“I imagine,” he continues, “that even these conflicts of mind were not without their use, as they led me to think habitually of God and a future state. And though my feelings were then, no doubt, too full of terror, what remained of them was a deep reverence for divine things, and in time a pleasing satisfaction which can never be effaced, and I hope was strengthened as I have advanced in life and acquired more rational notions of religion. The remembrance, however, of what I sometimes felt in that state of ignorance and darkness gives me a peculiar sense of the value of rational principles of religion, and of which I can give but an imperfect description to others.” At the time he was greatly distressed that he could not feel a proper repentance for the sin of Adam, taking it for granted, he says, that without _this_ it could not be forgiven him. The fact was that, under the influence of his friends, Haggerstone and Walker, he was insensibly following Baxter in attempting to reconcile the doctrines of Arminius and Calvin, and he ended by embracing those of Arminius. It was repugnant to his sense of equity and justice that, in the words of his Catechism, “All mankind, by the fall of our first parents, lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell for ever.” His first trial of faith came when he applied for admission as a communicant in the congregation which he had always attended. The old minister was willing enough to receive him, but the elders, who had the government of the church, discovering this unsoundness on the subject of the sin of Adam, stoutly refused to sanction his admission. Whilst the taint of heresy appears not to have greatly distressed the worthy Mrs Keighley, it doubtless added to her difficulties in shaping his course towards the ministry. In the natural order of things he was to have been sent to the academy at Mile End, a hot-bed of Calvinism, then under the care of Dr Cawder. “But,” he says, “being at that time an Arminian, I resolutely opposed it, especially upon finding that if I went thither, besides giving an _experience_, I must subscribe my assent to ten printed articles of the strictest Calvinistic faith, and repeat it every six months.” It now looked as if the idea of the ministry was to be given up for good and all, and given up it probably would have been but for the intercession of Mr Kirkby, who strongly recommended that he should be placed under the care of the good and learned Dr Doddridge. “Mr Kirby,” says Priestley, “had received a good education himself, was a good classical scholar, and had no opinion of the mode of education among the very orthodox Dissenters, and being fond of me, he was desirous of my having every advantage that could be procured for me. My good aunt, not being a bigoted Calvinist, entered into his views.”