Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/81

 parish churchyard. He was married and left issue.

Scott met with some success as a hymn-writer. Some of his hymns (e.g. ‘Absurd and vain attempt,’ ‘Imposture shrinks from light’) are odes to independence of thought; but his ‘Hasten, sinner, to be wise,’ has great power, and his ‘Happy the meek’ has great beauty. Eleven of his hymns were first contributed to ‘Hymns for Public Worship,’ &c., Warrington, 1772, 12mo, edited by [q. v.] Most of his hymns are contained in his ‘Lyric Poems’ (1773); others are in the ‘Collection,’ &c., 1795, 12mo, by [q. v.], [q. v.], and others. He published four single sermons (1740–59), including a funeral sermon for Samuel Baxter; also:
 * 1) ‘A Father's Instructions to his Son,’ &c., 1748, 4to (verse).
 * 2) ‘The Table of Cebes … in English verse, with Notes,’ &c., 1754, 4to.
 * 3) ‘The Book of Job, in English verse … from the original … with Remarks,’ &c., 1771, 8vo; 2nd edit. 1773, 8vo; a poor rendering; the notes are better than the text.
 * 4) ‘Lyric Poems, Devotional and Moral,’ &c., 1773, 8vo.

(1708?–1776), hymn-writer, sister of the above, was born at Hitchin about 1708. Her father writes of her (1 March 1740) as ‘one who devotes herself to doing good, as a protestant nun.’ Her letter to Doddridge, 10 May 1745, shows that she was suffering from religious depression, not unconnected with family troubles (, Correspondence of Doddridge, iii. 424, iv. 408 sq.) She married (1), at Norwich, in January 1751–2, Elisha Williams, formerly rector of Yale College, with whom in March 1772 she removed to Connecticut; (2) Hon. William Smith of New York, whom she survived, dying at Wethersfield, Connecticut, on 13 June 1776, aged 68. Prior to 1750 she had written many hymns; three manuscript collections are known, the largest containing ninety hymns. The first publication of her hymns was in ‘The Christian's Magazine’ (edited by [q. v.]), 1763 pp. 565 sq., 1764, pp. 42, 90, 182 sq.; the communicator of some of these signs ‘CL-T,’ and was probably the grandfather of  or Cloutt [q. v.] Nineteen of her hymns were given in Ash and Evans's baptist ‘Collection,’ Bristol, 1769, and twenty in Dobell's ‘New Selection,’ 1806. Of these about fifteen are in use; one of the best is ‘All hail, Incarnate God.’



SCOTT, THOMAS (1747–1821), commentator on the Bible, son of John Scott (d. 1777), grazier, was born at Braytoft, Lincolnshire, on 4 Feb. 1747. He was the tenth of thirteen children. After seven years' schooling, latterly at Scorton, Yorkshire, he was apprenticed in September 1762 to a surgeon and apothecary at Alford, Lincolnshire, but was dismissed in two months for some misconduct. His father then set him to the ‘dirty parts’ of a grazier's work, and his health permanently suffered from exposure to weather. Having passed some nine years in menial employment, he learned that the land on which he laboured was bequeathed to one of his brothers. He turned again to his ‘few torn Latin books,’ and at length, in 1772, left home in anger at his father's harshness. He applied to a clergyman at Boston on the subject of taking orders. The archdeacon of Lincoln (Gordon) gave him some encouragement, and he went up to London as a candidate for ordination, but was sent back for want of his father's consent and sufficient testimonials. He returned to a herdsman's duties; but having at length fulfilled the required conditions, he was ordained deacon at Buckden on 20 Sept. 1772, and priest in London on 13 March 1773, by [q. v.], bishop of Lincoln. Appointed to the curacies of Stoke Goldington, and Weston Underwood, Buckinghamshire, at 50l. a year, he taught himself Hebrew, and became a diligent student of the scriptures in the original tongues. He exchanged the Stoke curacy for that of Ravenstone in 1775. At a visitation in May 1775 he had made the acquaintance of (1725–1807) [q. v.], whom in 1781 he succeeded as curate of Olney, Buckinghamshire.

He had published on 26 Feb. 1779 a narrative of his religious development, under the title of ‘The Force of Truth.’ Cowper the poet revised the book ‘as to style and externals, but not otherwise.’ A more impressive piece of spiritual autobiography has rarely been written. With attractive candour it details the process by which a mind of singular earnestness, though of somewhat restricted compass, made its way from a bald rationalistic unitarianism to the highest type of Calvinistic fervour. Little by little Scott came, reluctantly enough at the outset, to share his friend Newton's absorbing religious-