Ebenezer Pemberton

1704-1777. American pastor. Born in Boston, son of a Congregational minister, he graduated from Harvard College (1721), and after serving as a chaplain was called to the pastorate of the Presbyterian Church in New York City (1727), having been ordained in Boston by a Congregationalist council. He formed close ties with J. Dickinson,* Aaron Burr, and John Pierson, all based in New Jersey. These four, of New England Puritan background, represented a powerful element in the formative stages of the Presbyterian Church: a group which resisted the doctrinal mentality of the Scotch-Irish and fought against slavish subscription even to the Westminster Confession.* Pemberton became a close friend of George Whitefield,* and with Dickinson was prominent in the founding of the College of New Jersey (1746). In 1754 he left the Presbyterian Church for a twenty-year ministry in the famous (Congregational) Old South Church, Boston.