#thomas hooker

by Thomas Hooker

See the humility and wisdom of the woman of Canaan, Matt 15, 17. She follows Christ; be he listens not to her, but gives her a sore foil, and calls her a dog, and saith, "you Gentiles are dogs; and the gospel of grace and salvation are the children's bread." Now if she had only considered the words of Christ, and only looked to herself and her own baseness, she had never come to have received either mercy or comfort from him. But she saith, "truth Lord, I am a dog, yet the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." This was her resolution. Wherein there are two things which express and set forth the frame of a gracious heart; a heart that is truly wise to attend to its own baseness., with faith: and that is her humility and wisdom. "Yet though I am a dog, I will not go out of door, but lie under the table for mercy:" there is her wisdom. And thus she; and so we must. and when our corruptions, as I said, flood in upon us, and we see ourselves quite lost, and damned in our sins, we must then say, "in truth Lord, I am as bad as thy word can make me, yet let me not fly from mercy, but lie at the feet of my Savior's mercy, till he look upon me as once upon Peter, Luke 22, 61.

Thomas Hooker was a prominent English colonial leader and Congregational minister, who founded the Connecticut Colony after dissenting with Puritan leaders in M...

"I confess it is beyond our power to awaken the heart, but ordinarily this way does good"