hopefully, Moses Coit Tyler, writes of John Cotton's works: "These
are indeed clear and cogent in reasoning; the language is well
enough, but that is all. There are almost no remarkable merits in
thought or style. One wanders through these vast tracts and
jungles of Puritanic discourse--exposition, exhortation, logic-
chopping, theological hair-splitting--and is unrewarded by a
single passage of eminent force or beauty, uncheered even by the
felicity of a new epithet in the objurgation of sinners, or a new
tint in the landscape-painting of hell."

Hubbard wrote, while he still lived: "Mr. Cotton had such an
insinuating and melting way in his preaching, that he would
usually carry his very adversary captive, after the triumphant
chariot of his rhetoric," but "the chariot of his rhetoric ceased
to be triumphant when the master himself ceased to drive it," and
we shall never know the spell of his genius. For one who had shown
himself so uncompromising in action where his own beliefs were
concerned, he was singularly gentle and humble. Followed from his
church one day, by a specially sour and peevish fanatic, who
announced to him with a frown that his ministry had become dark
and flat, he replied:

"Both, brother--it may be both; let me have your prayers that it
may be otherwise."

Such a nature would never revolt against the system of spiritual
cross-questioning that belonged to every church, and it is easy to
see how his hold on his congregation was never lost, even at the
stormiest episode in his New England career.