The life of John Thomas : surgeon of the Earl of Oxford, East Indiaman, and first Baptist missionary to Bengal / by C. B. Lewis.

  • Lewis, C. B. (Charles Bennett), 1821-1890
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The life of John Thomas : surgeon of the Earl of Oxford, East Indiaman, and first Baptist missionary to Bengal / by C. B. Lewis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    In my more youthful days, when the thoughts of my future life, blended with the ripeness of my years, often led me to the subject of matrimony, I very customarily formed a maxim in my mind that I would never marry any person but one of my own religious tenets, and more inwardly religious than I myself was. But being entwined with the world, and with almost all sorts of vice and habitual sin, this became a matter of no particular importance to me, so that I wonder, from circumstances which I cannot forget, why I was not permitted to marry one of those who were lost to all sense of comeliness in virtue and religion, except certain forms and customs, which the generality of people can by no means openly dispense with. At the solemnization of my marriage, which happened jn March, 1781, being then twenty-four years of age, I was sadly’lost to a proper sense of those solemn requisites that must alone, at the bar of conscience and in the sight of God, constitute a right to that com- munion. But I feel at this moment emotions of praise and thank- fulness in my heart, that notwithstanding my wrong motives, by which I naturally exposed myself to the common misery’and unhappiness of a married state, yet God was pleased to give the person I had taken for a wife a true love and affection for me, which was so evident to me on many occasions that it could not but win my regard. Pier religious principles were different from mine, she being a strong advocate for the Church of England, and I still harbouring sense enough of religion to make choice and pre erence, which I bestowed on the Baptist persuasion ; but by w at I have already said, you will perceive that nothing of this kind was then matter of trouble to me. After marriage I now and then attended places of worship on a babbath day, and once I accidentally dropped in where Mr. Robert vobinson of Cambridge was preaching on the instability of the natural man, and his words very much affected me, being very applicable to my case. After this sermon, I felt my inclination lean more naturally to some place of worship; and resolutions, praters, and reformations were again set up and carried forward for the world1 * hC 7lth Self'aPp;obation’ti]1 either the pleasures or cares of the world had recovered their usual dominion ; and then all was laid worshinXCePt PUbhC W°rShiP’ °r rath6r the attendance at public Z “-r6!011 a Sabbath day- The next remarkable of delfverv 7d 1 th\ministry of Dr. Stennett, whose manner of delivery and language had ever some weight with me. He was I forPthaChmig r°mKth0Se WOrds> inJ°hn xvii. 20, ‘Neither pray these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me