CHAPTER IV.

THE THEOLOGIANS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES.

WEIGHTY Works with long titles-these we find by the dozen in the collections of American books and pamphlets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By them the bibliographer can minutely trace the progress of printing in the New World, and the theologian can define the character and follow the course of religious opinion and practice in a land where religion was the all-important thing. But have they any literary value? What has literature to do with such treatises as these? :

"The Covenant of Grace Opened: Wherein These Particulars are Handled; viz.: (1) What the Covenant of Grace is; (2) What the Seales of the Covenant are; (3) Who are the Parties and Subjects fit to receive these Seales. From all which Particulars Infants Babcisme is proved and vindicated."

"The Application of Redemption by the Effectual Work of the Word and Spirit of Christ, for the Bringing Home of Lost Sinners to God."

"A Survey of the summe of Church-Discipline: Wherein, The Way of the Churches of New-England is warranted out of the Word, and all Exceptions of weight, which are made against it, answered."

The author of these books, and others like them, was Thomas Hooker, founder of Hartford, a church and town leader, a denominational authority, and

Thomas Hooker,

a great and untiring preacher, in the opinion 1586-1647. of his hearers. Two hours and a quarter he preached, on one occasion, and the thunders of his spoken words were caught and held in many booklets and pamphlets once read in New England and even in London, but undisturbed now, save by the antiquary or the auctioneer. A good, magisterial, narrow, useful man-how often must this record be made of one or another of the early Puritans! But his printed sermons, with all their intense theology, are not able to reproduce for us the achievements of the speaker: in nothing save doctrinal force do they surpass the utterances of a thousand pulpits to-day; their kinship in literature lies only in the fact that they were written, and that they had an ideal theme. This must be the final verdict with reference to thousands of printed pages produced by godly and justly honored American ministers before the Revolution. Their quaint characteristics and their doctrinal systems do not make them literature, for the most part. But in them the American mind was steadily working. The force of that mind was first felt in theology, second, in politics, last, in literature proper.

It is not easy, in these days of the independence of the laity, to estimate rightly the power of the ministers in early New England. Few Roman Catholic priests exercise a more potent control over their congregations than did these ministers and

servants of the First Churches of Boston, Salem, Plymouth, over their independent and democratic flocks. Theoretically, the minister was but one among the congregation, or rather the body of church-members; practically, however, he was a force in public affairs and in social order. He advised and warned on spiritual themes, and he spoke as one having authority in political questions. "That deservedly famous man of God, Mr. John Cotton," as John Cotton, John Norton called him, was the minister of 1585-1652. the First Church of Boston, and therefore held an official position which made him a sort of met ropolitan, or presiding bishop, of the strictly Puritan diocese. That which form could not do, among these scorners of form, was brought about by sheer intellectual ability and the force of circumstances. Weaklings and dunces have occupied high positions in hierarchical organizations; strong men have become leaders in democracies, religious as well as political. Cotton had been a famous preacher in Cambridge, England; he lost none of his resonance and robustness of manner and scholarship when he turned Puritan and came to New England. He had been an Anglican priest in Boston, England; Laud hounded him out of the country; he fled to the new Boston, which was named in his honor; and there he found full scope for his powers.

But of Cotton as a writer there is not much to say. Of his catechism called "Spiritual Milk for American Babes" (forming a part of that godly classic, the "New England Primer "), we have already spoken; these nine little pages are now his only remembered

writings. But thirty or forty works of his, large and small, have come down to us. He waged a bitter theological war with Roger Williams, as vehement (and fortunately quite as polite) as those which Milton was at that time fighting with his foes on the other side of the water. He could turn from "The Pouring out of the Seven Vials" to "A Brief Exposition of the Whole Book of Canticles "; great as he was deemed he was willing to pen "A Modest and Cleare Answer to Mr. Ball's Discourse of set Formes of Prayer"; he felt able to describe "The Doctrine of the Church to which are committed the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven"; but he strove to walk humbly in "The Way of Life; or, God's Way and Course, in bringing the Soule into, keeping it in, and carrying it on in, the wayes of life and peace." Others called him the patriarch of New England; but he himself was only trying to show that "The Way of the Churches of Christ in New England" was The Way of Churches walking in Brotherly equalitie, without Subjection of one Church to another." Good, earnest, strong man that he was, perhaps he does not now regret that the greater learning of the Boston which owes him so much, makes upon literature a far deeper mark than his

own.

Williams,

Roger Williams, Cotton's great opponent, had originally been a Church-of-England minis- Roger ter, but had, like Cotton, become a Non- 1606-1683. conformist. After his arrival in New England, he was for a time minister of the Salem First Church, but later became identified with the Baptists, and

with the fortunes of Providence. His relations with the Puritans were in every way unpleasant. Williams was a believer in civil and ecclesiastical freedom, and he greatly annoyed his pædo-baptist opponents by insisting that their principles of "freedom to worship God" be carried one step farther, or at least that they become tolerant of the opinions of others. Modern New England-indeed, modern civilization has accepted many of the principles for which Williams so bravely and logically fought. In his Providence colony he sundered church and State, and civil court and religious opinion and practiceall so closely united in Massachusetts; and there he admitted the Friends, though he repudiated and tried to overthrow some of their arguments and beliefs. The whole relation of Williams to the Puritans shows how inconvenient it is for reformers to have within their number one willing to go a step farther, and to bring their own inconsistencies to light. Williams was an able, earnest, and successful pioneer in that great movement toward religious freedom which has characterized the history of the United States. But in justice to the Puritans it should be said that he was sometimes hasty, indiscreet, sensational; and that he lacked the self-control which should be shown by a great reformer, as well as the solid learning of the Puritan leaders.

Williams wrote voluminously, bravely, vigorously, often violently, in favor of freedom of conscience, the severance of Church and State in England and America, and, above all, the abolition of persecution because of religious opinion. For "not loose, but