All through his life he kept copious journals of his sensations and resolutions, full of the deepest piety, always replete with sternness towards himself and others, and tinged with that melancholy which usually pervades the more earnest of that school which requires conscious feeling as the test of spiritual life.
In October 1803, he went to Ely for ordination as a deacon, though still wanting five months of twenty-three.

Those were lax days, there was little examination, and a very low standard of fitness was required.
Henry Martyn was so much scandalized by the lightness of demeanour of one of his fellow candidates that he spoke to him in strong reproof--with what effect we do not know, but he records that he never ventured to speak in rebuke, "unless he at the same time experienced a peculiar contrition of spirit." He became Mr.Simeon's curate, and at the same time took charge of the neighbouring parish of Lolworth.

People then had small expectations of clerical care, if a parish could be entrusted to a young deacon, non-resident, acting as tutor and examiner, and with an assistant curacy besides! His whole mind was, however, intensely full of his duties, and so unworthy did he consider all other occupations that he prayed and struggled conscientiously against the pleasure he could not but feel, in getting up Thucydides and Xenophon for the examinations.

Everything not actually devotional seemed to him at these times under a ban, and it is painful to see how a mind of great scope and power was cramped and contracted, and the spirits lowered by incessant self-contemplation and distrust of almost all enjoyment.

When, at another time, he had to examine on "Locke on the Human Understanding," the metaphysical study acting on his already introspective mind produced a sense of misery and anguish that he could hardly endure.