22
April 1688 A.D. Reformed
Confessionalist, Pastor, and first President of College of New Jersey (later
Princeton), Mr. (Rev.) Jonathan Dickinson, Born. A Respected Friend of Episcopal Clergyman,
Elizabethtown, NJ ßAmazing
collegialty. The Episcopal Churchman was using the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.
The
PCA historians tell it at: http://www.thisday.pcahistory.org/2014/04/april-22-2/
April 22: Rev. Jonathan Dickinson
22 April, 2014
God Prepares a Man for the
Times
Jonathan Dickinson shares a lot of credit in the shaping
of the early Presbyterian Church in the American colonies. Born on April 22, 1688 in
Hatfield, Massachusetts, he graduated from Yale in 1706. Two years later,
he was installed as the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of
Elizabethtown, New Jersey, where he remained for the next forty years.
In 1722, with respect to the issue of creedal
subscription, a schism began to develop in the infant Presbyterian
church. The question was simple. Should a church officer — elder or
deacon — be required to subscribe to everything in the Westminster Standards,
or would it be sufficient for that officer to simply subscribe to the more
basic truths of historic Christianity, as expressed, for instance, in the
Nicene Creed? Dickinson took the latter position and became the chief proponent
of it in the infant church. The fact that the same issue was raging in the
mother countries among the immigrants from England, Scotland, and Ireland only
heightened the controversy in the colonies. Eventually, the approaching storm
of schism was stopped by the Adopting
Act of 1729. Written by Jonathan Dickinson, it solidly placed the
church as believing in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the only
infallible rule of faith and life, while receiving an adoption the Confessional
standards of the Westminster Assembly as subordinate standards of the church.
Each court of the latter, whether Session, Presbytery, Synod, and General
Assembly would decide what exceptions to the latter would be allowed, and which
exceptions would not be tolerated to the Westminster Standards.
In addition to his pastoral leadership in the church
courts, the fourth college to be established in the colonies was the College of
New Jersey in October of 1742. It began in the manse of the first president,
namely, Jonathan Dickinson. The handful of students in what later on become
Princeton Theological Seminary and Princeton University studied books which
were a part of Dickinson’s pastoral library, and ate their meals with his
family. He would pass on to glory four months after the beginning of this school.
President Dickinson died on October 7th, 1747, of a
pleuratic attack, at the age of 60. The Rev. Mr. Pierson, of Woodbridge,
preached at his funeral. Dr. Johnes, of Morristown, New Jersey, who was with
him in his last sickness, asked him just before his death concerning his
prospects. He replied, “Many days have passed between God and my soul, in which
I have solemnly dedicated myself to Him, and I trust, what I have committed
unto him, he is able to keep until that day.” These were his last words. It is
said that when tidings of Mr. Dickinson’s disease came to Mr. Vaughn, the
Episcopal minister of Elizabethtown, who was then lying upon his own death-bed,
that he exclaimed, “Oh, that I had hold of the skirts of brother Jonathan!”
They entered upon their ministry in the town about the same time, and in their
death they were not divided.
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