“Before I give you an account of the state of our academy, and those other things you desired me, please to accept of my hearty thanks for that service you have done me, both in advising me to prosecute my studies in such an extraordinary place of education, and in procuring me admittance into it. I wish my improvements may be answerable to the advantages I enjoy; but, however that may happen, your kindness has fixed me in a place where I may be very happy, and spend my time to good purpose, and where, if I do not, the fault will be all my own. I am sensible how difficult it is to give a character of any person or thing, because the most probable guesses we make very often prove false ones. But, since you are pleased to desire it, I think myself obliged to give you the best and most impartial account of matters I can.
“Mr. Jones, then, I take to be a man of real piety, great learning, and an agreeable temper; one who is very diligent in instructing all under his care, very well qualified to give instructions, and whose well-managed familiarity will always make him respected. He is very strict in keeping good order, and will effectually preserve his pupils from negligence and immorality. And accordingly, I believe, there are not many academies freer in general from those vices than we are. In particular my bedfellow, Mr. Scott,[7] is one of unfeigned religion, and a diligent searcher after truth. His genteel carriage and agreeable disposition gain him the esteem of every one. Mr. Griffith is more than ordinary serious and grave, and improves more in everything than one could expect from a man who seems to be not much under forty; particularly in Greek and Hebrew he has made a great progress. Mr. Francis and Mr. Watkins are diligent in study and truly religious. The elder Mr. Jones, having had a better education than they, will in all probability make a greater scholar; and his brother is one of quick parts. Our logic, which we had read once over, is so contrived as to comprehend all Hereboord, and far the greater part of Mr. Locke’s Essay, and the Art of Thinking. What Mr. Jones dictated to us was but short, containing a clear and brief account of the matter, references to the places where it was more fully treated of, and remarks on, or explications of the authors cited, when need required. At our next lecture we gave an account both of what the author quoted and our tutor said, who commonly then gave us a larger explication of it, and so proceeded to the next thing in order. He took care, as far as possible, that we understood the sense as well as remembered the words of what we had read, and that we should not suffer ourselves to be cheated with obscure terms which had no meaning. Though he be no great admirer of the old logic, yet he has taken a great deal of pains both in explaining and correcting Hereboord, and has for the most part made him intelligible, or shown that he is not so. The two Mr. Joneses, Mr. Francis, Mr. Watkins, Mr. Sheldon, and two more gentlemen, are to begin Jewish Antiquities in a short time. I was designed for one of their number, but rather chose to read logic once more; both because I was utterly unacquainted with it when I came to this place, and because the others having all, except Mr. Francis, been at other academies, will be obliged to make more haste than those in a lower class, and consequently cannot have so good or large accounts of anything, nor so much time to study every head. We shall have gone through our course in about four years’ time, which I believe that nobody that once knows Mr. Jones will think too long.
“I began to learn Hebrew as soon as I came hither, and find myself able now to construe and give some grammatical account of about twenty verses in the easier parts of the Bible, after less than an hour’s preparation. We read every day two verses apiece in the Hebrew Bible, which we turn into Greek (no one knowing which his verses shall be, though at first it was otherwise). And this, with logic, is our morning’s work. Mr. Jones also began about three months ago some critical lectures, in order to the exposition you advised him to. The principal things contained in them are about the antiquity of the Hebrew language, letters, vowels, the incorruption of the Scriptures, ancient divisions of the Bible, an account of the Talmud, Masora, and Cabala. We are at present upon the Septuagint, and shall proceed after that to the Targumim, and other versions, etc. Every part is managed with abundance of perspicuity, and seldom any material thing is omitted that other authors have said upon the point, though very frequently we have useful additions of things which are not to be found in them. We have scarce been upon anything yet but Mr. Jones has had those writers which are most valued on that head, to which he always refers us. This is what we first set about in the afternoon, which being finished we read a chapter in the Greek Testament, and after that mathematics. We have gone through all that is commonly taught of algebra and proportion, with the first six books of Euclid, which is all Mr. Jones designs for the gentlemen I mentioned above, but he intends to read something more to the class that comes after them.
“This is our daily employment, which in the morning takes up about two hours, and something more in the afternoon. Only on Wednesdays, in the morning, we read Dionysius’s Periegesis, on which we have notes, mostly geographical, but with some criticisms intermixed; and in the afternoon we have no lecture at all. So on Saturday, in the afternoon, we have only a Thesis, which none but they who have done with logic have any concern in. We are also just beginning to read Isocrates and Terence, each twice a week. On the latter our tutor will give us some notes which he received in a college from Perizonius.
“We are obliged to rise at five of the clock every morning, and to speak Latin always, except when below stairs amongst the family. The people where we live are very civil, and the greatest inconvenience we suffer is, that we fill the house rather too much, being sixteen in number, besides Mr. Jones. But I suppose the increase of his academy will oblige him to move next spring. We pass our time very agreeably betwixt study and conversation with our tutor, who is always ready to discourse freely of anything that is useful, and allows us either then or at lecture all imaginable liberty of making objections against his opinion, and prosecuting them as far as we can. In this and everything else he shows himself so much a gentleman, and manifests so great an affection and tenderness for his pupils as cannot but command respect and love. I almost forgot to mention our tutor’s library, which is composed for the most part of foreign books, which seem to be very well chosen, and are every day of great advantage to us.
“Thus I have endeavoured, sir, to give you an account of all that I thought material or observable amongst us. As for my own part, I apply myself with what diligence I can to everything which is the subject of our lectures, without preferring one subject before another; because I see nothing we are engaged in but what is either necessary or extremely useful for one who would thoroughly understand those things which most concern him, or be able to explain them well to others. I hope I have not spent my time, since I came to this place, without some small improvement, both in human knowledge and that which is far better, and I earnestly desire the benefit of your prayers that God would be pleased to fit me better for His service, both in this world and the next. This, if you please to afford me, and your advice with relation to study, or whatever else you think convenient, must needs be extremely useful, as well as agreeable, and shall be thankfully received by your most obliged humble servant,
“Thomas Secker.”
Secker’s first communion was with a Dissenting church—the Rev. Timothy Jollie’s—and he preached his first sermon in a Dissenting meeting-house at Bolsover, in Derbyshire. He retained his feelings of affectionate indebtedness to his early friend to the close of Watts’ life.
His term of study closed at Stoke Newington, Watts, still little more than a youth, returned for some time to his father’s house at Southampton. Worshipping with the congregation there, under the ministry of the Rev. Nathaniel Robinson, he felt that the psalmody was far beneath the beauty and dignity of a Christian service. He was requested to produce something better, and the following Sabbath the service was concluded with what is now the first hymn of the first book; and a stirring hymn it is—as an ascription of praise or worship, and as a confession of faith it is remarkably comprehensive and complete.