One minister wrote to Newton, expressing doubt about Johnson's mission -
How is Mr. Johnson's Botany Bay scheme likely to end? I have seen a copy of his feelings on the occasion, and seemed to feel them all myself. It filled me with a thousand thanks that the Lord did not call me to that cross. If Johnson goes, I pray the Lord to go with him, and fit his mind for everything that lies before him.
Newton’s reply was typically elegant - but also cutting. For my friends who are pastors and missionaries, or considering the call, weigh yourself up against his words –
A minister who should go to Botany Bay without a call from the Lord, and without receiving from Him an apostolical spirit, the spirit of a missionary, enabling him to forsake all, to give up all, to put himself into the Lord's hands without resource, to sink or swim, had better run his head against a stone wall. I am strongly inclined to hope Mr. Johnson is thus called, and will be thus gratified.
I shall not advise him to consult with you upon this point. Your appointment is to smoke your pipe quietly at home, to preach, and to lecture to your pupils; you are not cut out for a missionary. I, too, must have my tea, my regular hours, and twenty little things which I can have when my post is fixed. I should shrink at the thought of living upon seals and train oil.
Oh! if Johnson is the man whom the Lord appoints to the honour of being the first to carry the glad tidings into the Southern Hemisphere, he will be a great and honoured man indeed.