The Words of Power: Carey's Establishment Rhetoric in The

The Words of Power: Carey’s Establishment Rhetoric in the “Enquiry”

Introduction

On a cultural elite scale in 1792, an unknown, unremarkable, and rural English Baptist minister, William Carey, would have been absent. Not being a member of the Established

Church of England and having no university education, Carey was a “Dissenter,” that is, someone who refused to conform to the Established State Church of England. He left Britain at age thirty-two as a Baptist missionary and arrived in Calcutta, India, on November 11, 1793.2 He lived in Bengal, India, never to return to his native Britain. In 1801 while in India, Carey was appointed professor of oriental languages in Fort William College, a college established by the

British East India Company for the education of young Britishers in the Company’s Indian civil service. Forty-one years after his arrival, Carey died on June 9, 1834, and was buried in

Serampore, India.3 Parallel to Carey’s missionary life in India, he made significant contributions

1Bennie R. Crockett, Jr., is Professor of Philosophy and Religion and Co-Director of the Center for Study of the Life and Work of William Carey, D.D., (1761-1834), William Carey College, Hattiesburg, Mississippi. This lecture was delivered as part of William Carey College’s “William Carey Lectures” on August 27-29, 2001.

2Eustace Carey, Memoir of William Carey, D.D.: Late Missionary to Bengal; Professor of Oriental Languages in the College of Fort William, Calcutta, with an introductory essay by Francis Wayland (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1836), 73.

3THE BENGAL OBITUARY, or a Record to Perpetuate the Memory of Departed Worth, Being a Compilation of Tablets and Monumental Inscriptions from Various Parts of the Bengal and Agra Presidencies. To which is Added Biographical Sketches and Memoirs of Such as Have Pre-Eminently Distinguished Themselves in the History of British India, since the Formation of the European Settlement to the Present Time (Calcutta: J. Thomas, Baptist Mission Press, 1848), 349, reports Carey’s epitaph as follows,

William Carey born 17th Aug. 1761, died 9th June 1834 "A wretched, poor, and helpless worm on thy kind arms I fall." --Mission Burial Ground, Serampore 2 to botany,4 linguistics, and educational and social reform in India. In this lecture, I focus specific attention on Carey’s use of the rhetoric—the language—of the Established Church of England in his 1792 missions pamphlet, the Enquiry. To understand his language better, a few comments about Carey’s radical political and religious worldview are necessary.

Carey’s Political and Religious Dissent

Although Carey was raised within an Anglican establishment home,5 he says he “looked upon Dissenters with contempt.”6 Later, he was associated and identified with religious and political radicals in the 1780s and early 1790s. Not being a member of the state church made him suspect, and he and his dissenting colleagues were not part of the wealthy landed aristocracy.

Carey’s Enquiry reflects a person opposed to the abuses of any church operated or supported by a political government. Listen to this sharp remark, which undoubtedly would have raised the ire of many Established Church ministers and loyalists,

Papists also are in general ignorant of divine things, and very vicious. Nor do the bulk of the church of England much exceed them, either in knowledge or holiness; and many errors, and much looseness of conduct, are to be found amongst dissenters of all denominations. The lutherans in Denmark, are much on a par with the ecclesiastics in England; and the face of most Christian countries presents a dreadful scene of ignorance, hypocrisy, and profligacy.7

4For example, William Roxburgh and William Carey (ed.) Hortus Bengalensis, or, A Catalogue of the Plants Growing in the Honourable East India Company's Botanic Garden at Calcutta (Serampore: The Mission Press, 1814); William Roxburgh, Nathaniel Wallich, and William Carey (ed.). Flora Indica; or Descriptions of Indian Plants, To Which are Added Descriptions of Plants More recently Discovered by Nathaniel Wallich, 2 vols., (Serampore: The Mission Press, 1820, 1824).

5Carey, Memoir of William Carey, 5. According to Stanley, Baptist Missionary Society, 7-8, Carey was an Independent dissenter from 1779-1783, being baptized by John Ryland, Jr., on October 5, 1783.

6Ibid., 7.

7William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens. In which the Religious State of the Different Nations of the World, the Success of Former Undertakings, and the Practicability of Further Undertakings, are Considered (Leicester: Ann Ireland, 1792), 65. 3

Or, in another place, Carey remarks in a curt and biting manner about the Church of England as he says, “In England, episcopal tyranny succeeded to popish cruelty, which in the year 1620, obliged many pious people to leave their native land and settle in America.”8 These were the words of a political and religious radical.

Carey’s moral and political commitments included a refusal to eat sugar produced from the slave plantations in the West Indies;9 such a refusal amounted to an abolitionist position long before the celebrated arguments of American abolitionists and John Stuart Mill.10 We do not have to infer from Carey’s Enquiry that he opposed slavery; rather, he writes openly about “the accursed Slave-Trade”11 in strong republican terms when he says,

yea, a glorious door is opened, and is likely to be opened wider and wider, by the spread of civil and religious liberty, accompanied also by a diminution of the spirit of popery; a noble effort has been made to abolish the inhuman Slave-Trade, and though at present it has not been successful as might be wished, yet it is to be hoped it will be persevered in, till it is accomplished.12

Other evidences of Carey’s connection with political and religious radicals of his day include the very publisher of his pamphlet. As you can observe, the pamphlet was published in

Leicester, England, by Ann Ireland. The Leicester Herald, a local newspaper in the town, published an advertisement on May 12, 1792, indicating that Carey’s pamphlet was published and on sale for one shilling and six pence with the profits to be applied to the proposed mission

8Carey, An Enquiry, 35.

9Ibid., 86.

10John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government (1861), preface.

11Carey, An Enquiry, 12.

12Ibid., 79. 4 to India.13 Some eight months later the publisher of this newspaper was prosecuted for

“circulating Tom [Thomas] Paine’s Rights of Man.”14 The other newspaper in town, The

Chronicle, was published by John Ireland beginning in 1791; John Ireland was probably the husband of Ann Ireland, and he stopped publishing The Chronicle in 1793 when he was threatened by the British government.15 These Leicester acquaintances of Carey’s held radical religious and political views. In addition, the other booksellers listed on the title page in London and Sheffield had published anti-slavery essays and were religious dissenters who opposed the state Church of England. Of particular interest is Joseph Johnson, Carey’s bookseller in London.

Johnson was the son of a Baptist farmer in north England. In London, Johnson employed Mary

Wollstonecraft as a translator, and in the same year as Carey’s Enquiry, he published

Wollstonecraft’s classic political essay, The Vindication of the Rights of Women.16

Carey the Radical and Establishment Rhetoric

With such inflammatory rhetoric against the State Church and his association with dissenting suspects, one may wonder whether Carey’s departure for India was of political necessity.17 Some agree that Carey’s life in India was far more successful than he could have

13Earnest A. Payne, “Introduction,” in An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens by William Carey, New facsimile edition (London: The Carey Kingsgate Press Limited, 1961), v.

14Ibid.

15Ibid., vi.

16Ibid., vii.

17Note the story about Thomas Paine’s escape from London for having radical political ideas. The building from which Paine escaped was the bookseller Joseph Johnson, one of Carey’s Enquiry booksellers in London. See Payne, “Introduction,” vii. 5 managed had he remained in Britain partly because of his radical religious and political ideas.

So, in a limited sense, India created Carey, and even today conceives of him as one of her own, a story that Western ears need to hear.18

Notice that Carey’s pamphlet title comprises forty-one words.19 Since its publication, the

Enquiry has become one of the literary cornerstones of modern missiology, causing Carey to become known internationally as “The apostle of modern missions.”20 One eminent biographer of Carey’s gave him the ultimate literary compliment when he remarked that Carey’s Enquiry was “first and still greatest missionary treatise in the English language.”21 A looming question for me is “why was Carey’s short pamphlet so powerful?”

One answer was offered during the centennial celebration of the Baptist Missionary

Society in 1892. A commentator at Nottingham, England, said that Carey’s pamphlet was “the

18See the Dr. William Carey Bicentenary 1793-1993, First Day Cover and Stamp, January 9, 1993, issued by the Department of Posts, Government of India.

19Carey’s Enquiry was reprinted in 1818 and 1891. The Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) subsequently published the 1792 pamphlet in facsimile format in 1934, 1942, and 1961. Other editions of Carey’s work— including a bicentenntial edition issued by the BMS in 1991—also exist in print and on the world wide web.

T. Vincent Tymms and J. Oswald Dykes remarked that Carey published the pamphlet as early as 1784, 1788, or 1791; see The Centenary Celebration of the Baptist Missionary Society, 1982-3: Reports of the Commemoration Services Held at Nottingham, Leicester, Kettering, London, and Northamption, ed. John Brown Myers, (London: The Baptist Missionary Society, 1893), 66, 321.

20The Rev. W. J. Price in The Centenary Celebration of the Baptist Missionary Society, 1982-3: Reports of the Commemoration Services Held at Nottingham, Leicester, Kettering, London, and Northamption, ed. John Brown Myers, (London: The Baptist Missionary Society, 1893), 181.

21George Smith, The Life of William Carey, Shoemaker & Missionary in Everyman’s Library, ed. Ernest Rhys(London: J. M. Dent, & Co.; New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., n.d. [1909]), 28. 6 finest apologetic work published in the eighteenth century.”22 But wait! Carey had no such philosophical or literary intentions. Rather, his purpose in the Enquiry was to give an enlightened rationale23 for the validity of missions outside of Europe, a minoritarian idea among many eighteenth century Christians. A second traditional interpretation contrasts Carey’s supposed new focus on non-European evangelization as the basis for the Enquiry’s power. I want to suggest something more basic than that for the pamphlet’s power, namely, Carey’s reliance on Church of England rhetoric—the Establishment’s language—in his Enquiry. How

Carey decided to use such language is related to his biography.

Carey’s Greek Language Facility and Establishment Rhetoric24

While Carey was a Baptist minister in Moulton, England, and prior to his move to

Leicester in 1789,25 he wrote the pamphlet. In addition to writing the pamphlet, he engaged in language study, and read Jonathan Edwards’s theology and philosophy.26 Andrew Fuller, one of

Carey’s most loyal friends and supporters, said in an 1813 letter (to a Dr. Chalmers),

22The Rev. T. Vincent Tymms in The Centenary Celebration of the Baptist Missionary Society, 1982-3: Reports of the Commemoration Services held at Nottingham, Leicester, Kettering, London, and Northamption, ed. John Brown Myers (London: The Baptist Missionary Society, 1893), 67. Tymms’ remark comes in the context of his argument that Carey’s pamphlet and missionary life refuted the naturalistic arguments of Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire concerning Christianity’s success.

23For a review of Carey’s Enquiry as a piece of Enlightenment argumentation, see Brian Stanley, “Christian Missions and the Enlightenment: A Reevaluation,” in Christian Missions and the Enlightenment, ed. Brian Stanley, in Studies in the History of Christian Missions, gen. ed. R. E. Frykenberg and Brian Stanley (Grand Rapids, Mich., and Richmond, Surrey: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., and Curzon Press, Ltd., 2001), 14.

24Carey says that his weekly schedule in Leicester allowed him to study languages on Mondays; see Eustace Carey, Memoir of William Carey, D.D.:Late Missionary to Bengal; Professor of Oriental Languages in the College of Fort William, Calcutta, with an introductory essay by Francis Wayland (Boston: Gould, Kendall and Lincoln, 1836), 38. As anyone who has studied languages knows, one day per week cannot allow one to master any language, much less so for Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French! 7 I knew Carey when he made shoes for the maintenance of his family; yet even then his mind had received an evangelical stamp, and his heart burned incessantly with desire for the salvation of the heathen; even then he had acquired a considerable acquaintance with Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French.27

In another place Fuller says that Carey translated a Dutch essay and presented it to him as a gift.28

One issue that Fuller’s letter provokes is how advanced Carey’s knowledge of Greek was while he was at Moulton. Fuller’s phrase “considerable acquaintance” does not give us much help in knowing whether Carey—during the time he composed the Enquiry at Moulton—could actually translate Greek. In a letter by his mute sister29 Mary Carey to Mr. Dyer,30 she describes

25Ibid., 35, 46-47. Likewise, William John Henderson, “Holding the Ropes,” in The Centenary Volume of the Baptist Missionary Society 1792-1892, ed. John Brown Myers (London: The Baptist Missionary Society, 1892), 6, says,

while he [Carey] mended shoes at Moulton, and while living there he penned between 1787 and 1789 a work which was published soon after the foundation of the Society. A facsimile of the first edition of this treatise has recently been issued, and it may be expected to increase the missionary ardour of many hearts even as it “added fresh fuel” to the zeal of Pearce, who saw the MS. when he visited Leicester, in 1789, to take part in the services held in connection with Carey’s settlement in that town.

According to THE BENGAL OBITUARY, or a Record to Perpetuate the Memory of Departed Worth, Being a Compilation of Tablets and Monumental Inscriptions from Various Parts of the Bengal and Agra Presidencies. To which is Added Biographical Sketches and Memoirs of Such as Have Pre-Eminently Distinguished Themselves in the History of British India, since the Formation of the European Settlement to the Present Time (Calcutta: J. Thomas, Baptist Mission Press, 1848), 335,

On returning home, Carey mentioned the subject [write a missions essay] to his friends Fuller and Ryland, urging them to undertake the task; they respectively excused themselves and advised him to begin writing without delay, but not to print his thoughts immediately. It is probable, however, that he did this, for we find it said in the Periodical Accounts, that he wrote the article on missions as early as 1786 [emphasis mine].

26Carey, Memoir of William Carey, 36, 45.

27As quoted in Edward Bean Underhill, “Bible Translation,” in The Centenary Volume of the Baptist Missionary Society 1792-1892, ed. John Brown Myers (London: The Baptist Missionary Society, 1892), 272.

28Carey, Memoir of William Carey, 46.

29Ibid., 15.

30Rev. John Dyer of Reading, England, was the third corresponding secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society, following Rev. Andrew Fuller and Dr. John Ryland. Dyer began his work in 1825 and concluded in 1841. See William John Henderson, “Holding the Ropes,” in The Centenary Volume of the Baptist Missionary Society 1792-1892, ed. John Brown Myers (London: The Baptist Missionary Society, 1892), 26-28. 8 the difficult financial condition in which Carey and his family found themselves in Moulton.

Yet, during that time, she says that her brother was “making considerable progress in the study of

Greek.”31 We also learn from her that William was unsuccessful as a schoolteacher in Moulton even though he cultivated “a neat garden,”32 which became a lifelong avocation.

Carey revised his Enquiry prior to its publication in 1792.33 While seemingly an insignificant footnote in the history of the Enquiry, one must recall that this period between his writing the pamphlet and its publication would have included at least two and a half years. How much Greek Carey learned in that period is unknown. We do know this much: he wrote the

Enquiry while in Moulton; he left Moulton for Leicester in 1789; he edited the Enquiry while in

Leicester; he published the Enquiry in Leicester in the spring of 1792.34

Rather than relying on Fuller or Mary Carey’s memory of his language facility, another way of determining Carey’s Greek facility would be to observe his use of the English New

Testament in his Enquiry. Such a procedure will not provide certainty about Carey’s Greek facility, but it will add to our understanding of his worldview prior to his arrival in India.

In the Enquiry, Carey quotes the New Testament seventeen times.35 Some of these quotes are no more than a few words, several quotes contain a single verse, and one of the quotes

31Carey, Memoir of William Carey, 23-24. Smith, The Life of William Carey, 17, puts Carey’s rudimentary acquaintance with Greek into his “cobbler’s shed” at Hackleton.

32Ibid., 22-23.

33Ibid., 49. Note that he was encouraged to revise the essay at the Clipstone Easter meeting of ministers, 1791 (Carey, Memoir of William Carey, 50).

34Carey, An Enquiry, 37, says, “The late Mr. Wesley lately made an effort in the West-Indies.” Wesley died March 2, 1791, in London. This remark may help in dating the composition of the Enquiry.

35Rom. 10:12-14 on the title page; 1 Cor. 1:21 and Rom. 1:23, p. 4; Matt. 28:19 and Mark 16:15, p. 7; Matt. 28:20, p. 9; Acts 1:15; 4:4, p. 15; Acts 6:4, p. 16; Acts 17:12; 18:9-10, p. 25; Acts 19:10, p. 26; 1 Cor. 6:17, p. 77; 9 includes three verses from Romans 10:12-14 as you can observe on the title page.36 Carey quotes the King James Version for all of these passages. As for the Old Testament, Carey loosely quotes it six times,37 adapting texts from Isaiah, Zechariah, Ecclesiastes, and Daniel as modifications of the King James Version.38 These modifications reflect more of Carey’s interpretation of the Old Testament than a new translation of the Hebrew text.

In the first paragraph in the first section of his pamphlet, one finds the key quote for

Carey’s argument in the Enquiry. He appeals to Matt. 28:18-20 as the foundation for his argument. The section is entitled “An Enquiry whether the Commission given by our Lord to his

Disciples be not still binding on us.”39 The Commission of which Carey speaks refers to Matt.

28:18-20 and a parallel text in Mark 16:15. Carey says,

Our Lord Jesus Christ, a little before his departure, commissioned his apostles to Go, and teach all nations; or, as another evangelist expresses it, Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. This commission was as extensive as possible, and laid them under obligation to disperse themselves into every country of the habitable globe, and preach to all the inhabitants, without exception, or limitation.40

Matthew 28:18-20 is one of the most famous of all New Testament passages, being called

“the Great Commission” by numerous commentators and ministers since the nineteenth

Luke 16:8, p. 81; Matt. 6:20 and Gal. 6:7, p. 86; 1 Thess. 2:19, p. 87. In addition, several summaries of various New Testament texts also appear.

36Carey’s quote (p. 87) from 1 Thess. 2:19 includes the three words “crown of rejoicing,” while his first New Testament quote on the title page includes three full verses, Rom. 10:12-14.

37Isa. 60:9, p. 68; Zech. 4:6, p. 77; Zech. 12:10-11, p. 78; Zech. 13:1, p. 78; Dan. 12:4, p. 80; Eccl. 11:1, p. 81.

38Particularly, Carey’s quotes of Zech. 12:10-11; 13:1 and Dan. 12:4 show this phenomenon.

39Carey, An Enquiry, 7.

40Ibid. 10 century.41 The paragraph stands as the authoritative conclusion to the first Gospel.42 The key text appears in verse 19, “Therefore, as you go, make disciples of all the gentiles.” Note that my translation differs in two significant ways from the traditional rendering in the King James text which says, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations.”43 The first difference is the change from the command “Go” to the phrase “as you go,” and secondly, rather than “teach all nations,” the more accurate translation is “make disciples of all gentiles.” If Carey could translate Greek when he wrote the Enquiry, his choice to use the Established Church’s translation conveyed his choice for words of power for his missionary argument.

Taking a cue from William Tyndale’s 1526 English translation of the Greek New

Testament and the popular Geneva Bible,44 the King James translators interpreted the Greek participle !"#$%&$'()$*+as a command—an imperative—with the English word, “go.”45 The majority of subsequent translations has followed the pattern set by the Tyndale-King James

41An early reference to “the great commission” is J. P. Chown, “The Great Commission,” in The Baptist Magazine (September 1859):533-538, continued in (October 1859):608-613, a sermon preached at Surrey Chapel, April 27, 1859, as one of the anniversary sermons of the Baptist Missionary Society. Chown’s sermon is on Mark 16:15, the parallel, yet spurious, text to Matt. 28:19.

42“First Gospel” is used here in the sense of canonical order. The text of Matt. 28:16-20 (my translation) says,

Now the eleven disciples went into Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had commanded them. And when they saw Jesus, they worshiped; but some doubted. And as Jesus came, he spoke to them saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, as you go, make disciples of all the gentiles, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey whatever I commanded you. And listen—I am with you all the days until the end of the age.

43The Holy Bible 1611 Edition, King James Version, A word-for-word reprint of the First Edition of the Authorized Version (Nashville, Thomas Nelson, 1980).

44The Geneva Bible, A Facsimile of the 1560 edition; intro. Lloyd E. Barry (Madison, Wisc.: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), following Tyndale’s lead reads “Go therefore, and teache all nacions.”

45Other constructions of the Greek participle !"#$%'",-.+interpreted as a command in the King James Version are 2:8; 9:13; 11:4. However, at 10:7, the KJV does not translate the participle as an imperative. 11 tradition of the command “go.”46 Yet, an alternate and possibly more accurate translation of the participle would read “as you go” or even “as you go about your life.” Of significance here is the fact that Carey’s use of “Go” from Matt. 28:19 and Mark 16:15 reveals his reliance on the King

James translation. One might say, “So what? That was the translation he had available. What’s the big deal?” Carey’s quotations of the King James Version demonstrate that he did not use his

The earliest Roman Catholic translation of Matt. 28:19 into English has an interesting alternative to the Tyndale-King James tradition. The Holy Bible Douay Version, translated from the Latin Vulgate [Douay, A.D. 1609; Rheims, A.D. 1582; Rheims New Testament, 1582] (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1956 ), 46, says, “Going, therefore, teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.” This translation, while being overly literal in its treatment, captures the sense of the text better than William Tyndale did. The reason for this correction was not that the Catholic translators understood Greek better; no, it is rather the fact that they were translating the New Testament from the Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome. On occasion in Greek, participles may be translated as commands, but in Latin, participles do not carry an imperatival or a command sense so the natural translation from Latin would not include “go” as a command. In regard to Latin participles being used as imperatives, Peter Butrica (Department of Classics, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, Newfoundland) says, “no; in Classical Latin, participles indicate an action going on at the same time as another action or something already completed at the time of another action and could not have this independent force.” See “Re: Translating Matt 28:19” on Classics-L By Thread Online, Internet Posted, August 21, 2001.

Interestingly, The Holy Bible, The Confraternity Edition of The New Testament, A Revision of the Challoner-Rheims Version Edited by Catholic Scholars (New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1950), 43, changed the Rheims translation to read, “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations.”

46The Holy Bible, Revised New Testament [English Revised Version] (Philadelphia: National Publishing Co., 1885); The Holy Bible, Newly Edited by the American Revision Committee, A.D. 1901 [American Standard Version] (New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1901); The New Covenant Commonly Called The New Testament [Revised Standard Version] (Toronto, New York, Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1946); The Holy Bible [New Revised Standard Version] (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

Other modern translations representing a wide range of translation theory that agree with the Tyndale-King James tradition are: The Twentieth Century New Testament: A Modern Translation into Modern English, rev. ed. (London: The Sunday School Union, 1904); New American Standard Bible (Chicago: Moody Press, 1960); Good News Bible: The Bible in Today’s English Version (New York: American Bible Society, 1966); The New English Bible with the Apocrypha (Oxford and Cambridge: Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press, 1970); The Holy Bible, New International Version (East Brunswick, N. J.: International Bible Society, 1973); The New Jerusalem Bible (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1985); The New American Bible, The Revised New Testament Authorized by the Board of Trustees of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (Nashville: Catholic Bible Press, 1987); The Revised English Bible with the Apocrypha (Oxford and Cambridge: Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press, 1989); New Testament, Contemporary English Version (New York: American Bible Society, 1991) 12 own translation of the Greek New Testament in the Enquiry. This seems odd for a person for whom it is said that he later translated the Bible into thirty or forty different languages.47

Both William Tyndale and the King James translators in 1611 interpreted the main verb

(,-&/)$%'0-)$) of Matt. 28:19 as “teach.”48 My translation—along with all major modern translations after the King James version—says “make disciples.” The use of “teach” was a significant oversight on the part of Tyndale and the King James translators. Although “teach” was the dominant translation in the eighteenth century, one of the Dissenters’ most prominent ministers in Northamptonshire, Philip Doddridge, correctly argued in 1761 against the King

James translation. Doddridge was a famous Congregational minister in Kettering, England, the town where Carey and other Baptist ministers established the Baptist Missionary Society in

1792.49 Doddridge calls Matt. 28:18-20 “the Commission,” referring to the universal nature of the Christian message. Also, Doddridge points out the King James Version’s mistranslation of

Matt. 28:19, “teach all nations.” Suggesting that the translation of the main verb (,-&/)$%'0-)$)

47“William Carey,” in Phillip Schaff [1819-1893], The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, ed. Samuel Macauley Jackson (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1952; reprint ed.), III:413. The number of languages that Carey learned and into which he translated the Bible is the subject of much debate in the sources. According to “Translations of the Scriptures,” From the London Missionary Register, Sept. 1821 Serampore. Baptist Missionary Society, reprinted in the Boston Recorder VI/50 (Saturday, December 8, 1821):1, Carey had translated into thirty-one different languages.

48The New Testament, trans. William Tyndale, The text of the Worms edition of 1526 in original spelling; ed. W. R. Cooper with a Preface by David Daniell (London: The British Library, 2000), p. 71, Tyndale’s translations says “Goo therefore and teache all nacions.”

The Holy Bible 1611 Edition, King James Version, A word-for-word reprint of the First Edition of the Authorized Version (Nashville, Thomas Nelson, 1980), says “Goe ye therefore, and teach all nations.”

49According to Andrew Gunton Fuller [ed.], “Memoirs of The Rev. Andrew Fuller,” in The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller (London: William Ball and Co., 1841), lvii, the original name of the Baptist Missionary Society was the “Particular-Baptist Society for propagating the Gospel among the heathen.” Also see, Brian Stanley, The History of the Baptist Missionary Society, 1792-1992 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1992), 14. 13 should not be confused with the use of the word “teaching” (1.1-'02"()$*) in the next verse

(28:20), Doddridge translates 28:19 as “proselyte all nations.”50 He says,

(l) Proselyte all the Nations of the Earth.] The whole Tenour of the succeeding Books of the New Testament shews, that Christ designed by this Commission, that the Gospel should be preached to all Mankind without Exception, not only to Jews, but to all the idolatrous Gentiles: But the Prejudices of the Apostles led them at first to mistake the Sense, and to imagine, that it referred only to their going to preach the Gospel to the Jews among all Nations, or to those who should be willing to become Jews.—I render the Word ,-&/)$%'0-)$, proselyte, that it may be duly distinguished from 1.1-'02"()$*, teaching, (in the next Verse,) with which our Version confounds it.51

Apparently, Carey had not read Doddridge on this point, or he intentionally disregarded

Doddridge’s more accurate interpretation of the Greek text. In the Enquiry, Carey demonstrates a lack of knowledge that the Greek verb translated correctly by Doddridge as “proselyte” did not

50Clearly, the focus of Matt. 28:19 is not on Jesus commanding his eleven disciples to go anywhere in particular; rather, the command was for the eleven to turn their attention away from Jews toward the gentiles. In Matthew, every occurrence of the Greek word $3&("* is translated as “nations” or “gentiles.” The grammar of the Greek text in Matt. 28:19 turns the attention of the reader toward the making of non-Jewish disciples in Galilee, the home of the disciples according to Matthew (28:10,16).

The use of )-4+$3&(/+in Matthew’s gospel refers to gentiles in 6:32; 20:19, 25; 24:7,9, though the last two listed here may include Jews. In material unique to Matthew’s Gospel, all occurrences of the Greek word $3&("*+refer to gentiles (4:15; 10:5,18; 12:18,21; 21:43; 24:14; 25:32; 28:19). See Douglas R. A. Hare and Daniel J. Harrington, “‘Make Disciples of All the Gentiles’ (Mt 28:19),” in Daniel J. Harrington, The Light of All Nations: Essays On the Church In New Testament Research, in Good New Studies, vol. 3 (Wilmington, Del.: Michael Glazier, Inc., 1982), pp. 110-23. For an alternate interpretation that does not follow the Heilsgeschichte model, see Terence L. Donaldson, Jesus on the Mountain: A Study in Matthean Theology in Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 8, ed. David J. A. Clines et al. (Sheffield, England: The University of Sheffield, 1985), 184, 281, n. 74.

The effect of this translation focused the first readers’ attention to non-Jews, specifically the nations or the gentiles: “As you live your life, make disciples of the gentiles.” While the participle does not necessarily substantiate a focus on the command “go,” the context of the verse clearly focused the first readers’ attention on the gentiles in Palestine or anywhere else in the countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. In Matthew’s understanding, the Jews had received Jesus’ call prior to his crucifixion, and the post-resurrection mission of the church became directed toward non-Jews, the gentiles.

51P[hilip] Doddridge, The Family Expositor: or, a Paraphrase and Version of the New Testament: with Critical Notes; and a Practical Improvement of each Section, Volume the Second, Containing the Latter Part of The History of our Lord Jesus Christ, As recorded by the Four Evangelists, Disposed in the Order of an Harmony (London: C. Hitch and L. Hawes, J. Buckland, J. Rivington, R. Baldwin, W. Johnston, J. Richardson, S. Crowder and Co., T. Longman, B. Law, T. Field, 1761), 668. 14 mean “teach.”52 So, Carey’s use of the King James Version—the Established Church Bible— actually had a more conservative appeal for English readers than the accurate interpretation of the text by the Dissenter, Philip Doddridge.

Not only does Carey quote Matt. 28:19, he also attaches Mark 16:15 to it.

Carey equated the text from Matt. 28:19 with that of Mark 16:15. Mark 16:15 has the same word

“go” (!"#$%&$'()$*) as does Matt. 28:19, but instead of “make disciples” (,-&/)$%'0-)$) the word “preach” (2/#%'5-)$) appears in Mark. Some twenty-five years after Carey’s death, many in the Church learned for the first time through the discovery of ancient manuscripts that Mark

16:9-20 was not original to Mark’s Gospel.54 Not knowing that, Carey relied on the Established

Church’s Bible for his missionary argument.

By combining Matt. 28:19 and Mark 16:15, Carey used two syntactically similar texts to support his idea for missionary outreach beyond Great Britain. Carey was not first in suggesting this idea. Many Protestant groups in Europe and in America, including such luminaries as the

Jesuits, the Moravians, John Eliot, David Brainerd, Jonathan Edwards, and John Wesley, were doing mission work long before Carey was born. And, Andrew Fuller, Carey’s devoted friend,

52Carey, An Enquiry, 8-9.

53Ibid., 7. Also, see his use of Mark 16:15 in paraphrase format on p. 73.

54Concern about Mark 16:9-20 was expressed at the Council of Trent in 1546. See F. J. Crehan, “the bible in the Roman Catholic Church from Trent to the Present Day,” in The Cambridge History of the Bible, The West from the Reformation to the Present Day, ed. S. L. Greenslade (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1963), 201. 15 had alluded to the idea55 in his 1781 essay “The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation.”56 What was new with Carey’s quotes was the combination of the Established Church’s Bible—the King

James Version—with a growing focus on missions outside of Europe. Or put more simply,

Carey quoted the words of the National Church for what was at that time a dissenting cause.

Here is one the great ironies of Carey’s Enquiry: he assails the Established Church on social morality and religious liberty, but he uses the Establishment’s words of power—the eminent King James Authorized Version—for a dissenting church interpretation of world missions. Such a reinterpretation of the biblical text fit the context of late eighteenth century

British culture, for that society already had extended and imposed itself on Indian culture through the East India Company, which arrived in India during the 1600s.

Some Non-Biblical Examples of Carey’s Establishment Rhetoric

Carey’s use of the Establishment’s words of power did not stop with the King James

Version. There are numerous examples of power rhetoric in the Enquiry. Primarily in regard to

55Brian Stanley, “Christianity and Civilization in English Evangelical Thought, 1792-1857,” in Christian Missions and the Enlightenment, ed. Brian Stanley, in Studies in the History of Christian Missions, gen. ed. R. E. Frykenberg and Brian Stanley (Grand Rapids, Mich., and Richmond, Surrey: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., and Curzon Press, Ltd., 2001), 179.

56Andrew Fuller, “The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation or the Duty of Sinners to Believe in Jesus Christ,” in The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, 2nd ed., ed. Andrew Gunton Fuller (London: William Ball and Co., 1841), 150-90; Mark 16:15 constitutes the epigraph for Fuller’s essay. See also, Andrew Fuller, “The Nature and Importance of Walking by Faith,” in The Complete Works of the Rev. Andrew Fuller, 538-46.

A mid-nineteenth century sermonic exposition of Mark 16:15 is J. P. Chown, “The Great Commission,” in The Baptist Magazine (September 1859):533-538, continued in (October 1859):608-613, a sermon preached at Surrey Chapel, April 27, 1859, as one of the anniversary sermons of the Baptist Missionary Society. 16 non-Britishers, Carey uses an abundance of establishment terms such as: “barbarous,”57

“barbarism,”58 “civilization,”59 “civilized,”60 “heathen,”61 “pagan,”62 “naked pagans,”63

“papists,”64 “popery,”65 “savage,”66 “subjects,”67 and “uncivilized.”68 Other key phrases betraying his Establishment worldview include: “every lawful method,”69 “more enlightened age,”70 “colonies,”71 “render obedience,”72 “no good civil government,”73 “useful members of

57Carey, An Enquiry, 4, 12, 31, 63, 68-69 (“barbarous Britons,” 82; “barbarious” p. 67).

58Ibid., 4, 70.

59Ibid., 38, 63, 70, 80. Brian Stanley, “Christian Missions and the Enlightenment: A Reevaluation,” in Christian Missions and the Enlightenment, 8, points out that one of the main characteristics of missionary movement was “a belief in the manifest superiority and liberating potential of Western ‘civilization,’ in both its intellectual and its technological aspects.”

60Carey, An Enquiry, 5, 32, 69, 72.

61Ibid., 1, 5, 8, 9-12, 14, 20, 23, 25, 31, 34, 36, 62-64, 67, 69, 71, 75, 77, 85-87 (includes “Britons”). This term, “heathen” appears frequently in the King James Version. In the New Testament, “heathen” appears as the translation of the $3&("*+and its cognates in Matt. 6:7; 18:17; Acts 4:25; 2 Cor. 11:26; Gal. 1:16; 2:9; 3:8.

Brian Stanley, “Christian Missions and the Enlightenment: A Reevaluation,” in Christian Missions and the Enlightenment, 8, indicates that there was “an almost universal belief that non-Western peoples were ‘heathens,’ lost in the degradation of sin and in need of salvation through the gospel of Christ.”

62Carey, An Enquiry, 33, 38-39, 41, 46-60, 62, 63.

63Ibid., 63.

64Ibid., 39, 41-44, 50, 54-56, 59, 65.

65Ibid., 31, 33-35, 64, 79.

66Ibid., 11, 13, 67, 71.

67Ibid., 3, 9.

68Ibid., 5, 32, 50, 68-69.

69Ibid., 3.

70Ibid., 4.

71Ibid.

72Ibid., 11. 17 society,”74 “able Divines,”75 “though we living in a civilized country where Christianity is protected by law,”76 and lastly, “undoubted orthodoxy.”77 These words were typical for the late eighteenth century Anglicans and Dissenters, and many of the terms derive from polemical debate with and disdain for Roman Catholicism, the pre-eminent establishment church of

Europe. Some of the terms words reach back as far as medieval Christianity. The interesting aspect about Carey’s use of these power words, however, is his application of them to cultures outside of Europe.

While understood as religious establishment terms, these words also extended beyond the bounds of the Church of England in 1792. The British East India Company would have used these same terms with a different intent. In Company use, these terms refer to persons in India and elsewhere that were inferior to British culture, rule, and values. Hence, the East India

Company came to abuse native Indian peoples for their wealth, land, and natural resources.

Notice the tangled web of irony: Carey, a social and political radical in Britain, used

Establishment power words from within the developing British Empire parallel to the East India

Company.

Previously, we identified the irony of Carey’s use of the Establishment Bible, the King

James Version. William Carey, a dissenting Baptist, adopted without variation the primary text

73Ibid., 13.

74Ibid., 70.

75Ibid.

76Ibid., 72-73.

77Ibid., 75. 18 of the Church of England. Remember, that church had persecuted Carey’s own Baptist forbears in England. Now we identify another irony of Carey’s use of Establishment rhetoric. The East

India Company continually attempted to block Carey and his colleagues from preaching to the natives of India for fear that evangelical preaching would upset the local peace, but more importantly, the Company feared such preaching would interfere with their trade options and money-making in India. Not until 1813—twenty years after Carey arrived in India—did he and the other dissenting missionaries achieve legal standing with the East India Company.78 Yet, in

1792, Carey used establishment rhetoric that resembled the East India Company’s attitudes toward native Indians. In the Enquiry, Carey used the words of establishment power to describe those who needed to hear the Christian gospel; the Company used those same words to help build a worldwide British Empire over which the sun never set. In this way, Carey’s mission work in

India and the East India Company’s expansion converged.

Another example of the Establishment’s power words that Carey used was the word group “civilization,” “civilized,” and “uncivilized.” As Carey says in the Enquiry, the term

“civilized” means the presence of government, laws, arts, and the sciences.79 One of the most illustrative passages in the Enquiry appears near the end of the essay. Carey says,

78Penny Carson, “The British Raj and the Awakening of the Evangelical Conscience: The Ambiguities of Religious Establishment and Toleration, 1698-1833,” in Christian Missions and the Enlightenment, ed. Brian Stanley, in Studies in the History of Christian Missions, gen. ed. R. E. Frykenberg and Brian Stanley (Grand Rapids, Mich., and Richmond, Surrey: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., and Curzon Press, Ltd., 2001), 66-67.

79Carey, An Enquiry, 70. 19 it is a satisfaction to consider that the late defeat of abolition of the Slave-Trade has proved the occasion of a praise worthy effort to introduce a free settlement, at Sierra Leona, on the coast of Africa; an effort which , if succeeded with a divine blessing, not only promises to open a way for honourable commerce with that extensive country, and for the civilization of its inhabitants, but may prove the happy mean of introducing amongst them the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.80

In this brief passage, Carey reveals his opposition to slavery and his support for the settlement and colonization of Sierra Leone. In a letter to his father on November 27, 1792, after he had published the Enquiry Carey told his father that he was considering a mission to Sierra

Leona, not India. Carey said,

Polly tells me that you are afraid that I should go as a Missionary—I have only to say to that, that I am at the Lord’s Disposal – but I have a very little expectation of going myself, tho I have had a very considerable offer, if I would go to Sierre Leone in Africa—I however don’t think I shall go.81

In 1787 the British established a colony at Freetown in Sierra Leone for the purpose of receiving slaves repatriated from Great Britain, America, and those rescued from shipwrecks. Carey hoped that the British colonization of Sierra Leone would provide honourable commerce, civilization, and Christianity. In this important text, Carey uses accommodationist rhetoric in which he advocates British colonialism for expatriated slaves in Africa. Two striking points occur here: 1)

Carey insists on “honourable commerce,” not the kind that abuses peoples’ dignity, land, and resources, and 2) he thinks that colonization will provide a means by which to introduce both civilization and Christianity to those colonized. In another place in the Enquiry, Carey asks,

“Would not the spread of the gospel be the most effectual mean of their civilization?”82

80Ibid., 80.

81William Carey to his father Edmund Carey, Leicester, November 27, 1792. Bound Volume of William Carey Letters, 1787-1815. F.P.C., Angus Library, Regent’s Park College, University of Oxford.

82 Carey, An Enquiry, 70. 20 Let me conclude by quickly summarizing. William Carey was raised as an Establishment

Anglican, but he came to reject that tradition, and he became a Dissenter—a Baptist—who opposed the state Church of England. As a Baptist minister, Carey ardently agreed with the already-present missionary outreach of various Protestant groups, so he wrote the Enquiry to convince Baptists and Dissenters to join the missionary outreach “to the heathen.” Although he was a Dissenter, Carey used the words of power from the Established Church’s tradition: specifically, 1) the King James Version, 2) power words such as “heathen” and “uncivilized,” and 3) power ideas such as British colonization as a means toward civilization and Christian identity. Carefully considering Carey’s rhetoric shines light on the complexity of his life as a

Baptist Dissenter, a missionary, a botanist, a translator, and a Britisher. Rather than thinking of

Carey as a cobbler, maybe we should begin to think of him as a wordsmith, that is, one who demonstrated an ability to use the English language in ways that simultaneously communicated his understanding of the Christian message and civilization.