Thomas Hooker on the pastoral task

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The scope of [the pastor’s] Office is to work upon the will and the affections, and by savoury, powerfull, and affectionate application of the truth delivered, to chafe it into the heart, to wooe and win the soul to the love and liking, the approbation and practice of the doctrine which is according to godliness… his labor is to lay open the loathsome nature of sin, and to let in the terrour of the Lord upon the conscience, that the careless and rebellious sinner may come to a parley of peace, and be content to take up the profession of the truth.

–Thomas Hooker (founder of the Connecticut Colony), A Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline, 1648.

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