In the year 1727, Mr. Saunders being in London, Doddridge supplied the pulpit at Kettering for a Sabbath, when he was minister of Kibworth. A letter Mr. Saunders wrote to Doddridge immediately after this will just serve to show that while Mr. Saunders was blessed with much comfort and usefulness, it was not every one of the members of his Church that had imbibed the spirit of their pastor.
To Mr. Doddridge.
June 1st, 1727.
My very dear and valuable Friend,—I am extremely obliged to you for your kind and consolatory epistle, and also for your kind services last Lord's-day; but am very sorry that my clerk should abscond. I suppose it was to give a specimen of his high orthodoxy, and for fear his tender conscience should be defiled with some of good old Mr. Baxter's divinity. Now this man, who is so much afraid for himself, has lately put a son apprentice in London, where he frequently hears swearing in the family, and is obliged to go to church, and has not liberty so much as to come and hear me now I am in town. But I always observed that the most highly orthodox, are remarkably defective in some branch or other of the Christian character. This is the man, too, who was so much offended because Mr. Brock was not excommunicated for going to church, who has now obliged his own child to attend it for seven years! I hope my very good friend Doddridge will take no notice of his conduct, nor in the least slight his friends at Kettering upon that account. There are not many such as he, though I cannot say but there is more than one; but were they generally of his mind, I would preach the Gospel to the wild Indians before I would serve them. You have a great many sincere friends in Kettering that love you well, and are always pleased with your good services; and I may without compliment say, when I am there, that you have one who esteems you according to your desert, and that, in my opinion, is beyond any man of your standing I ever knew.
After the death of Mr. Saunders the Church wished to have Mr. Wood, afterwards Dr. Wood, of Norwich, to be their pastor, but he declined acceding to their request. Mr. Benjamin Boyce, then a student at Northampton, under Dr. Doddridge, was invited on probation; and on May 7, 1740, he was ordained. Of the ordination service Mr. Boyce gives the following account:—
Mr. Julius Saunders, of Denton, introduced the solemnity with a very serious and suitable prayer; after which Mr. Floyd more fully engaged in prayer, with great copiousness of expression, and I hope with great fervency. Mr. Simson preached a very plain and evangelical sermon from 2 Cor. iv. 7—"We have this treasure in earthen vessels," &c. Mr. Goodrich read the invitation of the Church, to which the deacons present expressed their consent in the name of the Church by lifting up their hands, with which I declared my determination to comply. The same person received my confession of faith, which I publicly read; and after asking me several questions usual upon such an occasion, prayed over me. Dr. Doddridge gave me a very affectionate and important charge, which I desire never to forget; and to the people, a very free and affectionate exhortation. The whole solemnity was concluded by Mr. Dorsley in prayer.
Oh that God would make his strength perfect in my weakness, and his grace in my unworthiness! Oh that a double portion of his blessed Spirit may be poured upon me, who am so weak an instrument! and that such grace may be given me, who am less than the least of all saints, that I may "preach the unsearchable riches of Christ," and may be owned of him in my sincere desires and mean endeavours, if it is agreeable to the purpose of his grace, to fit and prepare many souls, that are either brought home or are yet strangers to him, by faith and holiness, for the complete enjoyment of "the inheritance of the saints in light." Thus may the Church of God be daily increased and edified, till all its pastors and all its members shall meet together to ascribe glory and grace to Him that sits on the throne and the Lamb for ever. Amen.
Mr. Boyce continued his ministry for 30 years over this people. During that period 161 members were added to the Church, and at his death the Church numbered 120 members. He died October 24th, 1770, aged 54 years. "Mr. Boyce was a native of Coventry, educated for the ministry at Northampton; in size rather under the middle stature. He was a close student, a practical and experimental preacher."
The Meeting House was new roofed soon after the commencement of his ministry, which indicates that it could not have been done well at the first, as it had only been built about 18 years. Several new pews were made over the stairs leading to the galleries, and where forms had before been set; which pews were immediately filled, and continued so, as did all the others, until his death. He was buried in the aisle before the pulpit, where his wife also, and mother, and two children were interred; and a handsome stone, with a suitable inscription, was placed in the front of the desk. "He lived much beloved, and died much lamented." Robert Hall observes, "that Mr. Boyce sustained the pastoral office for a long series of years with the highest reputation and success; and his death was deplored as an irreparable calamity, leaving it very improbable that a successor could be speedily found capable of uniting the suffrages of a people whose confidence and esteem he had so long exclusively enjoyed. Such is the imperfection of the present state, that the possession of a more than ordinary portion of felicity is the usual forerunner of a correspondent degree of privation and distress; and the removal of a pastor who has long been the object of veneration generally places a Church in a critical situation, exposed to feuds and dissensions arising out of the necessity of a new choice." This appeared in the case of Mr. Boyce's immediate successor.
Mr. Addington, of Harborough, delivered the funeral oration at the interment of Mr. Boyce, and Mr. Gregson, of Rowell, preached the funeral sermon, from 1 Thess. iv. 13, 14. In the closing part of that sermon we find the following statements in the account given of Mr. Boyce:—
It should be known that he feared the Lord, like good Obadiah, greatly, from his youth. He gave himself up to the Church of Christ under the pastoral care of Mr. Simpson, of Coventry, when he was 16 years of age. He acquired a rich stock of useful and valuable knowledge from those who were admirably capable of imparting from their rich treasures. Thus furnished, he began the sacred work of the ministry before he was 21 years of age, and has told you, in the last letter he will ever write, "It was the determination with which I preached my first sermon among you, to know nothing comparatively, but Jesus Christ, and him crucified; and I trust it has been my sincere concern to continue in that resolution to the last, testifying repentance towards God, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ." You are his witnesses, my dear brethren, how well, through divine grace, he abode by his determination, and you well know that the doctrines of the rich, free, and sovereign grace of God were his delight to study and to preach; and you must know how wisely and judiciously he stated them—with what caution, guarding against every extreme, and every abuse of those great and glorious truths. You cannot but know with what discreet zeal, with what plainness and fidelity, he published the grace of God in the ever-blessed and glorious Redeemer. Was not this the chief topic he delighted to insist upon? and particularly to show what holy, divine, and heavenly influence it ought to have upon the hearts and lives of men? and did he not do this in a very persuasive and pathetic manner? Did he not preach Christ Jesus the Lord, and constantly in his ministrations lay no other foundation than Christ Jesus, which God has laid in Zion, for your faith and hope to build and rest your eternal concerns upon? How has he declared in that very serious and affectionate epistle he sent you, "I know no other foundation that God has laid in Zion; and the more I survey the excellence of it, as given us in the Scriptures, the more I can say it is tried and precious. Nothing else will do to support the stress of our eternal hope, or indeed the pressure of painful afflictions. Blessed be God, here is support! here is consolation! it rejoices me to think that there are so many that can add the testimony of their experience to mine." The great God had blessed him with a happy temper and amiable carriage and behaviour. He knew how to weep with those that weep, and to rejoice with those that rejoice. He abhorred the mean conduct of too many in this degenerate world, the speaking evil of others; and was he not an example to believers in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity, and in prudence, for almost thirty-three years (which was almost double the number of the years of his predecessor), amongst you, the people of his charge? Oh how comfortable and delightful was the frame of his mind in this his last illness, which suddenly came on him, made rapid progress in extinguishing such a useful and precious light in this our Israel! On the last Saturday se'nnight, being the 20th of October, when he lay down upon his dying bed, he found great comfort from those words, in Romans viii., former part of the 34th verse: "Who is he that condemneth? it is Christ that died." He spake these words with tears of joy. His language was, "Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth I desire beside thee." When he was asked how he did by one of his friends, he answered, "I am well, for the consolations of God are neither few nor small; God has not left me, nor will he leave me." When I asked him how it was with him with respect to a better world, his answer was, with great pleasure in his countenance, "I can cheerfully trust my good God." He seemed always, during the intervals of his wanderings, to be praying, and before he died was very sensible; and, as far as can be learned, he spent his last breath in committing you, his dear people, to God in prayer (in which he had an excellent gift), and then sweetly fell asleep in Jesus, after having finished his appointed work and service.
Mrs. Boyce died little more than six months after the death of her husband, and that shortly after giving birth to an infant. From her funeral sermon, preserved in manuscript among the records of the Church, we present the following extract:—