But the process was slow; it had been so even in Paul's case. Carey found encouragement in intercourse with some old Christians in Hackleton, and he united with a few of them, including his fellow-apprentice, in forming a congregational church. The state of the parish may be imagined from its recent history. Hackleton is part of Piddington, and the squire had long appropriated the living of £300 a year, the parsonage, the glebe, and all tithes, sending his house minister "at times" to do duty. A Certificate from Northamptonshire, against the pluralities and other such scandals, published in 1641, declared that not a child or servant in Hackleton or Piddington could say the Lord's Prayer. Carey sought the preaching of Doddridge's successor at Northampton, of a Baptist minister at Road, and of Scott the commentator, then at Ravenstone. He had found peace, but was theologically "inquisitive and unsatisfied." Fortunately, like Luther, he "was obliged to draw all from the Bible alone."
When, at twenty years of age, Carey was slowly piecing together "the doctrines in the Word of God" into something like a system which would at once satisfy his own spiritual and intellectual needs, and help him to preach to others, a little volume was published, of which he wrote:--"I do not remember ever to have read any book with such raptures." It was Help to Zion's Travellers; being an attempt to remove various Stumbling-Blocks out of the Way, relating to Doctrinal, Experimental, and Practical Religion, by Robert Hall. The writer was the father of the greater Robert Hall, a venerable man, who, in his village church of Arnsby, near Leicester, had already taught Carey how to preach. The book is described as an "attempt to relieve discouraged Christians" in a day of gloominess and perplexity, that they might devote themselves to Christ through life as well as be found in Him in death. Carey made a careful synopsis of it in an exquisitely neat hand on the margin of each page. The worm-eaten copy, which he treasured even in India, is now deposited in Bristol College.
A Calvinist of the broad missionary type of Paul, Carey somewhat suddenly, according to his own account, became a Baptist. "I do not recollect having read anything on the subject till I applied to Mr. Ryland, senior, to baptise me. He lent me a pamphlet, and turned me over to his son," who thus told the story when the Baptist Missionary Society held its first public meeting in London:--"October 5th, 1783: I baptised in the river Nen, a little beyond Dr. Doddridge's meeting-house at Northampton, a poor journeyman shoemaker, little thinking that before nine years had elapsed, he would prove the first instrument of forming a society for sending missionaries from England to preach the gospel to the heathen. Such, however, as the event has proved, was the purpose of the Most High, who selected for this work not the son of one of our most learned ministers, nor of one of the most opulent of our dissenting gentlemen, but the son of a parish clerk."