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��NEW LONDON CENTENNIAL ADDRESS.
��and it is not strange that they should be anxious to obtain him for their min • ister here, and so we find him listening to their call, and willing in the end to cast in his lot with these old friends ; and after considering the subject fully he started with his family for New London, June 20, 1788, and arrived there July 1st, and he says in his diary, " went into a very poor house of Mr. James Brocklebank. The same night our youngest child (Manning) was tak- en sick."
He was, as you see, twelve days in moving from Attleborough to New London, a distance of 130 or 140 miles perhaps ; as long a time as would be necessary to go to San Francisco and back again. Time enough now to go to London or Paris.
His first work here was to found a church. This was done Oct. 23, 1.788. The churches from Sutton and Wendell being present, by their ministers and delegates, to counsel and assist. The church consisted at first of eleven members, and Mr. Seamans was in- stalled as pastor of the church and minister of the town, Jan. 21, 1789. Of the exercises at his installation, the gathering at the unfinished meeting- house, and the salary paid him by the town, we have already spoken ; also of the seasons of reformation in the church from time to time under his preach- ing. •
The church records also show a vast amount of labor done in the church. Those were the days for laying founda- tions, and Elder Seamans laid his foundations for church order and disci- pline deep, broad, and permanent. Were members guilty of any immo- rality, they were dealt with ? Did they absent themselves from the com- munion of the church, that was cause for labor? All members were re- quired to do their share, accord- ing to their means, for the support of the gospel. Many was the labor, frequent the letters of admonition, and not unfrequent the final letters of ex- pulsion sent to members of the church for the sole reason that they were un- willing to pay their due proportion,
��according to their ability, for ministerial support.
While all the poor were welcomed to the privileges of the gospel, with- out money and without price, yet it was held to be the duty of those church members who were known to be able, and could not deny the fact of their ability, to pay accordingly ; and if they would not, no amount of profession, no quantity of apparent sanctity and long-facedness was sufficient to screen the delinquent miser from merited expulsion.
The christians of those days evi- dently believed that no amount of grace was sufficient to save a man, un- less it was sufficient to sanctify his love of gain as well as his other affec- tions ; and that a man's conversion, in order to be genuine, must reach not only his head but also his heart, and not only his head and heart but also his pocket book. For the last years of his life he was not able to preach, ex- cept occasionally ; he did not preach much after the year 1824, though, so far as I can find, his pastoral relation to the church continued up to 1828, some forty years. That year Mr. Tracy was ordained as his successor in that office. Elder Seamans died Oct. 4, 1830, aged eighty-two years, four months and ten days, among the peo- ple with whom and for whom he had labored. He married for his second wife, Nov. 30, 1819, Mrs. Mary Everett, widow of Jonathan Everett, deceased.
Elder Seamans was a man of me- dium stature, light complexion, marked features, and in advanced life had a commanding and venerable appear- ance. It is said that he never wrote a sermon in his life. Yet he always preached his two sermons on Sunday,, and frequently a third, besides many on week days, and was always ac- ceptable and interesting, and an ear- nest preacher of the gospel of the Son of God. His long ministry in this town was no insignificant element in advancing the temporal and spir- itual welfare of the people and the church of New London.
Joseph Davis moved into town in
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