Williams, Samuel P. An Enquiry into the State of the Churches, &c. A Sermon, preached in several congregations, by appointment of the Consociation of Windham County. Hartford: Printed by Peter B. Gleason and Co., 1816. First Edition.
Removed pamphlet, 5 1/4 x 8 1/2 inches, small chip bottom corner of tp, 31 pp. Good. Pamphlet. [4842]
Practical and pointed advice on examining one's spiritual state and how to improve it. Without using the term explicitly, he is calling for a personal and corporate revival. He admonishes those who have nothing more than words to prove their faith.
Samuel Porter Williams (1779-1826) b. Wethersfield, CT; d. Newburyport, MA. He graduated Yale College at seventeen years of age, and afterwards studied theology under Timothy Dwight at New Haven. He was pastor of several Congregational churches, and from 1820 to his death was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Newburyport. "He always made the intended impression; he always stung the sinner's conscience; and this he did by those intervals of light and piercing truth, with which he interspersed his metaphorical roses." - Rev. Leonard Worthington, in Sprague's Annals, vol. iv. p. 372.