My most worthy and excellent friend, Dr. Taylor, [was] a man to whose writings and personal instructions I owe more than to all the books and men I ever conversed with. I shall ever look upon it as the most happy providence with which I was ever favoured, that, in early life, I read his most excellent books, full of the best instruction, and most excellently calculated to enlarge the mind, and to inspire it with just, rational, and generous sentiments. And I shall ever esteem it as a most distinguishing blessing, that I was afterward honoured with his friendship, and an epistolary correspondence for some years before his death, in which, with the greatest benevolence and goodness of heart, he condescended to solve the difficulties I proposed, and answer my objections.
His writings will remain an immortal monument of his various learning, excellent abilities, just and clear discernment, and critical knowledge of the Scriptures. His mind was the most excellently furnished with valuable and useful branches of literature of any man's I ever knew. His reading in modern books, indeed, was far from being extensive. It cannot be supposed, that a person whose whole life was indefatigably employed, besides the constant duties of the ministry, in teaching a grammar school, and in forming an Hebrew Concordance, should be able to redeem many vacant hours for acquiring a large acquaintance with what was daily passing in the literary world. Instead of wondering that he
