Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v1.djvu/72

46 for the snug Presbyterian Utopia. Nevertheless there was some hidden bias in the old Puritan's nature that warped him away from Presbyterianism, and made him the advocate of a democratic Congregationalism. The great schism which rent the early theocracy, carrying off three congregations into the Connecticut wilderness, was an early witness to the antagonisms which lurked in the ambitions of diverse-minded enthusiasts. The seceders had other notions of church organization, it appears, than those held by the dominant group; but they were moderates, who believed that everything should be done decently and in order, and instead of setting up a clamour and bringing confusion upon God's work, they withdrew quietly under the leadership of Thomas Hooker and set up their new church at Hartford.

Concerning the “grave and juditious Hooker” surprisingly little is known, notwithstanding the work that he did and the influence that he wielded dvuing a masterful life. He was a man evidently regardless of fame, who took small pains to publish his virtues to the ears of posterity; nevertheless it is clear that he was a better democrat than the Boston leaders—the father of New England Congregationalism as it later came to be when the Presbyterian tendency was finally checked. For his pronounced democratic sympathies some ground may be discovered in his humble origin. He was sprung of a plain yeoman family, got his education by the aid of scholarships, married a “waiting-woman” to the wife of his patron, and lived plainly, untroubled by social ambitions. He was a self-made man who had risen by virtue of strength of character and disdained to be a climber. He was evidently one of the greatest preachers of his time in either England, and he had early been marked by Laud's spies as one of “the people's creatures” “who blew the bellows of their sedition.” He drew young men to him—among others John Eliot; and even though he should be silenced, his influence would remain. “His genius will still haunte all the pulpits in ye country, where any of his scholars may be admitted to preach,” one of the sycophants reported of him. Such a man must be reckoned with; and when in New England he found the ways too autocratic to suit him, he threw himself into the work of quickening the democratic unrest. “After Mr. Hooker's coming over,”