Rees Harris

Rees Harris was a Arian preacher who came to Colchester in May 1783 to minister to the Independent chapel at Helen’s Lane, Colchester. He was ordained the following year.  He continued the practices of some of his predecessors, especially T. Stanton (minister from 1754-76) and William Waters (ordained by Kippis and Rees). According to a nineteenth-century history of the church (obviously written after the church had returned to orthodoxy), Harris continued the practices of his immediate predecessors who had “declared enmity to the doctrines of the Cross, kindled the flames of controversy, gave the people a relish for error, and planted the deadly Upas-tree of Socinianism on that spot which had seen the Holy and Divine Plant of Renown flourishing and affording both fruit and shade to weary and hungry souls.” The writer later adds that Harris “was a man of no religion, and therefore fell a prey to the temptations of sociality, and at his farewell adopted the following text as the ground of his discourse: ‘I was a reproach among all mine enemies, but especially among my neighbours, and a fear to mine acquaintance: they that did see me without fled from me’ (Psalm xxxi.2).” Rees was also listed as an agent for the Phoenix Fire Office in Colchester in the Universal British Directory for 1798, vol. 2, p. 521.  See “Brief Historical Sketch of the Church of Christ Meeting in Helen’s Lane, Colchester,” Transactions of the Congregational Historical Society 7 (1916-18), 254-61.