Note 71 — Chapter IX

Dr. Stonhouse, afterwards so well known as the Rev. Sir James Stonhouse, Bart., Rector of Great and Little Cheveril, Wilts, had his education at Winchester School, and was afterwards of St. John’s College, Oxford. He had his medical education under Dr. Nicholls, the celebrated anatomist, and Professor of Anatomy, in Oxford. He was a Deist, and took great pains to instil his pernicious principles into the minds of his pupils. “Under him (said Dr. Stonhouse) I commenced infidel.” During the years that he remained in this awful state of delusion, he did all he could to subvert Christianity, and wrote a keen pamphlet against it; “for writing and spreading of which (says he), I humbly hope God has forgiven me, though I never can forgive myself.” His conversion to Christianity, and the various circumstances attending it, were such, that he was persuaded to write the history of his life, with many reflections on the several circumstances of it. He kept this by him for some years, altering and adding, as his recollection enabled him. He read it occasionally to some of his intimate friends, who highly approved of it; and it was his intention that it should have been printed soon after his death, not through vanity, but as a public acknowledgment of his heinous offences against God, and his hope of pardon through a crucified Redeemer. But on reading it to a person for whose judgment he had the highest regard, he gave the Doctor such valid reasons against the publication, that he burnt it soon after, lest an ill use should have been made of it after his decease. In a letter to a friend, speaking of this event, Dr. Doddridge expresses himself in the following manner: “One of the most signal instances in which God has ever honoured me is in the conversion of a physician in this town, who was once free in his manner of living, and a confirmed Deist. God made me the means of first bringing him to a conviction of the truth of Christianity, and at length of enlightening his mind with the true and saving knowledge of Christ, to which I bless God he has now attained. Good Mr. Hervey has been honoured as a fellow-labourer with me in this work. My book on the ‘Rise and Progress of Religion’ has been, I hope, honoured of God, as one great means of producing this blessed change.” A full account of Dr. Stonhouse, and the circumstances of his conversion from infidelity, may be found in—“Hervey’s Letters,” “Doddridge’s Letters,” and “Letters from Sir James Stonhouse to the Rev. Thomas Stedman, Vicar of St. Chad’s, Shrewsbury.” Mr. Hervey’s letters on his ordination, first as deacon, by the Bishop of Hereford, and then as priest, by the Bishop of Bristol; the letters of Mr. Whitefield and Lady Huntingdon; and the death of his wife (the eldest daughter of J. Neal, Esq., M.P. for Coventry), were among the things that led to his conversion.