He was known for his facility in Latin with both epigrams and poetry, with Cotton Mather praising the latter. As a writer, his book of Puritan sermons titled "The Gospel Covenant, or the Covenant of Grace Opened", published in London in 1646, in which he appealed to "the people of New England," that they might "labor to shine forth in holiness above all other people", and evoked the City upon a Hill of John Winthrop. To historian Moses Coit Tyler, the "monumental book ... stands for the intellectual robustness of New England in the first age." It is considered one of the first books published in New England.