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The Beginners of a Nation

Note Note 1, page 321 — BOOK III. CENTRIFUGAL FORCES IN COLONY-PLANTING. (continued 2)

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Theological differences. Theological differences were early apparent in the teachings of the two leaders. Trivial enough to the modern mind are these questions concerning works as an evidence of justification and concerning active and passive faith in justification. Hooker maintained all by himself that there was "a saving preparation in a Christian soule before unyon with Christ." Note 1. The other ministers pretended to understand what he meant by this, and at first opposed him unanimously. No doubt, too, Hooker and his disciples found some fault with the outer form of the church as shaped by Cotton. Certain it is that Hooker's theories of civil government were more liberal and modern than Cotton's, though like Cotton's they were hung upon texts of Scripture. Hooker lacked Cotton's superfluity of ingenuity; he had less imagination and less poetic sentiment than Cotton, but his intellect was more rugged, practical, and virile. He was not a man to have visions of a political paradise; he did not attempt to limit citizenship to church members when he framed a constitution for the Connecticut towns. Nor did he give so much power and privilege to the magistrate as was given in Massachusetts. Note 2. He disapproved of Cotton's aristocratic theory of the permanence of the magistrate's office, as he did apparently of the negative vote of the upper house and of the arbitrary decisions which the Massachusetts magistrates assumed the right to make.

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