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.