Notwithstanding the great freedom of our speculations and debates, the
extreme of heresy among us was Arianism; and all of us, I believe, left
the academy with a belief, more or less qualified, of the doctrine of
_atonement_.
Warm friendships never fail to be contracted at places of liberal
education; and when they are well chosen are of singular use; Such was
mine with Mr. Alexander of Birmingham. We were in the same class, and
during the first year occupied the same room. By engagements between
ourselves we rose early, and dispatched many articles of business
every day. One of them, which continued all the time we were at the
academy, was to read every day ten folio pages in some Greek author,
and generally a Greek play in the course of the week besides. By this
means we became very well acquainted with that language, and with the
most valuable authors in it. This exercise we continued long after we
left the academy, communicating to each other by letter an account of
what we read. My life becoming more occupied than his, he continued
his application to Greek longer than I did, so that before his death
he was, I imagine, one of the best Greek scholars in this or any
other country. My attention was always more drawn to mathematical and
philosophical studies than his was.
These voluntary engagements were the more necessary, in the course
of our academical studies, as there was then no provision made for
teaching the learned languages. We had even no compositions, or
orations, in Latin. Our course of lectures was also defective in
containing no lectures on the scriptures, or on ecclesiastical history,
and by the students in general (and Mr. Alexander and myself were no
exceptions) commentators in general and ecclesiastical history also,
were held in contempt. On leaving the academy he went to study under
his uncle Dr. Benson, and with him learned to value the critical study
of the scriptures so much, that at length he almost confined his
attention to them.
My other particular friends among my fellow students were Mr. Henry
Holland, of my own class, Messrs. Whitehead, Smithson, Rotherham, and
Scholefield in that above me, and Mr. Taylor in that below me. With all
these I kept up more or less of a correspondence, and our friendship
was terminated only by the death of those who are now dead, viz. the
three first named of these six, and I hope it will subsist to the same
period with those who now survive.
All the while I was at the academy I never lost sight of the great
object of my studies, which was the duties of a christian minister,
and there it was that I laid the general plan which I have executed
since. Particularly I there composed the first copy of my _Institutes
of Natural and Revealed Religion_, Mr. Clark, to whom I communicated my
scheme, carefully perusing every section of it, and talking over the
subject of it with me.
But I was much discouraged even then with the _impediment in my
speech_, which I inherited from my family, and which still attends
me. Sometimes I absolutely stammered, and my anxiety about it was the
cause of much distress to me. However, like St. Paul’s _thorn in the
flesh_, I hope it has not been without its use. Without some such check
as this, I might have been disputatious in company, or might have
been seduced by the love of popular applause as a preacher: whereas
my conversation and my delivery in the pulpit having nothing in them
that was generally striking, I hope I have been more attentive to
qualifications of a superior kind.
It is not, I believe, usual for young persons in dissenting academies
to think much of their future situations in life. Indeed, we are
happily precluded from that by the impossibility of succeeding in any
application for particular places. We often, indeed, amused ourselves
with the idea of our dispersion in all parts of the kingdom after
living so happily together; and used to propose plans of meeting at
certain times, and smile at the different appearance we should probably
make after being ten or twenty years settled in the world. But nothing
of this kind was ever seriously resolved upon by us. For my own part,
I can truly say I had very little ambition, except to distinguish
myself by my application to the studies proper to my profession; and I
cheerfully listened to the first proposal that my tutor made to me, in
consequence of an application made to him, to provide a minister for
the people of Needham Market in Suffolk, though it was very remote from
my friends in Yorkshire, and a very inconsiderable place.
When I went to preach at Needham as a candidate, I found a small
congregation, about an hundred people; under a Mr. Meadows, who was
superannuated. They had been without a minister the preceding year,
on account of the smallness of the salary; but there being some
respectable and agreeable families among them, I flattered myself that
I should be useful and happy in the place, and therefore accepted the
unanimous invitation to be assistant to Mr. Meadows, with a view to
succeed him when he died. He was a man of some fortune.
This congregation had been used to receive assistance from both the
Presbyterian and Independent funds; but upon my telling them that I
did not chuse to have any thing to do with the Independents, and
asking them whether they were able to make up the salary they promised
me (which was forty pounds per annum) without any aid from the latter
fund, they assured me they could. I soon, however, found that they
deceived themselves; for the most that I ever received from them was in
the proportion of about thirty pounds per annum, when the expence of my
board exceeded twenty pounds.
Notwithstanding this, every thing else for the first half year appeared
very promising, and I was happy in the success of my schemes for
promoting the interest of religion in the place. I catechised the
children, though there were not many, using Dr. Watt’s Catechism; and
I opened my lectures on the theory of religion from the _institutes_,
which I had composed at the academy, admitting all persons to attend
them without distinction of sex or age; but in this I soon found that
I had acted imprudently. A minister in that neighbourhood had been
obliged to leave his place on account of Arianism, and though nothing
had been said to me on the subject, and from the people so readily
consenting to give up the independent fund, I thought they could not
have much bigotry among them, I found that when I came to treat of
the _Unity of God_, merely as an article of religion, several of my
audience were attentive to nothing but the soundness of my faith in the
doctrine of the Trinity.
Also, though I had made it a rule to myself to introduce nothing that
could lead to controversy into the pulpit; yet making no secret of my
real opinions in conversation, it was soon found that I was an Arian.
From the time of this discovery my hearers fell off apace, especially
as the old minister took a decided part against me. The principal
families, however, still continued with me; but notwithstanding this,
my salary fell far short of thirty pounds per annum, and if it had not
been for Dr. Benson and Dr. Kippis, especially the former, procuring
me now and then an extraordinary five pounds from different charities,
I do not believe that I could have subsisted. I shall always remember
their kindness to me, at a time when I stood in so much need of it.
When I was in this situation, a neighbouring minister whose intimate
friend had conformed to the church of England, talked to me on that
subject. He himself, I perceived, had no great objection to it, but
rejecting the proposal, as a thing that I could not think of, he never
mentioned it to me any more.
To these difficulties, arising from the sentiments of my congregation,
was added that of the failure of all remittances from my aunt, owing in
part to the ill offices of my orthodox relations; but chiefly to her
being exhausted by her liberality to others, and thinking that when I
was settled in the world, I ought to be no longer burdensome to her.
Together with me she had brought up a niece, who was almost her only
companion, and being deformed, could not have subsisted without the
greatest part, at least, of all she had to bequeath. In consequence
of these circumstances, tho’ my aunt had always assured me that,
if I chose to be a minister, she would leave me independent of the
profession, I was satisfied she was not able to perform her promise,
and freely consented to her leaving all she had to my cousin; I had
only a silver tankard as a token of her remembrance. She had spared no
expence in my education, and that was doing more for me than giving me
an estate.
But what contributed greatly to my distress was the _impediment in my
speech_, which had increased so much as to make preaching very painful,
and took from me all chance of recommending myself to any better place.
In this state, hearing of the proposal of one Mr. Angier to cure
all defects of speech, I prevailed upon my aunt to enable me to pay
his price, which was twenty guineas; and this was the first occasion
of my visiting London. Accordingly, I attended him about a month,
taking an oath not to reveal his method, and I received some temporary
benefit; but soon relapsed again, and spoke worse than ever. When I
went to London it was in company with Mr. Smithson, who was settled at
Harlestown in Norfolk. By him I was introduced to Dr. Kippis and Dr.
Benson, and by the latter to Dr. Price, but not at that time.
At Needham I felt the effect of a low despised situation, together
with that arising from the want of popular talents. There were several
vacancies in congregations in that neighbourhood, where my sentiments
would have been no objection to me, but I was never thought of. Even my
next neighbours, whose sentiments were as free as my own, and known to
be so, declined making exchanges with me, which, when I left that part
of the country, he acknowledged was not owing to any dislike his people
had to me as heretical, but for other reasons, the more genteel part
of his hearers always absenting themselves when they heard I was to
preach for him. But visiting that country some years afterwards, when
I had raised myself to some degree of notice in the world, and being
invited to preach in that very pulpit, the same people crowded to hear
me, though my elocution was not much improved, and they professed to
admire one of the same discourses they had formerly despised.
Notwithstanding these unfavorable circumstances, I was far from being
unhappy at Needham. I was boarded in a family from which I received
much satisfaction, I firmly believed that a wise providence was
disposing every thing for the best, and I applied with great assiduity
to my studies, which were classical, mathematical and theological.
These required but few books. As to Experimental Philosophy, I had
always cultivated an acquaintance with it, but I had not the means of
prosecuting it.
With respect to miscellaneous reading, I was pretty well supplied by
means of a library belonging to Mr. S. Alexander, a quaker,[3] to which
I had the freest access. Here it was that I was first acquainted with
any person of that persuasion; and I must acknowledge my obligation
to many of them in every future stage of my life. I have met with the
noblest instances of liberality of sentiment and the truest generosity
among them.
[3] QUAKERS. That instances of liberality of sentiment with respect to
religious opinion are frequently to be found among the Quakers there
can be no doubt, but this is certainly no part of their character as a
Sect. Thomas Letchworth one of the most acute and ingenious of their
preachers at Wandsworth near London, who from the writings of Dr.
Priestley had become a firm convert to his Unitarian opinions, informed
me that the expression of those opinions would be attended with certain
expulsion from the Society. Very lately Hannah Bernard, a female public
friend who went from America to England, was prohibited from preaching
by the Society, on account of her Unitarian doctrines.
Thomas Letchworth has been dead many years. In the short contest on the
question of liberty and necessity which was occasioned by Toplady’s
life of Jerome Zanchius, he wrote a good defence of the doctrine
of necessity signed Philaretes in answer to one from a disciple of
Fletcher’s of Madely, under the signature of Philaleutheros. There is
a trifling account of him containing no information, by one William
Matthews.