“We respectfully suggest that a similar proposal be made to the Baptist ministers in the United States; and we engage that, as soon as it shall appear that one hundred ministers, including ourselves, have resolved to transmit annually to the treasurer of the American Baptist Board of Foreign Missions one-twentieth of all their regular income, whether derived from their salaries or estates, we will relinquish a second twentieth of our allowance, that is, one-tenth of the whole.
“And lest it be said that we now receive high allowances, and can, therefore, afford to make some retrenchment, we state, not by way of ostentation, but merely to meet the remark, that, considering our allowances cover all our personal expenses except building or house rent, conveyance on mission business, and charges for medical attendance, we receive less than any English missionaries of any denomination, in any part of the East, and as little as any American missionaries in those parts, notwithstanding the expense of living on this coast is probably greater than at a majority of other stations.
We remain, yours faithfully,
“A. Judson,
“J. Wade.”
“Maulmain, June 19, 1829.
“My dear Sir: I propose, from this date, to lessen my usual allowance by one-quarter, finding, from experience, that my present mode of living will admit the retrenchment; this arrangement not to interfere with the proposals made under date of September last, concerning the one-twentieth and one-tenth.
Yours faithfully,
“A. Judson.”
But love of money was not the only worldly appetite which he nailed to the cross. He cut to the quick that passion for fame which was an inborn trait, and which had been inordinately stimulated by his parents during his earliest childhood. His overweening ambition received its first mortal wound, as he often remarked, when he became a Baptist. He declined the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity conferred upon him by the corporation of Brown University in 1823, and in May, 1828, wrote as follows to the editor of the Missionary Magazine: