mittee "to prevent the intrusion of roving exhorters." An unfounded report was circulated that Mr. Maccarty had invited Whitefield, who was then in Plymouth to preach his lecture preparatory to the Communion; and such was the excitement occasioned by the report, that, in order to prevent Mr. Maccarty from accomplishing his alleged purpose, they fastened the meeting house,-nailing the doors and boarding up the windows. Mr. Maccarty, regarding this as a personal insult, as well as a gross invasion of his rights as a minister, omitted the lecture, and immediately asked for a dismission. The case was accordingly submitted to a council, and they advised conditionally, that he should be dismissed. On the 3d of November, 1745, -precisely three years from the time of his ordination, he preached his farewell sermon, from the following very appropriate text-" Therefore watch, and remember that, by the space of THREE YEARS, I ceased not to warn every one, night and day, with tears. And now Brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them that are sanctified." A copy of the discourse was left in Kingston, and was published in 1804, with a preface containing a brief statement of the circumstances which led to the author's dismission. The sermon breathes a spirit of Christian magnanimity, and the relations which he subsequently bore to his former charge were never otherwise than pleasant.

The church in Worcester, having been vacant nearly two years, subsequent to the dismission of the Rev. Isaac Burr,* invited Mr. Maccarty, and Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Jonathan Mayhew, to occupy the pulpit,-each, four Sabbaths. Both these gentlemen acceded to the proposal. Mr. Maccarty preached his first sermon on Thanksgiving day, November 27, 1746, and continued his labours till January following. The time designated for the choice of a minister was the 19th of that month. The Sabbath preceding, the two candidates officiated,-Mr. Mayhew in the morning, and Mr. Maccarty in the afternoon. The result was, that the latter was almost unanimously chosen. His installation took place on the 10th of June, 1747.-he preached his own installation sermon.

Mr. Maccarty was a decided Whig during the Revolution; and his labours, both in the pulpit and out of it, were directed in favour of the American cause. Though his entire salary was only a competent support, his desire to share with his people the common burden, led him to relinquish a part of it, in consequence of which, he was often subjected to serious embarrassment. During the later years of his life, he was taken off from his labours by declining health. In 1783, he preached for a short time; but on the 20th of July, 1784, his earthly career closed. He died in the sixty-third year of his age, and after a ministry at Worcester of thirty-seven years.

On the 8th of September, 1743, Mr. Maccarty was married to Mary, daughter of Francis Gatcomb, a wealthy merchant in Boston, who emigrated from Wales. They had fifteen children. One son was graduated at Yale .College in 1766, became a physician, and died at Keene, N. H., in 1802; and one daughter was married to the Hon. Benjamin West of Charlestown, N. H. Mrs. Maccarty died at Worcester, December 28, 1783.

ISAAC BURR, the son of Thomas Burr of Hartford, Conn., was born in 1698; was graduated at Yale College in 1717; was ordained minister of the church in Worcester, October 13, 1725; was dismissed by an ecclesiastical council in November, 1744; after which he removed to Windsor, Vt., and died in 1751.

The following is a list of Mr. Maccarty's publications :-Farewell Sermon at Kingston, 1745. A Sermon at the author's installation at Worcester, 1747. Two Discourses on the day of the Annual Fast, and the day preceding the general muster of the Militia throughout the Province for the enlisting of soldiers for the intended expedition against Canada, 1759. A Sermon on the day of the execution of Arthur, a negro, at Worcester, 1768. A Sermon on the execution of William Lindsey for burglary at Worcester, 1770. A Thanksgiving Sermon, 1775. A Sermon preached at Worcester, on the execution of Buchannan, Brooks, Ross, and Mrs. Spooner, for murder, 1778.

A writer in the Massachusetts Historical Collections, says,

"Mr. Maccarty was tall in stature; in person slender and thin; with a dark and penetrating eye; a distinct and sonorous, though somewhat harsh toned voice. His address was impressive and solemn."

The elder President Adams, in his diary under date of May 23, 1756, writes thus:

Sunday-Heard Mr. Maccarty. He is particularly fond of the following expressions: Carnal, ungodly persons; sensuality and voluptuousness; walking with God; unregeneracy; rebellion against God; believers; all things come alike to all; there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked; shut out of the presence of God; solid, substantial, and permanent joys springing up in the soul; the shines of God's countenance."

The following testimony to Mr. Maccarty's character is inscribed on his tomb stone:

"Through the course of his ministry, he uniformly exhibited an example of the peaceable and amiable virtues of Christianity. Under a slow and painful decline, he discovered an ardent love to his Master, by a cheerful attention to his service, and at the approach of death he patiently submitted, in the full hope of a glorious resurrection from the grave."

Mr. Maccarty's published sermons, as well as some that remain in manuscript, show that he must have made careful and mature preparation for the pulpit, and that he was a sensible, serious, and stirring preacher.

MOSES MATHER, D. D..*
1742-1806.

MOSES MATHER was a son of Timothy Mather, and was born at Lyme, Conn., (to which place his grandfather had removed from Dorchester, Mass.,) March 6, 1719. He was graduated at Yale College in 1739; and, in due time, was licensed to preach the Gospel by the New London Association. He commenced preaching in Middlesex, (a parish in Stamford-now the town of Darien,) on the 19th of April, 1742. He was ordained pastor of the Congregational church (then newly formed) in that place, on the 14th of June, 1744. Here he remained in the pastoral relation during the residue of his long life. He received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from the College of New-Jersey in 1791. He died on the 21st of September, 1806, in the eighty-eighth year of his age, after having preached to the same people upwards of sixty-four years.

Hist. of the Mather family.-Dwight's Travels, III. MS. from Rev. E. D. Kinney. VOL. I.

54

In 1759, he engaged in a controversy with Dr. Bellamy on the subject of the Half-way Covenant; and published a large pamphlet entitled "The visible Church in covenant with God: or an Inquiry into the constitution of the visible Church of Christ; wherein the Divine right of infant baptism is defended; and the admission of adults to complete standing in the visible. Church, though destitute of a saving faith, shown to be agreeable to the revealed will of God." In 1763, he published a Sermon entitled "Divine Sovereignty displayed by predestination; or the doctrine of the Decrees. considered in its proper light and real tendency." He left behind him a work entitled "A systematic view of Divinity; or the ruin and recovery of man ;"-which was published in a duodecimo volume in 1813.

Dr. Mather was a Fellow of Yale College from 1777 to 1790.

He was married, on the 21st of September, 1745, to Hannah Bell, of his own parish, who died April 21, 1755, aged thirty-seven. By this marriage he had five children. He married a second wife, Elizabeth Whiting,-also a native of Middlesex, January 1, 1756. She died December 18, 1757, aged twenty-seven, the mother of one child. He married a third wife, Rebecca Raymond, of Norwalk, August 23, 1758, who died January 23, 1786, aged sixty-four. By this last marriage there were four children. He had ten children in all,-eight sons and two daughters. The Rev. Ezra D. Kinney, the present (1855) pastor of the church with which Dr. Mather was connected, writes thus-" About fifty of Dr. Mather's lineal descendants are members of some Christian church, and nearly all of them are Congregationalists or Presbyterians. I think that more than half of those who compose my congregation on the Sabbath, and nearly our whole choir. of singers, are his descendants. Two of his great grandsons have recently

been ordained Deacons of this church."

The following extract from Dr. Dwight's "Travels" may help to illustrate both Dr. Mather's history and character:-Referring to the parish of Middlesex, he says,

"On Sunday, the 22d of July, 1781, while the congregation were employed in public worship, a body of British troops, consisting chiefly of refugees, surrounded their church; and took the whole number prisoners, together with their minister, the Rev. Moses Mather, D. D. This venerable man was marched with his parishioners to the shore; and thence conveyed to Lloyd's neck. From that place he was soon marched to New-York, and confined in the Provost prison. His food was stinted and wretched to a degree not easily imaginable. His lodging corresponded with his food. His company, to a considerable extent, was made up of mere rabble; and their conversation, from which he could not retreat, composed of profaneness and ribaldry. Here also he was insulted daily by the Provost marshal, whose name was Cunningham,—a wretch remembered in this country, only with detestation. This wretch, among other kinds of abuse, took a particular satisfaction in announcing from time to time to Dr. Mather, that on that day, the morrow or some other time, at a little distance, he was to be executed.

"But Dr. Mather was not without his friends;-friends, however, who knew nothing of him except his character. A lady of distinction, having learned his circumstances, and having obtained the necessary permission, sent to him clothes, and food, and comforts, with a very liberal hand.

"Dr. Mather was a man distinguished for learning and piety, a strong understanding and a most exemplary life. His natural temper was grave and unbending. His candour was that of the Gospel,-'the wisdom which is from above;' which, while it is pure and peaceable, is also without partiality.' Of this a remarkable instance may be given. In the prime of life, he had a strenuous public controversy with one of the ministers of Connecticut, on a subject belonging to the Discipline and Communion of the Church. The debate was sufficiently ardent on both sides. In the decline of life, but in the full possession of his faculties, he was convinced that he was in an error, by the very writings which he had before answered. This fact he cheerfully acknowledged to his brethren."

FROM THE REV. MARK MEAD.

GREENWICH, Conn., March 26, 1855. Rev. and Dear Sir: I regret that it is not in my power to say much from personal recollection concerning Dr. Mather. My acquaintance with him was slight, and was limited to quite the latter part of his life. I never heard him preach, nor do I recollect to have had any conversation with him, till he was more than ninety years of age,-when I passed a Sabbath at his house, and preached in his pulpit.

He was a man of about the middle stature, rather slender than otherwise, of a pleasant expression of countenance, and free and easy in conversation. On the Sabbath which I spent with him, a young woman was examined and admitted to the church. Knowing that his practice had formerly been to receive persons to the church, merely on the ground of an unexceptionable moral character, without requiring evidence of true piety, I asked him in what light he regarded the person admitted. He gave me to understand that he received her as a real Christian; and remarked that he had formerly used two forms of covenant, but that, on more careful examination, he had become satisfied that it was proper to receive only those who made a credible profession of real godliness.

The following anecdote was related to me by the Rev. Dr. Isaac Lewis, the elder. After Dr. Mather was eighty years of age, Dr. Lewis called at his house, and while there, a blind man came in, which turned the conversation on the great calamity of blindness. Dr. Mather took occasion to remark upon the difference between natural and spiritual blindness, the former implying no criminality, while the latter was wholly inexcusable, and rendered the subject of it justly liable to the Divine displeasure. In further conversation, Dr. Lewis ascertained that Dr. Mather had changed his views on that subject, from reading the writings of Andrew Fuller; and Fuller, as you doubtless know, acknowledged his indebtedness for the same views to Dr. Bellamy, Dr. Mather's opponent.

Dr. Mather, though generally a grave man, had a rich vein of humour, of which there still remain many traditions. A man in his parish who pretended to be a sort of half Quaker, half infidel, and who was a member of the vigilance committee in the Revolution, -as he was once riding in company with him on horseback, said to him,-" Your Master used to ride an ass, and how is it that you ride a horse?" Because," ," said the Doctor, "the asses are all taken up

for committee men."

Dr. Mather used to wear a long rounded kind of a Quaker coat, with very large brass buttons from top to bottom. The Quakers, at that time, used to wear buttons made of apple-tree, and just enough to fasten their coats. The same man mentioned above, on meeting Dr. Mather one day, said to him,"Moses, why does thee wear so many buttons on thy coat?" "To show you,” said the Doctor, "that my religion does not consist in a button."

Dr. Mather was a most earnest patriot in the times that tried men's souls. One of his sons, who was carried a prisoner by the British to New York, and died there, was brought home a corpse. The father was greatly overcome by the affliction, but said,—“ I had rather see him a corpse, than to have him join the enemies of his country."

He undoubtedly exercised a great and good influence in his day; but the generation upon whom his influence was immediately exerted, has given place to one to whom he is known chiefly through tradition.

Respectfully and sincerely yours,

MARK MEAD.

SAMUEL HOPKINS, D. D.*
1742-1803.

SAMUEL HOPKINS was a descendant, in the fourth generation, of John Hopkins, who came from England, and settled at Cambridge in 1634, removed to Hartford, Conn., in 1636, and died in 1654. He was the son of Timothy and Mary (Judd) Hopkins, and was born at Waterbury, Conn., September, 17, 1721. His parents were both professors of religion, and they resolved, from the birth of this son, to give him a collegiate education, in the hope that he might become a minister of the Gospel.

In his childhood, he manifested no particular taste for study, but seemed rather inclined to labour on a farm. In the winter after he was fourteen, however, his mind which had before been somewhat impressed with religious things, took a still more decidedly serious direction, and, at the same time, he began to feel some impulses towards a liberal education. His father,more than ready to second his wishes on this subject, now placed him under the instruction of the Rev. John Graham of Woodbury. Here he went through his preparatory course, and was admitted a member of the Freshman class in Yale College, September, 1737, when he had just completed his sixteenth year. He maintained an honourable standing in his class, during his whole course, and was graduated in 1741.

During his connection with the College, he made a public profession of religion, and adopted the Calvinistic theory in distinction from the Arminian. Not long before the close of his College life, the great religious excitement that spread so extensively through the country, commenced, and the people of New Haven shared in it largely, under the preaching of Whitefield, Tennent, and others of the same school. A number of the students in College occupied themselves almost entirely in visiting their fellow students, and urging them to an immediate attention to their immortal interests; and David Brainerd, then an undergraduate, called at Hopkins' room, doubtful, it would seem, of the genuineness of his piety, and wishing to put him upon a more earnest self-examination. Though Hopkins behaved towards him with great reserve, he was deeply impressed by some remark that fell from him, and was put upon a course of reflection, by means of which he soon became convinced that his previous experience, and the hope founded upon it, were fallacious. After a few weeks, his views of spiritual things seemed to undergo a surprising change; and, while he found himself deeply affected with a sense of his own sinfulness, the Mediatorial work of Christ rose before him in surpassing glory; though he had not, at this time, the remotest idea that these exercises were connected with the beginning of the spiritual life. Just before he was graduated, Mr. Edwards, then at Northampton, visited New Haven, and preached his celebrated sermon on "The Trial of the Spirits ;" and he was so much impressed by it, that he resolved to go and reside with Mr. Edwards, as soon as the opportunity should occur for doing so.

Immediately after leaving College, he returned to his father's in Waterbury, and remained there several months, in a state of great mental depres

Hart's Fun. Serm.-West's Life of Hopkins.-Park's do.