CENTENNIAL HISTORY
lege, Cambridge, and studied theology with his father-in-law, Dr. Thomas Hooker, of Hartford. While he was a sound and judicious preacher, his ministry was to a generation that possessed far less of Christian zeal and deep religious principle than the generation then passing away, and therefore in spite of the pastor, there was a decline of spiritual life, brotherly love and public morals. He was the minister for about thirty-eight years. After an interregnum of about two years, the Rev. Samuel Andrew was called. He was an American, born in Cambridge, Mass., in 1656, the year the first Pastor, Peter Prudden, died. Mr. Andrew graduated at Harvard and was tutor there for several years. He became pastor at Milford, Nov. 18, 1685. His ministry was next to the longest the church has had, being for fifty-two years. He died, aged eighty-two years, Jan. 24, 1738. It was during his ministry in 1727 that a new meeting house, the famous three-decker, was built. Mr. Andrew was one of the three men who were most active in the measures taken to found Yale College, and was one of the ten men "agreed upon by general consent to be trustees to found, erect and govern a college." He was twice chosen Rector pro tempore of the college, which office he held about thirteen years: For several years the senior class was under his instruction in Milford. "He was considered," says Prof. Kingsley, "one of the best scholars of his time, and one of the principal founders of the college, and deserves to be considered one of its greatest as well as earliest benefactors." This period in the mother church was at a time when to be decent and formal was to be religious. Ungodliness was flourishing in New England. Licentiousness and drunkenness were on the increase. The effort to stem the tide by beautiful ecclesiastical and theological system and appeal to state authority failed. It was during the last years of Mr. Andrew's ministry that Jonathan Edwards was lifting up his great cry of repentance. And the air was soon to be filled with the spiritual longing voiced in the words of old, "men and brethren, what must we do to he saved."