With equal lack of worldly knowledge, I was a far more than equal
sufferer for it, at the very outset of my authorship. Toward the close
of the first year from the time, that in an inauspicious hour I left the
friendly cloisters, and the happy grove of quiet, ever honoured Jesus
College, Cambridge, I was persuaded by sundry philanthropists and
Anti-polemists to set on foot a periodical work, entitled THE WATCHMAN,
that, according to the general motto of the work, all might know the
truth, and that the truth might make us free! In order to exempt it from
the stamp-tax, and likewise to contribute as little as possible to the
supposed guilt of a war against freedom, it was to be published on every
eighth day, thirty-two pages, large octavo, closely printed, and price
only four-pence. Accordingly with a flaming prospectus,--“Knowledge is
Power,” “To cry the state of the political atmosphere,”--and so forth,
I set off on a tour to the North, from Bristol to Sheffield, for the
purpose of procuring customers, preaching by the way in most of
the great towns, as an hireless volunteer, in a blue coat and white
waistcoat, that not a rag of the woman of Babylon might be seen on me.
For I was at that time and long after, though a Trinitarian (that is
ad normam Platonis) in philosophy, yet a zealous Unitarian in religion;
more accurately, I was a Psilanthropist, one of those who believe our
Lord to have been the real son of Joseph, and who lay the main stress on
the resurrection rather than on the crucifixion. O! never can I remember
those days with either shame or regret. For I was most sincere, most
disinterested. My opinions were indeed in many and most important points
erroneous; but my heart was single. Wealth, rank, life itself then
seemed cheap to me, compared with the interests of what I believed to
be the truth, and the will of my Maker. I cannot even accuse myself of
having been actuated by vanity; for in the expansion of my enthusiasm I
did not think of myself at all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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