On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    ProteHant Dissenting Cfcurchvs in Cambridgeshire . 631

    Untitled Article

    Upon his coming to Cambridge , his first employment was to revonnditre the religiou * state of the town and county , in order the more properly to-adapt his ministry to all . He found the generality of the people grossly ignorant of religion , and very iminoral ; and the

    dissenters themselves with an orthodoxy eutre to have a very faint arud languid morality , and to be greatly negligent of those essential duties , and of cultivating that Christian temper which forms and

    constitutes the truly , religious character , honourable in the eyes of the world , and in the sight of God of great price . Deeply affected with this state of things , and touched with a compassionate concern for such number ' s of immortal sou Is

    that were perishing for lack of knowledge , with a zeal proportioned to the importance of the occasion , Mr . R . set up several lectures in the adjacent villages ; the good effects of which multitudes can happily testify . These village lectured in private houses or in country baros have proved the nurseries of his church ; and indeed

    no -where are they more needed than round Cambridge-. for whether it be owing to the non-residence of the clergy or-to any other cause , it has-been often remarked , and the present Bishop of Ely , Dr . Keen remarked it , in a printed

    charge ta his clergy at his first visitation at Cambridge , that the people round Cambridge have less "knowledge of religion than is to be found in any other parts of the kingdofti , the other university adjacencies excrpted .

    The lectures attended by Mr . R . arc either annual or occasional , which he ap- * points as it suits the people or himself , never going on a week day in hay-time , harvest , saffron-time , & c . or ststcd on

    fixed days . The usual time is half an hour past six in the evening , when the poor can best spare the time , ; andsome ^ times at five in the morning for onei hour before they go to > work , and now and then in the summer at two in the

    afternoon , for the sake of far comers . These meetings generally consist of scores , often of hundreds of people . A list of them follows .

    Villages . , Dhtancsfrom Cambridge , Number of Hearers . . Efry Drayton - 5 miles , " occasional ... iO 0 jDuxford - ¦ - » 8 m . occasional - 390 Foulmire - - - 9 m . occasional - - - im Foxon - - . - 8 m . annual - - - - « joo Fulboarn ¦ - « - ' - 5 m . stated monthly - - 4

    Fen Stanton is the orily one of the above places where there is a dissenting congregation statedly supplied every iiord ' s-day . They embodied themsd ^ cs into a regular church state , 1774 * is

    The v ^ hole country round about an encouraging field to cultivate ; for in all the Villages almost , as well as in the t o ** n , there are great numbers of serious attentive hearers , and many excellent Cririafcians , who , till fiteiy , were wholly w rt ^ c ^ ialntcd Mhh tjve principles of nontwtikzftitrr atid tbuid t ^ cre . ue even > a

    ^ , 900 very moderate provision made for the support of a seriou 9 evangelical ministry , there is the highest reason to believe in a few years several numerous congregations of Proseatant Dissenter * might be formed in these parts , where till within these fifteen years a disstnter was not known ,

    J ah ^ U conclude this article with the following extract from Mh R . ' s church book at Cambridge . / if In tl ^ c year 1765 , William Howdl Ewcu , I & fy L . L 1 . p , one of his . ruoj Wty ^

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1810, page 631, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1708/page/11/