[An Anglo-American Colonial Harvardian President Congregationalist Puritan Divine]

The Reverend Samuel Willard (1640–1707), born the thirty-first of January, 1640, at Concord in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was the sixth son of Major Simon Willard, a godly founder of that settlement, and Mary Sharpe, his pious consort, both of English extraction. Educated at Harvard College, where he attained his degree of Master of Arts in the year of our Lord 1659, Willard was from his youth inclined to the study of Divinity, esteeming the knowledge of Christ and the service of His Church above all earthly honors. Ordained to the sacred ministry at Groton in 1664, he did faithfully labor among that frontier people until, in God’s providence, the devastations of King Philip’s War compelled his removal. Thereafter, in 1678, he was called by the Third Church in Boston to be their teaching elder, where, upon the decease of Rev. Thomas Thacher, he became sole pastor and a light to many eminent families of the colony. In all things, Willard was a zealous defender of Reformed orthodoxy, steadfast in the covenantal theology of the Puritans, yet prudent and discerning, as notably manifested in his charitable skepticism during the lamentable witchcraft delusions of 1692. His labors extended to the academy, for from 1701 until his death in 1707, he served as acting President of Harvard College, laboring to preserve sound doctrine in the instruction of youth. His chief literary legacy, A Compleat Body of Divinity (1726), remains a monument of New England scholasticism, wherein the truths of Scripture are methodically set forth. Samuel Willard, thrice a husband and always a faithful shepherd, entered into his eternal rest in Cambridge, leaving a legacy of piety, prudence, and learned zeal for the cause of Christ in the wilderness.

The Reverend Samuel Willard (1640–1707), born the thirty-first of January, 1640, at Concord in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was the sixth son of Major Simon Willard, a godly founder of that settlement, and Mary Sharpe, his pious consort, both of English extraction. Educated at Harvard College, where he attained his degree of Master of Arts in the year of our Lord 1659, Willard was from his youth inclined to the study of Divinity, esteeming the knowledge of Christ and the service of His Church above all earthly honors. Ordained to the sacred ministry at Groton in 1664, he did faithfully labor among that frontier people until, in God’s providence, the devastations of King Philip’s War compelled his removal. Thereafter, in 1678, he was called by the Third Church in Boston to be their teaching elder, where, upon the decease of Rev. Thomas Thacher, he became sole pastor and a light to many eminent families of the colony. In all things, Willard was a zealous defender of Reformed orthodoxy, steadfast in the covenantal theology of the Puritans, yet prudent and discerning, as notably manifested in his charitable skepticism during the lamentable witchcraft delusions of 1692. His labors extended to the academy, for from 1701 until his death in 1707, he served as acting President of Harvard College, laboring to preserve sound doctrine in the instruction of youth. His chief literary legacy, A Compleat Body of Divinity (1726), remains a monument of New England scholasticism, wherein the truths of Scripture are methodically set forth. Samuel Willard, thrice a husband and always a faithful shepherd, entered into his eternal rest in Cambridge, leaving a legacy of piety, prudence, and learned zeal for the cause of Christ in the wilderness.

HIS WORKS:

Dogmatical Theologies:

*A Complete Body of Divinity in Two Hundred & Fifty Expository Lectures on the Assembly’s Shorter Catechism (*Boston in New-England: 1726)