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Pearce, Samuel

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an English Baptist divine, was born at Plymouth July 20, 1766. In 1786 he became a student at Bristol College, and was there converted. He was called to the pastorate of Cannon Street Baptist Church, in Birmingham, in 1790, on recommendation of Robert Hall, who had been one of his tutors. He was one of the founders of the Baptist Missionary Society at Kettering in 1792, and shortly after offered himself as one of its missionaries to India. But as his ministry had been almost one continual revival of religion, and his counsel seemed necessary in the successful management of the society, he was dissuaded from going. He died of consumption Oct. 10,1799. Samuel Pearce was the author of several hymns, of which those entitled Hymn in a Storm and In the Floods of Tribulation have found their way into several collections. He also published, Corporation and Test Acts Exposed (1790, 8vo), and Sermons (Lond. 1791, 8vo). His memoirs were published by Andrew Fuller in 1800, and have passed through numerous editions in England and America. "There have been few men," says Fuller, "in whom has been united a greater portion of the contemplative and the active; holy zeal and genuine candor; spirituality and rationality; talents that attracted almost universal applause, yet the most unaffected modesty; faithfulness in bearing testimony against evil, with the tenderest compassion to the soul of the evil-doer; fortitude that would encounter any difficulty in the way of duty, without anything boisterous, noisy, or overbearing; deep seriousness with habitual cheerfulness; and a constant aim to promote the highest degree of piety in himself and others, with a readiness to hope the best of the lowest." See, besides the Memoirs, Allibone, Dict. of Brit. and Amer. Authors, s.v.; Brown, Religious Cyclop. s.v.