The son of a weaver, born in Halifax, Yorkshire, and educated for the ministry at the Baptist college in Bristol, Foster served as a minister for a number of years.
He was the eldest son of John Foster, a small farmer, weaver and Baptist, living at Wadsworth Lane in the parish of Halifax, Yorkshire, born 17 September 1770.
He went home, but returned to Dublin in 1795 to take charge of the classical and mathematical school of John Walker,[2] which after eight or nine months he gave up as a failure.
[1] In February 1796, Foster returned once more to Wadsworth Lane, and remained there until early in 1797 he became minister of a general Baptist congregation at Chichester.
In mid-1799 he moved to the house of an early friend, Joseph Hughes at Battersea, where he spent several months in preaching, and teaching twenty African boys whom Zachary Macaulay was training for mission work.
[1] In summer 1806, Foster resigned the charge of the Sheppard's Barton congregation, troubled with a thyroid, and concentrated on writing.
The book contained four essays: "On a Man's Writing Memoirs of Himself", "On Decision of Character", "On the Application of the Epithet Romantic", and "On Some of the Causes by which Evangelical Religion has been rendered less acceptable to Persons of Cultivated Taste".
In 1820, he published his essay On the Evils of Popular Ignorance, based on a sermon preached on behalf of the British and Foreign School Society in 1818.
In 1825 he completed an introductory essay to Philip Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion for the series of Select Christian Authors published by William Collins of Glasgow.