[4] In 1811 and 1812, Cai Luxing (蔡盧興,[9] known at the time as "Tsae Low-heen")[1] was helping Robert Morrison to publish his Chinese translation of the New Testament[1] and in one of those years Liang began to assist in carving the work's printing blocks.

[3] Nonetheless, Cai's younger brother—probably named Gao—became the Protestants' first Chinese convert, baptized at a secluded seaside spring on July 16, 1814,[3] and Liang became their second.

[4] A month later, Morrison appointed him as a lay evangelist for the London Missionary Society[10][1][n 2] and in 1827 ordained him as a full minister, the first native Chinese to do so.

[10] He preached at hospitals and chapels and, after writing his own tracts, thought to distribute Christian literature to the scholars gathered for the prefectural and provincial imperial exams.

[12] He printed 7,000[14] or 70,000[1] tracts in a single year and personally distributed them to the thousands who came for the tests[1] in Guangzhou and in the prefectural seats of Guangdong.

[16] There are unclear references to some long-standing dispute between Wat and Liang that was eventually resolved;[17] they worked together in Malacca and again to continue the mission with another native worker after Morrison's death.

Amid the diplomatic crisis occasioned by the increase in opium smuggling and Lord Napier's resort to force to assert his right to act as the British consul in Guangzhou, the Emperor personally expressed disbelief that westerners were responsible for the Chinese-language magazines and broadsides being distributed by the English.

[19] Morrison died in August 1834 and, several days into Liang's distribution of tracts at Guangzhou's provincial exams a few weeks later, the city's police came for him and his companions.

He was formally attached to the London mission there in 1837[13] and, while working there with Wat Ngong, caused a "spike" in conversions, netting more than thirty converts in a span of months.

[13] He then joined Peter Parker's missionary hospital[1] on Hog Lane in Guangzhou's Thirteen Factories trading ghetto.

At an 1841 congressional hearing in Washington, Parker quoted Liang as saying "When I meet men in the streets and villages and tell them the folly of worshipping idols they laugh at me.

[1] Liang helped Robert Morrison's son-in-law Benjamin Hobson locate a residence and establish his clinic in Guangzhou's western suburbs in 1848.

[1] Although often called a "tract", it was over 500 pages long in nine stand-alone chapters or scrolls (juan),[31] which appear to have often been printed in four-volume sets.

[1] It largely dwelt on the omnipotence of God the Father, the degrading nature and effects of idolatry and other sins, and the personal choice between salvation and damnation.

[citation needed] Liang was an important participant in the establishment of Protestantism in China,[1] but is most remembered for the influence of his tracts on Hong Xiuquan and his Taiping rebels, for whom Good Words to Admonish the Age became a sacred text.