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REV. J. PROUD. 1253
The following particulars respecting him are mainly derived from a
notice of his life from the pen of the Rev. Samuel Noble, which
appeared in the "Intellectual Repository" for 1826, p. 347, and from
a printed sermon preached at his decease by the Rev. Edward Madeley
of Birmingham.
He was born on March 22, 1745, at Beaconsfield, in Bucking
hamshire, where his father was a tradesman, and at the same time
a preacher in the connection of the General Baptists. Mr. Proud
commenced his pulpit exercises in the year 1768, being then twenty
three years of age; and having continued to preach with zeal and
ability for the space of seven or eight years he was admitted by
ordination into the regular ministry of the General Baptist Denomi
nation. His first engagements were at Wisbeach in Cambridgeshire ;
but he was shortly removed to the city of Norwich, where a com
modious chapel was erected purposely for him by Mr. Hunt, who
acted with him as his colleague in the ministry. This was in 1789.
In the same year Mr. Ralph Mather, who had previously belonged
to the Quaker Denomination, and Mr. Joseph Whithingham Salmon,
who had been a Methodist Local Preacher, having been brought to
a knowledge of the truth in the doctrines of the New Church, and
being inflamed with an ardent zeal to promote its diffusion, under
took, at their own expense, a missionary journey through England.
When they came to Norwich, Mr. Hunt gave them permission to
preach in his chapel. On hearing them Mr. Proud opposed their
doctrines with the utmost vehemence, and made every effort in his
power to prevent their success. Mr. Hunt was more favourably in
clined, and held several conferences with the strangers. This rendered
Mr. Proud extremely uneasy, and one day, when he knew Mr. Hunt
and the New Church missionaries were together, he burst into the
room, and exhorted his colleague, in the most strenuous manner to
"have nothing to do with those men or their doctrines." Mr. Noble
says, he heard Mr. Proud say, that he used those very words. Im
mediately on his retiring-such is Mr. Noble’s recollection of this
occurrence he felt great agitation of mind : a doubt rushed upon
him, that it might be possible he was opposing the truth: he retired
into a room by himself, fell on his knees, and prayed devoutly that
he might obtain Divine direction, and be guided to a right decision:
he afterwards opened his Bible, when this passage met his eye :
"Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvellously;
for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though
it be told you" (Hab. i, 5) : the words struck him powerfully: he
took them as a proof of his incredulity and prejudiced opposition:
he determined, therefore, to read the writings of the New Church
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