been to "Pyquag," now Wethersfield, in 1634. The next year 1635,
witnessed the first to Windsor and Hartford; while in the following year
1636, Rev. Thomas Hooker and his famous colony made the forest resound
with psalms of praise, as in June, they made their pilgrimage from the
seaside "to the delightful banks" of the Connecticut. Hooker was
esteemed, "The light of the western churches," and a lay associate, John
Haynes, had been governor of Massachusetts. The church at Wethersfield
was organized while Mrs. Boreman's letter given above, was on its way,
Feb. 28, 1641; Samuel and Mary Boreman were undoubtedly among its
earliest members. His first pastor there was Rev. Richard Denton,
whom Cotton Mather describes, as "a little man with a great soul, an
accomplished mind in a lesser body, an Iliad in a nutshell; blind of an
eye, but a great seer; seeing much of what eye hath not seen." In the
deep forests, amid the cabins of settlers, and the wigwams of savages,
he composed a system of Divinity entitled "Soliloquia Sacra." Rev. John
Sherman, born in Dedham, England, Dec. 26, 1613, educated at Cambridge,
who came to America in 1634, also preached here for a short time. He
was afterwards settled at Watertown Mass., had twenty-two children and
died in 1685. The colony at New Haven, which was soon united with them,
was founded in 1638, under Rev. John Davenport and Gov. Theophilus
Eaton. They first met under an oak and afterward in a barn. After a day
of fasting and prayer they established their first civil government on a
simple plantation covenant "to obey the Scriptures." Only church members
had the franchise; the minister gave a public charge to the governor to
judge righteously, with the text: "The cause that is too hard for you
bring it unto me, and I will hear it," "Thus," says Bancroft, "New Haven
made the Bible its statute book, and the elect its freemen." The very
atmosphere of New Haven is still full of the Divine favor distilled
from the honor thus put upon God's word in the foundation of its
institutions. There were five capital qualities which greatly
distinguished the early New England Puritans. I. Good intellectual
endowments; they were of the party of Milton and Cromwell. II. Intense
religiousness; the names Pilgrim and Puritan, are synonymous with
zealous piety. III. Education; many were graduates of colleges; they
founded Harvard in 1636. IV. Business thrift; godliness has the promise
of the world that now is,