Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, BY CHRISTOPHER C. DEAN,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.

PREFACE.

THE preparation of this volume of the Series has been delayed, beyond the expectations of the author and of the Committee of Publication. This delay has arisen from the pressure of other duties, and from the difficulty of collecting materials. The latter has been of no ordinary magnitude. In the almost total absence of original papers of any kind, from Mr. Hooker's pen, the author has been compelled to rely principally upon matter, relative to him, which was incidental in Puritan and New England history, and scattered through many volumes in various libraries, and upon many thousands of pages. The reader will find in this volume, therefore, little of autobiography. The history of Mr. Hooker's life in Connecticut, especially, has been found merged in the civil and religious history of the State. The scantiness of original materials has been rendered a matter for special regret, from the belief that there have been in existence rich materials for a far more full biography, had they been carefully preserved. At the taking down of the old parsonage house of the First Congregational Church in Hartford, about thirty years since, a large quantity of ancient papers was found, supposed to be those of Rev. Thomas Hooker; and by persons employed in the work, and who were either ignorant or thoughtless of their value,

they were thrown into Connecticut river. If any thing would justify a State enactment, making the careless or wanton destruction of ancient manuscript papers felony, and punishable as such, the occurrence of such cases as this, which are frequent,-would seem to do so. If, like many good and great men, Thomas Hooker was accustomed to record, in a journal form or otherwise, interesting incidents in his own life, his religious exercises, and results of his experience and observation as a Christian citizen and a minister, such records have been hopelessly put beyond the reach of any biographer.

With its many imperfections, from whatever cause, the present volume is commended to the lovers of the Puritan character and principles, in hope that it will be found not altogether without value, as a small contribution to the stock of Christian biography.

May, 1849.

E. W. H.

LIFE OF THOMAS HOOKER.

CHAPTER I.

Parentage and ancestry. Cotemporaries. Persecutions of the Puritans of his time. Education at Cambridge. Fellowship in Emmanuel College. Conversion, religious experience, and formation of character. Preaches at Chelmsford. Remarkable success and influence. Char acter of his eloquence as a preacher.

THE eminence and usefulness of a great and good man invariably lead us to inquire into his early history; his parentage, ancestry, and early education; and the providential circumstances which gave direction to his mind, and stamp to his character. We generally have the means of answering such inquiries; are permitted to see what the individual was in his childhood, youth, and advancing manhood; how his character was formed, and by what instrumentalities developed. And while we see how men have been rendered useful, influential and estimable, we are instruct

ed respecting the methods by which we are to labor for the formation of character in those whom we are to educate for the service of God and the good of the world.

There are cases, however, in which Divine Providence denies us the satisfaction of this description of knowledge. The early history of the individual is hidden from our view. No friend or admirer of his character has preserved the materials for his early biography; or if so, they remain as yet undiscovered, if not lost. We have therefore to begin with the man after he has grown up to his full intellectual and moral stature. We doubt not he had an early education, and a course of training for his sphere of effort and usefulness. But we have to repress our curiosity on these points, and to rest satisfied that such a man lives and is become a blessing to the world; and be willing to leave the unknown years of his early life to be shown as among the secret things to be revealed in eternity.

The case of the excellent Thomas Hooker was like that which has now been described. Nothing has come down to us, in the histories of him and of his times, which even answers the question who were his father and mother. His birthplace was Marfield, Leicestershire,