Ecclesiastical History. 25 



countenance. Those who loved him held him in such affection and rev- 

 erence that they would not admit that Hazlitt's portrait was not a beauti- 

 ful picture. 



The Hon. Alden Bradford, in his Historical Sketch of Harvard Uni- 

 versity, published in the American Quarterly Register, in May, 1837, 

 states that he recollected seeing three venerable and learned men, — Dr. 

 Gay, Dr. Chauncy, and Dr. Appleton, — pass through the college yard 

 to the Library. " Dr. Gay and Dr. Chauncy were on a visit to Dr. Ap- 

 pleton, and they walked up to the chapel together, two being nearly ninety 

 years old, and the other, Dr. Chauncy, about eighty-three. It excited 

 great attention at the time." Great intimacy existed between these three 

 patriarchs during their long and useful lives. Chauncy and Gay died 

 in the same year. Appleton 's death took place about three years earlier. 

 At the ordination of Mr. (afterwards Dr.) Simeon Howard, as pastor of 

 the West Church, in Boston, Dr. Chauncy preached the Sermon, Dr. 

 Gay gave the Charge, and Dr. Appleton presented the Fellowship of the 

 Churches. They were often associated in similar services. 



The earliest sermon of Dr. Gay's which was printed was delivered at 

 the ordination of Rev. Joseph Green, at Barnstable, from Acts xiv. 15, — 

 " We are also men of like passions with you," — which was much ad- 

 mired for its wise lessons, seasonable admonitions, and moving exhorta- 

 tions. His classmate (Foxcroft) accompanied its publication with a 

 Prefatory Address "To the Reader," commending the sermon in the most 

 affectionate terms. Towards the close of this most impressive discourse, 

 we find the following passages in Dr. Gay's peculiar vein. Speaking of 

 the candidate for ordination, Joseph Green, he says : " We trust that he 

 will be a Joseph unto his Brethren, whom he is to feed with the Bread 

 of Life, and that God sendeth him here to preserve their Souls from 

 Perishing. The Lord make him a. fruitful Bough, even a fruitful Bough 

 by a well, grafted into the Tree of Life, and always Green, and flourish- 

 ing in the Courts of our God." 



Dr. Gay was remarkable in the selection and application of the texts of 

 his sermons. Having for a long time been unsuccessful in procuring a 

 well of water on his homestead, he introduced the subject into his prayers, 

 and also preached a sermon from Num. xxi. 17, "Then Israel sang 

 this song, Spring up, O well, sing ye unto it." In 1728 he delivered a 

 lecture in his own pulpit " to bring Lot's wife to remembrance," from the 

 text in Luke xvii. 32, " Remember Lot's wife," and entitled this very 

 able and interesting lecture, " A Pillar of Salt to Season a Corrupt Age." 

 The text of his sermon preached at the instalment of the Rev. Ezra Car- 

 penter, at Keene, in 1753, was from Zech. ii. 1, "I lift up mine eyes 

 again, and looked, and behold a man with a measuring line in his hand." 



Whatever may have been the theological views entertained by Dr. Gay 

 in the early part of his ministry, it is well understood that he sympathized 

 with the spirit of free inquiry, which gradually wrought a change in the 

 opinions of many eminent divines, commencing about the middle of the 

 last century. 



In his Convention Sermon of 1746, he attributes dissensions among the 

 clergy to " ministers so often choosing to insist upon the offensive pecu- 

 liarities of the party they had espoused, rather than upon the more mighty 

 things in which we are all agreed." 



He was opposed to creeds, or written Articles of Faith, proposed by 

 men. He thus expresses himself, in 1751, in his sermon at the ordina- 



