Note 391 — SECOND VISIT TO AMERICA. (continued 4)

The Rev. Nathaniel Appleton, D.D., who, after a faithful and successful ministry of sixty-six years, died in 1784, preached, on November 30, 1740, a sermon at Cambridge, from, "I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase." The sermon was published, and was stated to have been "occasioned by the late powerful and awakening preaching of the Rev. Mr. Whitefield."

Colonel Brattle, a representative of Cambridge in the general court, published two letters in the Boston Gazette, for April 20, and June 29, 1741; in which he vindicated the college at Cambridge against Whitefield's strictures upon it, but, at the same time, admitted that, "by the preaching of Whitefield and Tennent, the students in general had been deeply affected, and their enquiry now was, 'What shall we do to be saved?' These gentlemen," continues the colonel, "have planted, Mr. Appleton has watered; but, after all, it was God who gave the increase." Brattle adds, that "the overseers of the college thought it proper to set apart the forenoon of June 12, 1741, humbly to bless and praise the God of all grace for His abundant mercy to that Society."