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it so happened, that I do not recollect having met with him any more, till he came to my house in London with Mr. Thomas, to desire me to use what little influence I had with Charles Grant, Esq., to procure them license to go in the Company's ships as missionaries to the British settlements in India, perhaps in 1792. My little influence was of no avail. What I said of Mr. Carey, so far satisfied Mr. Grant, that he said, if Mr. Carey was going alone, or with one equally to be depended on along with him, he would not oppose him; but his strong disapprobation of Mr. T., on what ground I knew not, induced his negative. I believe Mr. Old died soon after I left Olney, if not just before; and his shop, which was a little building apart from the house, was suffered to go to decay. While in this state I several times passed it, and said to my sons and others with me, that is Mr. Carey's College. As it was at that time a mean and ruinous place, and as I stated that Mr. Carey was apprenticed to him who owned it, I was, by some means or other, charged with saying that he was a parish-apprentice. This I neither said, nor meant, nor thought. The Old's were rather a respectable family as to temporal things, and I knew nothing of Mr. Carey's family till afterward I was informed by a letter, from an afflicted sister of his, that a sermon, which I preached at Creaton, had been the means of her conversion.

'I from the first thought young Carey an extraordinary person: I augured the most happy consequences from his mission, provided his life were spared: I had no doubt but, in despite of disadvantages of education,

he would be a learned man. But he has lived to go beyond, in all respects, my highest anticipations. May God still preserve and prosper him and his! My time of life, and many infirmities, lead me to suppose my race nearly run; but the Lord is very gracious, and I still keep busily employed. My thanks and best respects to the committee, and thanks to you for the publication.

my

'I remain, dear Sir,

"Your friend, and fellow-labourer, THOMAS SCOTT.'

SECTION II.

EDITORIAL REMARKS-VARIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES CONNECTED WITH THE FORMA

TION OF THE BAPTIST MISSIONARY SOCIETY-FRAGMENT OF MEMOIR, &c.,

FROM THE HAND OF MR. FULler.

THE reader is already in possession of the leading facts and incidents of Dr. Carey's life, to the period of his regular entrance upon the duties of a minister and a pastor. But, there being others of more public interest, and of closer relevancy to that great work, in which the main vigour of his mind, and the two-thirds of his days were devoted; and there being other documentary materials, of equal interest to those preceding, it has been deemed convenient to present them in a separate section. Various and oppressive difficulties attended him during his continuance at Hackleton; such as would have repressed the ardour, and utterly drunk up the spirits of an ordinary mind. He had a wife of exceedingly frail constitution, an increasing infant family, and the widow of his deceased master to provide for from the proceeds of a business, in which, whatever might be his proficiency as to the mechanical part of it, he was confessedly very incompetent as a principal.

Nor were his circumstances less inauspicious to the formation of his religious life and principles, than they

were to his secular comfort. Though subject to certain moral restraints, and compelled to attend the regular service of the Establishment, as is commonly the case where a just exposition and a spiritual enforcement of the word of God is absent, it served only to invest him with a veil of ceremonial sanctity, leaving him a stranger and an alien to evangelical religion. When the light of divine truth first broke in upon his mind, and the earliest emotions of a spiritual life commenced their struggle in his heart, he had the fiercest prejudices to surmount, and every militant passion to subdue. The few christians with whom he first united in fellowship, were not in circumstances to contribute to his intellectual improvement; and were too rigidly bound to a jejune heartless system of doctrine, to aid him in the acquisition of correct and comprehensive views of the gospel, or afford him encouragement in diffusing them. He was thirsting for every species of knowledge, without the slightest facility for its attainment, and with scarcely a kindred mind near him interested in his welfare, or in sympathy with his feelings. Yet, amidst all this pressure of discouragement, he made sensible improvement in the cultivation of his mind, and strenuously exerted himself in preaching the gospel, in places distant some miles from the village in which he resided. But now, incidents occurred, and a rapid, but perfectly easy, succession of events were put in motion, which smoothed his access to ultimate eminence in literature and science, and conducted him to a sphere of religious activity, which, for

extent and importance, has seldom been paralleled in the annals of human enterprise. At this crisis, the acquaintance he formed with Mr. Ryland, junior, of Northampton, afterwards Theological President of the Bristol Academy, and with Mr. Sutcliff, of Olney, Bucks., contributed greatly to his encouragement. The latter friend often congratulated himself, that he lent him a Latin grammar, the first elementary book, he believed, that Mr. Carey ever perused in that or any other language. He also invited him, as the reader has already learned, to exercise his talents before the members of his own church, and thus more regularly authenticated his call to the ministerial office.

His settlement at Moulton, a village a few miles distant from the one in which hitherto he had resided,

was variously beneficial. He had now a regular charge, and the diligent study of the word of God, with other reading, and the mental effort necessary in publicly ministering to the same people four times every week, made him a rigid economist of time, and was no doubt favourable to that stern and almost sovereign control which he ultimately exercised over his own faculties, commanding them in concentrated force to any object, and almost at any time he pleased. Here, also, he became intimate with other ministers; as with Mr. Fuller, Mr. Hall, of Arnsby, in Leicestershire, Mr. Morris, of Clipston, and Mr. Samuel Pearce, of Birmingham. Mr. Hall was then venerable for age, admired through the denomination to which he belonged for the greatness of his talents;

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