Mr. Mitchel
The Reverend
JONATHAN MITCHEL was born at Halifax, in Yorkshire, in Great Britain, in 1624.
His parents were exemplary Christians, who, by the impositions and persecutions
of the English hierarchy, were constrained to seek an asylum in New-England,
in 1635; at which time they brought over their son Jonathan, then eleven years
of age. Their first settlement was at Concord, in Massachusetts; whence, a year
after, they removed to Saybrook, in Connecticut; and, not long after, to Wethersfield.
Their next removal was to Stamford; where Mr. Mitchel, the father, died in 1645,
aetat. LV.
The classical studies of his son Jonathan were suspended for several years,
after his arrival in America; but, “on the earnest advice of some that
had observed his great capacity,” they were, at length, resumed, in 1642.
(94)
In 1645, at the age of twenty-one, he entered Harvard College. Here, he became
religiously impressed, under Mr. Shepard’s ministry, which he so highly
estimated as, afterward, to observe, “Unless it had been four years living
in heaven, I know not how I could have more cause to bless God with wonder,
than for those four years,” spent at the University. He was an indefatigable
student, and made great acquirements in knowledge and virtue. His extraordinary
learning, wisdom, gravity, and piety, occasioned an early application of several
of the most considerable churches, for his services in the ministry. The church
at Hartford, in particular, sent for him with the intention of his becoming
successor to the famous Mr. Hooker. He preached his first sermon at Hartford,
June 24, 1649; and, on the day following, was invited to a settlement in the
ministry, in that respectable town. Having, however, been previously importuned
by Mr. Shepard, and the principal members of his society, to return to Cambridge,
free from any engagement, with a view to a settlement there; he declined an
acceptance of the invitation at Hartford, and returned to Cambridge, where he
preached for the first time August 12, 1649. Here a providential opening was
soon made for his induction into the ministry. Mr. Shepard died on the 25th
of the same month; and, by the unanimous desire of the people of Cambridge,
Mr. Mitchel was now invited to become his successor. He accepted the invitation;
and was ordained August 21, 1650.
Soon after his settlement, he was called to a peculiar trial. President Dunster,
who had formerly been his tutor, about this time imbibed the principle of antipedobaptism;
and preached some sermons against the administration of baptism to any infant
whatever. Mr. Mitchel, young as he then was, felt it incumbent on him openly
to combat this principle; and conducted, in this delicate and difficult case,
with such judgment, moderation, and meekness of wisdom, as would have well become
the experience and improvement of advanced age. Although this controversy occasioned
the President’s removal from Cambridge; yet Mr. Mitchel continued to cultivate
an esteem for him, and, after his decease, paid a respectful tribute to his
memory, in an elegy, replete with expressions of that noble and catholic spirit,
which characterized its author. (95)
Such were his literary acquirements, and so respectable his character, that,
so early as the year 1650, he was chosen a Tutor and a Fellow of Harvard College.
(96)
He was a very influential member of the Synod, which met at Boston in 1662,
to discuss and settle an interesting question concerning church-membership and
church discipline, and chiefly composed the Result of that Synod. “The
determination of the question at last,” says Dr. Mather, “was more
owing to him than to any man in the world.” The divine Head of the church
“made this great man, even while he was yet a young man, one of the greatest
instruments we ever had of explaining and maintaining the truths relating to
the church-state of the posterity in our churches, and of the church-care which
our churches owe to their posterity.”+ He was a man of singular acuteness,
prudence, and moderation; and was, therefore, eminently qualified to discern
the truth, in difficult and perplexing cases, and to adjust the differences
of disputants. (97) Hence in ecclesiastical Councils,
to which he was frequently invited, and in weighty cases, where the General
Court frequently consulted the minister, “the sense and hand of no man
was relied more upon than his, for the exact result of all.” The great
President Chauncey, though much older than he, and though openly opposed to
him at the Synod, said, at the very height of the controversy: “I know
no man in this world that I could envy so much as worthy Mr. Mitchel, for the
great holiness, learning, wisdom, and meekness, and other qualities of an excellent
spirit, with which the Lord Jesus Christ hath adorned him”
Morton, who was contemporary with Mr. Mitchel, says: “He was a person that
held very near communion with God; eminent in wisdom, piety, humility, love,
self-denial, and of a compassionate and tender heart; (98)
surpassing in public spiritedness; a mighty man in prayer, and eminent at standing
in the gap; he was zealous for order, and faithful in asserting the truth against
all oppugners of it.” (99)
Dr. Increase Mather, who was personally and intimately acquainted with him,
says: “He was blessed with admirable natural as well as acquired parts.
His judgment was solid, deep, and penetrating; his memory was strong, and vastly
capacious. He wrote his sermons very largely; and then used, with enlargements,
to commit all to his memory, without once looking into his bible, after he had
named his text; and yet his sermons were scriptural.”
As a preacher, he was distinguished for “an extraordinary invention, curious
disposition, and copious application” His voice was melodious, and his
delivery is said to have been “inimitable.” He spoke with “a
transcendent majesty and liveliness,” and toward the close of his discourses,
his fervency rose to “a marvellous measure of energy.”
He was pastor of the church of Cambridge about eighteen years; and “was
most intense and faithful” in his work. “He went through a great part
of the body of divinity; made a very excellent exposition of the book of Genesis,
and part of Exodus, and delivered many fruitful and profitable sermons on the
four first chapters of John.” He held, also, a monthly Lecture, which was
“abundantly frequented,” by the people of neighbouring towns, as well
as by his own society. “His race was but short, but the work he did was
very much. Just after he had been preaching on these words, I know that thou
wilt bring me to death, and unto the house appointed for all the living, as
he came out of the pulpit, he was seized with a fever, which terminated his
life July 9, 1668, in the forty-third year of his age, and eighteenth of his
ministry.
Dr. I. Mather says, he “never knew any death that caused so great a mourning
and lamentation generally. He was greatly loved and honoured throughout all
the churches, as well as in Cambridge, and admired by the most competent judges
of real worth.”
Very few of his writings were ever published, I can obtain notice of the following
only:
A Letter of counsel to his brother, written while he resided at the University;
An Election Sermon, on Nehem. ii. 10, entitled “Nehemiah upon the wall;”
preached May 15, 1667; and printed at Cambridge;
A Letter concerning the subject of Baptisme, printed at Cambridge, 1675;
“A Discourse of the Glory to which God hath called Believers by Jesus Christ,”
printed at London, after his death, with the Letter to his brother affixed;
and reprinted at Boston, in a duodecimo volume, in 1721.
Harvard Square Library
Cambridge, Massachusetts
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