William Carey Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

William Carey - Essay Example Indeed, as this essay hopes to establish, while William Carey's success emanated from his linguistic talents and his faith, it was, more significantly, the outcome of his rebellion against the Anglican faith and prevalent missionary model. The son of weavers, Carey's family could hardly afford to provide him with an education which extended beyond literacy and a rudimentary knowledge of history, geography, mathematics and science (George, 1991). His education certainly did not extend to either the classics or languages and, as a matter of fact, it was discontinued when, at the age of 14, he was apprenticed to a shoemaker. Nevertheless, his natural intellectual curiosity, compounded with his gift for languages, incited him to self-educate himself in both, successfully teaching himself Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Dutch, Italian and French (George, 1991). It was during his period of self-education and learning that Carey became increasingly discontented and disappointed with the Anglican Church. It was at this point, as George (1991) explains, that Carey increasingly found himself turning towards dissent against the Church of England and, eventually, the combined influence of his readings and an acquaintance, John Warr, motivated him to leave the church and join the Dissenters. His leaving of the Church of England and embrace of Dissent constitutes an important turning-point in Carey's life. As Parker (1914) explains, he did not leave the Church of England and the Anglicanism because he lacked faith but because his faith was not satisfied by that which the Church offered. Carey believed that the Anglican Church had, to a degree, lost its spiritual direction, had become too immersed in the material world and, as a direct result, was not fulfilling its duties towards God. That duty was the spreading of Christ's message to all parts of the world. It was with this in mind that not only did Carey become a Dissenter but joined with other Dissenters in the formation of a small Congregational Church (Parker, 1914). Although not even 18 at that time Carey had found his vocation and his life's work. From the Congregational Church, Carey joined the recently formed Particular Baptists and was baptized into the faith by Ryland, effectively declaring himself a committed Baptist (Mangalwadi, Magalwadi and Winter, 1999). In the Baptist faith, Carey found the spirituality which he had been searching for and which he had felt was lacking in the Church of England. This, however, did not mean that his period of rebellion had ended. It would not be an exaggeration to argue that it was during this period that his rebellion attained full expression and led him down a missionary's path. The spark which ignited Carey's most profound rebellion, a rebellion which was to inform and shape his life's work, was a Calvinist pamphlet which effectively stated that all men were not expected to, or responsible for, believing in the Gospels (Mangalwadi, Magalwadi and Winter, 1999). Carey wrote his disputation in The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation and, in a Church meeting, preached the responsibility of all Christians to spread the Gospels. Indeed, when ordered by J.R. Ryland not to presume his responsibility to preach God's word since "when God pleases to convert the heathen, he will do it without your aid or mine," Carey

Descartes Discourse on the Thinking and Existence Essay

Descartes Discourse on the Thinking and Existence - Essay Example Descartes goes ahead to explore the origin of the human thinking ability in order to justify the perfection of knowing than doubting. He explains that by doubting we get to come up with explanations that lead to knowing. This leads him to the conclusion that the ideas of the imaginable things exist within him, but they do not originate from him, rather they are imposed on him by a more perfect being than him (God). The incorporation of Descartes existence with God is quite convincing. He argues that since he knew more than what actually existed in his conscience, then it meant the extra knowledge was derived from an external source. If the external source did not exist, it should mean that he could not have been the way he was; mortal, changing, finite and impotent. God according to him added unto him the perfection that he needed to erase doubt from his mind. So one’s nature will allow him/her to know as much of God’s nature as he/she could. Descartes in his quest to discover more about himself ends up proving that God exists. I agree with him because he clearly outlines man’s imperfections, thus looks up to God for guidance in almost everything. However, a person’s thinking limits them within a very short scope of imagination that they end up not questioning what they think is true. We are so much rooted in our cultures and superstitions until we are rendered intellectually impaired.