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Of Mr . Belsham's personal history it is tiot our present purpose to speak . To do that as it should be done , and as we hope it will be done , would imply long habits of intimacy , and access to the memoranda , correspondence , and other documents , which happily remain , and which have been , by his direction , consigned to a friend and former pupil , who will , we doubt not , worthily discharge the very important trust thus confided to him . To give the world a faithful picture of the man will be his honourable and useful
task . Ours is to endeavour to portray the Minister ; to exhibit and estimate him as a Theologian , a Philosopher , a Controversialist , and a Preacher of the Gospel . The outline of Mr . Belsham ' s life , so far as it is needful now to refer to it , is soon sketched . His father was an intelligent and respectable Dissenting Minister . In 1766 , being about seventeen years of age , he was admitted a student at Daventry , then under the superintendence of Dr .
Ashworth and the Rev . Thomas Robins . He was appointed Assistant Tutor on the completion of his Academical Course ; ana after an interval of three years' absence , during which he was pastor of a congregation at Worcester , he succeeded Mr . Robins as Divinity Tutor , and minister of the Daventry congregation , in the year 1781 . Leaving this situation , in 1789 , in consequence of his opinions having become Unitarian , he retired into an obscurity in which , whatever his own humility might dictate , it was not possible he
should long remain . He was promptly summoned from it to become one of the Tutors at the New College , Hackney , an office which was soon terminated by the dissolution of the Institution . In 1794 , he was chosen to flie vacant pulpit of Dr . Priestley , by the Gravel-Pit congregation ; and eleven years after , he removed to Essex-Street Chapel , of which he continued minister till his death , although for the last five years the public services had chiefly devolved upon his coadjutor and successor , the Rev . Thomas Madge .
Brief as this record is , it contains one event of incalculable moment to the individual himself , and of no little interest to thousands besides , if its consequences be considered ; we mean his conversion to the Unitarian faith . The circumstances of that change merit serious consideration . So mighty a transformation of opinion presents a phenomenon well worthy the attention of all who make the human mind an object of scientific study . On that of
the devout Christian it has far higher claims . It has the exhibition of a soul of no ordinary powers passing either from darkness into light , or from light into darkness ; becoming emancipated from error or else apostatizing from the truth ; and either advancing towards the full fruition of gospel salvation , or sealing its own eternal and wretched doom . Happily we have the means of approaching to * ' see this great sight ; " its particulars are recorded with sufficient amplitude to guide our conclusions , if not to satisfy all our curiosity . They are thus stated in the Memoirs of Lindsey ( ch . x . | ; the account in the Preface to the Calm Inquiry is to the same effect :
" As a minister , whose principles were known to be what is commonly called evangelical , the author of this Memoir had been appointed , in the year 1781 , Theological Tutor in the Academy at Daventry , which was a continuation of the academy under the late pious and celebrated Dr . Doddridge at Northampton , and was supported by the trustees of the late William Coward , Esq ., who bequeathed a considerable estate for the education of Dissenting ministers , and for other religious purposes . The office of pastor of the Independent congregation at Daventry was at that time held in connexion with the office of Divinity Tutor , and to this he was also invited . The Unitarian
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On the Charaetftr and Writings of the Rev . T . Belsham . J&
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1830, page 75, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2581/page/3/
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