WILLARD, SAMUEL
(31 January 1640, Concord, MA-12 September 1707, Boston, MA). Education: B.A., Harvard College, 1659. Career: Minister, Groton, MA, 1663-76; minister, Old South Church, Boston, 1678- 1707; vice president, Harvard College, 1700--7; acting president, Harvard, 1701- 7.
Samuel Willard, one of the brightest clerics of his generation, began his ministry in the frontier town of Groton. When it was destroyed by Indians during King Philip's War, he retreated to Boston, where he became pastor of Old South Church. Willard was considered a moderate and a friend to the British government until 1686, when Sir Edmund Andros arrived as royally appointed leader of the newly formed Dominion of New England and commandeered Willard's meetinghouse for morning services of the Anglican Church.
Samuel Willard is best known to history for a book published almost twenty years after his death, and seldom read then or now. His Compleat Body of Divinity (1726) has been called "New England's summa." The book runs 914 folio pages and is the largest volume published during the colonial period. It grew out of monthly lectures on the Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism, which Willard delivered between 1678 and 1707.
It was natural that someone in New England's second generation would want to summarize the faith of the Puritan fathers, many of whom were alive during
Willard's early years. In many respects the Compleat Body of Divinity is a "conservative" work, upholding traditional Calvinistic ideas. It stresses that reason is important, but saving knowledge comes only through the Bible and personal regeneration. Salvation comes from grace, not from good works. Willard remarked, I know of nothing "which doth more threaten the understanding of true Christianity, and the bringing in of another Gospel, than the putting of Moral Virtues into legal dress, and without any more ado, to commend them to us as the graces of our Christian religion." And yet other elements of Willard's work reflect an eighteenth-century preoccupation with human felicity. Willard began with the premise that human beings naturally seek happiness, and argued that faith leads men and women to happiness or "blessedness," which in turn glorifies God. In this respect Willard seemed to look ahead to Jonathan Edwards*, whose idea of "holiness" also incorporated human happiness.
The Compleat Body is often regarded as having been still born. It did not excite the interest of a wide audience. But as a reference work, it was read by several generations of theology students in New England. And it endorsed ideas about grace and salvation that remained alive among Congregationalists long after its publication.
Bibliography
A: Brief Animadversions upon the New England Anabaptists (Boston, 1681); Covenant-Keeping, the Way to Blessedness (Boston, 1682); Mercy Magnified (Boston, 1684); A Brief Discourse on Justification (Boston, 1686); The Barren Figtree's Doom (Boston, 1691); The Character of a Good Ruler (Boston, 1694); The Truly Blessed Man (Boston, 17(0); A Brief Reply to George Keith (Boston, 1703); A Compleat Body of Divinity (Boston, 1726).
B: AAP I, 164-67; DAB 20, 237-38; DARB, 514-15; NCAB 6,413; SHG 2, 13-36; Seymour Van Dyken, Samuel Willard, 1640-1707: Preacher of Orthodoxy in an Era of Change (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1972); James W. Jones, "Samuel Willard," in The Shattered Synthesis (New Haven, 1973), 54-75; Ernest Lowrie, The Shape of the Puritan Mind (New Haven, 1974).
Samuel Willard, one of the brightest clerics of his generation, began his ministry in the frontier town of Groton. When it was destroyed by Indians during King Philip's War, he retreated to Boston, where he became pastor of Old South Church. Willard was considered a moderate and a friend to the British government until 1686, when Sir Edmund Andros arrived as royally appointed leader of the newly formed Dominion of New England and commandeered Willard's meetinghouse for morning services of the Anglican Church.
Samuel Willard is best known to history for a book published almost twenty years after his death, and seldom read then or now. His Compleat Body of Divinity (1726) has been called "New England's summa." The book runs 914 folio pages and is the largest volume published during the colonial period. It grew out of monthly lectures on the Westminster Assembly's Shorter Catechism, which Willard delivered between 1678 and 1707.
It was natural that someone in New England's second generation would want to summarize the faith of the Puritan fathers, many of whom were alive during
Willard's early years. In many respects the Compleat Body of Divinity is a "conservative" work, upholding traditional Calvinistic ideas. It stresses that reason is important, but saving knowledge comes only through the Bible and personal regeneration. Salvation comes from grace, not from good works. Willard remarked, I know of nothing "which doth more threaten the understanding of true Christianity, and the bringing in of another Gospel, than the putting of Moral Virtues into legal dress, and without any more ado, to commend them to us as the graces of our Christian religion." And yet other elements of Willard's work reflect an eighteenth-century preoccupation with human felicity. Willard began with the premise that human beings naturally seek happiness, and argued that faith leads men and women to happiness or "blessedness," which in turn glorifies God. In this respect Willard seemed to look ahead to Jonathan Edwards*, whose idea of "holiness" also incorporated human happiness.
The Compleat Body is often regarded as having been still born. It did not excite the interest of a wide audience. But as a reference work, it was read by several generations of theology students in New England. And it endorsed ideas about grace and salvation that remained alive among Congregationalists long after its publication.
Bibliography
A: Brief Animadversions upon the New England Anabaptists (Boston, 1681); Covenant-Keeping, the Way to Blessedness (Boston, 1682); Mercy Magnified (Boston, 1684); A Brief Discourse on Justification (Boston, 1686); The Barren Figtree's Doom (Boston, 1691); The Character of a Good Ruler (Boston, 1694); The Truly Blessed Man (Boston, 17(0); A Brief Reply to George Keith (Boston, 1703); A Compleat Body of Divinity (Boston, 1726).
B: AAP I, 164-67; DAB 20, 237-38; DARB, 514-15; NCAB 6,413; SHG 2, 13-36; Seymour Van Dyken, Samuel Willard, 1640-1707: Preacher of Orthodoxy in an Era of Change (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1972); James W. Jones, "Samuel Willard," in The Shattered Synthesis (New Haven, 1973), 54-75; Ernest Lowrie, The Shape of the Puritan Mind (New Haven, 1974).