After repeated solicitations, long deliberation, and earnest prayer to God for direction, I came to the resolution to accept the invitation of my dear and most affectionate friends at Northampton on Saturday, December 6th, 1729, and certified the Church of that resolution by a letter that evening. I removed from Harborough and came to settle here on Wednesday, December 24th. On Thursday, March 19th, 1730, I was solemnly set apart to the pastoral office by prayer, and fasting, and imposition of hands. Mr. Goodrich began with prayer and reading Eph. iv.; Mr. Dawson prayed; then Mr. Watson preached from 1 Tim. iii. 1, "If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work." Mr. Norris then read the call of the Church, of which I declared my acceptance; he took my confessions of faith and ordination vows, and then proceeded to set me apart by prayer. Immediately afterwards, Mr. Clarke, of St. Alban's, gave the charge to me; and Mr. Saunders, of Kettering, the exhortation to the people; and Mr. Mattock concluded the whole solemnity by prayer. It was a delightful, and I hope it will prove a very profitable, day. I write this memoranda of it under the remembrance of a painful and threatening illness, which detained me from my public work the two ensuing Sabbaths. The event is still dubious; but I leave my life and my dear flock in the hand of the great Shepherd, hoping what passed on my ordination-day will be an engagement to me to live more usefully, or an encouragement to die more cheerfully, than I should otherwise have done. Amen. I administered the Lord's Supper, for the first time, on Lord's-day, April 12th, 1730. I hope we had much of the presence of God with us, and may regard it as a token for good. On the 4th of February it pleased God to add to us eight persons, in whose character and experience we find great reason to be fully satisfied. The number of names entered in the Church-book, as we consider by the hand of Doddridge, is 342. After about ten years' labour as pastor, tutor, and author, finding the state of the Church not to his satisfaction, and feeling that he could not attend to it as it appeared to him to require, he endeavoured to engage the Church to choose some assistants to him in his work among the people, under the name of elders. They acceded to the request of their pastor, and unanimously made choice of the Rev. Job Orton, Rev. John Evans, as also of Mr. John Brown, to assist the pastor in his care of the society; and also desired Mr. Samuel Heyworth, by divine providence resident among them, though a member of the Church at Rowell, to assist, by his counsels and labours, in the same office. They were solemnly recommended to God by prayer at a Church-meeting, February 26, 1740, having then signified their acceptance of the call.