the age of twenty-one, when it gradually
faded away; but I believe that it had some influence on my opinions,
in the direction of those childish imaginations which I have already
mentioned, viz. in isolating me from the objects which surrounded me,
in confirming me in my mistrust of the reality of material phenomena,
and making me rest in the thought of two and two only supreme and
luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator;--for while I
considered myself predestined to salvation, I thought others simply
passed over, not predestined to eternal death. I only thought of the
mercy to myself.

The detestable doctrine last mentioned is simply denied and abjured,
unless my memory strangely deceives me, by the writer who made a
deeper impression on my mind than any other, and to whom (humanly
speaking) I almost owe my soul--Thomas Scott of Aston Sandford. I so
admired and delighted in his writings, that, when I was an
undergraduate, I thought of making a visit to his parsonage, in order
to see a man whom I so deeply revered. I hardly think I could have
given up the idea of this expedition, even after I had taken my
degree; for the news of his death in 1821 came upon me as a
disappointment as well as a sorrow. I hung upon the lips of Daniel
Wilson, afterwards Bishop of Calcutta, as in two sermons at St.
John's Chapel he gave the history of Scott's life and death. I had
been possessed of his essays from a boy; his commentary I bought when
I was an undergraduate.

What, I suppose, will strike any reader of Scott's history and
writings, is his bold unworldliness and vigorous independence of
mind. He followed truth wherever it led him, beginning with
Unitarianism, and ending in a zealous faith in the Holy Trinity. It
was he who first planted deep in my mind that fundamental truth of
religion. With the assistance of Scott's essays, and the admirable
work of Jones of Nayland, I made a collection of Scripture texts in
proof of the doctrine, with remarks (I think) of my own upon them,
before I was sixteen; and a few months later I drew up a series of
texts in support of each verse of the Athanasian Creed. These papers
I have still.

Besides his unworldliness, what I also admired in Scott was his
resolute opposition to Antinomianism, and the minutely practical
character of his writings. They show him to be a true Englishman, and
I deeply felt his influence; and for years I used almost as proverbs
what I considered to be