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Show Page 7 contribution to this enterprise; however, the influence of Hooker on the Pratt family must have been profound. Like the Pratts, Thomas Hooker was of obscure origin, a man who waited on tables to obtain his education. He was well-known as a lecturer, which in those days connoted "agitator," given to preach the "new gospel of free 6 judgment in religious matters." Hooker is known to have preached Non- Conformism throughout East Anglia, the home country of the Pratts, and it is very likely that the brothers took ship for America with Hooker. By escaping with Hooker's congregation from the oligarchic rule of the presbytery of Boston, they were assenting once again to the basic principle of individual religious self-determination, implicit in Hooker's conception of "Congregationalism:" "And whereas it hath been charged upon the people, that through their ignorance and unskilfulnesse, they are not able to wield such priviledges, and therefore not fit to share in ...power, The Lord hath promised: To take away the vail from all faces...the weak shall be as David, and David as an Angel of God...The church of Visible Saints confederating together to walk in the fellowship of the faith...is Toturn essentiale...."' Hooker's rejection of the autocratic principle of priestly authority derived from his belief in a Christian's inherent right to spiritual self-determination. This meant escape was imperative wherever spiritual tyranny asserted itself, so the Connecticut community soon became the ensign of independency in New England. Rooted as they were in English liberalism, the Pratt brothers certainly sustained the "Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, one of the first "commonwealth"charters in history, promulgated in 1639. By now the brothers reflected Hooker's belief that a confederation of the "Saints" was all that was essential for church and civil government - the Connecticut code agreed, thus becoming "the first written constitution of 8 modem democracy." That the Pratts assented to the Fundamental Orders |
