Although all the religious books that came in his way tended to confirm him in the principles of Calvinism, he was led by the natural vigour of his mind, and by an innate spirit of philosophical optimism, which strengthened with advancing years, to feel a repugnance to its gloomy tenets, and to question the sufficiency and reasonableness of much of its doctrine. The conversation of the heretical divines in whose company he was thrown served, moreover, to awaken inquiry and to increase his doubts. These divines were for the most part men who, in liberality of thought, were far in advance of the congregations they served, and this was especially the case of those for whose attainments and character the discerning boy had most respect.
The youth, who as a child had lisped at his mother’s knee, “without missing a word,” the formularies of the Assembly’s Catechism, was now tortured with doubt and misgiving as he strove to penetrate into and to realise the meaning of the phrases his memory so tenaciously retained. And the more he read and the more he pondered the more disquieted he became.
“Having,” he says, “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 anything 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,” he continues, “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.”
At the time he was greatly distressed that he could not feel a proper repentance for the sin of Adam, taking it for granted, he says, that without this it could not be forgiven him. The fact was that, under the influence of his friends, Haggerstone and Walker, he was insensibly following Baxter in attempting to reconcile the doctrines of Arminius and Calvin, and he ended by embracing those of Arminius. It was repugnant to his sense of equity and justice that, in the words of his Catechism, “All mankind, by the fall of our first parents, lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell for ever.”
His first trial of faith came when he applied for admission as a communicant in the congregation which he had always attended. The old minister was willing enough to receive him, but the elders, who had the government of the church, discovering this unsoundness on the subject of the sin of Adam, stoutly refused to sanction his admission.
Whilst the taint of heresy appears not to have greatly distressed the worthy Mrs Keighley, it doubtless added to her difficulties in shaping his course towards the ministry. In the natural order of things he was to have been sent to the academy at Mile End, a hot-bed of Calvinism, then under the care of Dr Cawder.
“But,” he says, “being at that time an Arminian, I resolutely opposed it, especially upon finding that if I went thither, besides giving an experience, I must subscribe my assent to ten printed articles of the strictest Calvinistic faith, and repeat it every six months.”
It now looked as if the idea of the ministry was to be given up for good and all, and given up it probably would have been but for the intercession of Mr Kirkby, who strongly recommended that he should be placed under the care of the good and learned Dr Doddridge.
“Mr Kirby,” says Priestley, “had received a good education himself, was a good classical scholar, and had no opinion of the mode of education among the very orthodox Dissenters, and being fond of me, he was desirous of my having every advantage that could be procured for me. My good aunt, not being a bigoted Calvinist, entered into his views.”
Priestley had another ally in his step-mother, for his father had married again. She was a woman of good sense as well as of religion, and had been sometime housekeeper to Dr Doddridge, of whom she had a high opinion, and had always recommended his academy.