Thomas Shepard (5)

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However, Shepard had many other afflictions to keep him low. Within two weeks after the organization of the congregation, his God-fearing wife, Margaret, whose health had been gradually failing, passed away. It had been her great desire to see her husband in a place of safety among God’s people and to leave her child under the pure ordinances of the gospel. Her desire was granted. Having been received into the fellowship of the church, having given up her dear child in the ordinance of baptism, and having witnessed the hopeful beginning of the work for which she had sacrificed all the comforts of life, and even life itself, she was by grace enabled to say with Simeon of old, “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.”

In the introduction to his Autobiography, Shepard addresses his son as follows: “And now, after this had been done [his baptism], thy dear mother died in the Lord, departing out of this world to another, who did lose her life by being careful to preserve thine; for in the ship thou wert so feeble and froward both in the day and night, that hereby she lost her strength, and at last her life. She hath made also many a prayer and shed many a tear for thee; and this hath been oft her request, that if the Lord did not intend to glorify Himself, that He would cut thee off by death rather than to live to dishonor Him by sin. And therefore know it, that if thou shalt turn rebel against God, and forsake Him, nor believe in His Son, the Lord will make all these mercies woes; and all thy mother’s prayers, tears, and death to be a swiff witness against thee at the great day.”

Not long after the death of his wife, this child was afflicted with a serious disease which settled in his eyes and left him totally blind. Many remedies were tried, but to no avail, until finally one was found that, with the blessing of God, was effectual, and his sight was restored. Shepard regarded this almost miraculous cure as a gracious answer to his prayers.

These domestic afflictions were soon followed by trials of another sort. The church at Newtown had been organized but a short time, and had but just begun to enjoy the liberty and the rest for which so many sacrifices had been made, when the peace of all the churches in the colony was violently disturbed by the opinions and practices of the Antinomians, which were first promulgated in this part of the world by a Mrs. Hutchinson. This woman, a member of John Cotton’s congregation in Boston, began to hold women’s society meetings in which she would expound on Cotton’s sermons, but she soon began to poison the minds of these women with Antinomianism, claiming that this doctrine was supported by their minister. This doctrine, which appealed to the fleshly lusts of many, soon spread throughout the whole colony. It was denied by Cotton and preached and written against by Shepard, who was instrumental in driving out those pernicious doctrines from New England. Mrs. Hutchinson ultimately was deported to England for her heresy.

One of the means by which Shepard destroyed the influence of the heretics in his own congregation was the delivery of his series of sermons upon The Parable of the Ten Virgins, which, after his death, were published by his son Thomas, assisted by his successor, Jonathan Mitchell. They were commenced in 1636, when the leaven of Antinomianism was most powerfully at work among the people, and finished in 1640. These sermons are considered the most valuable of his works and are eminently adapted to expose all false religion, while real Christians will find in them abundant instruction. In the celebrated Treatise on Religious Affections, Jonathan Edwards makes a freer use of this book than of any other. His whole work is pervaded by its spirit, and he acknowledges by nearly a hundred quotations his obligations to Shepard for some of his profoundest thoughts.

About a year and a half after the death of his first wife, Shepard married Joanna Hooker, the eldest daughter of Thomas Hooker. During the nine years which elapsed between Shepard’s second marriage and the death of his excellent wife, three children were born to him. The first, a boy, died “before he saw the sun, even in the very birth”; the second, named Samuel, was born in 1641; and the third was also a son, who after a brief and sickly life, died at the age of four months. Samuel, the second son, graduated from Harvard in 1658, was ordained a minister in 1662, and died in 1668 at the early age of twenty-seven. In 1646 the Lord gave them another son but took away his “most dear, precious, meek, and loving wife, in child-bed, after three weeks lying in,” leaving him again desolate in his trials.

Thomas Shepard did not confine his care and labors to the churches. Among the institutions which he regarded as of great importance was the establishment of a college in the Massachusetts colony. He saw the lack of such a school, where young men could be trained for the learned professions, and especially for the Christian ministry, to be a great detriment to the future welfare of both the churches and the colony. Largely under the influence of Shepard, Harvard College was instituted in 1636 in the town of Newtown, now known as Cambridge.

The labors and influences of Thomas Shepard, and of those other ministers with whom he was associated, were directed chiefly to the accomplishment of their first great undertaking, which was to found a truly Christian commonwealth in New England, where they and their posterity might enjoy civil and religious freedom. But they did not forget or neglect another important work, which was to preach the gospel to the Indians and to bring these poor outcasts to the knowledge of God. Though Shepard himself was not active in preaching to the Indians, not knowing their language, he strongly encouraged and took an active interest in the labors of John Eliot, the “apostle to the Indians,” as he is called.

In 1647 Thomas Shepard married his third wife, Margaret Boradel, by whom he had one son, Jeremiah, born in 1648. After Shepard’s death, Margaret became the wife of Jonathan Mitchell, his successor in the church at Cambridge.

Thomas Shepard’s work was now almost finished, and his useful life was rapidly drawing to a close. His health had at no period of his life been very vigorous, and he was liable to frequent attacks of illness. He was, as one of his biographers writes, “a poor, weak, pale-complexioned man, whose physical powers were feeble, but spent to the full”; and he says of himself that he was “very weak, and unfit to be tossed up and down and to bear persecution.” In August of 1649, upon his return from a meeting of ministers at Rowley, he took a severe cold, which terminated in quinsy accompanied by fever, and in a few days “stopped a silver trumpet from whence the people of God had often heard the joyful sound of the gospel.” He died, August 25, 1649, in the forty-fourth year of his age, universally lamented by the whole colony, in whose service he had exhausted all his powers.

The words of the dying are generally regarded as deeply significant; and the last expressions of a soul on the verge of heaven are treasured up and repeated by the living as revelations from the inner sanctuary of truth. The nature of the disease of which Thomas Shepard died perhaps prevented him from speaking much upon his deathbed; and many things which he may have said have not, probably, been recorded. A few precious things, however, have been preserved and, coming across the gulf of almost three hundred and fifty years, sound like a voice from heaven. “Love the Lord Jesus Christ very much,” said he to those who stood by his bedside watching his ebbing breath; “that little part which I have in Him is no small comfort to me now.” To several young ministers who visited him just before his decease he said, “Your work is great, and calls for great seriousness. As to myself, I can say three things: that the study of every sermon cost me tears; that before I preached a sermon, I got good by it myself; and that I always went up into the pulpit as if I were to give up my account to my Master.”

Only a few moments before Shepard died, with perfectly clear memory and understanding, he dictated his last will and testament to two of his friends. He was buried at Cambridge amidst the regrets and the tears of a congregation and a college that owed, under God, their existence and prosperity to his devoted labors and sacrifices. Such have been the changes which time has produced, that no stone remains to mark the place of his burial.

Thomas Shepard had three sons who became ministers of the gospel: Thomas, pastor of the church in Charlestown, who died at the age of forty-three; Samuel, pastor of the church at Rowley, who died in the twenty-seventh year of his age; and Jeremiah, ordained at Lynn, who died at age seventy-two after a ministry of forty-one years.

It is interesting to note that Anna, the daughter of Thomas Shepard of Charlestown, was married to Daniel Quincy. They had one son, named John Quincy. Elizabeth, the daughter of John Quincy, married William Smith, the minister of Weymouth. Abigail, the daughter of William Smith, married John Adams, afterward the second president of the United States, and was the mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States. Thus two presidents were descendants of Thomas Shepard of Cambridge!

The material on the life of Thomas Shepard was drawn from the book entitledThe Life of Thomas Shepard,written by John Albro, D.D., a pastor in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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