Note 272 — Chapter XI
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Dell complains that men famous for preaching, on coming to Cambridge, ceased from that sense of the Gospel which they once seemed to have. "How suddenly have they been entangled and overcome with the spirit of the enemy!"
Samuel Hering made certain proposals in 1653, and amongst others that two colleges should be set apart, in each University, to such as should solely apply themselves to the attaining the spirit of Jesus, which study needs few books; the works of Behmen, however, he mentions as a furtherance thereto. Such colleges he suggested should have the power of sending forth men to preach. "All teachers," he adds, "without God's hammer are but, in the history of the letter, hammers for the belly and ears, but not for the soul."
He wished that churches should be painted black outside, to remind people of the darkness within.—Nickoll's Letters of State, 99.