Worcester, Samuel. Facts and Documents, exhibiting A Summary View of the Ecclesiastical Affairs, lately transacted in Fitchburg; together with some Strictures on the Result of a late Party Council, in said town, and General Observations; the whole Designed to Vindicate the Rights of the Churches, and to Illustrate the Subject, and Enforce the Importance, of Christian Discipline. Boston: Printed by Manning and Loring, 1802. First Edition. [12136]
Removed, no wrapper, 6 3/4 x 4 1/4 inches, 180 pages, small hole in the second leaf affecting a few letters. Good. Pamphlet.
"Published according to an Act of Congress" on the tp.
All of the proceedings, letters, councils, the church covenant, etc. pertaining to the controversy. See last paragraph below.
Samuel Worcester, D.D. (1770-1821), born at Hollis, New Hampshire, graduated at Dartmouth College with the highest honors in 1795. “[In 1797] he was ordained pastor of the Church at Fitchburg, a society which was cursed by all the evils of the Half-Way Covenant – including among its members Deists, Arians, Universalists, and the openly immoral. With decision, inflexible integrity, and solemn faithfulness to truth and duty, Worcester opened the batteries of the Gospel upon the errors and sins that called for rebuke. As a result, in the ensuing spring, the covenant was revised and an orthodox creed adopted, and in 1799 an extensive revival occurred.”
"A malignant spirit of opposition, however, was all the time developed, and finally, under the leading of the Universalists, was openly manifested. Under this influence, the town voted a dissolution of their contract with the pastor, but a council of the Church unanimously decided that he should remain. His opponents now conceived the design of organizing themselves into the First Church in Fitchburg, thus enabling them to take the place of the church of which Worcester was pastor, in the legal relations of the town to the minister. Several ex parte councils were called for this purpose, but they failed in accomplishing their designs. The point of contention ultimately arrived at was whether the town should control the Church with reference to the selection or dismission of her ministers, or whether the Church should do this with the concurrence of the town acting as the parish, 'according to the uniform ecclesiastical usage of New England.'
"This, the biographer of Dr. Worcester remarks, was the first organized attempt in Massachusetts at such a subjection of the Church. The fearlessness, ability, patience, and skill of the pastor foiled the efforts of the disaffected, and the Church was saved from civil bondage. A mutual council was at length chosen according to ecclesiastical usage, the Church and pastor were sustained, and — at his own request — he was regularly dismissed, Aug. 29, 1802. The following year he was installed over the Tabernacle Church, Salem, Mass., where he had an eminently happy, useful, and successful pastorate." – M’Clintock & Strong.
