Newton was succeeded as curate of Olney by his disciple, and a man of
somewhat the same cast of mind and character, Thomas Scott the writer
of the _Commentary on the Bible_ and _The Force of Truth_. To Scott
Cowper seems not to have greatly taken. He complains that, as a
preacher, he is always scolding the congregation. Perhaps Newton had
foreseen that it would be so, for he specially commended the spiritual
son whom he was leaving, to the care of the Rev. William Bull, of the
neighbouring town of Newport Pagnell, a dissenting minister, but a
member of a spiritual connexion which did not stop at the line of
demarcation between Nonconformity and the Establishment. To Bull
Cowper did greatly take, he extols him as "a Dissenter, but a liberal
one," a man of letters and of genius, master of a fine imagination--or,
rather, not master of it--and addresses him as _Carissime Taurorum_.
It is rather singular that Newton should have given himself such a
successor. Bull was a great smoker, and had made himself a cozy and
secluded nook in his garden for the enjoyment of his pipe.
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