woollen cloth. His first wife, my mother, was the
only child of Joseph Swift, a farmer at Shafton, a village about six
miles south east of Wakefield. By this wife he had six children, four
sons and two daughters. I, the oldest, was born on the thirteenth of
March, old style 1733, at Fieldhead about six miles south west of Leeds
in Yorkshire. My mother dying in 1740, my father married again in 1745,
and by his second wife had three daughters.
My mother having children so fast, I was very soon committed to the
care of her father, and with him I continued with little interruption
till my mother’s death.
It is but little that I can recollect of my mother. I remember,
however, that she was careful to teach me the Assembly’s Catechism, and
to give me the best instructions the little time that I was at home.
Once in particular, when I was playing with a pin, she asked me where
I got it; and on telling her that I found it at my uncle’s, who lived
very near to my father, and where I had been playing with my cousins,
she made me carry it back again; no doubt to impress my mind, as it
could not fail to do, with a clear idea of the distinction of property,
and of the importance of attending to it. She died in the hard winter
of 1739, not long after being delivered of my youngest brother; and
having dreamed a little before her death that she was in a delightful
place, which she particularly described, and imagined to be heaven, the
last words she spake, as my aunt informed me, were “Let me go to that
fine place.”
On the death of my mother I was taken home, my brothers taking my
place, and was sent to school in the neighbourhood. But being without
a mother, and my father incumbered with a large family, a sister of my
father’s, in the year 1742, relieved him of all care of me, by taking
me entirely to herself, and considering me as her child, having none of
her own. From this time she was truly a parent to me till her death in
1764.
My aunt was married to a Mr. Keighly, a man who had distinguished
himself for his zeal for religion and for his public spirit. He was
also a man of considerable property, and dying soon after I went to
them, left the greatest part of his fortune to my aunt for life, and
much of it at her disposal after her death.
By this truly pious and excellent woman, who knew no other use of
wealth, or of talents of any kind, than to do good, and who never
spared herself for this purpose, I was sent to several schools in the
neighbourhood, especially to a large free school, under the care of a
clergyman, Mr. Hague, under whom, at the age of twelve or fifteen, I
first began to make any progress in the Latin Tongue, and acquired the
elements of Greek. But about the same time that I began to learn Greek
at this public school, I learned Hebrew on holidays of the dissenting
minister of the place, Mr. Kirkby, and upon the removal of Mr. Hague
from the free school, Mr. Kirkby opening a school of his own, I was
wholly under his care. With this instruction I had acquired a pretty
good knowledge of the learned languages at the age of sixteen. But from
this time Mr. Kirkby’s increasing infirmities obliged him to relinquish
his school, and beginning to be of a weakly consumptive habit, so
that it was not thought adviseable to send me to any other place of
education, I was left to conduct my studies as well as I could till I
went to the academy at Daventry in the year 1752.
From the time I discovered any fondness for books my aunt entertained
hopes of my being a minister, and I readily entered into her views.
But my ill health obliged me to turn my thoughts another way, and with
a view to trade, I learned the modern languages, French, Italian,
and High Dutch without a master; and in the first and last of them I
translated, and wrote letters, for an uncle of mine who was a merchant,
and who intended to put me into a counting house in Lisbon. A house was
actually engaged to receive me there, and every thing was nearly ready
for my undertaking the voyage. But getting better health my former
destination for the ministry was resumed, and I was sent to Daventry,
to study under Mr. Ashworth, afterwards Dr. Ashworth.
Looking back, as I often do, upon this period of my life, I see the
greatest reason to be thankful to God for the pious care of my parents
and friends, in giving me religious instruction. My mother was a woman
of exemplary piety, and my father also had a strong sense of religion,
praying with his family morning and evening, and carefully teaching
his children and servants the Assembly’s Catechism, which was all the
system of which he had any knowledge. In the latter part of his life
he became very fond of Mr. Whitfield’s writings, and other works of a
similar kind, having been brought up in the principles of Calvinism,
and adopting them, but without ever giving much attention to matters
of speculation, and entertaining no bigotted aversion to those who
differed from him on the subject.
The same was the case with my excellent aunt, she was truly Calvinistic
in principle, but was far from confining salvation to those who thought
as she did on religious subjects. Being left in good circumstances,
her home was the resort of all the dissenting ministers in the
neighbourhood without distinction, and those who were the most
obnoxious on account of their heresy were almost as welcome to her, if
she thought them honest and good men, (which she was not unwilling to
do) as any others.
The most heretical ministers in the neighbourhood were Mr. Graham of
Halifax, and Mr. Walker of Leeds, but they were frequently my Aunt’s
guests. With the former of these my intimacy grew with my years,
but chiefly after I became a preacher. We kept up a correspondence
to the last, thinking alike on most subjects. To him I dedicated my
_Disquisitions on Matter and Spirit_, and when he died, he left me his
manuscripts, his Polyglot bible, and two hundred pounds. Besides being
a rational Christian, he was an excellent classical scholar, and wrote
Latin with great facility and elegance. He frequently wrote to me in
that language.
Thus I was brought up with sentiments of piety, but without bigotry,
and having from my earliest years given much attention to the subject
of religion, I was as much confirmed as I well could be in the
principles of Calvinism, all the books that came in my way having that
tendency.
The weakness of my constitution, which often led me to think that I
should not be long lived, contributed to give my mind a still more
serious turn, and having read many books of _experiences_, and in
consequence believing that a _new birth_ produced by the immediate
agency of the Spirit of God, was necessary to salvation, and not
being able to satisfy myself that I _had_ experienced any thing of
the kind, I felt occasionally such distress of mind as it is not in
my power to describe, and which I still look back upon with horror.
Notwithstanding I had nothing very material to reproach myself with,
I often concluded that God had forsaken me, and that mine was like
the case of Francis Spira, to whom, as he imagined, repentance and
salvation were denied. In that state of mind I remember reading the
account of the man in the iron cage in the Pilgrim’s Progress with the
greatest perturbation.
I imagine that even these conflicts of mind were not without their
use, as they led me to think habitually of God and a future state.
And though my feelings were then, no doubt, too full of terror, what
remained of them was a deep reverence for divine things, and in time
a pleasing satisfaction which can never be effaced, and I hope, was
strengthened as I have advanced in life, and acquired more rational
notions of religion. The remembrance, however, of what I sometimes felt
in that state of ignorance and darkness gives me a peculiar sense of
the value of rational principles of religion, and of which I can give
but an imperfect description to others.
As _truth_, we cannot doubt, must have an advantage over _error_, we
may conclude that the want of these peculiar feelings is compensated
by something of greater value, which arises to others from always
having seen things in a just and pleasing light; from having always
considered the Supreme Being as the kind parent of all his offspring.
This, however, not having been my case, I cannot be so good a judge of
the effects of it. At all events, we ought always to inculcate just
views of things, assuring ourselves that _proper feelings and right
conduct_ will be the consequence of them.
In the latter part of the interval between my leaving the grammar
school and going to the academy, which was something more than two
years, I attended two days in the week upon Mr. Haggerstone, a
dissenting minister in the neighbourhood, who had been educated under
Mr. Maclaurin. Of him I learned Geometry, Algebra and various branches
of Mathematics, theoretical and practical. And at the same time I read,
but with little assistance from him, Gravesend’s Elements of Natural
Philosophy, Watt’s Logic, Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding, &c,
and made such a proficiency in other branches of learning, that when I
was admitted at the academy (which was on Coward’s foundation) I was
excused all the studies of the first year, and a great part of those
of the second.
In the same interval I spent the latter part of every week with Mr.
Thomas, a baptist minister now of Bristol but then of Gildersome,
a village about four miles from Leeds, who had had no learned
education. Him I instructed in Hebrew, and by that means made myself a
considerable proficient in that language. At the same time I learned
Chaldee and Syriac, and just began to read Arabic. Upon the whole,
going to the academy later than is usual, and being thereby better
furnished, I was qualified to appear there with greater advantage.
Before I went from home I was very desirous of being admitted a
communicant in the congregation which I had always attended, and the
old minister, as well as my Aunt, were as desirous of it as myself,
but the elders of the Church, who had the government of it, refused
me, because, when they interrogated me on the subject of the _sin of
Adam_, I appeared not to be quite orthodox, not thinking that all the
human race (supposing them not to have any sin of their own) were
liable to the wrath of God, and the pains of hell for ever, on account
of that sin only; for such was the question that was put to me. Some
time before, having then no doubt of the truth of the doctrine, I
well remember being much distressed that I could not feel a proper
repentance for the sin of Adam; taking it for granted that without
_this_ it could not be forgiven me. Mr. Haggerstone above mentioned,
was a little more liberal than the members of the congregation in
which I was brought up, being what is called a _Baxterian_;[1] and
his general conversation had a liberal turn, and such as tended to
undermine my prejudices. But what contributed to open my eyes still
more was the conversation of a Mr. Walker, from Ashton under line, who
preached as a candidate when our old minister was superannuated. He was
an avowed Baxterian, and being rejected on that account his opinions
were much canvassed, and he being a guest at the house of my Aunt, we
soon became very intimate, and I thought I saw much of reason in his
sentiments. Thinking farther on these subjects, I was, before I went to
the academy, an Arminian, but had by no means rejected the doctrine of
the trinity, or that of atonement.
[1] BAXTERIANS, The famous Non-conformist Richard Baxter who flourished
about the middle of the last Century, attempted a Coalition between the
doctrines of Calvin and Arminius. The former of these held that God
from the beginning had elected a few of the human race to be saved,
without reference to their good actions in this life, and had left the
rest of mankind in a state of final and inevitable reprobation. The
latter was of opinion that the Christian dispensation furnished the
means of final Salvation to all men, though the merits of the death
of Christ would be ultimately advantageous to believers only. Baxter,
thought with Calvin that some among mankind were from the beginning
elected unto eternal life, and gifted from above with the saving grace
necessary in the first instance to the several steps of a believer’s
christian character; but he thought also with Arminius that all men
had common grace imparted to them, sufficient to enable them if they
chose, to attain unto final Salvation by using the means ordained by
Christ and his Apostles. Calvin also held the final perseverance of the
Saints, or as it has since been expressed that a believer might fall
foully but not finally, whereas Baxter seems to have thought that not
every one who had saving grace imparted to him would persevere to the
end, or as the Arminian Methodists quaintly express it, he held that a
believer may fall both foully and finally. The compromising doctrine of
Baxter may be seen in his very learned and unintelligible work entitled
Catholick Theology. He used to be an annual communicant in the Church
of England by way of exemplying his accommodating opinions.