in which he is yet held by many of those who will feel an interest in this volume, and because of the lesson which it teaches to all those who either teach or favor the revived fanaticism of a personal reign, and the speedy destruction of the world.

The successor of Mr. Austin was the Rev. JOHN GILES. He was born in England, and whilst pursuing a course of classical study became hopefully pious, and at an early age. Having completed his theological studies at Homerton, he was ordained and installed pastor of an Independent church in Wellington, Somersetshire, on the 26th of September, 1786. Here he continued for nine years, preaching the gospel with great success. His love of civil liberty, and his abhorrence of the ecclesiastical oppression he witnessed around him, induced the desire to seek for his rising family a home in this country. With this object in view, he sought a dissolution of his pastoral relation to his people, and whilst preparing for his voyage received an invitation to become the pastor of New Chapel, in Castle-street, Exeter, which by the solicitation of friends he was induced to accept; and he was settled there in 1795. With this people he remained three years, and from a small, distracted band, be raised them up to be a large and flourishing and united church. In 1798 he embarked with his wife and six children to this country, where he landed in September. He came to this town in June, 1799, and buried his wife here on the 5th of August

following. He was installed on the 4th of June, 1800; but such was the effect of the death of his wife on his health and spirits as to unfit him for pastoral duties; and he sought and obtained a dismission in the following October. After regaining his health, he subsequently settled in Newburyport, Mass., in 1803, where he continued, useful and beloved, until his death, which took place September 28, 1824.

Bringing with him ministerial manners and habits. to which the people were unaccustomed, his ministrations were not at first very popular; but they subsequently became so. He was an earnest, very orthodox, and useful preacher. He brought with him the highest testimonials of character to this country; his subsequent career showed that they were merited, and by a faithful and stainless ministry of twenty-one years he embalmed his memory among the people amid whose tears and lamentations he went up to his reward in heaven.*

The successor of Mr. Giles was the Rev. HENRY KOLLOCK. As an able and deeply interesting memoir of him is written by his brother, the Rev. Shepard K. Kollock, which is prefixed to a posthumous edition of his Sermons, in four volumes octavo, but little need be said in regard to him here. He was ordain

* For the materials from which this brief narrative is compiled, I am indebted to Mrs. Titcomb, of Newburyport, a daugh. ter of Mr. Giles, and to a sermon preached at his funeral by the Rev. Samuel Porter Williams.

ed and installed in this place, December 10th, 1800. After a brilliant ministry of three years, of whose usefulness there are yet living witnesses, he removed to Princeton in December, 1803, because of his election to the office of Professor of Divinity in the College of New-Jersey. He afterwards settled in Savannah, where he died universally lamented, December 29th, 1819. He was principally distinguished for his remarkable eloquence, which was unsurpassed in his day in the American pulpit.

On the 26th of December, 1804, the Rev. JOHN M'DOWELL, D. D. was ordained and installed the successor of Dr. Kollock, and continued the Minister of the church for twenty-nine years, when he was dismissed, April 30, 1833, to become the Pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. With the exception of Dickinson's, his was the longest ministry that the First Church ever enjoyed; and, probably, was the most useful of any. But as he is yet living, and although in the fortieth year of his ninistry, active and useful, what might justly be said of him here must be left to his biographer to say, after the good fight he has been so long waging is terminated, and he has gone up to wear his crown, and with those who have turned many to righteousness to shine as a star for ever and ever.

1

CHAPTER IX.

Whilst from the first settlement of this town there were, probably, some individuals and families whose prepossessions inclined them to the PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH, yet the earliest information we have of the affairs of this Congregation commences with 1704. In this year, the Society for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts, sent here as a Missionary the Rev. Mr. Brook. He commenced preaching at the house of a Colonel Townley, to whom the Congregation is indebted for the land now occupied by their Church and grave-yard. When the house of Mr. Townley could no longer accommodate his hearers, Mr. Brook repaired to a barn, fitted up in a rude manner, for worship. The great inconvenience to which they were thus subjected, induced them to resolve on the erection of a church, whose foundations were laid in 1706. Mr. Brook died in 1707, greatly lamented by his parishioners, and by the Society that sustained him.

The Rev. Mr. VAUGHAN, two or three years after the death of Mr. Brook, became the Rector of the Church, and continued its Minister for nearly forty years. He was remarkable for his amiable and social virtues, and was popular with his own people. Although he and Mr. Dickinson were the opposite of one another in natural temperament, and were fre

quently engaged in warm controversy, their personal relations were always of the most pleasant character. The news of the death of Mr. Dickinson was carried to Mr. Vaughan just as he was dying, and, amongst the last audible words that he was heard to utter were these, "O that I had hold of the skirts of brother Jonathan!"

On the death of Mr. Vaughan, the Church was occasionally supplied by the Rev. Mr. Wood, who at the same time supplied the Church at New-Brunswick. But as the Congregation declined under him, application was made to the Society in England for a permanent Minister. Mr. Thomas Bradbury Chandler was then appointed Catechist, and afterwards was ordained Rector of the Church. He subsequently rose to distinction, and was in his days amongst the most able defenders of Episcopacy in the country. Under his ministry in 1762, the Church received a charter from the Crown, which is still the law for regulating the temporalities of the Congregation.

"The war of the Revolution," says Dr. Rudd, "had a melancholy and ruinous effect upon the concerns of our communion. The Church of England being connected with the state government of that country, and the circumstance that the clergy of that Church were bound by the oath of conformity and allegiance to support and defend the measures of the Crown, led all the common people to believe, and all the prejudiced partizans of popular government to maintain, that a Churchman and a foe to popular liberty were synony