USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Essex > Two centuries of church history : celebration of the two hundredth anniversary of the organization of the Congregational church & parish in Essex, Mass., August 19-22, 1883 > Part 5
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** See Appendix B.
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During the last sickness of Rev. Mr. Wise, in April 1725, Mr. Pickering was invited by this parish to supply the pulpit four Sabbaths and continued preaching here through the spring and summer. Receiving then a call to the pastorate he accepted it and was ordained in the second meeting-house, October 13, 1725. The next year he built the house now occupied by Mr. Edwin Hobbs and made it his home the rest of his life, boarding, as his note-book states, in the family of Capt. Jonathan Cogswell from March 31, 1725 to June 16, 1736 and after that in his own house. He was never married.
Mr. Pickering was remarkable for his physical strength and muscular activity. He was noted also for his mechanical genius. As a skilful artificer in wood and in metal at the forge, he made some household articles for his own use, which have descended in the family. And the combined study-table and desk of his own invention and make, which served for his sermon-writing and his books of reference, is still in use in the house in which he was born. In keeping his financial accounts he was scrupulous and exact, and a high sense of honor guided all his business relations with others.
For about seventeen of the twenty-two years of his min- istry Mr. Pickering seems to have given entire satisfaction to his people and to have been influential with them. In 1734 the parish voted that "in consideration of their love and affec- tion to the Rev. Theophilus Pickering, they do freely, fully and absolutely convey to him all their right, title and interest in the land enclosed by the fence around his house and the well dug by him on the southeasterly side of the road." On account of the depreciation of the currency, they also added at this time fifty pounds to his salary and continued to increase it from time to time for the same reason, until it amounted to £232 per annum. Of his faithfulness and earnestness as a minister of the gospel we find evidence in the addition to the church during his pastorate, of about two hundred members,
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nearly as many as during that of Mr. Wise, though it was only half as long ; and in the occurrence of at least one exten- sive revival of religion, the first in the history of this church, as the fruit of which seventy-six persons made a profession of religion.
The published testimony of his church, after his death, re- specting him, was: "We at Chebacco have (as we verily be- lieve) had among us a man of God, a learned, orthodox, prudent and faithful minister of Jesus Christ, though not without failings, even as others ; one whom we heard teaching and preaching the Gospel with pleasure, and we hope with profit; and whose memory will we trust be ever dear to us."
Of the preaching of the Rev. Mr. Whitefield, during his first tour through New England, in 1740, and of the remark- able religious revival which followed it, which has been usually called "The Great Awakening," Mr. Pickering was no. uninterested observer.
When the renowned Evangelist, on this excursion eastward, on which he set out from Boston, Sept. 29th of that year, preached at Ipswich, on the hill in front of the first Congre- gational meeting-house, to some thousands, Mr. Pickering, as he tells us in one of his letters, was one of the many who went up from Chebacco and listened to his surpassing elo- quence. This was the occasion of which Mr. Whitefield wrote : "The Lord gave me freedom, and there was a great melting in the Congregation." On his return from the east, he also preached at Ipswich, Oct. 4th.
Soon after, or at least early in the next year, the religious interest began to manifest itself in this community. Of a full account of it written in 1747, a part is as follows :
In the year 1741 and onwards it pleased God, out of his rich, free, and sovereign grace to bring upon the minds of many in this parish a deep concern about their future state and what they should do to be saved; and although something of this concern then spread itself over the land and in some places was very remarkable, we believe it was in none more so than in this place. The face of things was now changed; and engagedness to
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hear the word preached, christian conferences, private meetings for religious worship and assistance to each other in the way of life were what the minds of many appeared to be deeply concerned in, and engrossed much of our time. And we have undoubted grounds to conclude that at this time the free grace of God was richly displayed in the saving conversion of many among us."
With the progress of this religious work, which so deeply stirred the people of New England, there was soon developed among the churches and ministers everywhere a widening di- vergence of views with respect to the doctrinal preaching of the professional evangelists, the reality of certain inward ex- periences of which they made great account, the measures and methods they employed and the propriety of the degree of independence of church and ministerial authority maintained by them and their adherents.
The author of the work entitled The Great Awakening, published in 1842, remarks :
" The whole land, between 1742 and 1745 was full of angry controversy. . Pastors were divided against pastors, churches against churches, and the members of the same church against each other, and against their pastor. The established rules of ecclesiastical order were set at defiance and openly trampled upon in the name of God. Ignorant and headstrong men were roaming at large, pretending to be under the immediate guidance of the Holy Ghost and slandering the best men in the land, and multitudes be- lieved them. Religious meetings were often attended with disorder, from which the most reckless 'new measure' men of the nineteenth century would shrink back in absolute dismay. It is no wonder that good, judicious, sober men were alarmed, that they thought the conversion of some hun- dreds or thousands had been purchased at too dear a rate; and that they pronounced the revival a source of more evil than good."
So much this author concedes. And it was certainly the fact that early in 1743 there had come to be a division of the churches and ministers of our order into two great parties, which might be termed the right and left centre of the eccle- siatical host, the right centre believing in and zealously pro- moting the revival, acknowledging the existence of errors and disorders accompanying it, but condemning and contending
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against them and discerning abounding good which infinitely outweighed the attendant evils, -their extreme right wing, however, consisting of fanatics, rash and erratic Separatists, and disorganizers ; the left centre (including some most excellent and pious clergymen), recognizing the reality of the revival and some good in it, but cautious or fearful about en- dorsing it as a whole, chiefly impressed by the errors, the disorders, the irrational excitements and the fanaticism accom- panying or following it,- their extreme left wing composed of formalists, ultra-conservatives, those who were extremely high-church as regarded ecclesiastical authority, and ration- alists.
While Mr. Pickering, who was distinguished for the mod- eration and coolness of his temper and the steadiness of his conduct, must perhaps be located in the left centre, he was certainly very near the dividing line. His piety and the evangelical character of his preaching were strongly endorsed by a large council in 1746, of which the Rev. Messrs. White of Gloucester and Wigglesworth of Hamilton were members, both of whom signed the famous Boston Testimony of minis- ters, in 1743, in favor of the revival. Mr. Pickering's own language also furnishes evidence of the correctness of his views on certain important points. In one of his letters pub- lished in 1742, he says :
"I don't ask you whether the conversion of a sinner be the work of God ; this is undoubted. Or, whether the work of conversion be the same in the nature of it in every age; this is indisputable. Or, whether conviction precedes or accompanies conversion, and both may be called the work of God, that is, of his grace; this is admitted. Or, whether the work of conviction and conversion be now carried on in the land ; this is conceded."
That Mr. Pickering not only discerned the spiritual reality of the revival, but also felt a genuine interest in it, he himself maintained in his letters, and there is no reason to doubt his sincerity. In another of these letters in 1742 he says :
"That numbers have been lately awakened to a careful inquiry into their spiritual state, and many convinced of their sin and danger and stirred up
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to duty, in a deep concern for their eternal salvation is what I am so far from disbelieving, that I am free to acknowledge it to the glory of God; and the rather because I doubt not but Divine Providence will shortly make it manifest, that what good has been done by some unprecedented measures is especially owing to the preventing mercy of God, in counter- working the devil in his subtle devices to undermine the churches of Christ."
Yet the errors and disorders which followed in the wake of the revival seemed to him so pernicious, that he shrank from actively participating in it.
One of the prevalent notions, apparently taught and culti- vated by the revivalists, he refers to, in a letter of the same year, as :
" The conceit of some that the sudden starts of their fancy are immediate impressions from the Holy Spirit ; that an impatient and furious desire to bear down all before them is a right zeal for the glory of God; and that they alone are the true ministers of Jesus Christ. Doubtless there are snares on either hand ; and the Rev. Mr. Whitefield's concessions in his answer to the Bishop of London are matter of sober reflection, viz., that: 'Luke- warmness and zeal are the two rocks against which even well-meaning peo- ple are in danger of splitting - the bane of christianity, and all ought to be thankful to that pilot who will teach them to steer a safe and middle course.'" "But," Mr. Pickering adds, "What if the pilot should mistake the vane for the compass?"
To Mr. Whitefield he wrote in 1745 :
"I suppose you can't be ignorant of the schisms, variance, emulations, strife, railings and evil surmisings, things very different from the fruits of the Spirit, that have been rife among us more than four years ago. It is my real sentiment according to the best judgment I can form that you are, at least, some unhappy occasion of our troubles."
In his own study of the measures of the revivalists, Mr. Pickering had observed some things, which he thought not scriptural and indicative of an effort to secure apparent results by an artificial excitement of natural feeling.
In a letter to Rev. Mr. Rogers of Ipswich, of Feb. 15, 1742, he writes: "You believe the Holy Spirit has of late remark- ably descended upon many places. Would to God it might
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Congregational Church and Parish, Essex.
be according to your belief. But I am somewhat afraid that you have too great a dependence upon the remarkable effects or occurrences so often seen in your night meetings, at two of which I was present, on the 7th and 8th of January last."
Another thing that troubled Mr. Pickering was the disposi- tion of the revivalists to cut loose from the teachings and guidance of the educated ministry, to weaken their authority and influence and to break down the regularly constituted organizations and arrangements for the maintenance of re- ligion.
His exhortation in still another letter is :
"I desire you to be careful not to lead men into such a notion of the com- munity of ministers, as may tempt them to slight the authority and ad- ministrations of their own pastors; but when you see people running mad after Paul and Apollos, and Cephas, rather say : Are ye not carnal? More- over let not the deceiver beguile you into a belief of the necessity of de- stroving the form of religion because many professors may seem to deny the power. And I beseech you be cautious that while you endeavor refor- mation, your measures may not be subversive of our religious interests which were so dear to our forefathers. And therefore, I wish you to be of no council or aid to any party that may plot against our ministry, churches and colleges. What will not some men do? I pray God their machinations may be short-lived, and removed as a shepard's tent."
On the day when it was expected that a minister would be ordained over the Separatist Society, he writes :
"I went and stood before the chief house of entertainment where were many people and desiring them to attend, made a declaration in the following words. * * 'Therefore I solemnly testify that such a procedure' * (as this attempted ordination ) .is encouraging of unwarrantable separations. a disparaging of Ecclesiastical councils, a breach upon the fellowship of the churches, destructive of their peace and order, and highly injurious to the second church in Ipswich.' I then drew off and went to the Meeting- house where were many people without as well as within, and asking in those that were abroad I performed divine service ; and at the close of the lecture I acquainted the assembly with the contents of the foregoing de- claration, dismissed the people and went home."
Mr. Pickering was also sorely tried during these years ( 1742-45) by the efforts of certain ministers and exhorters
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to preach in his parish without his invitation or consent, and by the uncharitable way in which they alluded to him in their prayers and their preaching. Against this treatment he remonstrates in his letters to the Messrs. Rogers and to Mr. Davenport (who was then at Ipswich) and in one of a little later date to Mr. Whitefield, in a frank and decided manner, yet with dignity and christian courtesy.
July 16, he writes :
"Instead of giving me better light and satisfaction by any reply to my inquiry (that you would dissolve my doubts as to certain views you hold) you and your brother without advising with me, or first obtaining my con- sent, came last March into my parish and held several meetings in the house for public worship; and have moreover been pleased to pray for me in your assemblies, that God would open my eyes and that the scales might fall from them ; yea one of you thought fit, publicly, in the hearing of my people, to call me their blind minister."
This attitude of Mr. Pickering towards the revival move- ment and the measures adopted to promote it and the char- acter of his preaching occasioned, on the part of those among his people who were in the fullest sympathy with the work, a .
growing dissatisfaction with him throughout the year 1743; which led them finally to present to him, March 12, 1744, a statement in writing of certain grievances or "occasions of disquietude" (as they styled them) signed by twenty-six of the sixty-three members of his church, with the intimation that they should withdraw from his preaching, unless the causes of this disquietude were removed.
These grievances in reality charged him with not preaching plainly the distinctive doctrines of the Bible, with a want of interest in his ministerial work, with worldliness of spirit and conduct and with opposition to the work of grace going on among them.
Mr. Pickering's indignation at these charges, as well as his determination to prevent as far as possible any departure from the established usages of the church, carried him to an ex- treme in the exercise of his authority as church moderator
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Congregational Church and Parish, Essex.
towards the disaffected brethren and in his personal treat- ment of them, which only served to widen the breach between him and them, and to confirm them in their purpose of se- cession from the church.
On the 13th of January, 1746, at the house of Daniel Giddinge, sixteen members of the church resolved to form a society, that they might have the gospel of Christ preached to them; on the 15th they went up to the meeting-house where there was then a church meeting, and "declared to Mr. Pickering and the church publicly that they had separated themselves from them;" and on the 20th they completed the formation of a "Separate Society," thirty-eight men entering into "a solemn covenant and league to set up the worship of God agreeably to his word revealed in the Scriptures." Of this body Capt. Robert Choate was moderator and William Giddinge clerk.
Notwithstanding this decisive action the church called a council of nine churches, May 20, to consider the whole mat- ter; of which Rev. John White, of the First church, Glouc- ester, a son-in-law of Rev. Mr. Wise, and warmly interested in the revival, was the moderator.
Although the disaffected brethren declined the proposal of this council to join in calling a mutual council, they yet, at its invitation, presented all their articles of complaint and the evidence to sustain them, to the members of the council as private christians.
With all the facts thus before them the majority of the council in their result, June 10th, after a thorough investiga- tion, judged that there was no ground for the charge of a want of interest on the part of Mr. Pickering in his ministe- rial work, or of a neglect of pastoral visits; that there was no reason for doubting his piety, for believing that he had been worldly in spirit, or had conducted improperly in busi- ness affairs ; and they endorsed fully the evangelical character of his preaching. On the other hand they were of the opin-
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ion that he had been negligent about examining candidates for admission to the church respecting their religious experi- ences, that he had failed to examine early and thoroughly into the nature of the religious experiences among his flock, as he ought to have done; and that his treatment of the aggrieved at first had given them just ground of offence, but that he had offered them such satisfaction that they ought to forgive him. The council, therefore, regarded the withdrawal as unjustifiable and reproachful to religion, and the action of the disaffected, in setting up a separate assembly for worship, as contrary to the known order of the churches.
A minority of six-including three ministers-dissented, . considering that the disaffected persons had real grounds of grievance with their pastor, which still remained, and that the withdrawal was not reproachful to religion nor deserving of the censure of the church. Yet even they did not justify the withdrawal in all the circumstances of it, and they exhorted both parties to put away what had been "unchristian-like" in spirit and behavior, and carefully endeavor a reunion.
Whether this protracted struggle, involving the alienation of friends and causing continual anxiety, disappointment and depression to Mr. Pickering on account of this dismem- bering of the church and parish, unfavorably affected his health or not, we do not know; but in a little more than a year, after a very short sickness he died of a fever, Oct. 7, 1747-closing his ministry of twenty-two years at the early age of forty-seven ; and his remains lie in the old grave yard.
In the Boston Gasette or Weekly Journal of Tuesday, Nov. 10, 1747, appeared the following notice :
"Chebacco in Ipswich, Oct. 11, 1747. On Monday last died here of a fever and this day was interred the Rev. Theophilus Pickering, in the forty-seventh year of his age ; and after he had been Pastor of the Second Church in Ipswich 22 years. He had been as generally esteemed and loved by his people. perhaps, as most of his Order, until some of the last years of his life : when unhappy Alienations on Account of his Doctrine and Conduct, discovered themselves in many of his Flock, who brought Accu-
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sation against him relating hereto before the Church and at length before a Council of the neighboring Churches Convened for that Purpose, who judged the Alienation and Disaffection to be without Sufficient Ground. Under the pressure of so great Trouble, as he was Exercised with, he was Observed to bear up with Uncommon Evenness and Patience of Mind, and dy'd at last in a desirable Tranquility of Soul as to Spirtual Concerns ; Preaching the Doctrines of Grace by a free Profession that he was a sinful Creature, who had nothing of his own to recommend him to God; that his alone Expectation was from the imputed Righteousness of the Re- deemer, and that he had a Comfortable Hope of Acceptance through that Righteousness."
The church nothing daunted by his loss, loyal to his mem- ory and still maintaining the justice of their cause, prepared and adopted Dec. 31, 1747, and published early the next year: "A Letter from Second church in Ipswich to their . separated brethren in defence of their deceased pastor and themselves, against the injurious charges of the said separated brethren in a late print of theirs, by giving a more just and true account of the things that preceded the separation."
Instead also of entertaining a proposal made by the seced- ers, Jan. 14, 1748, for a conference to consider the possibility of a union of the two bodies, they immediately declined it, and called a council of six churches from Boston, Cambridge Reading and Salem to pass judgment on the procedure of the withdrawing members; which body after two sessions on the 19th and 30th of July, 1748, gave decision that the new Separate organization was not a Congregational church, and exhorted the brethren composing it to be reconciled to the church they had left.
On the 3d of January, 1749, Mr. Nehemiah Porter, a native of Hamilton and a graduate of Harvard College in 1745, who had already supplied the pulpit for some time, was or- dained the third pastor of the old church. Of his ministry here of seventeen years very little is known. Near its close a disagreement arose between him and some of his church : and the mutual council, called to consider the matter, advised him to "take blame to himself and to give the aggrieved
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brethren such satisfaction as they had a right to demand." This he refused to do, and, as a majority of the church sus- tained him, the disaffected, considering that there had been a breach of the covenant on the part of said majority in so doing, withdrew and were received into communion with the new church.
A difficulty afterwards respecting his salary occasioned other councils and finally the dissolving of the relation be- tween him and his church and parish, by a decision of referees, in June 1766.
Mr. Porter removed to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, where there was a Chebacco colony ; and, after founding a Congregational church there and preaching to it several years, returned to his native state and was the pastor of a church in Ashfield, Franklin Co., from Dec. 21, 1774 until his death Feb. 29, 1820, when he lacked but a month of a hundred years in age. His active service in the ministry did not end until he was in his eiglity-eight year; and he continued to preach occasionally for a long time afterward, sometimes exhorting and praying in public up to the last year of his life.
The testimony of one of his contemporaries was, that "as a preacher he sustained a very respectable character; if not a star of the first magnitude, yet shining with a clearness and degree of lustre, which rendered him an ornament to the church. The doctrines he firmly believed were such as are emphatically called the doctrines of grace; and these he in- culcated in all his sermons, which were instructive, impressive and delivered with force and fervor." His ministerial labors were attended with success in large additions to his church.
One or two anecdotes told of him may help to illustrate his character. He was a chaplain in the American army, at the surrender of Burgoyne, and used to say with a great deal of animation, " I conquered him. The decisive blow was struck, and the battle decided while I was holding a season of special prayer, in a retired place, with a few pious soldiers." Mr.
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Congregational Church and Parish, Essex.
Porter had great firmness and decision of character. Once, when preaching on politics, a gentleman of the opposite party arose in his pew and said, "Mr. Porter, you had better let that subject alone." Upon which, with a stamp of the foot and great energy, he exclaimed, "Silence !" and pro- ceeded with his discourse.
On his grave stone, near the Congregational church in Ashfield, is the following epitaph : "Mr. Porter was a faithful minister of Christ: with long life he was satisfied: he fell asleep in Jesus in hope of a joyful resurrection and a blessed immortality. 'The righteous shall be in everlasting remem- brance.'"
THE NEW CHURCH AND ITS FOUNDERS.
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