Pe(a)cock, Reginald (^orKEYXALD), a learned and worthy English prelate, was born in Wales about 1390, and was educated at Oxford, where he became fellow of Oriel College. He took holy orders, and, after filling minor appointments, became successively bishop of St. Asapli and Chichester, by the favor of Humphrey, the good duke of Gloucester. He labored most earnestly for the conversion of the Lollards, by the use of candid arguments; but his moderation turned the Romanists against him, and he was deposed for resisting the papal authority and denying transubstantiation, with other articles of the Roman Catholic faith. He was obliged to recant his notions, and his books were publicly burned; after which he was confined in Thorney Abbey, where he died in 1460. He was the author of a number of works, of which those not destroj-ed remain in MS., except his Treatise of Faith, which was published by Wharton in 1688 ; and Repressor of overmuch Blamiwj of the Cler- gy (1860), which may be compared to Locke's Reason- ableness of Christianity/. It is an appeal to reason, but is not open to the charge of Deism. His life was writ- ten by the Rev. John Lewis (1744), and it is a sequel to the life of Wickliffe. " It forms a fitting introduction to the history of the English Reformation." See Hard- wick, Church History of the Middle Ages, p. 395, 396; Farrar, Crit. Hist, of Free Thought, lect. iii ; Hallam, Lit. Hist, of Europe; Land. A then. 1860, i, 878; Hook, Eccles. Bioq. vol. viii, s. v. Pecock ; Lewis, Life of R. Peacoc/t (1744). (J. H.W\)
Peah. See Talmud.
Peal, James G., a minister of the Methodist Epis- copal Church. He was a native of England ; was con- verted while young; and enlisted as a soldier in May, 1805, and afterwards served in Spain, Portugal, and Ger- many. During nine years' service he preached much to the soldiers, and formed a considerable society. In 1815 the royal staff corps, to which he belonged, came to Halifax, and thence to Cotcau-du-Lac, Low^er Can- ada. Here he was discharged by the governor with honor, that he might enter the itinerant ministry, which he did in 1818, as a member of the Genesee Conference, and labored with much acceptability and usefulness un- til his death, Dec. 25, 1822. He was a faithful and de- voted man, and died from exposure undergone in the duties of his work. The most prominent traits of his
character were zeal, firmness, and perseverance in the discharge of his duties. See Minutes of Conferences. i, 405; Conable, Hist, of the Genesee Conference (N. Y. 1875, 8vo), p. 201, 202.
Pear, Prickly. See Thorx.
Pearce, Samuel, 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 ministrj' 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 au- thor of several hymns, of which those entitled Hymn in a Storm and In the Floods of Ti-ihdation 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 pub- lished 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, j-et the most unaffected modesty; faithfulness in bearing testimony against evil, with the tenderest compassion to the soul of the evil-doer; fortitude that woukl encounter any difficulty in the way of dutj', without anything boisterous, noisy, or overbearing; deep seriousness with habitual cheerfulness ; and a con- stant aim to promote the highest degree of piety in liimself and others, with a readiness to hope tlie best of the lowest." See, besides the Memoiis,' Allibone, Diet. ofBiit. and A mer. A uthors, s. v. ; Brown, Religious Cyclop, s. v. (J. II.W.)
Pearce, Zachary, D.D., an eminent British divine and scholar, and a prelate of the English Church, was born at London in 1690. He was the son of a distiller in Holborn, and went to Westminster Grammar School; thence he passed to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship. At Cambridge Pearce was best known as a polite classical scholar, and it was in 1716, before he took orders, that he published his edition of Cicero De Oratore. He inscribed it, at a friend's suggestion, to lord chief-justice Parker, afterwards earl of Macclesfield, though he was not known to him, and this circumstance led to a friendship and patronage w'hich were of the greatest use to him. The lord chief- justice, being made lord chancellor soon after, took Mr. Pearce into his familj' as his domestic chaplain. Pre- ferment now opened up to him. He was presented to the living of Stapleford Abbots in Essex, St. Barthol- omew, near the Royal Exchange, and finally of St. Mar- tin's-in-the-Fields, London. The last appointment was in 1723. He was made dean of Winchester in 1739, in 1748 bishop of Bangor, and in 1756 bishop of Rochester, with the deanery of Westminster annexed. Bishop Pearce, though well fitted for the episcopal dignity, was a man of great modest}' and humility, and as anx- ious to avoid preferments, and to resign them when forced upon him, as most men were to gain and hold them. His anxiety to retire from the high station to which he was thus involuntarily raised was so sincere, as well as strong, that at length, in 1768, the govern- ment yielded to his repeated request, and allowed him to resign the more valuable appointment, his deanery, in favor of Dr. Thomas; Pearce retaining, however, the bishopric, to the retiring from which there existed some objections of an ecclesiastical nature. He died at Little Eating Jan. 29, 1774. Bishop Pearce was as distin- guished for his charity and munificence as for his learn-