I was always aware that it was my duty to do all that I could with propriety to serve the cause I had undertaken, and yet I found myself embarrassed at their request.
Foreseeing, as I have before related, that this cause might demand my attention to it for the greatest part of my life, I had given up all thoughts of my profession.

I had hitherto but seldom exercised it, and then only to oblige some friend.

I doubted, too, at the first view of the thing, whether the pulpit ought to be made an engine for political purposes, though I could not but consider the Slave Trade as a mass of crimes, and therefore the effort to get rid of it as a Christian duty.

I had an idea, too, that sacred matters should not be entered upon without due consideration, nor prosecuted in a hasty, but in a decorous and solemn manner.

I saw besides that, as it was then two o'clock in the afternoon, and this sermon was to be forthcoming the next day, there was not sufficient time to compose it properly.