Part 14

This practice was a source of great satisfaction to him through life. It was at first adopted as a mode of regulating his studies, and afterwards continued from the pleasure it gave him. The greater part of his diaries were destroyed at the riots at Birmingham, but there are still extant those for the year 1754, 1755 and several of the subsequent years.

As it will serve to shew the regularity with which he pursued his studies, and may possibly be instructive as well as amusing to the reader, I shall give a specimen of the manner in which he spent a year while he was at the academy, at Daventry, and for that purpose shall select his diary for the year 1755 when he was in his 22d year. The diary contains a particular account of what he read and wrote each day, and at different periods of the year he sums up in the following manner, the progress he had made in improvement, which I give as entered at the end of the diary.

* * * * *

Business done in January, February and March.

Practical.

Howe’s blessedness of the righteous; Bennet’s pastoral care; Norris’s letters and some sermons.

Controversial.

Taylor on Atonement; Hampton’s Answer; Sherlock’s discourses Vol. 1; Christianity not founded in Argument; Doddridge’s Answer; Warburton’s divine legation; Benson on the first planting of Christianity; King’s Constitution of the Primitive Church.

Classics.

Josephus, Vol. 1, from page 390 to 770; Ovid’s Metamorphoses to page 139; Tacitus’s History, Life of Agricola, and Manners of the Germans.

Scriptures.

John the Evangelist, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles to the Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, 1st and 2d Corinthians, in Greek; Isaiah to the 8th chapter, in Hebrew.

Mathematics.

Maclaurin’s Algebra to part 2d.

Entertaining.

Irene; Prince Arthur; Ecclesiastical characters; Dryden’s fables; Peruvian tales; Voyage round the world; Oriental tales; Massey’s travels; Life of Hai Ebn Yokdam; History of Abdallah.

Composition.

A Sermon on the Wisdom of God; An Oration on the means of Virtue; 1st Vol. of the Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion.

Business done from April 1st to June 23d.

Practical.

Watts’s Catechism, and discourses on Catechizing; Fenelon’s spiritual works Vol. 1st and half of Vol. 2d; Saurin’s Sermons a few; Thomas a Kempis Book 1st to ch. 21; Cotton Mather’s life; Jenning’s on preaching Christianity.

Controversial.

Towgood, Gill and Breckell on Baptism; Le Clerc on Inspiration; Whiston’s Historical preface; Emlyn’s narrative and humble enquiry; Apostolical Constitutions; Newton on the prophecies; Winder’s History of knowledge; Hoadly on the Sacrament; Lowman on the Revelation; Moral Philosopher; Hume’s Political discourses; Middleton’s fathers of the four first centuries; Middleton and Waterland’s controversy. ---- on the Demoniacs; Goodrich’s display of Human Nature.

Classics.

Cicero’s 1st. Phillippic.

Historical.

Universal History Vol. 15 and 16 and to page 488 of the 17th.

Composition.