Loving God and Neighbor with Samuel Pearce

By Michael A. G. Haykin and Jerry Slate

The love of God and neighbor is the heart of the Christian faith. Forgotten saint Samuel Pearce teaches us how to live a life faithful to the greatest commandment.

Pearce was a Baptist pastor known in eighteenth-century England for his moving preaching and strong, pious character. In his short life, he supported believers in his own parish as well as in the many cities where he preached and helped send missionaries. Yet his personal faith, founded on the "holy love" of God, formed his most compelling witness to the world. By getting to know Pearce's story, readers will learn from his example what it looks like to love God and neighbor—in good times as well as challenging and seemingly mundane ones.

The Lived Theology series explores aspects of Christian doctrine through the eyes of the men and women who practiced it. Interweaving the contributions of notable individuals alongside their overshadowed contemporaries, we gain a much deeper understanding and appreciation of their work and the broad tapestry of Christian history. These books illuminate the vital contributions made by these figures throughout the history of the church.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Release date: Aug 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9781683592709

Michael A. G. Haykin

Michael A. G. Haykin (ThD, University of Toronto) is professor of church history and biblical spirituality at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and director of The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies. He has authored or edited more than twenty-five books, including Rediscovering the Church Fathers: Who They Were and How They Shaped the Church.

Book preview

LOVING GOD AND NEIGHBOR

WITH

SAMUEL PEARCE

MICHAEL A. G. HAYKIN

&

JERRY SLATE, JR.

Loving God and Neighbor with Samuel Pearce

Lived Theology

Copyright 2019 Michael A. G. Haykin and Jerry Slate, Jr.

Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225

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All rights reserved. You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at [e-mail].

The Scripture quotation marked (NLT) is from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (KJV) are from the King James Version. Public domain.

Print ISBN 9781683592693

Digital ISBN 9781683592709

Series Editor: Michael A. G. Haykin

Lexham Editorial: Todd Hains, Abigail Stocker, Danielle Thevenaz

Cover Design: Eleazar Ruiz, Micah Ellis

LIVED THEOLOGY

To my father, Simon Haykin:

thank you for being a man of principle, deep courage, and

true faith and for giving your children and their children a

tremendous heritage in England and Canada.

—Michael A. G. Haykin

I dedicate my portion of this work in loving memory of the

man whose name I am honored to share and who led me to

the saving knowledge of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ:

Jerry Carl Slate, Sr.

AUGUST 28, 1939–SEPTEMBER 10, 2018

"Well done, good and faithful servant.

Enter into the joy of your Lord."

—Jerry Carl Slate, Jr.

God is love. That makes me happy.

—Samuel Pearce

Contents

Series Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Introduction

Chapter 2

Life in a Dear Dying Redeemer

Chapter 3

A Zealous Lover of Christ

Chapter 4

Labors of Love

Chapter 5

My Lovely Sarah

Chapter 6

Meddle Not with Political Controversies

Chapter 7

Call Forth the Fruitfulness

Chapter 8

Salvation Entirely by Grace

Chapter 9

The Religion of the Heart

Chapter 10

I Ever Wish to Make My Savior’s Will My Own

Chapter 11

Surely Irish Zion Demands Our Prayers

Chapter 12

The Religion of the Cross

Appendix

William Jay’s Recollection of Samuel Pearce

Further Reading

Works Cited

Subject Index

Scripture Index

Timeline of Samuel Pearce’s Life

Series Preface

Men and women—not ideas—make history. Ideas have influence only if they grip the minds and energize the wills of flesh-and-blood individuals.

This is no less true in the history of Christianity than it is in other spheres of history. For example, the eventual success of Trinitarianism in the fourth century was not simply the triumph of an idea but of the biblical convictions and piety of believers like Hilary and Athanasius, Basil of Caesarea and Macarius-Symeon. Thirteen hundred years later, men and women like William Carey, William Ward, and Hannah Marshman were propelled onto the mission field of India—their grit and gumption founded on the conviction that the living, risen Lord has given his church an ongoing command: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age (Matt 28:19–20 ESV). These verses had an impact when they found a lodging-place in their hearts.

The Lived Theology series traces the way that biblical concepts and ideas are lived out in the lives of Christians, some well known, some relatively unknown (though we hope that more people will know their stories). These books tell the stories of these men and women and also describe the way in which ideas become clothed in concrete decisions and actions.

The goal for all of the books is the same: to remember what lived theology looks like. And in remembering this, we hope that these Christians’ responses to their historical contexts and cultures will be a source of wisdom for us today.

And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. (Hebrews 11:39–12:2 KJV)

Michael A. G. Haykin

Chair and Professor of Church History

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Acknowledgments

Books are usually not written without the help of others; this one is no exception.

Michael Haykin wishes to thank:

Susan J. Mills, the former Archivist of Regent’s Park College, the University of Oxford, for enormous help in working with the Pearce manuscripts, and Revd. Emma Walsh, the present librarian of Regent’s Park College; Dr. Grant Gordon, of Aurora, Ontario, for numerous kindnesses; Dr. Ruth E. Mayers Alcalay for research on Pearce and his family in archives in Plymouth and London; Ian Clary, my administrative assistant when I was Principal of Toronto Baptist Seminary and Bible College, and now a professor at Colorado Christian University; my maternal aunt Marie Eyre, for material relating to Birmingham, England; Martha Brown Shepherd, whose husband and children are direct descendants of Samuel and Sarah Pearce through their daughter Anna, for the loan of a book and information regarding the Pearce children; Linda Durkin, who was the Faculty Secretary at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for many years and who typed the sermons of Pearce; Dr. Peter Morden, the Senior Pastor/Team Leader of South Parade Baptist Church in Leeds, England, for reading through the manuscript; Dr. Jason Dees, one of my doctoral students at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary who wrote his thesis on Pearce; Dr. David Norman; and my doctoral student and research assistant Baiyu Andrew Song.

Jerry Slate, Jr., wishes to thank:

Pastor Kurt Smith of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Remlap, AL, who first admonished me to pursue a ministry of writing; the saints of Berean Baptist Church in Hiram, Georgia, who have encouraged and supported me in this endeavor; and my soul mate and best friend in the entire world: my wife Angela Slate. Her faith in Christ and her unswerving devotion to me are the wind beneath my wings, and she is the apple of my eye.

Dundas, Ontario, and Powder Springs, Georgia

March 19, 2018

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In the history of God’s people, there have been a number of individuals who seem to have packed decades of spiritual maturity into a few short years of life. There is a spiritual intensity about such men and women that make them utterly unforgettable to their contemporaries. Such, for example, were David Brainerd (1718–1747), Ann Griffiths (1776–1805), Robert Murray McCheyne (1813–1843), and Jim Elliot (1927–1956); and such was the subject of this biography, Samuel Pearce (1766–1799). The name of Samuel Pearce rarely appears in histories of Christian spirituality, though it most definitely should. His life and thought represent the best of late eighteenth-century Baptist piety. His memoirs, drawn up in 1800 by Andrew Fuller (1754–1815), one of his closest friends, went through a significant number of printings and editions on both sides of the Atlantic in the course of the nineteenth century. Fuller especially focused on Pearce’s piety and concluded that the governing principle in Mr. Pearce, beyond all doubt, was holy love. In fact, for some decades after his death it was not uncommon to hear him referred to as the seraphic Pearce.

William Jay (1769–1853), who exercised an influential ministry in Bath for the first half of the nineteenth century, has this amazing remark about Pearce’s preaching: When I have endeavoured to form an image of our Lord as a preacher, Pearce has oftener presented himself to my mind than any other I have been acquainted with. He had, Jay went on, a mildness and tenderness in his style of preaching, and a peculiar unction. When Jay wrote these words it was many years after Pearce’s death, but still, he said, he could see his appearance in his mind’s eye and feel the impression that he made upon his hearers as he preached. Ever one to appreciate the importance of having spiritual individuals as one’s friends, Jay has this comment about the last time that he saw Pearce alive: What a savor does communion with such a man leave upon the spirit.¹ This biography is written on the assumption that if Pearce’s life could be a blessing to Jay as he recalled aspects of that life, such a blessing is equally available to modern readers of Pearce even though they have not had Jay’s privilege in knowing Pearce when he walked this earth. Pearce’s life, shaped as it was by holy love, has much to teach modern-day believers in our world today.

This book is a joint effort between a historian and a pastor. Pearce was first and foremost in his service to Christ a pastor, and it is vital that a pastoral element inform any account of his life. But his day is not our day: things have changed. The past is a foreign country—they do things differently there, and Pearce’s life needs to be recalled accurately in its historical context. Professor Michael Haykin had been gathering material for a biography of Pearce for over twenty years when Pastor Slate contacted him in April of 2012 about a biography he was contemplating on Pearce. From this initial contact came this volume. The reader needs to know that this is not what is called a definitive life of Pearce; there is more that could be said. But the authors deem his life so important for the modern day, filled as it was with holy love, that they felt it needful to get this small study into print.

Chapters 1 through 3, written by Michael Haykin, cover Pearce’s life from his first breath in his native Devon to the pastorate of Cannon Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, England. The remaining chapters cover key elements or themes in his ten-year ministry at Cannon Street, his sole pastorate: his marriage to Sarah Hopkins (chapter 4); his political views (chapter 5); his perspectives on pastoral ministry (chapter 6) and on theology (chapters 7–8); and his passion for missions, illustrated in his desire to go to India as a missionary (chapter 9) and in his preaching trip to Ireland (chapter 10). Of these chapters, Jerry Slate, Jr., wrote the bulk of chapters 5 and 9; Michael wrote chapters 4 and 10; and chapters 6 through 8 were a joint effort. The final chapter, chapter 11, deals with the last three years of Pearce’s life and was mostly written by Jerry.

When Pearce was called to the pastorate at Cannon Street, he asked for an annual vacation leave of six weeks, so that he might visit his father (his mother had died when he was very young) in Plymouth. It is appropriate that both authors have dedicated this book to their respective fathers.

CHAPTER 2

Life in a Dear Dying Redeemer

Like the Carthaginians in the ancient world and the Venetians in the Renaissance, the English created a society based on their dominance of the watery part of the world, as Herman Melville once described the earth’s oceans. Beginning with Elizabethan naval warriors like Francis Drake (c. 1540–1596)—a deeply committed Protestant—by the eighteenth century the English had become a world power primarily through their control of the seas. And central to this rule were ports like Plymouth in Devon.

The rise of Plymouth, the birthplace of Samuel Pearce, to a position of national prominence paralleled England’s emergence as an imperial maritime power. Occupying a strategic position at the western end of the English Channel and possessing one of the world’s largest natural harbors, Plymouth became a strategic port