Note 172 — Chapter VI

This advice is stated in the church book to have been given by “the reverend elders, met at Norwich.” Such meetings were occasionally held in the earliest times of the Congregational churches, in Norfolk and Suffolk. At a later period, stated meetings were held by the ministers of the Walpole, Wrentham, and Southwold churches, who were, by degrees, joined by others of their brethren. Dr. Doddridge, in 1741, dedicated a sermon (preached at Kettering) to the associated ministers of Norfolk and Suffolk, with expressions of great affection and respect. In 1761, these meetings, which, (as Mr. Harmer remarks,) “agreeably to the usual course of human affairs,” had been attended with diminished zeal, were revived on an extended scale, and continued to be held twice a year, for some years afterwards. Those who attended them, claimed no “authoritative power, but merely a reverential regard to counsels, given in the gentlest way.”—Harmer’s Misc. Works, pp. 197–200.