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 absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my
Creator;--for while I considered myself predestined to salvation, my
mind did not dwell upon others, as fancying them 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 under-graduate, 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 "Force of Truth" and Essays from a
boy; his Commentary I bought when I was an under-graduate.

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 the scope and issue of