Yet no one would today call Thomas
Hooker a liberal in religion, pioneer in political liberty though
he proved to be. His extant sermons have the steady stroke of a
great hammer; smiting at the mind and heart. "Others because they
have felt the heavy hand of God . . . upon these grounds they
build their hopes: 'I have had my hell in this life, and I hope
to have heaven in the world to come; I hope the worst is over.'"
Not so, thunders the preacher in reply: "Sodom and Gomorrah they
burnt in brimstone and they shall burn in hell." One of Hooker's
successors has called him "a son of thunder and a son of
consolation by turns." The same may be said of Thomas Shepard,
another graduate of Emmanuel College in the old Cambridge, who
became the "soul-melting preacher" of the newer Cambridge by the
Charles. Pure, ravishing notes of spiritual devotion still sing
themselves in his pages. He is wholly Calvinist. He thinks "the
truth is a poor mean thing in itself" and that the human reason
cannot be "the last resolution of all doubts," which must be
sought only in the written Word of God.
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