1642 THOMAS HODGES. Covenanter on the Means of Displaying the Glory of God

  A deeply moving sermon on the role of Christian ministry of displaying before humanity the glory of God and a sort of order of God's blessing for the individual and nation. Hodges begins by arguing, rightly I should think, that a nation seems to glory of God as it is shown in individually godly people, so that the chief work of grace rests at the local level and the individual level, not the governmental. Perhaps we can hear Hodges here pushing back against the more strident branch of the Covenanted Presbyterians of the Westminster Assembly who thought of the Parliament and the Westminster Assembly as God's primary method for setting up a Presbyterian theocracy. Many of the more moderate Presbyterians, Independents, and Congregationalists in the Westminster Assembly resisted this call, including, it seems, our man Hodges. . . though he was a Covenanter and still earnestly rebukes magistrates for their unwillingness to prosecute crimes of ungodliness and their complicity in de-Christi