To the REVEREND PRINCIPAL AND VICE-PRINCIPAL OF ST. EDMUND HALL, OXFORD.* To the Clergy and Parishioners of CHOBHAM AND BISLEY IN THE DIOCESE OF WINCHESTER.† To the Clergy and Parishioners of UPPER AND NETHER WORTON, near Banbury, in the Diocese of Oxford. To the numerous and most affectionate friends WHO FORMED THE CONGREGATION OF ST. JOHN'S, BEDFORD ROW, with their present Minister. And, lastly, to the twenty or twenty-five Reverend Clergy of the PARISH OF ST. MARY, ISLINGTON, with its population of 50 or 60,000 souls, from which, after an incumbency of eight years, I was removed to this awful and overwhelming position, of Bishop of Calcutta in March 1832. My object in thus enumerating my chief spheres of duty is that I may not seem negligent, so far as concerns myself, to put my brethren residing now or labouring therein, in remembrance in this and * Of which society I have been a member since May 1, 1798. + Where I was curate to that most distinguished minister of Christ, the late Rev. Richard Cecil, from 1801 to 1803. Which I served as curate from 1803 to 1812. § From 1808 to 1824. every other way, of the commanding truths of the Gospel, though they know them and be established, as I trust, in the present and unchangeable truth of Christ our Lord. Yea, I think it meet, far as I am removed from them in person, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir them up by putting them in remembrance. Knowing, most assuredly, from my time of life, within less than three years and a half of the age of man, and from the shock of late given to my already debilitated constitution by a dangerous attack of fever, that I must SHORTLY put off this my tabernacle, as our Lord Jesus Christ by these warnings hath shewed me. Moreover, I would thus endeatour, by these salutations and the volume accompanying them, that my friends may be the better able, after my decease, to have these things always in remembrance. The only return I entreat of all into whose hands this volume may fall, is that they will labour fervently in prayer for me, that I may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God; and may finish at length my course with joy and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the Gospel of the grace of God. It would be most ungrateful in me if I did not here publicly record, before I conclude this address, my humble thanksgivings to Almighty God for having preserved me so long in this fearful climate of India, and having permitted me to enter on the thirteenth year of my residence in this diocese ; especially when I remember that the longest of my two Right Reverend predecessors' continuance was little more than seven years and a half, and the shortest only nine months. I would also here record my thanksgiving to God, that you, my Right Reverend Brethren, have been preserved in your dioceses of Madras and Bombay for nearly seven years. Would to God that not only Ceylon were about to be erected into a separate see, but also Agra with its north-western provinces, extending to the Indus; and Singapore, with its neighbouring important stations in the Straits of Malacca, and Cochin or Tanjore, with the Christian flocks in the neighbourhood of the Syrian Churches, and the forty thousand converts of the Propagation and Church Missionary Societies. To Christ our Lord, however, I commend these and all other the vital interests of souls in India. Him I adore as the Head of his Church. Of him I implore the pardon of all my unnumbered sins and short-comings, especially as a Bishop; to him I look for a blessing on the volume I now with fear and trembling send forth; and in him confide for raising up instruments for the accomplishment of his designs of mercy to India, and the whole heathen and Mohamedan world. In this blessed Saviour may we be found, my Right Reverend Brethren, living and dying; and to Him, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, may we ascribe praises and thanksgivings as the God of our salvation, in time and throughout eternity! I beg to subscribe myself, Your most affectionate Brother, D. CALCUTTA. |