Biography of SAMUEL JOHNSON
JOHNSON, Samuel, educator, born in Guilford, Connecticut, 14 October 1696;
died in Stratford, Connecticut, 6 January 1772. Samuel was graduated at Yale
in 1714, and in 1716, when the college was removed from Saybrook to New Haven,
he became one of its tutors. He resigned in 1719, having meanwhile studied
theology, and in March 1720, was ordained pastor of the Congregational Church
in West Haven. During his residence at New Haven several circumstances
occurred to give him a predilection for episcopacy, and he would have
preferred Episcopal to Congregational ordination, but deemed it prudent to
conform to the prevailing ecclesiastical usages of the country. In 1722 he
met Mr. Pigot, an Episcopalian clergyman, who was settled at Stratford, and
introduced him to his college friends. A series of meetings that followed
resulted in the conversion of President Timothy Cutler, Tutor Daniel Brown,
and himself to episcopacy, and he sailed with his friends for England, where
all three were ordained. On his return to Connecticut, Mr. Johnson was
assigned to the mission at Stratford. Soon after the arrival of Dean Berkeley
in this country, Mr. Johnson made his acquaintance, and began a
correspondence with him which continued throughout life. When Berkeley was
about to return to Europe, Mr. Johnson suggested to him the gifts to Yale
that he afterward made. Mr. Johnson had not been long settled at Stratford
when he felt called upon to engage with his pen in the defence of episcopacy.
In 1725 he was brought into a controversy with Reverend Jonathan Dickinson, of
Elizabethtown, New Jersey, and afterward with the Reverend Thomas Foxcroft, of
Boston. In 1732 a similar controversy began between him and Reverend John
Graham, of Woodbury, Connecticut, which did not end until 1736. During the
revival in connection with Whitefield's labors, he published a pamphlet for
the times, containing his views on the divine sovereignty (Boston, 1745),
which was replied to by Mr. Dickinson, and later, to counteract what he
deemed the dangerons views that were then spreading, he issued a work on moral
philosophy, entitled "A System of Morality" (1746). In 1744 his
congregation had so increased that it was considered necessary to find a new
place of worship. In 1752 Benjamin Franklin published in Philadelphia an
enlarged edition of Dr. Johnson's "System of Morality," under the
title of "Elementa Philosophica," for the use of the college that was
about to be established in that city, and the author was urged to become the
president of the institution, but declined. In the following year several
residents of New York, chiefly Episcopalians, invited him to remove to that
city preparatory to becoming president of a college (King's, afterward
Columbia), for which an act of assembly had been obtained. This invitation he
accepted, and began his labors on 17 July 1754, with a class of ten pupils, of
whom only seven were graduated. Under his rule the institution was guided
through its early troubles, subscriptions were obtained for its endowment, and
its policy and course of study regulated. He continued to hold office until
early in 1763, when he resigned on account of family troubles and his advanced
age. He then returned to Stratford to reside with his son, and the following
year was again appointed to the charge of his old parish, where he remained
until his death. Dr. Johnson received the degree of M.A. from both Oxford
and Cambridge in 1723, and that of D.D. from the former in 1743. His
published works, besides those already mentioned, include "A Letter from a
Minister of the Church of England to his Dissenting Parishioners" (New
York, 1733); "A Second Letter" (Boston, 1734); "A Third Letter"
(1737); "A Sermon Concerning the Obligations we are under to Love and
Delight in the Public Worship of God" (1746); "A Demonstration of the
Reasonableness, Usefulness, and Great Duty of Prayer" (New York, 1760);
"A Sermon on the Beauty of Holiness in the Worship of the Church of
England" (1761); and "An English and Hebrew Grammar" (London, 1767;
2d ed., 1771). See his "Life," by Reverend Dr. Thomas B. Chandler
(1805, London, 1824), and "Life and Correspondence," by Reverend E.
Edwards Beardsley, D.D. (New York, 1874).
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