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favour me with some remarks onthe place * I hear the house is turned topsy-turvy ; , and a strange degeneracy there is since I and some others left it .
I desire you will be pleased to send me some psalm tunes , and present my respects to my son Seeker , to George , and the rest of my friends thereabouts . " This letter bears date the 8 th of Oct .
1709 . It has been questioned whether Seeker ever communicated with any congregation of Dissenters . This seems to be put beyond controversy by a list which still exists of the members of Mr . Jollie ' s Church at Sheffield , in which the name of Thomas Seeker
appears along with the names of other young men , students in his academy . The precise time of his residence in the family of Mr . Jollie does not appear . In 17 * 11 , he had left Attercliffe and was in London . There he was
introduced to Dr , Watts , at whose suggestion he entered himself as a student for the Dissenting ministry in an academy established by Mr . Jones , a man of real learning and great abilities , at Gloucester . His letter to
Dr . Watts , written soon after his admission into this academy , which has been often published , describes the objects and plan of study , and exhibits
Mr . Jones , and with his situation , he expresses in a letter written in the same month to his sister , Mrs . Milnes , a copy of which is now before me . Mr . Jones was then intending to remove the academy , which had been
held in a close part of the town , to a country situation , a change which Seeker . seems to have much approved . He speaks of his intention to spend the ensuing vacation among his friends at Chesterfield .
In this academy he spent four years ; and they were four years well employed . This was the full term of a student's residence . At the conclusion of it , the regular course would have been , that he entered upon the practice of his profession by / undertaking the charge of some congregation of Dissenters . This , however , he did not do : and the silence of those who could
have set the question to rest , has left a material point in his early history affected with some uncertainty , namely , whether he ever intended to take the
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charge of any Dissenting society . I mean only the silence of those who wrote tinder instructions from his Grace ' s family , for it has been asserted over and over again , by persons living in the nei ghbourhood of Chesterfield , who remem
bered him when visiting there , that he offered himself as a candidate to the small society of Dissenters in the little town of Bolsover . Mere silence , on the other side , without any positive denial , can hardly be taken as a counterpoise against the concurrent
testimony of several persons : and the only part of the tradition which can , I think , with any pretence of probability be set aside , i ^ , that he was a candidate , and not merely an occasional supply . For it appears from evidence before me , that in the autumn of 1715 , when
he had just left Mr . Jones ' s academy , Seeker was at Chesterfield ; and it further appears from NeaPs list of Dissenting congregations made in that very year , that Bolsover was then destitute of a minister , and that the
congregation was under the temporary care of the Rev . Mr . Thomas , the minister at Chesterfield , on whoin Mr . and Mrs . Milnes attended , and who
was an intimate friend of young Seeker . Under these circumstances , nothing can appear more probable to those who know any thing of the usages of Dissenters , than that Seeker might occasionally relieve his friend from a journey of seven or eight miles ; and
officiating to a vacant congregation as a young and unengaged minister , be might easily be mistaken for a candidate . Nor is any thing more probable than that if he did aspire to a situation in every way unworthy his talents and
acquirements , the members of ' the Bolsover congregation might be little disposed to invite him to make a permanent settlement among them . Those sprightly and agreeable manners which at this period of his life recommended
him to the affectionate regards of his family and acquaintance , would be no recommendation to a country society of Dissidents , in whom little of the old Puritan character was , it is probable , effaced , and who were unable to
comprehend the value of a young man possessed of a vigorous understanding , considerable theological knowledge , and piety , genuine but rational What would be the effect of a cool
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^ 66 Notices of the Ea rly Life of Archbishop Seeker .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1820, page 66, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2485/page/2/
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