The chapel was then closed; one part of the flock settled at Needham Market, the other at Stowmarket,—these churches still existing. In Combs began the romantic period of his life. He became interested in Deborah Denny, a child of twelve when he came to the village, who grew up under his ministrations. Her family for centuries was famed for its piety and was thoroughly devoted to the interests of the church. Her training had been as strict in religious matters as Mr. Prince’s. In her eighteenth year Deborah sailed for America, with her brother Samuel, to join another brother, who had settled here previously. Mr. Prince took passage on the same vessel, and two years later they were married at the house of her brother, Daniel Denny, at Leicester, by Rev. Joseph Sewall, Mr. Prince being ten years older than his bride. He had been urged to continue his residence abroad; but his longings for home were too powerful for their inducements, and later in life he was known to have regretted spending so many years away from what he then had learned to consider his true sphere of usefulness.
He landed in Boston on a July Sunday, 1717. He notes it thus in his journal: “The captain sent his pinnace to carry me up. I landed at Long Wharf about three quarters of an hour before the meeting began, and by that means escaped the crowds of people, five hundred it was said, who came down on the wharf at noon, inquiring for me. But now, the streets being clear, I silently went up to the Old South Meeting House, where no one knew me but Mr. Sewall, in the pulpit.” The churches of Hingham, Bristol, and the Old South gave him urgent calls to become their pastor. His choice fell upon the Old South, whose pastor, Mr. Sewall, was a cherished friend and classmate.
Mrs. Grace Denny, Mrs. Prince’s mother, in her letters to “daughter Prince,” regretted that she was to be subject to the temptations of a city life, fearing it would be a snare and hindrance to her growth in grace, and advocated the choice of Hingham as a residence. In 1719 Boston was a goodly town of only twelve thousand inhabitants, governed with strict Puritan laws, some of which were even oppressive, giving small opportunity to indulge in the frivolities of life, even if one desired, and least of all to a pastoress of the Old South Church.
The church in which Mr. Prince was ordained by Increase and Cotton Mather, and Mr. Sewall, and where he delivered his own ordination sermon to admiring crowds, was not the historical structure of the present day, although it occupied the same site. The street in front was lined with beautiful mulberry trees, and bore the name of ‘Marlboro’, from the great Duke and General. The parsonage was next door north, and opposite, on Milk street, was the home of Josiah Franklin, where Benjamin was born. There were handsome residences in the vicinity, and the streets even then were paved with cobble-stones.
Rev. Mr. Wisner, on the one-hundredth anniversary of the erection of the present Old South, gave a pleasing account of the lives and work of Joseph Sewall and Thomas Prince. He said, “Forty years these excellent men associated and labored for this congregation, in firm friendship, in perfect unity, which few can emulate. Their journals show never a shadow of difference. They had remarkable tempers. Mr. Sewall notes in his journal that he and Mr. Prince always prayed together before their different church services, and occasionally spent portions of a day mutually devoted to private humiliation in united prayer.”
The present meeting-house was erected in 1729. A day was set apart “to humble themselves before God, for all their unfruitfulness under the means of grace enjoyed in the old meeting-house, and to bless the building of another one.”
Mr. Sewall prayed with the workmen before they began to take down the house. It is curious to note the remarkable faith in direct answer to prayer in those days. President Dwight lays emphasis upon the fact, and gives the following instance in the life of Mr. Prince as evidence: “It was the destruction of the French fleet, under Duke D’Anville, in 1746. Forty ships of war, destined for the destruction of New England, were fitted out at Brest for the purpose. Our pious fathers, apprised of the danger, called a meeting for fasting and prayer. While Mr. Prince was officiating and praying most devoutly to God to avert the calamity, a sudden gust of wind arose (the day had been perfectly calm and clear), so violent as to cause a loud clattering of the windows. The reverend pastor paused in his prayer, and, looking around upon the congregation with a countenance of hope, he again commenced, and with great devotional ardor supplicated the Almighty to cause that wind to frustrate the object of our enemies, and save the country from conquest and popery. A tempest ensued, in which a greater part of the French fleet was wrecked on the coast of Nova Scotia. The Duke D’Anville committed suicide. Many died with disease, and thousands were consigned to a watery grave. The small number who survived returned to France, broken in health and spirits,—the enterprise was abandoned, and never renewed.” Many who were present have left accounts of Mr. Prince’s earnestness on this occasion.
Probably no two men could be more devoted to the religious interests of their church and the community at large than these, yet Mr. Prince records, eighteen years after the beginning of his pastorate, that the ministers of Boston made an extraordinary effort to arrest the decay of godliness, but with no abiding results, and this was particularly noticeable in his own congregation. There seemed to be no change in this respect until the coming of Whitfield, in 1740, when he preached “to breathless thousands in the old South Church.” Mr. Prince welcomed this apostle with enthusiasm. His own sermons were full of vigor, and a brilliant imagination embellished them with abundant illustrations, but depth of thought and zealous research made the majority of his writings far above the comprehension of the multitude. His printed funeral sermons are quaint in their deep, black borders, with drawings of death’s heads similar to those that adorned the tombstones. His sermon after the death of George I. may have embodied the feeling prevalent at that time; but, in view of the more critical light thrown upon the character and reigns of the Georges by historians and satirists of our day, this eulogy is a curiosity, with its almost childish enthusiasm and simple-hearted loyalty. The following are passages from his sermon:—
For my part, I shall never forget the joy that swelled my heart when in the Splendid Procession, at his Coronation, preceded by all the nobles of the kingdom and his son and heir-apparent, one other hope, with their Ermine Robes and Coronets, that Royal face at length appeared, which Heaven had in that moment sent to save these Great Nations from the Brink of Ruin. Nor do I speak of it as my case alone, but as what appeared to be the equal transport of the multitudes around me. The tears of joy seemed to rise and swell in every eye, and we were hardly able to give a shout thro’ the laboring passions that were swelling in us. He was in some respects a Father to the Kings of the earth, or at least a powerful and decisive mediator and umpire among them. The eyes of the greatest princes were turned to him. In these distant parts of his Dominion we have felt the happy influences of his happy reign. He was the darling and protection of his people, the great support of the reformed interest and the arbiter of Europe. George II. is a Prince of winning countenance and manly aspect, had considerable treasure of useful learning, and with him a most amiable Princess, the reigning glory of her sex for beauty, knowledge, wit, discretion, the sweetest temper, the most cheerful, affable and engaging countenance and carriage, with every charming virtue; in the bloom of her youth preferred her chaste religion to all the glories of the Imperial family, and became the love and admiration of every protestant.
President Cheney says of Mr. Prince “he may be justly characterized as one of our great men;” but he deplored that he sometimes devoted so much attention to minute and trifling circumstances of things, and gave too great credit to surprising stories. This, no doubt, may at times have been unnecessary, and would certainly be a failing at the present time, when writing on all subjects is so universal; but in Mr. Prince’s case it took the form of an advantage to posterity, as this love of detail caused him to hand down to all generations the most life-like descriptions of daily life and conversation of his own and remote times. Although he saw a particular providence in every act, every word, every wind that blew, and every storm that arose, yet Mr. Sewall said of him, “that the great truths and doctrines of the Gospel were his chosen subjects. He spake as the oracles of God, as one that felt the Divine Excellence. Some of his discourses even have received impressions in England.”