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Compare Parson Hooper with Jonathan Edwards. What language, details, or elements in each text best exemplify their different styles and impact?

Reverend Hooper is a fictional character created by Nathaniel Hawthorne in his 1832 short story "The Minister's Black Veil." He is described as a pastor who "strove to win his people heavenward by mild, persuasive influences, rather than to drive them thither by the thunders of the Word." Hooper does not interact warmly with his congregation, though; in fact, "with the multitude, good Mr. Hooper was irreparably a bugbear."


Jonathan Edwards was, by contrast, a highly-respected theologian and superstar guest minister who made the rounds of New England meetinghouses during the Great Awakening. His most famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," was not mild. In it, Edwards warned,



"O Sinner! Consider the fearful Danger you are in: 'Tis a great Furnace of Wrath, a wide and bottomless Pit, full of the Fire of Wrath, that you are held over in the Hand of that God."



Puritanism was a difficult religion in which to feel secure about one's salvation, and both the fictional Reverend Hooper and history's Jonathan Edwards meant to bring people to God using whatever influence they thought would be effective.

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