USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > Thirteen historical discourses, on the completion of two hundred years : from the beginning of the First Church in New Haven, with an appendix > Part 6
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In 1642, a gentleman of Virginia came to Boston with let- ters, addressed to the ministers of New England, from many well disposed people in the upper and newer parts of Virginia, " bewailing their sad condition for want of the means of sal- vation, and earnestly entreating a supply of faithful ministers, whom, upon experience of their gifts and godliness, they might call to office." These letters having been publicly read at Boston on a lecture day, the elders of the Churches in that neighborhood met, and having devoted a day to consul- tation and prayer in reference to so serious a proposal, agreed upon three settled ministers who they thought might best be spared, each of them having a teaching colleague. The re- sult was, that two ministers, Mr. Knolles of Watertown and Mr. Tompson of Braintree, were by their Churches dismissed
* Mather, Magn. III, 162. Church Records.
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to that work, and went forth upon the mission under the patronage of the General Court .* To this mission,-the first American home missionary undertaking,-the Rev. Thomas James of New Haven was added. The mission was not un- successful ; " they found very loving and liberal entertain- ment, and were bestowed in several places, not by the gov- ernor, but by some well disposed people who desired their company." Their ministry there was greatly blessed, and greatly sought by the people ; and though the government of that colony interfered to prevent their preaching, " because they would not conform to the order of England," " the peo- ple resorted to them, in private houses, to hear them as be- fore."+ Their preaching, even in this more private manner, was not tolerated. An order was made, that those ministers who would not conform to the ceremonies of the Church of England should, by such a day, depart from the country.} Thus their mission being brought to an end, they came back to New England.
Afterwards, during the period of the suppression of monar- chy and prelacy in his native country, Mr. James returned to England, leaving here a son of the same name, who was for many years a member of this Church, and was afterwards the first minister of Easthampton, on Long Island. The father obtained a settlement in the parish Church of Needham, in the county of Suffolk, in England, from which he was ejected by the act of uniformity, in 1662. He had a pretty numerous Church after his ejection ; and he left behind him, there, the reputation of an eminently holy man. It may be added, as an illustration of the indignities to which the ejected ministers of 1662 were subjected, that "though he was much beloved and esteemed, yet, when he died, the clergyman who came in his place would not allow him to be buried in any other part of the churchyard, but that unconsecrated corner left for rogues, whores, and excommunicates,-though
* Winthrop, II, 78. t Winthrop, II, 96.
# Mather, Magn. III, 216.
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the clergyman owed his benefice to the noble uprightness of Mr. James's heart."*
The Rev. SAMUEL EATON, whom I have mentioned on a former occasion, resided in this place till the year 1640, when he returned to England with the design of gathering there a company of emigrants who should settle what was afterwards called Branford, that tract having been granted him " for such friends as he should bring over from Old England." Being detained awhile at Boston, his occasional services in that place excited so much interest, that earnest proposals were made to him for a permanent settlement there,-which he rejected. Arriving in England at a time when the Estab- lished Church seemed to be about to undergo a general and thorough reformation, and when men of the Puritan party, no longer driven into banishment by persecution, had the strongest hopes of the political and religious renovation of their own country, he found more encouragement to remain there than to come back into this wilderness. He became teacher of a Congregational Church gathered at Duckenfield, in Cheshire, his native county, whence he removed, proba- bly with some part of his congregation, to the neighboring borough of Stockport. In this place, he had difficulty with his people, some of whom, it is said, "ran things to a great height, and grew wiser than their minister." He also was one of the two thousand ministers who, in 1662, were silenced in one day, by the act of uniformity-not merely turned out of their livings, but silenced, because they could not submit to all that was required by the rubrics and canons of the na- tional Church. After his ejection, many of his old hearers
* Calamy .- Prince's Annals, 71, 72. The learned editor of Winthrop, in his note on Thomas James, (I, 94,) is a little too severe upon Mather. That quaint and conceited historian does not " blunder in giving two of the name" of James ; nor had he been careful enough to ascertain " the name of baptism of both" would he have "inferred the identity of the person." Mather is the most vexatious of all writers ; for it is evident on almost every page, that he suppresses much information pertinent to his subject, for the sake of lug- ging in his " ass's load" of pedantic lumber ; but it is easier to suspect him, than to convict him, of a positive inaccuracy in such matters.
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who had disliked him much while he was their minister, be- ing now brought to commune with him in difficulties and sufferings, "were wrought into a better temper." He suf- fered many things not only from the persecution which raged against the silenced ministers, being "several times brought into trouble and imprisoned," but from many other sources,- till, on the 9th of June, 1665, he died at Denton in Lancashire, and was buried in the chapel there. He is described as hav- ing been "a very holy man, of great learning and judgment, and an incomparable preacher." His funeral sermon was preached, according to his own appointment, from the words of Job, (xix, 25-27,) "I know that my Redeemer liveth," &c. The preacher on that occasion dwelt much on the afflictions of the deceased. The departed good man was spoken of as having been " much afflicted in his estate in the times of the former bishops," and as having been more re- cently "afflicted in his body, liberty, friends, good name, and oft times and many ways troubled and grieved in his spirit." His afflictions had been "many and great, and some of long continuance." He had been wronged in his good name, "not by enemies, but friends." " He had suffered for a sea- son the loss of speech, being thus unfitted for public service." "Some of those to whom he had preached, and with whom he had walked, had greatly distressed his heart with their errors in doctrine, and their scandals and divisions ; some had returned him evil for good, and hatred for good will, and had filled him with reproaches." He had "been dying many years," and at last departed in an evil time, leaving his friends and the Church of God in great and general affliction. Yet he died not till God, having humbled him and proved him, had " cleared his innocency, and restored him to some meas- ure of usefulness." "By the goodness of God, he died, not- withstanding all his enemies, in his own house and bed, and came to his grave in peace, according to his heart's desire."*
* The funeral sermon, preached for the Rev. Samuel Eaton, is found in the works of Oliver Heywood, V, 509.
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He was the author of several works published in vindica- tion of the divinity and atonement of Christ, against some Socinian adversary. He was also author, in partnership with his colleague in the ministry, at Duckenfield, of two works written to defend the Congregational church order against the claims of Presbyterianism .* It is testified by a bitter enemy,t that he was "held in wonderful esteem" by the Puritans in that part of the kingdom, and that he was "a most pestilent leading person" among them. As an instance of the consideration in which he was held, it is stated that he was, in his own county, an assistant to the commissioners appointed by Parliament for the ejection of scandalous, igno- rant and insufficient ministers and schoolmasters ; and this it
* The published works of Samuel Eaton, as enumerated by Wood, are the following :
" A Defense of Sundry Positions and Scriptures, alledged to justify the Con- gregational Way. London, 1645, quarto. It contains about 130 pages.
" Defense of Sundry Positions and Scriptures, for the Congregational Way justified : The second part. London, 1646. It contains about 46 pages." [In this and the preceding work, he was assisted by his colleague at Ducken- field, Timothy Taylor. A copy of the second is in the library of Harvard University.]
" The Mystery of God incarnate : or, the Word made Flesh, cleared up, &c. London, 1650 ; octavo. Written against John Knowles, a Socinian, who had answered our author Eaton's Paper concerning the Godhead of Christ.
" Vindication, or further Confirmation of some other Scriptures, produced to prove the Divinity of Jesus Christ, distorted and miserably wrested and abused by Mr. John Knowles, &c. London, 1651 ; octavo.
" The Doctrine of Christ's Satisfaction, and of the Reconciliation of God's part to the Creature. Printed with the Vindication.
" Discourse Concerning the Springing and Spreading of Error, and of the Means of Curc, and of Preservation against it. Printed also with the Vindi- cation.
" Treatise of the Oath of Allegiance and Covenant, showing that they oblige not." [The date of this publication is not given ; but a reply to it was pub- lished in 1650.]
" The Quakers Confuted, &c. Animadverted upon by that sometimes no- ted and leading Quaker, called George Fox, in his book entitled, The Great Mystery of the Great Whore unfolded: And Anti-Christ's Kingdom revealed unto destruction, &c. London, 1659."
t Wood, Athena Oxon.
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was, doubtless, that made him "pestilent," in the estimation of the " scandalous and insufficient."
The Rev. WILLIAM HOOKE, was born of a respectable fam- ily in the county of Hampshire. He was sent to Trinity College, in Oxford, in 1616, where he proceeded to the de- gree of master in arts in 1623, "at which time," says the malignant Wood, "he was esteemed a close student and a religious person." Having received orders in the Church of England, he was made vicar of Axmouth, in Devonshire, where he continued several years. The character of his sermons, it is said, as well as his non-conformity, made him obnoxious to the powers which then were in his native coun- try. Like many others, he was so hotly persecuted that he had no choice but to flee. Accordingly he came to New England, where, adds the historian before named, he " con- tinued his practices without control for some time."
Soon after the settlement of Taunton, in 1637, we find Mr. Hooke the pastor of the Church in that place. In what year he removed from Taunton to New Haven is not ascer- tained, nor indeed can we fix precisely the date of his ordi- nation as teacher of this Church. Mather however informs us, that "on the day of his ordination, he humbly chose for his text those words in Judges vii, 10: 'Go thou with Phurah thy servant,'-and as humbly raised his doctrine, that in great services a little help is better than none, which he gave as the reason of his own being joined with so considerable a Gideon as Mr. Davenport."*
While he resided here, one of his correspondents in Eng- land was his wife's near kinsman, Oliver Cromwell,t and from that circumstance, as well as from the family alli- ance, it may be inferred, that before he came to this country he was on terms of intimacy with that extraordinary man.
* Magn. III, 214.
t Hutchinson, III, 234 ;- where " Hooker" is obviously an error of the transcriber, or of the printer, for " Hooke."-Savage's Winthrop, I, 252.
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And when at last his friend Cromwell had mounted to all but absolute power over the whole British empire ; when his wife's brother, Edward Whalley, was one of the eight mili- tary chiefs, who ruled the eight districts into which the Pro- tector had divided the kingdom of England ; when the fear of a Presbyterian hierarchy over the churches of England had been taken away, and Congregational principles seemed likely to triumph,-it is not strange that he felt himself drawn to- ward his native country. The New Haven colony was at that time greatly depressed, and the prospect of its growth was gloomy. Why should he remain here in the woods, at this outpost of civilization, preaching to a feeble, disheart- ened company of exiles, in a little meeting-house of fifty feet square,-with only slender advantages for the education of his numerous family, and with little prospect of accomplish- ing any great result,-when Old England offered to talents like his, and to a man of his principles and connections, so wide a field of action ? And besides, how much might he do for New England, and especially for his dear friends and flock in New Haven, if he were at the seat of empire, and at the ear of him who swayed the empire ? Accordingly we find that in 1654, " Mr. Hooke's wife was gone for England, and he knew not how God would dispose of her ;" and in 1656, we find Mr. Hooke himself removing to England .* We find him, not long after his arrival there, writing to Gov. Winthrop, " As touching myself, I am not yet settled, the Protector having engaged me to him not long after my land- ing, who hitherto hath well provided for me. His desire is, that a Church may be gathered in his family, to which pur- pose I have had speech with him several times; but though the thing be most desirable, I foresee great difficulties in sun- dry respects. I think to proceed as far as I may by any rule of God, and am altogether unwilling that this motion should fall in his heart. But my own weakness is discouragement enough, were there nothing else."+ Cromwell's desire to
* Town Records.
t III, Mass. Hist. Coll. I, 181.
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have a Congregational Church in his own household, at the royal palace of Whitehall, was at least so far carried into ef- fect, that Mr. Hooke became the Protector's domestic chap- lain, in which office he was associated with no less a man than John Howe .* He also had conferred upon him the mastership of "the hospital called the Savoy, in the city of Westminster,"-a place which in other times had been, and afterwards became again, the bishop of London's city resi- dence,-a place of some note in ecclesiastical history, as having received that synod of Congregational elders and del- egates which framed the " Savoy Confession ;" and as hav- ing been also, after the restoration, the scene of several of those conferences and debates between some of the dignita- ries of the establishment and some leading non-conformists, by which the court imposed upon the Puritans with hypo- critical professions of candor, till it grew strong enough to throw off the disguise and show its hatred.
In these circumstances, the late teacher of the Church in New Haven might very reasonably feel that he had found a much more important field of usefulness, than that which he had left behind. Here, indeed, his Sabbath auditory had included the great men of the jurisdiction, the honorable governor, the worshipful deputy governor, the magistrates, the deputies ; but there, he preached to His Highness the Lord Protector of the three nations, and to one and another of the men whose counsels and agency Cromwell employed in his most politic and energetic administration. Here, he had preached with a little array of armed men, commanded by the valiant Captain Malbon, guarding the humble sanctuary against the savages ; there, he had before him those veteran chiefs whose energy had swept away the king " and all his
* In the order of procession at the funeral of the Protector, the "chap- lains at Whitehall, Mr. White, Mr. Sterry, Mr. Hooke, Mr. Howe, Mr. Lockyer, Mr. [Hugh] Peters," had a place assigned them. A few files after them, was the place of the five " Secretaries of the French and Latin tongues, one of whom was " Mr. John Milton."-Burton's Cromwellian Diary, II, 524.
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peerage," and whose names were words of terror. Here, he felt that he was but " a little help" to " so considerable a Gideon as Mr. Davenport ;" there, he was himself, both by station and by his popular talents, one of the most "con- siderable" of the ministers in the metropolis of Protestant Christendom. But how imperfectly can we, in our short- sightedness, judge of the comparative importance of different stations and spheres of usefulness. In less than two years after Mr. Hooke's arrival in England, his great friend, the Protector, died ; and immediately the pillars of that unce- mented fabric of empire tottered. Within two years more, -years of anxious excitement,-Richard Cromwell had re- signed the iron scepter which no hand but his father's could wield ; and treachery and dissimulation, taking advantage of dissensions among the true-hearted, had restored the mon- archy, in the person of the ever infamous King Charles II. Then came that age of England's greatest degeneracy, when her royal palaces rang with the mirth of pimps and courte- zans, while the graves of heroes, sages and saints, whose memory she ought to have treasured, were dishonored and violated by authority. Then came again the era of Sabbath sports, and " healths nine fathoms deep," and fox-hunting clergymen, while godliness was counted treason, and the Baxters and Flavels, the Owens and the Howes, were marks of obloquy and vengeance. Then, to be teacher of a hum- ble Church in New England, was a better place for useful- ness and happiness, than to be the non-conforming master of the Savoy, ejected and silenced. Then the late chaplain to Oliver, whose name, even after his bones had been dug up, and hanged, and buried again under the gallows, made the cavaliers turn pale with hate and terror,-the brother of the outlawed and hunted regicide, Whalley,-could find in Eng- land little peace, and little opportunity of public usefulness. He not only suffered ejection from his place, and silencing, but other forms of persecution, being "sometimes brought into trouble" for worshiping his God according to his own convictions.
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Mr. Hooke was the author of several printed works,* only one of which is known to be in existence in this country. It is a sermon, preached at Taunton in 1640, on a day of public humiliation appointed by the Churches in behalf of their native country, over which the clouds were then hang- ing which soon after broke in the horrors of a civil war. The title of the sermon is "New England's Tears for Old England's Fears ;" and the sermon itself is, in matter and style, quite unlike the ordinary preaching of that day. For matter, while a strain of evangelical sentiment runs through it, it is chiefly occupied with a lively description of the hor- rors of war, and especially of civil war, and with a statement of the reasons which ought to constrain the men of New England to sympathize with all the distresses of their mother country. For the style, while it has some touches of antique phraseology, it is far more ornamented, polished and rhetori- cal, than the style of any other New England preacher of that day.
That you may have a specimen of the matter and style of his preaching, I introduce here some extracts from the ser- mon, as it lies before me.+
* The works of Mr. Hooke, as set down by Wood, are-
" New England's Tears for Old England's Fears,-Fast-Sermon. Printed 1640, 41, in qu.
Several Sermons, as (1) Sermon on Job 2, 12 .- Printed 1641, in qu. (2) Sermon in New England in behalf of Old England, &c., printed 1645, in qu. and others.
" The Privileges of the Saints on Earth beyond those in Heaven, &c. Lond. 1673, in oct.
" A Discourse of the Gospel-Day-printed with the former book.
" He had a hand also in a Catechism published under the name of Joh. Davenport, and hath written other things which I have not yet seen."
To this catalogue may be added from Calamy, The Slaughter of the Wit- nesses,-and A Sermon in the Supplement to the Morning Exercises.
t The full title of the pamphlet is, " New England's Teares for Old Eng- land's Feares. Preached in a Sermon on July 23, 1640, being a day of Pub- lique Humiliation. appointed by the Churches in behalf of onr native Coun- trey in time of feared dangers. By William Hooke, Minister of God's Word; sometimes of Axmouth in Devonshire, now of Taunton in New England. Sent over to a worthy member of the honorable House of Com- mons, who desires it may be for publike good. London, Printed by E. G. for
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The text is Job ii, 13. "So they sat down with him upon the ground, seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great." After a brief opening of the text, the proposition is announced, " that it is the part of true friends and brethren to sympathize and fellow-feel with their brethren and friends when the hand of God is upon them. The proposition, or doctrine, having been "proved," according to the fashion of the day, by an induction of instances from the Scriptures, and illustrated by "reasons" from the nature of the case, we come to the " use" or application, which occupies the greater part of the discourse. And here the preacher says, " Before I come to the main use which I aim at, I will speak a few words, by way of information, to show how far they are from being friends or brethren, who are ready to rejoice at the afflictions and miseries of others. A right Edomitish quality ; for Edom rejoiced over the children of Judah in the day of their destruction." " And it is commonly ob- served, that men and women who have turned witches, and been in league with the devil thereby to do mischief, are never given over so to do, till they begin to have an evil eye which grieveth at the prosperity and rejoiceth at the misery of others. Hence witchcraft is described by an evil eye."* "Nay it is the property of the Devil to be thus affected. Man's prosperity is his pain, and man's adversity his rejoic- ing, as we see in Job ; neither is there scarce any thing that doth more import the seed of the Serpent in a man than this
John Rothwell and Henry Overton, and are to be sould at the Sunne in Paul's Church-yard, and in Popes-head Alley. 1641." The copy which I have had the privilege of consulting, belongs to the Library of Harvard Univer- sity, and is the only copy known to exist in this country.
* Nescio quis teneros oculus mihi fascinat agnos.
To this classical citation with which the author of the Sermon decorates his margin, I may add that the trials of " Mrs. Elizabeth Godman," as detailed in the town and colony records, contain evidence equally conclusive with the reasoning above, to show that Mr. Hooke was not so far superior to his age as not to believe in actual witchcraft. Cudworth would never have sus- pected him, on that ground, " of having some hankering towards atheism."
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same Enixaigexaxiu, rejoicing in the evil and misery of an- other."-" And though I am not able to charge any of you with this cursed affection, yet I do wish you to look into your own hearts ; for this I am sure, here are strong tempta- tions sometimes leading towards it in this land, which, when they meet with a heart void of grace, must needs stir up the disposition in it."
The preacher then proceeds to the "use which he princi- pally intends," which is to exhort his hearers to an affection- ate sympathy with their countrymen in their native land. He reminds them, that there is no occasion for sorrow on their own account. He beseeches them, " Let us lay aside the thoughts of all our comforts this day, and let us fasten our eyes upon the calamities of our brethren in Old England, calamities at least imminent, calamities dropping, swords that have hung a long time over their heads by a twine thread, judgments long since threatened as foreseen by many of God's messengers in their causes, though not foretold by a spirit prophetically guided, heavy judgments in all proba- bility, when they fall, if they are not fallen already." Then follows a vivid portraiture of war, and especially of the ag- gravated atrocities of civil war, which was the heavy judg- ment then coming down upon England. After which he proceeds in his exhortation.
" That which we are now called to is brotherly compassion, and to do the part of Job's friends in my text, to sit aston- ished, as at the crying sins, so at the feared sorrows of our countrymen ; for in all probability their grief is very great. To this end you may think awhile of these particulars.
" First, of our civil relations to that land, and the inhabi- tants therein. There is no land that claims our name but England; we are distinguished from all the nations of the world by the name of English." "Did we not there draw in our first breath ? Did not the sun first shine there upon our heads? Did not that land first bear us, even that pleas- ant island, but for sin I would say, that garden of the Lord, that paradise.
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