SHEPARD, THOMAS
(5 November 1605, Towcester, Northamptonshire, England-25 August 1649, Cambridge, Massachusetts). Education: B.A., Emmanuel College, Cambridge, 1623; M.A., Emmanuel, 1627. Career: Lecturer, Earles-Colne, Essex, 1627-30; tutor and chaplain, Buttercrambe, Yorkshire, 1630-33; minister, Heddon, Northumberland, 1633-34; Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1636-49.
Puritan historian Edward Johnson called Thomas Shepard a "soul ravishing minister," and his clerical successor, Jonathan Mitchell, said his time as Shepard's colleague was like "four years living in Heaven." Thomas Shepard was noted for his ability to preach to the affections and his example was so compelling that more than half of the citations in Jonathan Edwards's· influential Treatise on Religious Affections are from one tract by Shepard: The Parable of the Ten Virgins.
Shepard's background was typical of early Puritan ministers. He was interested in religion at a young age, attended Emmanuel College, became attracted to Puritanism, preached, and was silenced. In condemning him for nonconformity in 1630 Archbishop William Laud forbade him to "preach, read, marry, bury, or exercise any ministerial function in any part of his diocese." For a time Shepard tried to carry on his ministry as a private chaplain and in an obscure parish, but he was silenced again. So he decided to join the migration to New England. His first ship was driven back by a storm and almost wrecked, and the second sprung a leak in midocean, but in the fall of 1635 he arrived safely in New England.
Shepard succeeded Thomas Hooker* as minister at Cambridge and married Hooker's daughter. During the first year of his ministry he opposed the Antinomians and kept the heresy from entering Cambridge. For this reason he is said to have won the favor of the Puritan authorities in their selection of Cambridge as the site for Harvard College. Shepard was active in church affairs and was one of the ministers responsible for the custom of requiring public confessions of religious experience as a criterion for church membership. He was also one of John Eliot's· chief supporters in missionary work among the Indians.
Shepard's life was short-he died during his forty-fourth year-but his influence was great. One of the most successful preachers of the plain style, he preached clear and evocative sermons about the soul and salvation that were printed and reprinted long after his death. The Sincere Convert, for example, went through twenty-one editions from 1641 to 1812. It includes a line, anticipating Jonathan Edwards's famous "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." "Thou hangest but by one rotten twined thread of thy life," wrote Shepard, "over the flames of hell every hour."
Shepard reminded people of hell-and of heaven. His influence derived from his skills as a writer and a preacher and from his own personal experience with the life of the spirit In a sermon he once asked, "Hast thou not thought sometimes, at a sermon, the minister hath spoken to none but thee, and that some or other hath told the minister what thou hast said, what thou hast done, what thou hast thought?" Shepard preached just such personal, affecting sermons, drawing on his own experience to bring the great principals of religion to the ordinary lives of his parishioners.
Bibliography
A: The Sincere Convert (London, 1641, and many subsequent editions); New England's Lamentation for Old England's Present Errors (London, 1645); The Sound Believer (London, 1645); Certain Select Cases Resolved, Specially Tending to the Right Ordering of the Heart (London, 1648); The Clear SunShine of the Gospel Breaking Forth upon the Indians of New England (London, 1648); The Parable of the Ten Virgins Opened and Applied (London, 1660); Church Membership of Children and Their Right to Baptism (Cambridge, Mass., 1663); The Works of Thomas Shepard, (New York, 1967); Michael McGiffert, ed., God's Plot: The Paradoxes of Puritan Piety (Amherst, MA, 1972) [Shepard's autobiography and journal].
B: AAP 1,59-68; DAB 17, 75-76; DNB 18, 50-51; NCAB 7, 33-34; J. A. Albro, The Life of Thomas Shepard (Boston, 1847); G. L. Shepard, A Genealogical History of William Shepard and Some of His Descendants (Salem, Mass., 1886); Alexander Whyte, Thomas ShepM'd, Pilgrim Father and Founder of Harvard (London, 1909); S. E. Morison, Builders of the Bay Colony (Boston, 1930), 105-34; George Selement and Bruce C. Woolley, Thomas Shepard's Confessions (Boston, 1981) [conversion testimonies from Shepard's church accompanied by an extensive introduction]; Susan Drinker Moran, 'Thomas Shepard and the Professor: Two Documents from the Early History of Harvard," Early American Literature, 17 (1982), 24-42.
Puritan historian Edward Johnson called Thomas Shepard a "soul ravishing minister," and his clerical successor, Jonathan Mitchell, said his time as Shepard's colleague was like "four years living in Heaven." Thomas Shepard was noted for his ability to preach to the affections and his example was so compelling that more than half of the citations in Jonathan Edwards's· influential Treatise on Religious Affections are from one tract by Shepard: The Parable of the Ten Virgins.
Shepard's background was typical of early Puritan ministers. He was interested in religion at a young age, attended Emmanuel College, became attracted to Puritanism, preached, and was silenced. In condemning him for nonconformity in 1630 Archbishop William Laud forbade him to "preach, read, marry, bury, or exercise any ministerial function in any part of his diocese." For a time Shepard tried to carry on his ministry as a private chaplain and in an obscure parish, but he was silenced again. So he decided to join the migration to New England. His first ship was driven back by a storm and almost wrecked, and the second sprung a leak in midocean, but in the fall of 1635 he arrived safely in New England.
Shepard succeeded Thomas Hooker* as minister at Cambridge and married Hooker's daughter. During the first year of his ministry he opposed the Antinomians and kept the heresy from entering Cambridge. For this reason he is said to have won the favor of the Puritan authorities in their selection of Cambridge as the site for Harvard College. Shepard was active in church affairs and was one of the ministers responsible for the custom of requiring public confessions of religious experience as a criterion for church membership. He was also one of John Eliot's· chief supporters in missionary work among the Indians.
Shepard's life was short-he died during his forty-fourth year-but his influence was great. One of the most successful preachers of the plain style, he preached clear and evocative sermons about the soul and salvation that were printed and reprinted long after his death. The Sincere Convert, for example, went through twenty-one editions from 1641 to 1812. It includes a line, anticipating Jonathan Edwards's famous "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." "Thou hangest but by one rotten twined thread of thy life," wrote Shepard, "over the flames of hell every hour."
Shepard reminded people of hell-and of heaven. His influence derived from his skills as a writer and a preacher and from his own personal experience with the life of the spirit In a sermon he once asked, "Hast thou not thought sometimes, at a sermon, the minister hath spoken to none but thee, and that some or other hath told the minister what thou hast said, what thou hast done, what thou hast thought?" Shepard preached just such personal, affecting sermons, drawing on his own experience to bring the great principals of religion to the ordinary lives of his parishioners.
Bibliography
A: The Sincere Convert (London, 1641, and many subsequent editions); New England's Lamentation for Old England's Present Errors (London, 1645); The Sound Believer (London, 1645); Certain Select Cases Resolved, Specially Tending to the Right Ordering of the Heart (London, 1648); The Clear SunShine of the Gospel Breaking Forth upon the Indians of New England (London, 1648); The Parable of the Ten Virgins Opened and Applied (London, 1660); Church Membership of Children and Their Right to Baptism (Cambridge, Mass., 1663); The Works of Thomas Shepard, (New York, 1967); Michael McGiffert, ed., God's Plot: The Paradoxes of Puritan Piety (Amherst, MA, 1972) [Shepard's autobiography and journal].
B: AAP 1,59-68; DAB 17, 75-76; DNB 18, 50-51; NCAB 7, 33-34; J. A. Albro, The Life of Thomas Shepard (Boston, 1847); G. L. Shepard, A Genealogical History of William Shepard and Some of His Descendants (Salem, Mass., 1886); Alexander Whyte, Thomas ShepM'd, Pilgrim Father and Founder of Harvard (London, 1909); S. E. Morison, Builders of the Bay Colony (Boston, 1930), 105-34; George Selement and Bruce C. Woolley, Thomas Shepard's Confessions (Boston, 1981) [conversion testimonies from Shepard's church accompanied by an extensive introduction]; Susan Drinker Moran, 'Thomas Shepard and the Professor: Two Documents from the Early History of Harvard," Early American Literature, 17 (1982), 24-42.
