Thomas Scott (commentator)

Thomas Scott (1747–1821) was an influential preacher and author who is principally known for his best-selling work A Commentary On The Whole Bible and The Force of Truth, and as one of the founders of the Church Missionary Society.

Thomas Scott was born in 1747 at Braytoft in Lincolnshire, the son of a grazier (cattle farmer), the tenth of thirteen children. His mother was better educated than his father and taught Thomas to read, and he went to various small local private schools before being sent at the age of ten to a school in Scorton in Richmondshire, 150 miles away from home. Returning in 1762 he was apprenticed at 15 to a surgeon in nearby Alford, but was soon dismissed for bad conduct. Returning to the family farm in disgrace, he was reduced to working as a labourer for his father, enduring this for ten years before finally leaving home in 1772 to become ordained as an Anglican priest at the age of 25. As he afterwards admitted, he went into the ministry for a comfortable career, and did not believe in most of the doctrine he was required to preach.

Scott was first a curate in Buckinghamshire in 1772, and was originally appointed to the adjacent parishes of Stoke Goldington and Weston Underwood. In December 1774 he married Jane Kell, housekeeper to a local family. From 1775 to 1777 Scott served as curate of nearby Ravenstone by virtue of a 'swap' with the curate there.

During this period, Scott began a friendship and correspondence with the hymnwriter John Newton who was curate of neighbouring Olney. This instigated the examination of his conscience and study of the Holy Scriptures that were to convert him into an evangelical Christian, a conversion he related in his spiritual autobiography The Force of Truth published in 1779.

In 1781, Scott transferred to the curacy of Olney, Newton having gone to London, and in 1785 Scott also moved to London to take up a post as a hospital chaplain at the Lock Hospital for syphilis sufferers. He would walk 14 miles every Sunday, preaching and taking services at various churches, including St. Mildred, Bread Street, and St. Margaret, Lothbury, in addition to his work at the hospital chapel. While in London he started publishing the Commentary On the Whole Bible that was to make his name.

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