TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT

COMMITTEE ON

HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS

IV

Thomas Hooker

PUBLISHED FOR THE TERCENTENARY COMMISSION

1933

"Reprinted November, 1957"

TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT

COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS

Thomas Hooker

WARREN SEYMOUR ARCHIBALD HESE years are years of remembrance in New England. We are reminded by these anniversaries of those who, crossing the At- lantic in such little ships as the Arbella and Tthe Griffin, laid down the keels of these ships of state, these free and noble commonwealths in which we have found safety in storms and pure delight in peace. One of the most notable of those journeymen of God was our own great fellow citizen, Thomas Hooker, a statesman of the first rank and a powerful preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thomas Hooker was born in 1586, in the hamlet of Marfield, in the parish of Tilton, in the county of Leices- ter, England. That region is the midland of England, and there in those neighborhoods of Stratford, Bedford, and Huntingdon were born Shakespeare, Bunyan, and Crom- well. From the hilltops in that parish you could see in his day, and you can see today, one of the most beautiful landscapes in that English countryside. On one of those hilltops stands St. Peter's Parish Church; a stone, Gothic church built in the middle of the twelfth century. It was 1 four hundred years old when Thomas Hooker was bap- tized at its old font in 1586, and it is almost eight hun- dred years old today. The parish had few inhabitants in the middle of the sixteenth century, and it had few in- habitants in the middle of the nineteenth. In 1564, when Queen Elizabeth was on the throne, Marfield had six fam- ilies. In 1884, when Victoria was queen, Marfield had five families. Not much change in three hundred years! If Thomas Hooker, like the ghost in Hamlet, could re- visit "the glimpses of the moon," he would have seen, I imagine, in 1931 much that was familiar in 1631. There is the same countryside, there is St. Peter's Parish Church, just as it looked four hundred years ago; there without is the ancient churchyard; there within is the old octagonal font; there is the monument, which he had seen so often as a boy, to Jehan de Digbie, Christ's sol- dier in the Holy Land, his hand on his sword, and a lion at his feet. Yes, if Thomas Hooker returned to Marfield, in Old England, he would find few changes. But if he returned to Hartford, in New England, what a change he would behold from the frontier settlement he helped to found to the goodly city in which we live! He would ex- claim: What wonderful works of men and God have been wrought in this new world! From that little, quiet, hamlet of Marfield and its six families, and its leisurely path of one and a half miles across the fields to St. Peter's Church, Thomas Hooker was sent as a boy of thirteen or fourteen to the grammar school at Market Bosworth, a school established by the generous gift and endowment of Sir Wolstan Dixie in 1586. So the boy and the school had the same age. This was the school where Dr. Johnson, almost two hundred years later, was an "usher." Only twenty-five miles away from the school is Bosworth Field, where Richard III lost 2 his crown and his life. And while this boy Thomas Hooker was studying his Latin and Greek in Bosworth Gram- mar School, another boy from that same midland region was writing a play about that crook-backed king, and his crooked reign, and the battlefield of Bosworth; the play that makes history rise from the dead on Bosworth Field and live again in the living words of men. From that grammar school in Market Bosworth, Hooker went at the age of eighteen to Cambridge Univer- sity where he was first enrolled in Queens', and later in Em- manuel College—the college from which many of the first Congregational ministers graduated. Cambridge Univer- sity, and this college in particular, were then the intellec- tual nurseries for the Puritan Party in England. The spirit of the place was Puritan. Emmanuel was a new college in those days, and represented the new ideas. It had just been founded by a member of the Mildmay family, the same family which had lived for generations in Cheltenham, where, later, Thomas Hooker was to be the lecturer at St. Mary's. Queen Elizabeth had looked with some suspicion on this Puritan college founded by this Puritan family, and had said to Mildmay in her sharp, quick way: "Sir Walter, I hear you have erected a Puri- tan foundation in Cambridge." He replied like a good and acceptable man at court, that he had only planted an acorn, and he couldn't be sure what kind of fruit might grow from this planting. In this Puritan university, and in a period reverberant with great events, Thomas Hook- er received his higher education. Even to this day the college retains this simplicity. In 1930 I visited Thomas Hooker's college. I was fortunate in having one of the resident instructors for a guide. He took me all over the college from cellar to attic. The silver was being cleaned that day, and I was able to see all their 3 treasures, some pieces dating from those early days, though whether Hooker ever saw them or not I cannot be sure. The college has been changed, in one way and an- other, a great deal since Thomas Hooker's years of resi- dence. Much of it was rebuilt in the days of Sir Christo- pher Wren. But there is one old dormitory, and there are some old walls, and the cellars, and the kitchen, which probably Thomas Hooker would recognize as familiar. Here he took his B.A. degree in 1608, his M.A. in 1611, here he remained a student for seven years, and here he continued for three or seven years more. Those were great years in English history. Queen Elizabeth was leaving the stage on which she had played a great part in the grand style. King James, the son of the rival queen whom Queen Elizabeth had ordered beheaded, was now on the throne with his pernicious ideas of divine au- thority. The authorized version of the Bible was pub- lished in 1611, the year Hooker took his M.A. degree. In 1608, the year Hooker received his B.A. degree, Pastor John Robinson and the people of the Scrooby Church sought refuge in Holland. Those were the years which marked the beginning of the long and bitter war between the Stuart kings and parliament; the years which saw the efforts to marry Prince Charles to the Infanta of Spain; the years which witnessed the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh and the outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. These were the crucial episodes which concerned the minds and conversations of men between 1604 and 1630. No one then concerned with history could have attached much if any significance to a little group sailing in a ship called the Mayflower toward the new world in 1620. Yet how that event has grown into vast meanings and connections, and how many a crisis then considered by contemporaries as prodigious and portentous, has shrunk and faded away 4 into oblivion. It makes one wonder what unconsidered and perhaps unknown trifle of our day will occupy high and bold headlands of history, where the currents of the cen- turies sweep by, displacing forever in the minds of men those events which now occupy transient headlines of the press. In all those contemporary events we can surely be- lieve Thomas Hooker was interested. Others who shared with him attention to their present hour, were the men who were in Cambridge University at that time and who like him came to be great Puritan divines. Among these were Nathaniel Ward, graduated in 1603, later minister in Ipswich, Massachusetts, and author of the Simple Cob- bler of Agawam; William Ames, afterward associated with Hooker and the English exiles in Rotterdam; Peter Bulkeley, M.A. in 1605, and first minister in Concord, Massachusetts; John Cotton, M.A. in 1606, and minis- ter of the first church in Boston; Francis Higginson, M.A. in 1613, minister in Salem; John Wilson, afterward as- sociated for so long a time with John Cotton in Boston. All these men, afterward so prominent in the founding and development of New England, were Thomas Hook- er's contemporaries in Cambridge, and we can be sure they studied not only their books, but also those strange forces which were shaping the destiny of England. In the year 1620—that year which means so much in our New England history—Thomas Hooker left Cam- bridge University, and was made minister of a little country church in Esher, Surrey, about sixteen miles from Westminster. Sixteen miles from Westminster Bridge is no distance at all now in these days of automobiles; but it was something of a distance in 1620. Esher was then, and is now, a little village near the Thames. And the church was a little village church, not capable of seating at the 5 most, a hundred people. Here Hooker worked as minister for five years, and here he married his wife Susanna. In 1625 he was called to be the lecturer in St. Mary's Church, Chelmsford, Essex. Chelmsford is twenty-nine miles east of London, on the road from London to Har- wich, the port at which so many travellers from Holland debark. This was a change from the quiet little village of Esher. Chelmsford was then, and still is today, a busy town. St. Mary's Church is a very ancient and very noble building. It is built of flint, the stone employed so fre- quently in churches in that part of England. There is a Norman door in the great tower. In the arch over that door are to be found the Boar and Mullet of the De Vere family. King Henry VIII gave the patronage of the, church to Roger Mildmay, ancestor of Sir Walter who founded Emmanuel College. Twenty generations of that family sleep beneath its roof today. In this ancient church Thomas Hooker preached for almost four years. He made a deep impression. He was a real preacher. His congregation was composed of people who came from all directions in that neighborhood. Before he left England he preached a sermon entitled: "The Danger of Desertion, A Farewell Sermon." This was printed several years later in 1641, in London, Old Bailey, in Greene-Arbour, at the sign of the Angell. It will give you a good idea of the powerful preacher in St. Mary's, Chelmsford. He was preaching to Englishmen on the peril of England:

Plead with England, my Ministers, in the way of truth and say unto them, let them cast away tKeir rebellions lest I make her as I found her in captivity in the days of bondage. . . . England hath been a mirror of mercy, yet God may leave us and make us a mirror of his justice.

6 Go to Bohemia, from thence to the Palatinate, and so to Denmark. . . . You cannot go two or three steps but you shall see the heads of dead men, go a little further and you shall see their hearts picked out by the fowls of the air, whereupon you are ready to conclude that Tilly hath been there.

For this is our misery, if that we have quietnesse and com- modity we are well enough, thus we play mock-holy-day with God, the Gospell we make it our pack-horse; God is going, his glory is departing, England hath seen her best dayes, and now evill dayes are befalling us; God is packing up his Gospell, be- cause no body will buy his wares, nor come to his price. Oh lay hands on God! and let him not goe out of your coasts, he is a going, stop him, and let not thy God depart, lay siege against him with humble and hearty closing with him, suffer him not to say, as if that he were going, farewell, or fare ill, England, God hath said he will doe this, and because that he hath said it, therefore prepare to meet thy God, O England.

Our God is going, and do you sit still on your beds? Would you have and keep the Gospell with these lazy wishes? Arise! Arise! and down on your knees, and intreat God to leave his Gospell to your posterity.

This preaching abounds in short, quick sentences which must have shot like arrows to the mark. Now he speaks in irony of those who "give a bow with the knee and a stab with the heart." Now he asks in sternness: "What are we? I will tell you. We are a burthen to God." Now he proclaims the good news: "That man that will bid God welcome to his heart, may go singing to his grave." Now he preaches the evangel concerning the real Chris- tian: "Though he wear a ragged coat and be pinched with hunger, yet he wants God more than these." This was the kind of preaching which drew multitudes to St. Mary's. And this success brought down upon his 7 head the displeasure of Archbishop Laud who was "en- deavouring to suppress good preaching and advance Pop- ery." Complaints were sent to London by members of Laud's party. Efforts were made to check and block these perilous reports. A petition signed by fifty-one ministers in Essex County was sent to'Archbishop Laud saying: "We all esteem and know the said Thomas Hooker to be for doctrine orthodox, for life and conversation honest, and for his disposition, peaceable." In spite of this loyal support, the position grew too dangerous, and so it seemed wise to resign. This was probably in 1629. He re- tired to a village four miles away called Little Baddow and here he kept a school. His assistant was John Eliot, afterward the famous minister in Roxbury and still more famous missionary to the Indians, whose Indian Bible we may stop to note is the strange source of one notable word in our political vocabulary, "Mugwump". Even in this retirement in Little Baddow, Thomas Hooker was not safe. His enemies were powerful. They succeeded in hav- ing him cited to appear before the High Commission Court. Fortunately for him at that time he was sick and unable to appear. He was placed under bond for j£$o. As soon as he was well, he escaped to Holland. Friends paid the bond. The Earl of Warwick provided a place for his family. He was lucky to get away. One of the ministers who was caught was whipped, branded, his nostrils slit, and his ears cut. Holland was the sanctuary for many an Englishman in those days of persecution and martyrdom. Today we can still see the little brick houses where they lived, in the narrow streets and courts and alleys of Leyden, and Am- sterdam, and Delft. Here is the pulpit where their minis- ter preached. Here are the same canals they saw. Here, too, are the memorials of Holland's great fight with Spain 8 which stirred the Protestant heart of those exiles, as it moves the heart and mind of the visitor today. But though they were grateful for this sanctuary, and proud of the Protestant achievements of the Low Country, yet they were always mindful of the land whence they fled, wistful to return and eager to be again in England. And when this, by virtue of the persecution in their home- land, became manifestly impossible, then with determina- tion they sought another country in the wilderness of the new world. This was especially true of Thomas Hooker. Some of his congregation had already gone, in 1632. In 1633 he managed to pass from Holland to England with- out being seized by the officers of the king, and there he and John Cotton sailed in the Griffin for New England. They were eight weeks at sea. Hooker and his congrega- tion, "the Braintree Company (which had begun to sit down at Mt. Wollaston)" were assigned by the colony to what is now Cambridge, then called Newtown. It was a little village of one hundred families "having many hun- dred acres of ground paled in with one general fence which is about a mile and a half long which secures all the weaker cattle from the wild beasts." Their houses were gathered near the bank of the river, where the col- lege dormitories now stand. Some old eighteenth-century houses still remain in that neighborhood, and monu- ments and tablets commemorate historic places. The house where Thomas Hooker lived, stood in what is now the Harvard College Yard. A stone bearing an inscrip- tion, on the street side of Boylston Hall, marks the site of his parsonage. His church, the first Church of Christ in Newtown, met in the meetinghouse at the southwest corner of Mt. Auburn Street and Dunster Street. But they were not satisfied with this situation. Soon they desired a change. On October 11, 1633, three 9 hundred years ago, Thomas Hooker was settled as their pastor and teacher. In May, 1634, just eight months later, they "desired leave of the Court to look out either for enlargement or removal," stating in their petition that they suffered "straitness for want of land." In that spring they sent men exploring in Agawam and Merri- mac, and on July 6 to Connecticut "intending to re- move their town thither." In September the General Court met in Newtown. Their main business was the question of this removal. The main reasons given in the petition of Newtown for leave to remove to Connecticut are these: 1. Their want of accommodation in Newtown. 2. The fruitfulness and commodiousness of Connecti- cut. 3. The strong bent of their spirits to move thither. The question was pretty thoroughly debated, voted on, and finally settled by a sermon of John Cotton, with the decision that they were to remain in Newtown. Enlarge- ments were added to their town. They were given, in ad- dition to Cambridge, what is now Brookline, Brighton, Newton, and Arlington. Still they were not content to remain in Newtown. Some historians, Dr. Trumbull and Dr. Walker for example, consider it probable that there was a conflict, or at any rate lack of sympathy and una- nimity, between such leaders as Winthrop and Hooker, and between the settlement in Newtown and the settle- ment in Boston. At any rate, in spite of the decision, some of the Newtown settlers left the bank of the Charles River immediately and spent that winter on the Con- necticut. By spring all had finally decided to move. Thomas Shepard and his congregation had arrived from England in February. To him and his people they sold their houses and lands in Newtown. On May 31, 1636, 10 they began their famous journey. They followed a trail known as the Old Bay Path (or the Old Connecticut Path). They were the first in that western migration and frontier movement which did not stop until men reached the Pacific. When Thomas Hooker came with his company, two advance parties were already here. The first company, led by William Goodwin, came in October, 1635. The second company was led or met by Samuel Stone, the teacher of the church. It was the custom of the first Congregational Churches in New England to have two ministers: one called the pastor, and one called the teacher. Thomas Hooker was not a Separatist. He was an Independent, a Congrega- tionalism He believed in the liberty and independence of the individual church. In Winthrop's Journal there is this paragraph: "Mr. Hooker, pastor of the Church of Newtown, and most of his congregation went to Con- necticut. His wife was carried in a horse litter; and they drove one hundred and sixty cattle, and fed of their milk by the way." Their trail, the Old Bay Path or the Old Connecticut Path, wound through Cambridge, Watertown, Waltham, Weston,Wayland,Framingham, passing north of Cochitu- ate Pond, turning south through South Framingham, Hopkinton, Westborough, Grafton (where there was an Indian village of John Eliot's Christian Indians), and so through Millbury, Oxford, Charlton, and Sturbridge. Near here, marked by a tablet today, is the Leadmine Hill of the Indians and of Governor Winthrop of Connec- ticut, and here is Tantiusque, "the ancient Indian gate- way to the West." Reaching the Quabaug River, they followed this river to Springfield and the Connecticut. From Springfield the Old Bay Path came through Long- 11 meadow, along the meadows to John Bissell's ferry in Windsor. Here they crossed the river, and so on to the site and settlement so familiar to you in Hartford. This was in June, 1636. Something of the beauty of this valley can be imagined. These pioneers increased that loveliness, and gave to all that nature had endowed, the labor of their hands and the glory of their lives. A century and a half later, John Adams, riding through this rich valley, wrote in his diary: I have spent this morning riding through Paradise. ... A vast prospect of level country on each hand. . . . Here is the finest ride in America I believe; nothing can exceed the beauty and fertility of the country. The lands upon the river, the flat lowlands are loaded with rich, noble, crops of grass and grain and corn. Wright says some of the lands will yield two crops of English grass. The possibilities of this beauty and the potential wealth of this valley were evident to the pioneers of 1636, and here they established the work of their hands. Thomas Hooker was busy'in those years as settler, minister, and statesman. One of his most famous ser- mons was that preached on May 31, 1638, two years after they arrived, before an adjourned session of the April Court. His text was, Deuteronomy 1113, "Take you wise men, and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you." In this ser- mon he laid down three doctrines: Doc. I. That the choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God's own allowance. Doc. II. The privilege of election which belongs unto the people must not be exercised according to their humour, but according to the blessed will of God. Doc. III. That they who have the power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in their power also to set the bounds of the power and place unto which they call them. 12 This is the famous sermon in which are found the princi- ples soon after formulated in the Fundamental Orders. So the years went by in the church and settlement in Hartford, Thomas Hooker preached the gospel of Christ in a free church to a free people. You can imagine him living in his parsonage near Arch Street and drawing water from his well which can still be seen in the Foundry Room of the Taylor & Fenn Company. You can imagine him preaching in the meetinghouse in Meeting-House Yard, now the old State House Square,. and drawing the water of life from the deep wells of the living word. You can turn to his will and rebuild in your mind the contents of that parsonage—"the furniture in the new Parlour, in the Hall, in the ould Parlour, in the Chamber over that in the Hall Chamber, in the kitchin Chamber, in the Cham- ber over the new Parlour, in the garritts, in the kitchin, and especially the Bookes in his studdy." You can think of him visiting his people like a good shepherd of the flock. In those eleven years in Hartford he made the journey between Hartford and Boston four times at least, and probably more, visiting Roger Williams at Providence at least once on the way. Just one year after he came to the river, he was called back to the Bay to serve in the council called for the trial of Anne Hutchinson. In May, 1639, Mr. Hooker, and Mr. Haynes, Governor of Connecticut, journeyed to Boston "and staid near a month," in confer- ence on a possible federation of Connecticut and Massa- chusetts. In September, 1643, he came again as one of the moderators of the Cambridge Synod. You can see him going to Saybrook as an unofficial representative of the General Court to discuss with Fenwick the question of union with the river towns. In July, 1645, he was once more in Cambridge attending a council of the churches, where his book, Survey of, the Summe of Church-Disci- pline, which the churches had asked him to prepare, was among the books agreed upon by the council and "sent over into England to be printed." So the years went by—1636 to 1647—in Hartford, far away from Cambridge and London; those years which in England were loud with debate and furious with war. The great and serious controversy between King Charles I and Parliament was drawing steadily nearer to an issue in action. Laud was making life intolerable by his tyranny for many Englishmen. Cromwell and Milton, Hampden and Pym, were pleading for the liberties of England. In 1638, two years after Hooker came to Hartford, the Eng- lish revolution of the seventeenth century began with the revolt in Scotland. In 1640 the Long Parliament was summoned. Strafford was sent to the block. The Star Chamber and High Commission Courts were abolished. From 1642 to 1646, the last years of Hooker's life in Hartford, the great civil war was fought in England: the Battle of Edgehill in 1642, Marston Moor in 1644, and Naseby in 1645. These were the stern actions which were deciding that Parliament was to be the dominant force in the English constitution. That civil war was in the thoughts of all New England. Far removed by land and sea from this civil war, the life of a man who was also in his way a dominant force in the constitution of the English speaking peoples was drawing to a close. In June, 1647, Hartford was afflicted with an "epidemical sickness". This was prevalent among the English, French, Dutch, and Indians. So general was it in the country that the synod meeting in Cambridge, June, 1647, was forced to adjourn on this account. Thomas Hooker was one of the victims of this disease. He died on July 7, 1647, "a little before sunset." He was sixty-one years old. 14 Thomas Hooker was a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He was a minister of a Congregational Church. He was a firm believer in the Congregational Way. He was first and last, a preacher of the Word. It is interesting and significant to look at the texts of several of his sermons. So often one hears the casual re- mark that the Puritan preacher took all his texts from the Old Testament. No doubt there was an Old Testament virility in their character, which is not to be deplored; and no doubt they gave their sons such Old Testament names as Zabdiel, which is not a handicap, as Dr. Zabdiel Boylston made manifest. But as a matter of dry fact, all the texts, for example, in Hooker's "Application of Redemption" are from the New Testament: Book I. I Peter I :i8. "Ye were redeemed by the blood of Christ." Book II. Matt. i:2i, "He shall save his people from their sins." Book III. Luke 1:17. "To make ready a people pre- pared for the Lord." Book IV. II Cor. 6:2. "In an acceptable time have I heard thee, in the day of salvation have I succored thee." Book V. Matt. 20:5, 6, 7. "He went out about the sixth, ninth, and eleventh hour, and hired laborers." Book VI. Rev. 3:17. "Thou sayest thou art rich" etc. Book VII. Rom. 8:7. "The wisdom of the flesh is en- mity against the Lord and is not subject to the Law.'' Book VIII. John 6:44. "None can come to me but whom the Father draws." All these texts are from the New Testament. They show forth the region in which his mind worked. A man is known by the company he keeps, and a preacher's mind is known by the great texts with which he keeps company. Further, it is interesting and important to note the 15 force of this Puritan preacher: direct, forthright, and drawn from the very human experience of the hearts and minds to which he is preaching. There is nothing remote or aloof. His style is close action. Here is a sample which every family in the congregation must have felt forcibly: If a pot be boiling upon the fire, there will a scum arise, but yet they that are good house-wives and cleanly and neat, they watch it and as the scum riseth up they take it off and throw it away, happily more scum will arise, but still as it riseth they scum it off. Thus it is with the soul, impurity will be in the heart where there is faith and it manifesteth itself and riseth up when the soul is in action, but yet the heart that hath faith eyeth the soul, and as it discovereth any impurity, though it be never so secret, never so small, though it be never so agreeing to his natural disposition, it scummeth it off. He has left about thirty titles in discourses and ser- mons. All these with one exception, Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline, were oral discourses. He was not a writer of books. He was a preacher, first and last. His published writings are his sermons. They were preached. They were made to be preached. They were not essays in divinity. They were real sermons preached to men, to persuade and convince their hearts and minds. Some of these published sermons were printed from notes made by hearers. Some were printed from his own manuscript. So far as we know, none were revised by him and none were seen by him through the press. They were printed far away from his pen and eye and mind, in England and Holland, or later reprinted in America. He was a preacher, and by all accounts a real preacher and a great preacher. People came to hear him, and peo- ple were moved by his preaching. Here was one who spoke with authority and not as the scribes. In one of his sermons he describes a powerful minister and that de- scription fits him. Here is the passage: 16 The word is compared to a sword; as, if a man should draw a sword and flourish it about, and should not strike a blow with it, it will doe no harm; even so it is with the Ministers, little good will th&y doe if they doe only explicate; if they doe only draw out the sword of the spirit; for unless they apply it to the people's hearts particularly, little good may the people ex- pect, little good shall the Minister doe. A common kind of teaching when the Minister doth speake only hooveringly, and in the general, and never applies the word of God particularly may be compared to the confused noise that was in the ship wherein Jonah was, when the winds blew, and the sea raged, and a great storm began to arise. The poore Mariners strove with might and main, and they did endeavour by all means possible to bring die ship to the shore; every one cried unto his god and cast their wares into the sea, and ail this while Jonah was fast asleep in the ship; but when the Mariners came down and plucked him up, and said, "Arise thou sleeper.... Who art thou? Call upon thy God," then he was awakened out of his sleepe. The common delivery of the word is like that confused noise: there is matter of heaven, of hell, of grace, of sin spoken of, there is a common noise, and all the while men sit and sleep carelessly, and never look about them, but rest secure; but when particular application comes that shakes a sinner, as the Pilot did Jonah, and asks him, What assurance of God's mercy hast thou? What hope of pardon of sins? of life and happiness hereafter? You are baptized, and so were many that are in hell: you come to church, and so did many that are in hell: but what is your conversation in the meantime? Is that holy in the sight of God and man ? When the Ministers of God shake men and take them up on this fashion then they begin to stirre up themselves, and to consider their estates. There speaks Thomas Hooker—powerful minister, a real and a great and a good preacher of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: a man among men and a man of God. Em- phatically a man among men, because he was primarily a man of God. He was a powerful minister. He was a minister who knew his people and who knew them by 17 name. He was a minister who loved his people and they loved him. He honored and revered his people as the children of God, the sheep of his pasture, and they in re- turn honored and revered him as the servant of God, the good shepherd of the flock. As a powerful minister he was and is a living illustration of the fact that the enduring value of life is character, and character is produced and developed out of man's vision and experience of the Eter- nal God. This minister was a statesman. He was the statesman of New England and the ambassador of Connecticut in her conferences with Saybrook and the Bay. Head and shoulders he was above most men physically, according to tradition; and head and shoulders above most of his contemporaries he stood in great discretion and sober judgfnent. To Thomas Hooker they turned for counsel and judicial decision. His sermon preceded and out- lined the Fundamental Orders of 1639. He was nomi- nated as moderator in a Plymouth controversy. He was summoned to Boston and Cambridge for the famous Sy- nod of 1637 which tried Anne Hutchinson, and served as one of the two moderators of that council. He was there again in 1639 in company with Mr. Haynes to confer on the question of the confederation of the colonies. He was one of the moderators of the "synod," as Richard Mather calls it, of 1643. He was again in Cambridge in 1645, where the book he had been asked to write was adopted as the voice and word of New England on the question of her ecclesi- astical polity. As soon as he came here they turned to him for guidance in affairs which seriously concerned their re- lations with England. In 1634 Endecott had cut the cross of St. George from the English ensign—as a papal symbol. This question had embroiled the magistrates of the Bay for two years. The ministers were divided and 18 doubtful. It was finally submitted to Hooker for decision. His decision covered thirteen pages and held that the ac- tion of Endecott was indefensible. The references in Bradford and Winthrop reveal the high respect in which his fellow citizens and colonists held his counsel and decisions. He was a statesman in sympa- thy, understanding, clear judgment, and good common sense. While proving all things, he could hold fast that which is true. He was careful and eager to the very end of his life, to maintain the liberty of the individual and the individual church against "the binding power of syn- ods." His warning was clear as a bell: "he that adventures far in that business will find hot and hard work, or else my perspective may fail, which I confess it may be." But his "perspective" did not fail. He could see men and affairs in a large way. He could see the individual church as free and independent, associated with other churches in a fel- lowship which is simply advisory. He Could conserve the inherited good while living in the liberating present. He could keep a level head and a firm foot in the changes and chances of this mortal world. He had independence and vigour in judgment. He had a faculty for living with men. The gospel according to his sincere and devoted and powerful life, was the evangel heard and read and be- loved in his church and in these colonies. The word was made flesh, as it always must be, and dwelt among them in sincerity and devotion, in grace and truth. He was a great minister and a great citizen.

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