Samuel Whiting
Samuel Whiting was a significant figure in the early New England Puritan community, born in Boston, Lincolnshire, England, to a prominent civic family. He pursued an education at Emanuel College, Cambridge, earning degrees in arts, before experiencing personal loss with the death of his first wife. Whiting's second marriage to Elizabeth St. John connected him to influential political figures, including a member of Parliament and a chief justice. After facing challenges related to his nonconformist views in England, he emigrated to New England in 1636, where he settled in Lynn, a town renamed from its Native American designation. Throughout his forty-plus years in Lynn, he became an accomplished scholar and was involved with Harvard College, serving as overseer and delivering significant sermons. Whiting's writings reflected his deep commitment to Puritan ideals and the authority of the church, even as he grappled with the encroaching influence of civil courts on religious matters. His notable works included "A Discourse of the Last Judgment" and "Abraham's Humble Intercession for Sodom," emphasizing prayer and moral discipline in his community.
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Samuel Whiting
Writer
- Born: November 20, 1597
- Birthplace: Boston, Lincolnshire, England
- Died: December 11, 1679
Biography
Samuel Whiting was born in Boston, Lincolnshire, England, the town after which Boston, Massachusetts, was named. The son of John Whiting, a prominent civic leader who was mayor of Boston from 1600 to 1608, Samuel was also related to the noted preacher John Cotton. Samuel attended Emanuel College, Cambridge University’s most conservative college. He received a bachelor of arts degree in 1616 and a master of arts degree in 1620.
Whiting’s first wife died, leaving him with a daughter, Dorothy. In 1629, he married Elizabeth St. John, who bore him a son, Samuel. Elizabeth belonged to a distinguished family. Her father was a member of Parliament; Oliver Cromwell appointed her brother, Oliver, chief justice of England.
Whiting suffered denunciation during his first ministry in Lynn Regis because of his nonconformity. Following his marriage to Elizabeth, he moved to a parish in Skirbeck, where he was again badgered for his views. In 1636, despairing of finding a compatible pastorate in England, he followed the lead of his relative, the Reverend John Cotton, who had earlier fled to the New World in disguise.
The Whitings landed in New England in the year that Harvard College was founded. They settled in Saugus. Soon the town’s Native American name was changed to Lynn in honor of Whiting’s first pastorate in England. Whiting, having found compatible surroundings, remained in Lynn for over forty years. An accomplished Hebrew scholar with a comprehensive knowledge as well of classical languages and literatures, Whiting was chosen to deliver the Latin oration at Harvard College in 1649, and in 1654 was made overseer of the college. He also delivered the artillery sermon in 1660.
Whiting was noted for his amiable smile, on which Cotton Mather commented in his Magnalia Christi Americana in 1702. Early in his residency in the New World, Whiting apparently distanced himself from the legal proceedings that led to the banishment of his former neighbor in England, John Wheelwright.
Nevertheless, by 1650, as many of the founders of the colony died, Whiting feared that the influence of the clergy in affairs of state was diminishing. In his “Concerning the Life of the Famous Mr. Cotton, Teacher to the Church of Christ in Boston, in New England,” which Whiting wrote in 1653, he held up John Cotton as an exemplar of the need for Puritan ideals. As civil courts began to intrude significantly into areas that once fell within the jurisdiction of the church, Whiting struggled to maintain the authority of religion in matters of discipline and morality. Although he was fighting a losing battle, Whiting continued to write and did so with little vindictiveness.
His A Discourse of the Last Judgment, an outline of his sermon notes over the years, was so successful in 1664 that he followed it in 1666 with Abraham’s Humble Intercession for Sodom, in which he urges people to commune with God through prayer and promises that God will destroy the wicked.