Though Scott was unpopular at Olney, it must not be supposed that the fault was altogether his.  Possibly he may not have had the elements in his character which, under any circumstances, could have made him popular.  Indeed, he frankly owns that he had not.  ‘Some things,’ he writes, ’requisite for popularity I would not have if I could, and others I could not have if I would.’[820] But at Olney his unpopularity redounded to his credit.  No man could have done his duty there without being unpopular.  The evils against which Scott had to contend were of a more subtle and complicated kind than simple irreligion and immorality.  Spiritual pride, and the combination of a high profession with a low practice, were the dominant sins of the place.

Scott’s warfare against the perversions of Calvinism forms a conspicuous feature in his ministerial career.  On his removal to the chaplaincy of the Lock Hospital in London, he met with the same troubles as at Olney, on a larger scale, and in an aggravated form.  ‘Everything,’ he writes, ’conduced to render me more and more unpopular, not only at the Lock, but in every part of London ... but my most distinguishing reprehensions of those who perverted the doctrines of the Gospel to Antinomian purposes, and my most awful warnings, were the language of compassionate love, and were accompanied by many tears and prayers.’[821] His printed sermons show us how strongly he felt the necessity of making a bold stand against the pernicious principles of some of the ‘professors’ who attended his ministry.  It required far greater moral courage to wage such a warfare as this than to fight against open sin and avowed infidelity.  And when it is also remembered that Scott was a needy man, and that his bread depended upon his keeping on good terms with his congregation, and, moreover, that he had to fight the battle alone, for he was too much identified with the ‘Methodists’ to receive any help from the ‘Orthodox,’ his difficult position will be understood.  But the brave man cared little for obloquy or desertion, or even the prospect of absolute starvation, when the cause of practical religion was at stake.  There is very little doubt that it was.  Many who called themselves Calvinists were making the doctrines of grace a cloak for the vilest hypocrisy; and the noble stand which Scott made against these deadly errors gives him a better claim to the title of ‘Confessor’ than many to whom the name has been given.

In spite of opposition, the good man worked on, with very small remuneration.  His professional income (and he had little or nothing else) hardly exceeded 100_l._ a year.  For this miserable stipend he officiated four times every Sunday in two churches, between which he had to walk fourteen miles, and ministered daily to a most disheartening class of patients in a hospital.  To eke out his narrow income he undertook to write annotations on the Scriptures, which were to come out weekly, and to be completed in a hundred