Many persons and institutions made this book possible by preserving,transmitting, and interpreting Cotton Mather's life and works for threecenturies. Most of them must necessarily but unjustly go unnamed, yet tobe able to acknowledge some publicly is a rich and complex pleasure.First, my thanks to the following for allowing me to use and to quote frommanuscripts in their collections: the American Antiquarian Society,Worcester, Mass.; the Bodleian Library, Oxford, England; Department ofRare Books and Manuscripts, Boston Public Library, by courtesy of theTrustees of the Boston Public Library; Department of Manuscripts, theBritish Library, London; the Brown University Library, Providence, R.I.;the Francis A. Countway Library, Harvard Medical School, Boston; theHoughton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., by permissionof the Houghton Library; the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadel-phia; the Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.; the Massachu-setts Historical Society, Boston; the National Library of Scotland, Edin-burgh, with permission of the Trustees of the National Library ofScotland; Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, the New York PublicLibrary (Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations), New York City; the RoyalSociety, London; Mather Collection (#38-632), the Tracy W. McGregorLibrary, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville; the Yale UniversityLibrary, New Haven, Conn.

For various favors I also feel grateful to Alfred Owen Aldridge, PatriciaBonomi, Ursula Brumm, Everett Emerson, Mason I. Lowance, PatriciaThompson, Louis Tucker, James W. Tuttleton, and Aileen Ward. Christo-pher Jedrey found me a room in Lowell House at Harvard Universitywhen the inns were full, and Kathryn M. Carey guided me through the

X ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Boston court records. Marcus A. McCorison and his superb staff at theAmerican Antiquarian Society were, as always, lavish in both help andhospitality, especially Jo-Anne Beales, Bill Joyce, and Georgia Bumgardner. I am also obliged to my colleagues Josephine Hendin, for herencouraging comments on the work-in-progress, and Robert Raymo, forhis expert advice on Mather's Latin. Michael G. Hall of the University ofTexas very generously gave much time to a detailed reading of the manu-script. His unmatched knowledge of Increase Mather and of seventeenthcentury New England political life spared me many errors.

Sometimes in the course of writing the book I have had in mind therudderless ship where Whitman's captain chalks in large letters on aboard, "Be of good cheer, we will not desert you." For their large hearts Ithank my friends Sacvan Bercovitch, Guen Chabrier, Tom and Gina Davis,Daniel Fuchs, Eugene Goldberg, Flora Kaplan, John Kuehl, Peter Shaw,and Jack Zipes. My final acknowledgments I hardly know whether to calldebts or boasts, for I owe most to a beautiful young scholar and to ayoung man of rare integrity who happen also to be my children, WillaZahava Silverman and Ethan Leigh Silverman.

K.S.New York City5 February 1983

. . . the silent Saint shall now speak aloud unto us:Even in holding his Peace he shall now speak aloud untous: A Dumb Man shall now speak unto us. It shall be done,I will not say, Miraculously, but I hope, it will be doneRemarkably, and very Profitably. The very silence willhave in it a Voice to be greatly hearken'd to. And if I de-clare to you, That my Design is, to strike my HearersDumb, it will be a Kindness for them.

—Silentiarius (1721)

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COTTON MATHER

COTTONUS MATHERUS

(1663-1686)

He was perhaps the principal Ornament of this Country, and the greatest Schol-ar that was ever bred in it.

But besides his universal Learning; his exalted Piety 2nd extensive Charity, hisentertaining Wit, and singular Goodness of Temper recommended him to all, thatwere Judges of real and distinguishing Merit.

—New-England Weekly Journal, February 19, 1728

If young Mr. Mather publishes his father's Life I should be glad to see hismemory honored with an Elogium wherein his Merits are touched with delicacy, soas to make them shine but not glare. That great Man was worthy of the utmost laborsof the Muse. . . .

—isaac watts to Mather Byles, January 23, 1729

His Son . . . can have therefore no Occasion to invent any Additions to his DearFathers History . . . indeed, if He had Published all that his Written Memorialswould have enabled him, or that himself and others have been Witnesses of, He hadnot only swell'd the Volume to too large a size for the present Age to bear, andthereby hurt its Usefulness; but he must have also given such a full Account of thisextraordinary Person as would have exceeded the Belief of those who were Strang-ers to him. The very bare Narration would have rather looked like the celebratedLife of CYRUS, and be disputed by Posterity whether it were design'd and drawn fora mixt Romance, or a real History.

—thomas prince, Preface to Samuel Mather's TheLife of the Very Reverend and Learned CottonMather, D.D. & F.R.S. (1729)

The man who is possessed of a power to act the tyrant when he thinks proper,let him become possessed of it as he may, is at least an USURPER of power thatcannot belong to him in any free state—Power is intoxicating: There have been fewmen, if any, who when possessed of an unrestrained power, have not made a verybad use of it—They have generally exercised such a. power to the terror both of thegood and the evil, and of the good more than the evil. . . .

—"cotton mather" (pen name of Samuel Adams),Boston Gazette, November 25, 1771

Ah pity the wretches that lived in those days,(Ye modern admirers of novels and plays)When nothing was suffered but musty, dull rules,And nonsense from Mather and stuff from the schools!

—philip freneau, "Sketches from AmericanHistory" (1781)

When I was a boy, I met with a book entitled "Essays to do Good," which Ithink was written by your father. It had been so little regarded by a former possessor, that several leaves of it were torn out; but the remainder gave me such a turn ofthinking, as to have an influence on my conduct through life; for I have always set agreater value on the character of a doer of good, than on any other kind of reputation; and if I have been, as you seem to think, a useful citizen, the public owes theadvantage of it to that book.

—benjamin franklin to Samuel Mather,May 12, 1784

Quantum Nomen! Quanta Nomina!

Esteem, prestige, position, and respect belonged to Cotton Mather bybirth, for his flesh and name united two of the most honored families inearly New England, the Cottons and the Mathers.

Both his grandfathers were Moses-like figures, leaders and lawgiversduring the great exodus of English Puritans from England to America.Richard Mather, his paternal grandfather, had studied at Oxford Universi-ty and, like other Puritan ministers, was harassed for flouting the practicesof the Church of England. When he admitted to an official of a churchcourt that in his fifteen years of preaching he had never worn a surplice,he was told, "// had been better for him, that he had gotten Seven Bas-tards. " Suspended from his pulpit, he migrated to Massachusetts in dis-guise and settled at Dorchester, where he preached for nearly thirty-fouryears. In addition to acting as a Harvard Overseer and working at theconversion of the Indians, he drafted the famous Cambridge Platform of1648, by which the New England Puritans codified and published to theworld their distinctive form of church government—known, because ofits emphasis on the autonomy of individual congregations, as Congrega-tionalism.

Cotton Mather's maternal grandfather, John Cotton, was also a re-nowned English minister, as well as a graduate of Cambridge Universityand the author of nearly three thousand pages of published sermons.When John Winthrop's historic fleet of four ships sailed to MassachusettsBay in 1630, the vanguard of the Puritan hegira, it was John Cotton whopreached the farewell sermon. He reminded the emigrants that after Jero-boam set up golden calves for worship, godly Israelites abandoned hiskingdom and moved to Jerusalem. Thus, he implied, Scripture warranted

the Puritans' own flight from idolatrous England to the New World,where they might have "liberty of the Ordinances"—liberty to observethe religious forms and ceremonies prescribed by God in the New Testament, purged of such merely human additions as the wearing of elaborateclerical vestments, the hearing of confession and praying to saints, thehierarchy of bishops and cardinals. Two years later Cotton was summonedto an ecclesiastical court to answer for his religious views. He went intohiding, and at the age of forty-eight emigrated. His congregation in Eng-land followed him to America, where he became the minister of the FirstChurch of Boston.

The moral and political authority of Cotton Mather's grandfatherslived on in the next generation. Two of John Cotton's sons, and four ofRichard Mather's, graduated from Harvard College and entered the minis-try. The devotion of the two families to the Puritans' Christian Israel inAmerica meant that eight of Cotton Mather's closest male relatives wereministers: both his famous grandfathers, five of his six uncles—and ofcourse his father, Increase Mather.

Except for uncertain health, Increase Mather demonstrated even inyouth that the eminence of Richard Mather would not diminish in him,but expand. Born in Dorchester on June 21, 1639, he learned Latin andGreek grammar from his father, and entered Harvard at the age of twelve.But his concerned parents withdrew him a while for private instruction,fearing the effect of the college diet, he said, on "my weak natural consti-tution of Body." At the age of fifteen he was first smitten by what becamea lifelong ailment, "a sore disease, which was apprehended to be thestone, but I suppose it was a spice of the strangury [slow painful emissionof urine]"—classic afflictions of the sedentary scholar. Terror of dyingcoupled with the death of his mother in 1655 produced an extremity ofanguish in his soul, resulting in an experience of religious conversionfollowed by a considerable period of inward peace. On his eighteenthbirthday he preached his first sermon; soon after he preached in Dorches-ter, from Richard Mather's own pulpit.

Increase improved his education and preparation for the ministry byspending the next four years abroad. His eldest brother, a minister inDublin, encouraged him to come to Ireland. Increase wished to do so,and prevailed on his father for permission. Stricken after about a monthabroad with measles and a month later with smallpox, he however recov-ered and took a Master's degree at Trinity College. His commencement

exercises so pleased the scholars that they "did publicly Ham me; a vani-ty which I never saw practised before nor since; nor to any one but myself." For the next three years he preached in England and Guernsey.During this time he felt a troubled, prophetic intimation of impendingchange. The impression came with such strength that while preaching inthe city of Gloucester, young as he was, he publicly prophesied that faith-ful witnesses of Christ must expect new suffering. Several weeks later,monarchy was restored in England after a decade of Puritan rule, bringingwith it new demands for conformity to the ceremonies of the Church ofEngland. Increase himself, as he recalled with gratification, was "perse-cuted out of two places . . . before I was 22 years of age." Hoping to findat least temporary shelter and greatly desiring to see his father again, hereturned in September l66l to New England. At the first sight of RichardMather he wept abundantly—"I think the only time that I ever wept forJoy." His love was returned, for when Increase once again preached at hisfather's church in Dorchester, Richard Mather could hardly pronouncethe blessing for his own tears.

Returned from England, Increase settled into public and domesticlife. He found himself with invitations to preach from no fewer thantwelve congregations. Often self-deprecating and with no very high opin-ion of humanity, he considered his popularity a result of his years abroad,which made him seem a stranger in Massachusetts, "and people are apt torun after strangers though they have little in them of real worth." Hechose to settle where he believed he would be most serviceable for Christand His people, in the Boston North Church. On March 6, 1662, he mar-ried Maria Cotton, the daughter of the great John Cotton, now dead. Thefamilies had been drawn together in 1656 when Richard Mather, widow-er, married Cotton's widow. As Increase described his marriage to hisstep-sister, he was "brought into acquaintance with her by means of myFathers having married her mother."

The first eight years of their marriage, Increase Mather and Maria Cot-ton lived in the house where Maria had been born. It had been built onthe slope of an eighty-foot hill known as Cotton's Hill—one of the threepeaks of Trimountain, a high ridge on whose central peak a beacon wasset to notify the surrounding country of danger. This ridge dominated anearly islanded peninsula, almost completely surrounded by water butattached to the mainland by a skinny neck, so low that the spring tidesometimes washed its road. Below this ridge lay Boston.

Although settled only about thirty years, Boston was the largest townin North America, containing in 1663 about three thousand inhabitants.Most of the houses seem to have been small (not twenty of them, by a1673 report, had ten rooms), built of wood, and set close together as mLondon. Many were built near the shoreline, with wharves extending intothe harbor. Cobblestones paved some streets, but most were dirt, roamedby stray horses and swine. The outstanding building was the multipur-pose Town House, the center of New England's civic and business life,containing the various courts of the colony and the town's free library,but serving as well for town meetings and an armory. Set at the mainintersection of Boston and surrounded by many shops, it was a two-storystructure with a projecting first floor upheld by ten-foot-high pillars, thespaces between which served as an open-air exchange for merchants andshipmasters.

The Mathers' house, perhaps a fifteen-minute walk from the TownHouse, stood on about an acre and a half of land, with fences, a garden,and fruit trees. Sir Henry Vane, an early governor of Massachusetts, hadlived there and to the original building had annexed a second one. In this"double house" on a steep hill overlooking Boston, the couple's firstchild was born at a quarter past ten in the morning, February 12, 1663.Always mindful of the prestigious past, Increase named the child Cottonin honor of Maria's father, "the most Eminent Man of God that ever New-England saw."

Virtually nothing is known about Cotton Mather's early relation to hismother. Indeed very little is known about his first years as a whole, al-though much can be inferred from the hopes and anxieties of his father.Increase made a formidable parent: loving, encouraging, and principled,but also high-strung, morose, and mysterious. "Strong affections," as heremarked, "bring strong afflictions," and during Cotton's frequent child-hood illnesses, the father's intense love for his son caused him equallyintense anxiety. In October 1664 he recorded in his diary, "Fears of Cot-ton's death because so ill." A month later he wrote, "This day Cottontaken very ill of vomiting and purging. I troubled because loved him sostrongly." The next June the child suffered "extreme pains," leaving In-crease crying to God to spare his life. During a new illness with highfever two months later, Cotton, now two and a half years old and able tospeak, said: "Father, Ton [i.e., Cotton] would go see God." The child'spious wish to die "went to my heart," Increase wrote, "lest Lord shouldtake him away by death."

These and Increase's several other bouts of acute distress over Cot-

ton's health arose not only from the child's actual illnesses and from thehigh infant mortality rate in New England, but also from a huge invest-ment of hope. Very early in his son's life he felt an inner supernaturalconviction that Cotton had been specially chosen: "if ever Father had aparticular Faith for a child, then I had so for that child, of whom I couldwith Assurance say, God has blessed him, yea, and He shall be blessed."And Cotton early bore out his father's certainty. By his own later accountof his childhood, he learned to write before going to school and began topray just as he began to speak, not repeating standard forms of prayers butinventing prayers for himself. In encouraging such hopeful signs, In-crease likely observed at home the parental practices he often urged onhis congregation: to spend much time educating their children's mindsand hearts; pray much for their conversion; explain to them sadly theircorruption by nature; and charge them, with the greatest solemnity, "toknow and serve the God of their Fathers."

While such nurture demanded much time and close personal supervi-sion, Increase was also often remote and forbidding. A deeply privateman, he wrote on the title page of his diary some verses describing hismelancholy yearning for solitude:

Give me a Call

To dwellWhere no foot hath

A PathThere will I spend

And EndMy wearied years

In tears

Increase's love of withdrawal and his often-expressed dislike of visitorswere in part vocational, a relish for prayer and reading that fitted him forthe ministry, in keeping with the Hebraic and Puritan view of study as aform of worship. He said once that he "loved to be in no place on theEarth, so much as in my Study." Usually there by about seven in themorning, he sometimes stayed until after midnight, appearing only formeals or to supervise religious instruction and devotion in his family. Heseldom spent fewer than sixteen hours a day in his study. "He lov'd thisStudy," a contemporary wrote, "to a kind of excess, and in a manner liv'din it from his Youth to a great Old Age."

Yet Increase Mather's love of privacy was personal as well. He carriedthe lonely austerity of his study into public life, being, as his son empha-

sized later, "HEART SERIOUS." While displaying the neatness, carriage,and conduct of a gentleman, his behavior was grave: "His very Counte-nance carried the Force of a Sermon with it. "Contemptuous of loquacityand ornament, in both his preaching and his social life, he spoke littleand plainly. This was no "Starch'd Appearance, and a Tartuflcover," hisson later believed, but rather that, having a true fear of God, he guardedhis heart. Some of his reserve in personal relationships he tried to fosterin his children, teaching them to maintain a moderate disposition, sus-pect others, and suppress resentment. For instance, the "Rules of Behav-ior" drawn up by Cotton's brother Nathanael (born when Cotton was six)include such wary injunctions as: "Believe not all you hear, and speak notall you believe"; "Never impart that to a Friend, which may Impower himto be your Enemy"; "If you have an Injury done you, you do your Adver-sary too much Honour to take notice of it; and think too meanly of yourself to Revenge it."

On larger, impersonal issues, however, Increase's solitariness as-sumed a militant aspect. The conviction of serving a sacred cause mademany Puritans blunt, but Increase was unusual in the frequency and bold-ness of his displays of crotchety dissent. Indifferent to current opinionand defiant of majorities and authorities of every sort, he heeded hisconscience. When he took his M.A. at Trinity College he refused to wearthe customary ceremonial hood and cap. When the Restoration was pro-claimed he refused to toast the new king's health, explaining he would"pray for the Kings health but drink for my own." When the celebratedaged minister Michael Wigglesworth was about to remarry—having inview a woman who was unbaptized, not yet twenty years old, and hisserving maid—Increase told him tartly: "if there were an eminency of thefear of God discernible in your Damosel, notwithstanding her obscurityupon other accounts, there would be less of scandal in proceedings. But Ido not hear any one but yourself speak much concerning that matter."Fearless as well, he acted as part of an underground, during Cotton'syouth, hiding the regicides Goffe and Whalley from crown officials pursu-ing them in New England.

But Increase's inwardness went far beyond love of study, personalreserve, or feisty outspokenness. It was also a realm of mystical experi-ence and of depressive longings for annihilation. Like others he believedthat singular devotion to contemplation and prayer produced a height-ened susceptibility to psychical events, "Presagious Impressions. " Oncehe felt his soul strangely moved with thoughts of heaven; three days laterhe learned that "at That very Time," a hundred miles away, his brother

Eleazer had died. Another time while praying in his study he found hisheart exceedingly melted, "and me thought, I saw God before my eyes."The experience was so strong that he feared falling into a trance. Oftenhe received strange intimations that he would shortly die; they sometimesarrived with guilty feelings of inadequacy in his ministry. On one suchoccasion, for instance, he recorded feeling "ashamed to think how little Ihave done for God and for Jesus Christ, and how short I have fallen of theobligations the Lord has brought me under." God, he sensed, "may nowjustly put an end to my days, and take me out of the world because I am(and ever have been) an unprofitable servant." These hints of mortalityhe often revealed in his published writings and sermons, and he oftenspoke from his pulpit, a contemporary said, "in the most solemn andaffecting manner, of his Desires to depart."

Whatever Increase's congregation made of his frequent announce-ments of his imminent death, his son can have taken them only as dread-ful threats of abandonment. They already echo in Cotton's remarkablecomment to him, at the age of two and a half, "Father, Ton would go seeGod." However loving and attentive, this was a father not easily pleased,whose attention was not guaranteed, and whose concern often seemed tolie elsewhere than here and now.

The years of Cotton's infancy and early childhood were for IncreaseMather a period of turbulent dissatisfaction, for the church and place inwhich he settled left him feeling painfully unfulfilled. The North (orSecond) Church had been formed in 1650, the first sermon there havingbeen preached by his brother Samuel. The congregation had invited In-crease to settle with them soon after his return from England, but he heldout for two years, "finding a great averseness in my spirit to comply there-with." His aversion had several sources. Although he preached to thecongregation regularly on a salaried basis, ordination meant a lifelongholy commitment to them. Distance probably also counted, for thechurch lay in the other, north end of Boston, perhaps a mile from hissouth-end home on Cotton's Hill. Many ministers in Increase's genera-tion, too, were beginning to fall out with their congregations over suchmatters as salary and admissions policy. Above all, he was aware of hisfamily's distinction and, having sampled the richness of cosmopolitan lifeabroad, he greatly hoped to return to England, if liberty toward Dissent-ers was granted.

The brethren of the church held a day of prayer asking God to incline

Increase to accept their call. The same day he felt a strong impression onhis mind to do so, and relented. But he stipulated conditions: that itpersecuted, insufficiently paid, in poor health, or called to greater service, he be free to move elsewhere or return to England—threats of abandonment in a different form. Obviously he accepted the invitation withintense repugnance, for the prospect of his ordination touched off a se-vere religious crisis. On four separate days between April 10 and 19, 1664,a month before his ordination, he recorded feeling "Dead in receivingsacrament," his heart "lifeless." Agonies of religious doubt made himlistless and sleepless, fearful of being unable to preach, "Grieved,grieved, grieved, with temptations to Atheism." How long this crisis last-ed is uncertain, but his son later wrote that "Furious and BoisterousTemptations unto Atheism" embittered "the more Early Years of his Min-istry." In this mood he was ordained at the North Church on May 27,1664, his father, Richard Mather, assisting in the ceremony.

Immediately Increase regretted his decision. He learned that somemembers of his church opposed offering him a substantial maintenance,and that a motion had even come before the legislature to ask the churchto forbear ordaining him altogether. These "unworthy dealings" madehim feel, just a month after his ordination, that he would rather sufferunder prelacy in England than stay in Boston and "suffer under them thatlooked upon as godly [sic]." As he settled into his ministry, other mem-bers of the church criticized him for grousing over his pay, threatening toleave, or acting dictatorially, so that he found himself not only feelingunappreciated but also unable to study or to sleep, and owing money tohis butcher. For three years he complained about his wretched situationin his diaries, his grievances alternating with anguished exclamations ofreligious doubt:

Many thoughts of heart whether to continue in Boston. Strong inclinationsto move to Connecticut.

. . . much troubled and disturbed in my spirit to think how little en-couragement and how much disrespect I have met with in Boston.

Melancholy and inclination to leave Boston because of the miserableuncertain maintenance. . . .

Heart full of sad thoughts.

His resentment of his inadequate salary was allayed when some wealthypersons joined his church and contributed extra money for his support.Later in life he grew more affectionate toward his flock, but he neverwholly overcame or stopped speaking of his desire to return to England,

"to follow my studies and increase learning, and where I might havesuitable encouragement in outward respects."

What must have been a discontented household mood during CottonMather's first few years was aggravated by the inevitable bickering of ayoung couple, however pious, learning to live together. Not much isknown about Maria Cotton, two years younger than Increase. Both herhusband and her son later praised her affection, godliness, and self-sacri-ficing nature. Increase described her as a woman of a "very loving tenderdisposition" who strove never to displease him: "Her honor for me wastoo great. For She has said to many, that She thought I was the bestHusband, and the best man in the whole world." Given his solitary tem-perament and vocation, he also saw her as an ideal wife: "I kept close tomy Study, and committed the management of the affairs of the Family toher." Cotton clearly felt loved by her and later praised her as a pattern ofpiety: a woman who read over the Bible perhaps twice a year, performedprivate devotions perhaps six times a day, kept whole days of fasting andprayer, and was humble, modest in attire, and charitable to the poor.

But these eulogies came forty years later. Increase's diaries for theearliest years of his marriage offer few glimpses of Maria, and they allreveal less sugar than vinegar. Hardly three months after Cotton's birth,he found his wife also dissatisfied with him. When he asked her "in aloving way" to explain just how he had misconducted himself, she saidshe "expected no good either for soul or body" from him, for he "wasnever like to have any." Some people, she assured him, considered it "a1000 pities" that she had married him; if she wanted, she "might havehad better." Next month Increase recorded that Maria felt ill-requited inher esteem for him: "you set down my bad and I set down your good,"she said. And she added a dash of venom: "if my bad ones be no morethan your good ones they not very many." Another ambiguous entry sug-gests that Maria was distressed by Increase's complaints about Boston,and by living with her new husband and infant son in her father's house(and perhaps with her mother): "This morning my wife desired me withtears to leave her fathers house, wishing that I would rather leave Bostonthan live here, because her mother had spoken to her &c."

In the fall of 1669, when Cotton was six, Increase succumbed to seri-ous emotional difficulties. They may have been precipitated by the death,that April, of his father. Now blind in one eye, Richard Mather became illat Increase's house with a violent fit of the stone and was taken home toDorchester to die a week later. That fall, Increase himself experiencedextreme pain in his left side and a violent fever that "brought me to the

gates of death." These subsided but gave way to "Hypochondriacal affection," that is, melancholy or depression. The depression shut Increase infor the winter, incapacitating him for preaching until March 1670, andthen "very weak in body." Around the spring of 1671 he began sufferingattacks of "Ephialtes," severe nightmares later described by his son as"little short of Mortal." His considerable medical reading taught him thatvictims of Ephialtes were vulnerable to apoplexy, epilepsy, or mania. Hebecame persuaded (or, as he put it later, Satan took advantage of hismelancholy to persuade him, "though there was no ground for it") thathis own fate would be mania.

The possibility of going insane filled Increase with "inexpressiblesorrows and fears." For several weeks he lodged at Lynn to drink from itsnoted spring, on the widespread theory that "melancholy Hypochondria-cal vapors" originated in the spleen and might be remedied by mineralwaters. But the nightmares returned almost every night, depriving him ofrest and leading him to fear that his faith in God to relieve him wouldprove a delusion. Despite periods of revival and sound sleep, the night-mares persisted through the summer and fall, waking him before day,convincing him that "my Ephialtes would issue in a Mania." Pouring outhis heart, he begged God either to answer his prayers for survival or todeny them. This prolonged bout of Ephialtes seems to have passed in thefall of 1671, but he suffered terrifying nightmares recurrently throughoutthe rest of his life.

During this period, probably in 1671, the family moved into a newhouse, in the other, north, end of Boston. What occasioned the move isunknown; perhaps Increase's emotional state or Maria's unhappiness overresiding in her father's house, or simple convenience. The new housewas only a short walk from the North Church, to whom it belonged, andthe family was growing. By about the time of the move, Cotton was one offive Mather children, a new infant having arrived every two years: Maria(March 1665), Elizabeth (January 1667), Nathanael (July 1669), and Sa-rah (November 1671)—for each of whom Increase prayed each day andnight by name, except when ill and unable to pray at all.

Cotton later called the North End "the Island of North-Boston" It wasin fact a genuine island, roughly the shape of a reversed P. The stem ofthe P was separated from the South End of Boston by a canal, spanned bytwo drawbridges. Larger bodies of water surrounded the bowl of the P:the Mill Pond (which worked a grist mill and a saw mill), the CharlesRiver, and Boston Harbor. This was a compact, brisk shipbuilding andcommercial area with many wharves and coffee houses, described by a

visitor in 1663 as "the most elegant and populous part of the town." Inaddition to the many merchants and shipbuilders who wished to live neartheir warehouses and wharves, the street traffic thickened with travelersto or from Charlestown, Cambridge, or the north, who needed to use theCharlestown ferry. The most conspicuous features of the neighborhoodwere the Mill Creek, in which butchers cast entrails and garbage, andwindmill hill (later Copp's Hill), rising about fifty feet from the sea, theburial ground of the North Church. Increase's life and his family's cen-tered in the part of the End known as Clark's Square, an important socialdistrict near which lived many families of wealth and consequence. Here,only a street or so from the wharves extending into Boston Harbor, stoodthe North Church, apparently built, like the two other Boston meeting-houses, of clapboards and shingles, its bell ringing out at nine each nightand five each morning.

By moving near his flock Increase did not improve his relation tothem. In debt and oppressed by "outward wants and Family straits," hebegan compiling a fresh list of resentments, praying to Christ either tomove his people to give him a comfortable living or to "remove me toanother people who will take care of me." The indifference of somemembers of his congregation to his welfare again stirred angry, sorrowfulfantasies of departure and death. Only his absence would make him ap-preciated: "When I am gone, my poor people will believe that the griefwhich I sustained by their neglects of me and mine, was unprofitable forthem." Worse, Increase's pinching circumstances hindered his studiesand his ministry. He could be content to be poor, he wrote at the end of1672, as long as he could serve God undistractedly: "but to be in debt tothe dishonor of the Gospel, is a wounding killing thought to me; yea sogrievous as that if it be not remedied in a little Time it will bring me withsorrow to my grave."

From the time of the family's move, just before or after 1671, come thefirst substantial details of Cotton Mather's life. Some survive in forms thatinvite omission and distortion, accounts written long after the events byfamily members with didactic, apologetic, or self-justifying motives. Evenso, they make clear part of what it meant to grow up a Cotton and aMather, and the son of Increase Mather.

Not surprisingly, Cotton's piety was precocious. Before he was able totake notes in church while listening to his father and other preachers, hewould come home from the service and write out what he remembered.

He read Scripture ardently, for a time nothing less than fifteen chapters aday, divided into morning, noon, and night exercises. Presumably emulating his father's paternal and ministerial pedagogy, with a touch of hisown ingenuity, he composed prayers for his school friends and "Obligedthem to Pray." He also "Rebuked my Play-mates, for their Wicked Wordsand Ways." As a result, he learned at the age of seven or eight that part ofthe meaning of being a Mather was to undergo ingratitude. For his play-mates did not always take his concern for their souls kindly: "Sometimes ISuffered from them, the persecution of not only Scoffs" he recalled, "butBlows also, for my Rebukes." Increase responded to this like someonewhose father had been persecuted for not wearing a surplice and whohad himself been harassed out of two places before the age of twenty-two.He seemed "very Glad, Yea, almost Proud, of my Affronts; and I thenwondered at it, tho' afterwards, I better understood his Heavenly Princi-ple."

In study and learning Cotton was equally precocious and equally aMather. For his formal schooling he attended the public school in theSouth End run by the gifted poet Benjamin Tompson and then by thelegendary Ezekiel Cheever, the first great schoolmaster in America. Ateacher in Boston for thirty-eight years, Cheever combined in his teach-ing Christian piety and classical learning. A sort of "Christian Terence,"as Cotton later described him, he not only labored to improve his sdents'Latin prose style but also prayed with them daily, catechized them week-ly, and dressed plainly to set them an example of Puritan tradition. Chee-ver praised Cotton's diligence, but how much of his classical learningCotton got from Cheever and how much from his father or on his own isunclear. Cotton's constitution being "Tender and Weakly," and theschool being in the other end of Boston, the anxious Increase kept himhome during the winter. Cotton spent the time reading church historyand developing his budding facility and love for language. Able evenearlier to write out what he remembered of sermons and to create prayers,by around the age of eleven he had read in Cato, Tully, Ovid, and Virgil,gone through a great part of the New Testament in Greek, "read consider-ably" 4n Homer, and begun Hebrew grammar. He now spoke Latin "soreadily" that he could not only write notes of sermons as the preacherspoke in church, but even write them in Latin while the preacher spokein English.

By 1674 Cotton had mastered the entrance requirements for HarvardCollege and was admitted, he wrote later, "upon a Strict Examination ofthe President and Fellows." No account of his examination remains, but

the college laws required for admission a working knowledge of Latinand Greek, and signs of academic promise:

When any Scholar is able to read and understand Tully Virgil or any suchordinary Classical Authors, and can readily make and speak or write trueLatin in prose and hath Skill in making verse, and is Competently ground-ed in the Greek Language; so as to be able to Construe and Grammaticallyto resolve ordinary Greek, as in the Greek Testament, Isocrates, and theminor poets, or such like, having withal meet Testimony of his towardli-ness, he shall be capable of his admission into the College.

Increase Mather entered Harvard at the age of twelve; his son entered atthe age of eleven and a half—the youngest student admitted to the col-lege in its history.

Cotton's brilliant entrance, however, was flawed. He had developed astammer. For a Mather, of course, such a handicap was all but ruinous.The firstborn son of a rising minister, the grandson of two famous minis-ters, and the nephew of five other ministers, there was no question butthat he would be raised for the ministry himself. Yet the stammer, hewrote later, made such a career " a Thing as much despaired of, as any-thing in the World." Increase saw what his son's impediment meant forthe tasks of preaching and public prayer, and worried "lest the Hesitancyin his speech should make him uncapable of improvement in the work ofthe ministry, whereunto I had designed him." On October 7, 1674, hefasted and prayed in concern over Cotton's stammer, calling him andMaria into his study, where they prayed together, and with "many Tearsbewailed our sinfullness, and begged of God mercy in this particular."He resolved to trust in God and let Him do what He saw good, whetherHe chose to remove the impediment or not.

Just when and why Cotton Mather's stammer manifested itself is un-certain. However speculative, the question deserves brief discussion be-cause feelings about his speech guided or colored many of his later activ-ities, sometime subtly. Increase first mentions the stammer in his diary ofOctober 1674, a few months into Cotton's freshman year at Harvard. Onlyportions of this diary have survived, however, and the diaries for the pre-ceding six years, which may have contained entries concerning Cotton'sstammer, are missing. Thus the affliction may have developed well before1674. In fact stuttering, to use the current term, can begin even before thethird year; most stutterers, eighty-five to ninety percent, begin stutteringbefore the age of eight. The notion of an onset to stuttering is itselfmisleading, since nearly all children have some natural disfluency of

speech. A child "begins" stuttering when its disfluency first strikes aparent as abnormal, or when some provocations abruptly intensity it. Thelikelihood that Cotton's speech problems began several years before theage of eleven is strengthened by a later remark of his son Samuel. An"uncommon Impediment in bis Speech," he wrote about his father, appeared "from his Cradle."

In explaining the causes of stuttering, modern speech pathologistsdiffer, some emphasizing the organic, others the psychological. Cotton'sseveral childhood ailments may have contributed, since many stutterersseem to have had rheumatic fever and scarlet fever. But even most au-thorities who emphasize physiology grant importance to psychologicalinfluences. As the son of a father to whom great affections meant greatafflictions, who spent sixteen hours daily in his study and welcomed hisson's chastisement by the ungodly, Cotton Mather fits a widely acceptedmodel of stutterers as "sensitive" children of overanxious and perfection-ist parents who set lofty standards of achievement and conduct. That In-crease Mather was a man who garnered invitations to preach from a dozendifferent congregations cannot have helped; extra pressure is createdwhen a child's parents or siblings are endowed with particularly effectivespeech that is an object of family pride. Even if exceptionally goodspeech has never been demanded of some minister's or lawyer's or teach-er's son, one authority writes, it is "reasonably sure that he inflicted onhimself all of the consequences of such demands merely in the naturalprocess of competing with his father."

Whether Cotton Mather's stutter began in early childhood or close topuberty, and whatever its causes, it exposed him to ridicule and madehim highly self-conscious and highly sensitive to criticism of what hesaid. "I know one, who had been very much a Stammerer," he wrote latein his life, " and no words can tell, how much his Infirmity did Encumberand Embitter the first years of his Pilgrimage." Speaking impersonally butevidently from distressing personal experience, he described the stutter-er's tension and embarrassment in speech situations, "when he feels Godcontinually Binding of him; and when Every Business and Even- Compa-ny, wherewith he is concerned, puts him in Pain, how to get thro' theSpeaking Partwhich he has before him." Even more painfully, people ofno goodness or breeding subject him to "Inhumane Derision, "so that hefeels unfit for, and perhaps averse to, the delights of human society. The"one" he knew, Mather wrote, poured out to Christ "Thousands of Sup-plications for a Free Speech."

Christ was not the only Comforter, for the closeness of Puritan social

and family ties meant that Cotton need not struggle with his humiliationalone. Besides praying at home with his concerned parents, he received avisit in his chamber at Harvard (probably after freshman year) from ElijahCorlet, an aged, famous schoolmaster and a sympathetic person. Corlettold him: "My Friend, I now Visit you for nothing, but only to Talk withyou about the Infirmity in your Speech, and offer you my Advice about it;Because I suppose tis a Thing that greatly Trouble [sic] you." Observingthat no one ever stuttered when singing psalms (many stutterers can singfluently), he advised Cotton to speak very deliberately, with a "a Drawl-ing that shall be little short of Singing." He illustrated the method byreciting the first verse in Homer and prolonging every syllable. Thedrawling, he suggested, was at least preferable to stuttering, and wouldgive him time to command his thoughts and to substitute a pronounce-able word for one that he anticipated might be blocked. And by using themethod for a while he would soon become habituated to speaking cor-rectly, and by degrees grow able to speak at a normal pace, "Tho' myAdvice is," he concluded, "Beware of Speaking too fast, as Long as youLive."

Other problems than his stutter faced Cotton Mather at Harvard. At thetime of his admission, physical, demographic, and administrative prob-lems had put the school in the sorriest state in its history. Because Har-vard was the training ground for the New England ministry, its sinkingcondition long remained a matter of deep public concern. Set on a largeplain, the physical college consisted essentially of the President's house,a small brick Indian school, and the College Hall, making a compact unitaround the college yard. But the Indian college was little used and wasmaintained as a printing house. The College Hall, a two-story woodbuilding enclosing most of the college facilities (library, recitation hall,dormitory, and study), was collapsing, and by 1677 became uninhabit-able. A large new brick hall was under construction at public expense,but probably no students moved in until the spring of 1678, just monthsbefore Cotton's graduation.

No ampler facilities were in a sense needed, because the number ofcollege-age boys in the families that had founded and used the schoolhad dwindled, threatening its very existence. When Cotton attended, Har-vard enrolled perhaps no more than twenty students all together; his ownclass had only four. Administration was erratic. Between 1672 and 1685no fewer than thirteen official attempts were made to retain a president,

resulting in a succession of short-term administrations. When Cotton entered, the president was Leonard Hoar, a Harvard graduate himself(1650), recently returned to Boston after taking a medical degree in England. A man with lively scientific interests and a friend of the Englishchemist Robert Boyle, he hoped to raise funds toward building an arboreum, a chemical laboratory, and an "ergasterium for mechanic fancies/1and by these means to effect Harvard's "resuscitation from its ruins."

But in the depleted state of the college neither President Hoar norCotton Mather prospered. Cotton's student life under Hoar seems to havebegun auspiciously. The president assigned him for his first declamationa topic that acknowledged his family's achievement and his own promise:"Telemacho veniet, vivat modo, fortior AEtag'—that the son of Ulyssesmight one day be even braver than his father. But at the moment CottonMather was an eleven-year-old boy and probably already a stutterer,among students whose ages ranged from about fifteen to eighteen. Afteronly a month or two at college he returned home. He had received, In-crease wrote, "some discouragement ... by reason that some of the schol-ars threatened him, &c, as apprehending that he had told me of theirmiscarriages." Unfortunately the nature of the discouragement, thethreats, and the miscarriages is entirely unknown. But Cotton may havestayed home the rest of his freshman year, studying with his father and onhis own.

President Hoar fared even worse. The General Court (Massachusetts'bicameral legislature) held an extraordinary session in October 1674 todeal with the college's "languishing and decaying condition." Because ofthe paucity of students, it dismissed all of the school's salaried officers,and ruled that if by the next Court the college was in the same conditionHoar would be dismissed. Next month all but three students left. InMarch Hoar resigned his presidency and by the winter he was dead. In-crease, prone to attribute death to ingratitude, believed Hoar was"brought into a consumption by the grief he sustained through afflictionswhen President of the college." By the time Cotton returned for his soph-omore year the college had a new president, the minister of Cambridge,Urian Oakes.

The change in administration apparently did not ease Cotton's diffi-cult situation at Harvard. His discomfort may even have grown, because afew days before Hoar resigned, Increase Mather accepted an appointmentby the college Overseers as a nonresident Fellow of the college, and thenbecame active in its affairs, not always helpfully. When he learned thatstudents were saying he desired the presidency, he rode to Cambridge to

complain to President Oakes, who assured him everyone knew he couldhave the presidency if he desired it and prayed him for the good of thecollege to bear with the students' "Jealousy." Increase made equallyplain his anger over his son's treatment at the school. Less than a monthinto Cotton's sophomore year, Increase was troubled to learn that he hadbeen "abused" by some students. Like the "discouragement" Cotton re-ceived as a freshman, the nature of this "abuse" is unknown—perhapshazing and fagging, or some taunt for his stutter. But it was presumablywhat goaded Increase into riding to Cambridge to speak with Oakes andone of the Fellows about withdrawing his son again. Understandably,given the Mather name and the few students, they resisted. Increase didat least remove Cotton from under the instruction of his current tutor, andmay have again kept him home a while. In September he also threatenedto resign his position as Fellow because he too, he said, "had been soabused," and because the Corporation had dealt with him grievously insummoning students to ask them "who told tales to me"—which mayhave figured in Cotton's abuse. Deeply protective toward the young, how-ever strict, he also complained to the Overseers about the general prac-tice of hazing freshmen.

The demoralized atmosphere at the college during Cotton's sopho-more year was deepened by a violent event, which his father claimed tohave foreseen. Early in 1674 Increase felt persistent intimations that Godwould strike New England by sword. Believing that when God intendedheavy judgments He often forewarned some servant, he preached twosermons on Ezekiel 7:7: The day of Trouble is near. The summer of 1675fulfilled his prophecy. King Philip's War erupted, almost wholly destroy-ing more than a dozen towns, and leaving many Indians from severaltribes slaughtered, sold into slavery, or dead of exposure in what for themwas a virtual war of annihilation. By one estimate almost every person inBoston lost a relation or near friend; the debt incurred by Massachusettsseems to have exceeded the value of the whole personal property of itsinhabitants.

While Cotton was enrolled at the college in the winter and spring of1675-76, towns such as Medfield, Groton, and Rehoboth suffered bloodyand fiery raids. The fighting came within twenty miles of Boston; ongoingconstruction of the new College Hall was suspended. Cotton witnessedhis father's many prayers to God for victory, and believed them effica-cious. Increase set apart a special day to beseech God to cut off theIndian leader, King Philip, by a providential stroke. In "less than a Week,after This," Cotton recalled, "the Thing was Accomplished. " Philip was

shot and quartered, Boston receiving his hands, Plymouth his head. Colton later recalled how with his own hands he detached Philips jaw fromhis skull.

The war hardly ended when Cotton, now nearly fourteen, understoodhimself to have witnessed the accomplishment of another of his father'sprophecies. Increase had become "strongly possessed" with fears thatBoston would be punished by a judgment of fire. On November 19, 1676,he again preached his congregation a warning sermon. But he foundthem unmoved. When he went home he paced his study, weeping, saying, "O Lord God, I have told this people in thy Name that thou art aboutto cut off dwellings, but they will not believe me. "Maria did not trust hisprophetic sense either. He feared their house would burn, and urged herto move from it with him and the children. Unawed and unpersuaded,she considered his forebodings "only a phansy in my head."

Increase frequently suffered from insomnia, but the fact that he wasawake at about five o'clock in the morning on November 27 he attributedto Providence: "God (and I believe his Angels) did so influence that Icould not sleep that morning," he wrote. Smelling something, he roseand looked out the window. Then, "some began to cry fire."

Cotton Mather saw his family's house burn down, in a conflagrationthat also destroyed his father's meetinghouse and threatened to consumeBoston. Breaking out in a building opposite the Mathers' house from acarelessly set candle, the fire headed on wind toward the Mathers' livingquarters. Increase's immediate thought was to get the children out of thehouse. Next he tried to save his many manuscripts and his more than athousand books, whose loss "would more afflict me," he said, "than to bedeprived of all other outward effects." He went to his much loved studyand—apparently with the house aflame—gave his most valuable manu-scripts to Cotton to carry off. Then he began throwing books down thestairs as fast as he could. Before he managed to clear the study peoplecalled to him that if he stayed longer he would be killed.

Increase lost by fire about eighty books, his father's letters, a trunk ofhis mother's writings, the winter provision in the cellar, the clothing inthe garret, and some English money and gold that were filched, seeming-ly while his goods lay in the street. But he rescued the beds, bedding,linens, most of the chairs, and—the "great mercy"—a thousand booksand most of his manuscripts. Luckily for history these included a work hethen had in his library, the manuscript of William Bradford's History ofPlymouth Plantation. By one account the fire devoured about forty fivedwellings, the North Church, and several warehouses, leaving seventy or

eighty families homeless. Except for a heavy downpour of rain it wouldprobably have destroyed the whole North End and endangered Charles-town also, for fireflakes drifted over the river and fell there on houses andbarns.

After the fire the Mathers stayed a few days with John Richards, aprominent member of the North Church, then moved for a while to an-other house. For six months Increase preached at the other Boston meet-inghouses, until his church was rebuilt. In October 1677 he bought someland near the North Church, which probably became the site of what hecalled "the house which was built for me" (presumably by his congrega-tion). Still standing in the nineteenth century, it was then described as atwo-story building with dormer windows, complemented by a large gar-den and orchard.

No record remains of Cotton's childhood thoughts and feelings aboutKing Philip's War, or the burning of his home, or his abuse by fellowstudents. But in later life he could study and work productively amidheavy personal burdens, and even as he reached puberty, his powers ofconcentration were great. Despite his trials he seems to have breezedthrough the required junior and senior curriculum at Harvard. Althoughthe college trained ministers, it was not a divinity school, but ratheraimed at educating both religious and civic leaders. Its 1650 charter de-clared that the school intended to educate young men "in all manner ofgood literature, arts, and sciences." While the first two years of studyemphasized Greek, Hebrew, and logic, the third introduced ethics, andthe fourth included metaphysics, mathematics, rhetoric, oratory and the-ology.

Cotton later wrote that before the age of fourteen he composed He-brew exercises and "Ran thro' the other Sciences, that Academical Stud-ies ordinarily fall upon"—apparently meaning that he completed most ofthe curriculum by the middle of his junior year. By then he had alsocomposed systems of logic and physics that were used by other students;had advanced in arithmetic (never his strong subject, he admitted) "as faras was Ordinary"; and had learned "the Use of the Globes" (and drawn amap of New England that was sent to his uncle Nathaniel, a minister inDublin). By following Elijah Corlet's advice to speak very deliberately hegained at least enough fluency to enable him to make the required decla-mations. Already a prodigious reader, he had also "read over" hundredsof books. Several of the first books he owned as a student have survived,

22 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COTTON MATHER

such as Wilhelm Schickard's Horologium Hebraeum I L639; a Hebrewgrammar) and Archibald Simson's Hieroglypbica Animalium Terrestrium

(1622; on natural history). Passed from father to son, they bear IncreaseMather's name as the previous owner and donor, and beneath that theinscription "Cottonus Matherus, 1674."

Cotton usually took for his student declamations some article of natural philosophy, that is, of science. Significantly for his later life, he wasattending a school that sanctioned and taught the Copernican view of theuniverse, and that owned a three-and-a-half-foot telescope. His stutterplayed into his scientific interests, for at some time during his collegeyears the impediment led him almost to despair of becoming a minister,and to apply himself to becoming a physician. As an unsought result, hebegan imagining he had "almost every Distemper that I read of, in mystudies." To cure his fancied maladies he sometimes administered medi-cines to himself, not only needlessly but also hurtfully.

Cotton came down with a real malady as well. And as happened to hisfather when he was afflicted with urological ailments in adolescence, thisillness, or another close to it in time, brought on a religious crisis. Atabout the age of fourteen he fell into "great Symptoms of an Hectic"(extreme emaciation), severe enough to make him think, "/ am goingapace to the Gates of the Grave, I am deprived of the Residue of myYears." Even before he became ill, his "diverse Miscarriages" had madehim suspect he had never truly been moved by God's Spirit, that he wasbut a "Refined Hypocrite." With the onset of his illness, and of fear thathe would die, his suspicions became gnawing. He trembled to think, herecalled later, that after his high hopes for himself and the commendationof others, he would turn out to be a "Castaway." His life at Harvard mayhave aggravated his self-doubt. His first extant letter, likely written in hissenior year, speaks not only of his "deceitful heart" but also of "residingin a place of much temptation" where he is "debarred the special oppor-tunities of seeking and seeing the face of God, which have once beenenjoyed." Apparently he meant that being at Cambridge he could notregularly hear his father preach, although during his last two years hevery often returned to Boston for Increase's Sunday sermon, and occa-sionally for his Thursday lecture.

For whatever reasons, Cotton labored under a sense of his vilenessand unacceptableness to God. He confided his worries to Increase, whotold him there was no repentant sinner whom Christ would not freelyaccept. His father's assurances quickened his spirit. While praying andthinking of being reconciled to God he felt "Strange, and Strong, and

QUANTUM NOMEN! QUANTA NOMINA! 23

Sweet Intimations" that Christ had accepted him. Once while praying heexperienced what seemed a genuine influx of divine grace: "I sensiblyfelt an unaccountable Cloud and Load go off my Spirit," he recalled, "andfrom that Minute I was as much altered, by a New Light, and Life, and Easearriving to me, as the Sunrise does change the World, from the Conditionof Midnight"

During his last two years at Harvard Cotton also began to expand andrefine his religious life in general. In 1676 he started taking detailednotes on sermons he heard, and the next year began serving as an amanu-ensis for his father, transcribing important documents into his churchrecords. Around the same age he began to observe entire days of privateprayer and fasting, and seems to have seriously begun the Puritan devo-tional art of meditation, trying to devise a logical daily method and evenwriting a discourse on the practice. Now or perhaps in his first year aftergraduation, he also joined a society of pious young men who met theevening following every Sabbath to pray, sing psalms, and propose devoutquestions. At these meetings he made some "Probationary Essays"toward the ministry, presumably attempting to preach impromptu ser-mons.

At the Commencement Day exercises for the class of 1678, PresidentUrian Oakes regaled the audience with a copious Latin oration, in whichhe remarked that Cotton Mather, at the age of fifteen, already showedsigns that he would emulate and honor his father, his two prestigiousgrandfathers, and his five uncles. Part of his oration he addressed, in hiswittily florid style, to the new baccalaureate himself, to "COTTONUSMATHERUS."

"Quantum Nomenf" Oakes said, What a Name! Or rather, he correct-ed himself, "quanta Nomina!" What Names! He would say nothing of theboy's reverend father, in the audience, since he did not wish to praisehim to his face. But if this youth, he continued in Latin, brought back inhimself the piety, learning, ingenuity, judgment, prudence, and gravity ofhis reverend forebears he could be said to have done his part well. AndPresident Oakes believed that would happen:

. . .nee despero futurum, ut in hoc Juvene

COTTONUS atq; MATHERUS tarn re quam

Nomine coalescant et reviviscant,—

"I do not despair that in this youth COTTON and MATHER shall in fact asin name coalesce and revive."

The Solemnest Work in the World

The ministry, for which Cotton Mather had been designed since birth,was both the main public role in Puritan culture and a transcendent,sacred calling. "To preach the unsearchable Riches of Christ, " Cottonknew, to nurture in others that miraculous transformation of being signi-fying their salvation, was "the Solemnest Work in the World," and for fiveyears he prepared himself with exhausting dedication.

In his sixteenth year Cotton was admitted by rite to the North Churchand began preaching informally to neighbors. He inaugurated his formalcareer by acknowledging his dual Cotton and Mather descent. Hepreached his first public sermon, on August 22, 1680, at his grandfatherRichard Mather's church in Dorchester; the next Sabbath he preached forhis father in Bostoffc^nd the Sabbath after that he preached in the Bostonchurch once led by his grandfather John Cotton. His early efforts wonpraise and notice. The brethren of Increase's church voted in Septemberto have Cotton assist his father in preaching, as a ministerial candidate,once every two weeks or oftener. Flattering letters reached him and hisfather from ministers and church members in Ireland, the West Indies,and both Englands, praising him as a "hopefull sprout," observing his"extraordinary pregnancy," comparing him to young Timothy. One wom-an told Increase in 1681 that she had come into a Boston shop to buyspectacles when his son, whom she had never seen before, walked in. Itsurprised her to "so fix my eyes upon one I did not know," yet the boyseemed so grave and becoming that "I could not forbear asking him if hewere not a Mather." Cotton was aware of it himself. "Lord, "he prayed, "/know Thou will signalize me, as thou hast my Father, my Grandfathers,and my Uncles before me. Hallelujah. "

But that Cotton would be signalized was not so certain. For a day ortwo before preaching his first public sermons he felt "horribly Buffetedand Unkinged," his efforts even to pray for deliverance hobbled by men-tal confusion. By crying earnestly to Christ he managed to perform theservice comfortably, but at around the same time he was shaken, like hisfather, by Ephialtes or nightmares, which sometime "handled me so Se-verely" that he expected to become apoplectic, or to die. These too healleviated by prayer, and by eating no meat and taking an herbal remedymade of peony. But there were other fears also, including, several timesduring his candidacy, the threat of his father's imminent death. Spittingblood and thought to be consumptive, Increase became so ill in 1680 thatbetween mid-April and early September he could not administer commu-nion, and had to baptize his daughter Hannah not in church but at home.Nor was Increase ever ill quietly. Dissatisfied with his ministry and feel-ing that his destiny lay in England, he often used his illness to repay theungrateful, warning them that his soul was about to take flight. All NewEngland prayed for him when he became ill in 1681; another illness in1683 sent rumors throughout Boston and surrounding towns that he wasdying or dead.

Cotton feared being left alone by Increase, partly because Puritan cul-ture stressed entire dependence on one's father for a model of behavior.Ideal children, he remarked in a later sermon, "are not mere Pictures,which may have something of the figure and feature in them, but they areChildren that will talk and walk just like their father." Thus when In-crease fell ill, Cotton importuned that he "may nojfctoerewith be takenfrom us; but still be continued as our Watchman, rslny days." When In-crease recovered, he often thanked God for "a Father, given me from theDead." Often he prayed for the "Life and Health of my dear Father, whomI may reckon among the richest of my Enjoyments."

Increase's grave illnesses cannot have eased the burblingly confusedstate of love, envy, rivalry, and dependence in which Cotton prepared tojoin his father in the ministry of the North Church. In addition, Puritanculture prescribed that parents' love should be returned more largely.Preaching to some young people in 1683, Cotton urged: "You shouldendeavor to requite your parents, for whom, I profess to you, you cannever do enough." Feeling that he too could never do enough for hisfather, he frequently served as Increase's amanuensis, copying over hissermons and tracts, and transcribing some of the manuscript of his cele-brated Remarkable Providences. By such means he no doubt wished tohonor and repay the father who had counseled him and prayed fervently

for his health and salvation. But to display loyalty and admiration mightalso secure Increase's uncertain devotion to him, perhaps magically insure his continued life. Voluminously he wrote down his father's words asIncrease preached in church, his notes on his fathers sermons from thebeginning of 1683 to February 1684 filling around two hundred pages.The nature of some of his favors to Increase, too, suggests a desire todemonstrate to him his own disinterest in competition. For instance, hegave his father several gifts. At the age of eighteen he bought Increase aSpanish Indian servant. Two years later he and some acquaintances of-fered to pay for the publication in London of some of Increase's dis-courses. He also owned a watch with a "Variety of Motions," of whichIncrease was "desirous." Although very fond of the watch himself, hepresented it to his father, thinking, "/ owe him a great deal more thanthis."

Cotton was correct in believing he could "never do enough" for hisfather; although throughout his son's candidacy Increase often prayed forthe preservation of his life and the success of his service to God, heopposed Cotton's joining him in the ministry of the North Church. Thebrethren appointed the young man as a probationary preacher to them in1680, but he was not ordained for another five years. In that period thechurch voted seven times for his continuance with them and, with grow-ing annoyance, for his permanent settlement. Their frequently expresseddesire to have Cotton as a colleague with his father partly arose from thescarcity of New England-trained ministers, corresponding to the drop inenrollment at Harvard, and probably also from their apprehension of be-ing left without a minister by Increase's death. But they desired Cottonalso because he proved himself an effective preacher, as appears in thelanguage of their votes, which "earnestly desire" his continuance, andpraise "the ministerial gifts wherewith the Lord hath graciously en-dowed" him.

How intently the North Church sought Cotton became particularlyclear in the fall of 1681, when the Harvard administration voted to makeIncrease president of the college. However dissatisfied with his congre-gation in relatively urban Boston, Increase disdained rustic Cambridge,and interpreted the vote as a slight. Exactly twenty years before he hadpreached his first sermons in Boston, he grumbled, "and now I am votedout of the Town." He did preside over the 1681 commencement, at whichhe handed Cotton his M.A. degree. But he told the Overseers he couldnot accept the presidency without the consent of his church. They op-posed the appointment not only because they wished to keep Increase as

their minister but also, they explained, because they hoped Cotton mightbe "settled among us with his father," and that for them to release In-crease was "a likely way to be deprived of them both."

Yet Increase did not want the North Church to have them both. Heantagonized his flock, many of whom, he noticed, "seemed to be trou-bled" at his opposition to Cotton's settlement. Indeed the family's pridein dynastic succession makes Increase's resistance puzzling. Consideringthat he felt mistreated by his congregation, he may have been galled bytheir enthusiasm for his son; or he may have feared Cotton's rivalry andpossible dissent. Perhaps he simply wished to avoid any suspicion ofnepotism. He may even have been speaking for Cotton, who may have feltunready for ordination at this time. That seems unlikely, but it jibes withthe explanation later given by Cotton's son Samuel. Cotton declined ordi-nation by the church, Samuel wrote, "partly because they were not inextreme Want, having his Father with them, who was hearty and strong[as Increase certainly was not], and partly from a modest Opinion, and lowApprehension of himself and his Talents." Perhaps it was true both thatIncrease opposed Cotton's ordination and that Cotton feared it. Whateverthe case, Increase told his flock that he did not wish to share his pulpitwith his son. When one of his illnesses led him to advise the brethren toseek his replacement, they unanimously elected Cotton. But Increase ex-plained that he was "very backward in consenting to their desires becauseof my Relation to him."

Cotton also received many invitations in 1681 and 1682 from thechurch at New Haven. Citizens and public officials of the town wrote toIncrease to say that having heard so much and so well of his son theywould count it "a great favor from God, if we may enjoy his ministryamong us." They recognized, however, that Cotton had become popularat the North Church, and told Increase that "your son is so dear andprecious to your society that it will be a breaking thing to part with him."These warm and persistent invitations proved awkward for Cotton. Hetold the New Haven church that his removal from Boston would turn theflock against his father, "if after so many Importunate Votes of theirs, formy Settlement here, he had any way permitted my Removal from them."In at least one sense, and probably more, his reply was disingenuous.Having been taught to "walk and talk" like his father, he no more wantedto preach in rustic New Haven than his father to dwell in Cambridge. Bybirth and disposition he had been designed, and now designed himself,for larger service, for the North Church in Boston, "as Great a Place, asany in these Parts of the World."

Yet Increase seems to have advised his son to accept the second-rateoffer from New Haven. Later in life Cotton wrote that his father "(Ithought) Encouraged me, to Accept an Invitation to a Small and MeanCongregation." Whether the church involved was at New Haven or somewhere else, and whether the uneasy parenthesis indicates skepticism orcontinued resentment, Cotton considered the offer beneath him andfound his father's advice that he accept it deflating. The "Humiliations,"he later wrote, of "Leading an obscure Life among the poor Husbandmen,assaulted my Mind with sore Discouragements."

Cotton spent much of the five years of his candidacy in battering,tireless self-examination. To accept ordination he must be sure he was nolonger a creature driven unawares by sin, but one to whom God hadgranted the grace to perceive, and thus the desire to live for, God's good-ness. And anguishingly he recognized, as all Puritans did, that to dispelunloving and rebellious feelings in himself—his portion of the universallegacy of original sin—was beyond his doing. No more than the blind canforce themselves to see could he overcome his sinful nature by Scripturereading, self-persuasion, or any act of his will. To purge himself requiredthe supernatural work of God's Holy Spirit on his heart, transforming hisentire way of feeling about the world. "O undertake for me, Deliver me,"he cried, "My Diseases are so complicated, that I am not able so much asdistinctly to mention them unto thee; much less can I remedy them."

To discern whether such a deliverance had taken place in him was thewracking, everyday work of Cotton's entire candidacy, especially from theage of eighteen when, he wrote, his "Mind was Exceedingly taken up,with the great Action, of, A Closing with the Lord Jesus Christ." He strovenow not to understand faith, repentance, and holiness, but rather to expe-rience them. His method for attaining this "Impressive" knowledge be-gan with trying to identify and rebuke his sins, then seeking pardon forthem. The two-step process might last days, weeks, or months, and mightfalter in doubt and have to be repeated. Prostrate on his study floor hebewailed his listlessness, sloth, lukewarmness, and many other sins, espe-cially lust and pride. He identified with an aging minister who had beenfound guilty of adultery, and feared that "I, who am a young Man, in mysingle Estate, should be left by God, unto some Fall, whereby His BlessedName would suffer." Apparently guilt-ridden over masturbation per-formed or considered, he confessed to God the loathsome defilement ofhis soul: "Lord, Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? I

have certainly been one of the filthiest Creatures upon Earth." To halt the"irregularities which my Thoughts within me have hurried me into," heresolved to practice extraordinary austerities and to emulate Saint Augus-tine in perpetual celibacy.

Cotton also felt embittered and confused over his "cursed Pride, theSin of young Ministers." He wished to become what he understood hisfather to have been, the father whose fellow graduates publicly"hummed" him, " a Young Man every where Admired, and Applauded,and Accepted, and Flock'd after." Yet he recognized that his ambitiousdesire to become a famous preacher like Increase dishonored his sacredobligation to use his ministry to glorify not himself but God alone. Oftenhe recorded his pleasure in preaching in a populous place, "the Metropo-lis of the whole English America" and of garnering a great and growingreputation. But he just as often warned himself against his "abominablyproud Fishing for popular Applause." In 1681 he spent a special day ofhumiliation to castigate his pride, indicting himself for desiring greaterrenown than his age or ability merited, and for congratulating himselfwhen answering questions readily or preaching well. "Proud Thoughts"he lamented, "fly-blow my best Performances!"

The stains on his soul tormented Cotton, producing anguished criesof his unworthiness for salvation. Summoning his sins into his mind inthe hope of cracking his hard heart, he cursed himself for a "poor, bro-ken, sorry despicable Vessel," a "rotten Stump." He was "feeble andworthless," "miserably defective," "crabbed, foolish, despicable," "unsa-voury Salt, fit for nothing but the Dunghill." How could such a thing loveGod, much less lead others to love Him? His disfigurement made himworthy not of the ministry, but rather "worthy of Death, Death, Deathforever."

But having identified and bewailed his sins Cotton prayed God to fillhis soul with love, and as he hoped, his long bouts of self-condemnationand humiliation gave rise to an assured sense that God had forgiven him.One such cleansing epiphany occurred after much secret prayer in Sep-tember 1681, when he felt that his heart no longer relished lust andpride: "Oh! I feel! I feel! I feel! I love the Lord fesus Christ; I love Himdearly, I love Him greatly, yea, I love Him above all" Another suchmoment arrived in August 1683, when he spent about two weeks preach-ing with his father in rural Lynn. While enjoying the solitude of the fieldshe felt "strong and strange Assurances" not only that God had pardonedhim, but also that He designed to make him His instrument, "not only tobless me, but also to make me a Blessing."

This certainty, however, Cotton found hard to sustain. Time and again,he soon worried whether it was illusory, then doubted the genuineness ofhis repentance, until his sureness dissolved into fresh doubts, leavinghim where he began. Returning from Sabbath worship in March 1681. forinstance, he felt an assurance that left him saying, "/ believe that I am achosen Vessel, and that the Lord will pour mercy unto me . . . It will heso!" But six days later his belief collapsed into "Discouraging Fears, thaiI should not be able to go thro' the work." His inability to believe in thereality of his conversion gave rise to self-accusations of heart-deadnessand formality, of mimicking the conversion process without experiencingit: "I am but a very Parrot in Religion!" The inauthenticity of even hiskeenest epiphanies left him with a sense of desertion and rejection byGod: "Oh! how hath He broken my Heart, and ground it . . . into Powder,before Him! How is the inflexible Stone turn'd into pliable Flesh!"

However brokenhearted, Cotton also knew that God's abandonmentof him, like all forms of affliction, was intended to draw him closer toHimself. By raising then crushing his conviction, God meant to producein him more perfect understanding of his sinful nature, preparatory to agenuine experience of conversion and a more able ministry. So he trust-ed: "I believe, that when the Lord has broken me, and fitted me forfurther Mercy, and laid me low before Him, He will raise me up, inbestowing of great Comfort on me and employing me in great Service forHim." For being broken the only remedy was to repeat the process ofidentifying and bewailing his sins in the hope of pardon, even should thepardon prove transient and illusory. Alternately rejoicing and despairingof his conversion throughout his candidacy, he was repeatedly forced torecommence the work of closing with Christ, and to "anew go over all theSorrowful and Heart-breaking Hours."

Cycles of assurance and doubt were common, even formulaic, amongPuritans. But Cotton saw himself as trying to serve God more strenuouslythan others, and as suffering more than others by His abandonment. Godhad favored him with two quickened faculties, which "(however vile Iam) I cannot but acknowledge." First, God had given him "A tenderHeart," a sensitivity that made him unable to "live quietly under thesmaller neglects of God, which the Generality of Christians give wayunto." Second, "an active Mind," an ingenuity that made him uneasyexcept when doing something to promote God's Kingdom. Now andthroughout his life he believed deeply in a hierarchy of the pious, andaspired to join the elite. "My Heart is insatiably pressing," he wrote at

around the age of nineteen, "after the High Attainments of Religion."

Such high attainments differed greatly from what Cotton later calledthe "Low, Dull, Slothful Measures, of the Common and Barren Christian-ity." The distinction lay in vigorous constancy and imaginativeness. Topress after high attainments of religion meant living in heaven while onearth, and Cotton resolved in 1685 "to be continually abounding in theThoughts of God. Nor would I be one waking quarter of an Hour withoutthem." Not only the abundance of devotion counted but also the manner.He wished, he wrote later, to use "my Wit, as well as my Grace" and tolend his devotions "a certain charming Elegancy, and Sacred Curiosity."He strove to invent ever new, ever more ingenious and striking methodsof praising God. Indeed, ingenuity or "curiosity" would become one ofhis distinctive values, a measure for him of all accomplishment. Devotingone's life to God involved for him a play of imagination that made it akinto art.

Some means of living in heaven while on earth Cotton performed dailyor almost daily, often laying down schedules of devotion for himself.Secret prayer (private prayer, as opposed to public prayer in church orfamily prayer at home) he considered "the straight way to the City ofGod," a daily duty. He later recommended that it be practiced in a lockedor barred room to prevent disturbance and permit intimate confession ofsecret sin, begging the Lord's mercy while lying prostrate on the floor,mouth in the dust. Occasionally he devoted entire days to secret prayer,and in 1683 even drew up an elaborate routine for them, in fourteennumbered steps. He began the day by expressing to God his belief that theLord rewarded those who sought Him diligently. Then, in order, he readchapters of Scripture, meditated on his vileness, sang hymns, proposedprofitable questions to himself, supplicated God for pardon of sin, sanganother hymn, meditated, prayed again, sang a psalm—and so on until heended the day by "renouncing all Apprehension of Merit, in my ownDuties, and relying upon the Lord Jesus Christ alone, for Acceptance andSalvation." Twice a week or more, as mentioned earlier, he also recordedsermons in his voluminous notebooks, often adding his own resolvesupon hearing them. Almost daily he also recorded his prayers, medita-tions, and religious experiences in a diary, with occasional comment onhis domestic circumstances, or about social and political events. Thesediaries, the lengthiest surviving of any American Puritan, begin in 1681and end in February 1725, although he probably began them earlier andkept them until his death: eighteen years have unfortunately been lost.

As if he had cast God Himself in the image of Increase Mather, torwhom he could "never do enough" Cotton invented literally thousandsof other means of demonstrating his devoutness. Taking pleasure in the"Variety of Contrivance" that flooded from him he decided to spend atleast a tithe of his income on pious purposes; to precede even act withthe thought "let me now do this (or, / will do this) for God"; to prefacethe recording of every act in his dairy with a statement that he did it forGod's glory; to ask each morning, and review each evening, questionsdesigned to strengthen grace in him; to sing hymns every morning andnight, of his own composing; to make his rising thoughts concern somepassage of Scripture, disposing him to fear God all day; to write letters topeople needing help; to penalize himself if he omitted any religiousexercise he had prescribed, or failed to annex a pious thought to eachsentence of his prayers, or on the Sabbath spoke any word incongruouswith the day—and to donate the self-imposed fines to the poor. He evenset apart a special day on which to invent "Contrivances" on the question,What may I do for God? The answers, he said, issued in "Thousands ofResolves." He drew others into his contrivances as well. He often prayedand fasted with groups of religious young men, and from the age of sev-enteen he undertook the tuition of several scholars, some older thanhimself, in Hebrew, discoursing with them individually in his study abouttheir salvation. When two people unexpectedly visited him during a day-long fast in 1685 he invited them to join his devotions, which includedpreaching them three sermons, each about an hour long.

Not even this was enough. Cotton wished to have God in his thoughtsevery waking moment. To attain that high end he practiced a "spiritualAlchemy." This meant ceaselessly creating brief petitions and supplica-tions—"Ejaculatory Prayers"—and sending them to Heaven in an all-daystream of spontaneous praying. He often based the "ejaculation" on somepresent thing or person, viewing the entire world as a preacher: "TheMeanest Objects in the House, or in the Street, have afforded me Thou-sands of Lessons, which I have immediately Sent up to Heaven." Trans-muting his moment-to-moment sensory experience into a glorification ofGod, he could form prayers not only before acts of worship or whilehearing sermons or singing psalms, but also while traveling in the road,eating dinner, walking down the street, or just sitting in his study. Al-though he chose to "not be so Pharisaical as to show it," when encoun-tering a tall man he might pray, "Lord, give that Man, High Attainments inChristianity"; seeing a black person he asked, "Lord, wash that poor Soul

white in the Blood of thy Son"; feeling unnoticed by someone (a reveal-ing category) he said, "Lord, help that Man, to take a due Notice of theLord Jesus Christ." As the wit of these ejaculations suggests, his motivesin distilling thousands of brief prayers from mundane experience wereboth devotional and aesthetic, aimed at glorifying God but also at "thepleasing of my Fancy."

As Cotton noted in his diaries several times during his candidacy, hewas not always able to complete the devotional tasks he prescribed forhimself. Yet he found the prescribing a goad to the performance, and ahelp in producing the "heavenly Way of Living" he sought. And it wasenough. He feared that by his "macerating Exercises" he had wasted hisstrength, wounded his body, and thereby broken the sixth command-ment. The "Excesses of my Devotions" atop his occasional, intense re-gimes of secret fasting and prayer sometime did damage his health. InJanuary 1684 they brought splenetic maladies and the possibility of con-sumption, threatening his life, he believed. Wondering whether he hadmade his duties into murders and injured the very service he intended toglorify, he asked God to pardon and pity him for the sake of Jesus Christ.

"Give my Stammering Tongue leave to say; Oh! That we knew the Dayof our Visitation." Thus Cotton urged immediate repentance upon theaudience of his first recorded sermon, preached when he was sixteen. Ashis self-conscious candor indicates, Elijah Corlet's advice to him had notwholly succeeded, Modern speech therapists would not recommend Cor-let's method of speaking very deliberately, for the effort to scan approach-ing speech situations produces a strained vigilance, and the avoidance ofhard-to-pronounce words invites bizarre substitutions or odd circumven-tions, not curing the inability but masking or avoiding it. Just the same,Cotton managed to control the impediment effectively enough so that bythe time he gave his first formal sermons, in 1680, Increase observedgratefully that despite his "natural Infirmity" he delivered himself inpreaching and prayer "without any considerable Hesitancy."

During the first three years of Cotton's candidacy the severity of hisstutter fluctuated. Shortly after his eighteenth birthday he recorded thathis preaching was free of it; but a year later it "threatened such a Returnupon me as to render me unserviceable." While following Corlet's ad-vice, he spent on the matter "many Thousands of solicitous Thoughts,"and sought help by prayer. Some solace he found in the fact that the

speech difficulties of Moses had continued even after he began his min-istry:

Oh! Thou that madest Man's Mouth, didst Thou not make the Mouth ofthe Stammering Moses to speak? Didst thou not open the Lips of Jeremiah,when he pleaded, / cannot speak? Did not my Lord Jesus cure a man thathad an Impediment in bis Speech? Oh! Lord, Oh! Lord, I am sensible, thatone Touch, one Word of thine will relieve my Infirmity. Oh! touch myTongue: Say, Ephphatha and my mouth will be opened!

On his knees in prayer he often received strong persuasions that theLord's Ephphatha—"Be Opened"—would be spoken, promising "great-er Supplies of Speech in store for me, than I ever yet received." But henever fully conquered the impediment, and when it remitted he feared itsreturn.

Cotton tried as well to understand the cause and significance of hisstutter. Like any other affliction, it represented God's chastisement forsin: "by my early Wickedness and Filthiness, I have provoked Thee," hewrote at around nineteen, "to take away from me one of the greatestConveniencies, enjoyed by thy reasonable Creatures." In fact, God hadscourged him far more mildly than the depth of his depravity deserved:"tho' thy Rod has been very heavy in this regard upon me. . . . Lord, Ideserve, not only a Stammering, Slowness, but also a total Dumbness inmy Speech." But as Cotton and other Puritans also understood affliction,God's rod descended in loving concern. The purpose of his stutter was tolead him to examine himself, become conscious of his sin, and renounceit. God bound his tongue not to make him despair, but to make himeminently holy, "yea, to make me more happy than other men."

In seeking the iniquitous causes of his stutter, Cotton fastened on tworelated sins: pride and anger. He understood that his desire for famecorrupted his obligation to use his tongue selflessly to serve God. Hisstutter, then, was the ignominious mark of his "ambitious Affectation ofPraeheminencies." Determining to use his tongue as God's, not as hisown, he chastised its sins and declared in August 1683 that he "asked fora Tongue only to serve Him, and bespeak the Loves and Lives of myNeighbours for Him." In return for improvements in his speech he vowednot to reach after improvements too high for him. The same year he drewup "RULES OF SPEECH" in which he resolved not only to speak verydeliberately, but also to consecrate his speech to God, to rarely come intocompany without seeking useful discourse, and to pray daily, "Lord, letmy Mouth show forth thy Praise"*

In fact, Cotton was probably correct in viewing his stutter as a punish-ment for his pride, only he applied the rod himself. The impediment maywell have arisen in an attempt to block ambitious thoughts, dangerouslycharged with the thrill of showing up a father who had been invited topreach by a dozen different congregations. He was also probably correctin associating his stutter with anger. "Stammerers are often of too Choler-ic a Disposition," he wrote in later life, "and Sooner Angry than theyshould be; whereas they of all People, should always maintain the Meek-ness of Wisdom." The possibility that certain kinds of anger might them-selves be linked to pride he set before himself at the age of nineteen,when he took notes on a sermon preached by his father. Increase ob-served that seemingly causeless anger is really caused: "pride is thespring whence causeless Anger does usually proceed." Cotton recordedin his notebook his father's view that to give vent to unprovoked anger byintemperate language reveals an unmanly spirit, while meekness is excel-lent and like to God, who is slow to anger. Judging from the "Rules ofBehavior" composed by Cotton's brother Nathanael, Increase inculcatedsimilar lessons at home, and they were borne in on Cotton again as heresolved to read books that might teach him "the Government of theTongue." Out of one English work he copied at length injunctionsagainst retorting when one is disparaged or defamed: "beware of a Trans-port of Anger; that you speak not harshly or unadvisedly against him; ortoo passionately for thyself"; "Watch against all bitter, and over-passion-ate Speeches against malignant Opposers of the Truth." While it re-mained Cotton's duty as a minister and a Puritan openly to denounceungodliness, he repeatedly cautioned himself to speak ill of no one ex-cept for good reason and right purpose, and to be circumspect in hisspeech.

Cotton seems to have brought his stutter under satisfactory control afew months short of his twenty-first birthday, when he thanked God forthe "miraculous Freedom of my Speech." Yet it recurred in later life, andhis speaking seems to have become permanently marked by Corlet's ad-vice: his son Samuel wrote that his father always spoke with "much Delib-eration." There were other lasting effects of his long attempt to masterthe impediment, as he attempted to overcome its underlying anger andpride by demanding of himself the opposite behavior. However ambi-tious, he must appear selfless. However angry, he must appear mild, aconciliator. However much a stutterer, he must entrance large audiences.This wish to spellbind asserts itself in an utterly un-Puritan image whichcrops up several times in Cotton's early writing, that of a theater. Once,

when concerned about the small size of his audience, he cautioned him-self, as if he were on stage, that the eye of God "shall be Theatreenough." Similarly, in a letter written around 1682, he apologized tor hisbrevity by saying he "comes just like Cato on the stage . . . only to go offagain." His desire to captivate seems equally apparent in his determina-tion to lend his devotional exercises "a certain charming Elegancy, andSacred Curiosity," as if to entertain God Himself. In tact the youthfulstutterer would become the most noted conversationalist of his time,much admired and sought after by contemporaries for his erudite andbeguiling wit.

Meanwhile, Cotton had become highly sensitive to others' receptionof what he said. When his speech was ignored he managed both to ac-knowledge and to deny his limitations by first denigrating and then con-gratulating himself, in a way that left him feeling at once big and small.Throughout a dinner he attended, for instance, he sat silently, creatingejaculatory prayers by "spiritual alchemy" in his mind. His youth, he felt,excluded him from conversation with his elders; and the other tabletalk,he decided next, was "too trivial to be Worthy of my Attention." Once,finding his congregation thinner than usual, he countered his discour-agement first by considering his unworthiness, then by adding that manyministers more excellent than himself "would count themselves happy, ifthey might preach quietly to a Company one quarter so big." Or he some-time soothed his hurt pride by glorying in defeat. In the voting to choosea preacher for the annual artillery sermon in 1686 he received few votes,even though he was closely connected to a captain in the militia, and waspassed over. Out of this he made a show of gladly welcoming rejection,establishing his superiority by putting those who did not choose him tospeak beneath his notice. "I took some Satisfaction, I hope," he wrote,"in being overlooked, as to that Choice."

Cotton's deliberateness and self-idealization in managing his speechextended to his writing as well. Even his childhood and adolescent scriptis neat, precise, in fact visually interesting; some is printlike, as if a substi-tute for publication. His fine handwriting made him serviceable through-out his middle and late teens as an amanuensis for many importantchurch and government documents, most notably for writing up the deci-sions of the unprecedented Reform Synod which gathered in Boston in1679-80 to discuss pressing social and moral reforms. Twenty eminentministers of New England signed Cotton's lengthy document, the listheaded by the signature of the legendary preacher to the Indians, JohnEliot. From the viewpoint of Cotton's fears about his speech, the beautiful

clarity of the hand, the borderlike margins, bold capitals, and other care-fully wrought devices all declare that surely this could not be the work ofa stutterer.

And beginning in youth, Cotton probably handwrote as much as anyhuman being ever has. The sermon notebooks alone which he kept be-tween the ages of thirteen and thirty-two, with about two hundred andfifty words per page, contain roughly seven thousand pages. Far lengthierthan the surviving sermon notebooks of any other American Puritan, theysummarize in detail around a thousand sermons by leading New Englandministers, about many of which little or nothing would otherwise beknown. They not only suggest unusual patience, stamina, and concentra-tion, but also seem to flaunt an ability to produce unlimited numbers ofwords with superb clarity, on a page if not by tongue. Later in life Cottonwould achieve such astonishing feats of language as the ability, he said,to ''write very good Spanish" by studying it only "a few leisure Minutes inthe Evening of every Day, in about a Fortnight, or three weeks Time"—claiming in effect to have learned a language he also published in afterstudying it about three hours. Later he also observed that stutterers' pridein being able to speak a few words clearly makes them perversely loqua-cious, so that "there is nothing more frequent, than for Stammerers tospeak Ten times more than they need to." Indeed by displaying his copi-ous mastery of engaging language in every form, the youthful stuttererwould become one of the most prolific writers in American history.

Some connection between Cotton's written and spoken language wasnoticed later by his friend Thomas Prince, who compared his prose withhis speech and described both as "very emphatical." A connection seemsclear enough in Cotton's first published work, his Poem Dedicated to . . .Urian Oakes (1682), a funeral elegy on the recently deceased presidentof Harvard. Having chosen to appear in print, at the age of nineteen, in aclassic New England form, he began the poem by cataloguing the NewEngland elegists who preceded him, starting with his grandfather JohnCotton. Like his comparable Elegy on . . . Nathanael Collins (1685, me-morializing a Harvard-trained minister), the poem offers a summary ofthe minister's virtues and assesses the meaning of his death to family,friends, and community.

However traditional, Cotton's first poems record his highly personaltransference to writing of habits and attitudes connected with his difficul-ties in speaking. He presents himself as a mute: "I the dumb son ofCroesus." But as if in denial of his speechlessness, both poems are unusu-ally long for American Puritan elegies, amounting together to thirty-seven

pages of verse: "My Love," he explains, "is Talkative." Despite the solemn elegiac occasions, too, he labors to entertain and impress by Ianguage, placing Collins's relatives on a "Stage" to comment on the "Trag-edy." Exhibitions of cleverness choke or divert the forward flow ofmourning verse—exclamations, rhetorical questions, italics, curious lore,classical references, esoteric allusions, half-page stacks of footnotes, andmany puns. Cotton writes of his halting verse, "I strive to run, but then Iwant my feet"; the argument over how many angels can dance on thepoint of a needle, he says, is perhaps a "needless Point." Wittily he com-pares Oakes's death to the loss of a tooth, and measures the depth ofCollins's sermons by remarking that "Elephants/ Might take content'' inthem. Both these rhapsodically insincere and pretentiously ornamentalpoems bespeak someone concerned less with what he is saying than withsounding copious and charming.

Cotton's stutter may echo more directly in the strange awkwardness ofthe elegies. Their gawky unmelodiousness suggests what he later de-scribed as the "broken and blundering" speech of stutterers, and seemsnot so much unmusical as pathological:

Some Elogyes compose to try their Wits;

The Gout, (r) the Feavour, // yea & Injustice, (s)Folly (t) and Poverty (u) have in the Fits

Of Ranting Writers had a comeliness.

My Theme, my Humour is not such an one:

Who to prove Cicero not eloquent,Pen'd Books (x) who truth & worth for guards disown

Such only count Collins not excellent.

Whether the inept clumsiness of Cotton's verse derived from his speechdifficulties, he had no gift at all for rhyming or for verse rhythm, althoughhe would attempt to write poetry throughout life. Increase sent copies ofhis son's first published work to several persons, one of whom repliedbluntly that however hopeful Cotton's prospects as a minister, "in mythoughts he will never win the laurel for his poesy."

Cotton's affections and social sense were strong, his interests broad,his appetite for learning large, and while trying to live in heaven he alsoenjoyed earth. By the time of his family's move to the North End of Bos-ton from Cotton's Hill he was one of five children; by 1684 he was one often, a new brother or sister having arrived about every two years: Samuel

(August 1674), Abigail (April 1677), Hannah (May 1680), Catherine (Sep-tember 1682), andjerusha (April 1684). Around the age of seventeen heundertook to engage his sisters Maria, Elizabeth, and Sarah in the serviceof Christ, calling them successively into his study and explaining in pa-thetical terms their obligation to give themselves to Christ.

Cotton says virtually nothing about the other Mather children in hisdiaries. But his closest relation seems to have been with his brother Na-thanael, six and a half years his junior, to whom he presented a volume ofmanuscript sermons preached by their grandfather John Cotton. The giftwas appropriate, for the extraordinarily pious Nathanael prayed constant-ly, tackled rabbinic learning and philological problems of Scripture, andwrestled soul-searchingly with the problem of his conversion. Cotton tu-tored Nathanael as well, but found that he was "forced often to chide himto his Recreations, but never that I remember for them." An unrelentingstudent, Nathanael was admitted to Harvard at the age of twelve, and fouryears later was suffering pains in his joints. Like his father he also experi-enced spells of depression, and sometime fashioned himself "DeodatusMelancholicus." Increase also designed him for the ministry, but he feltunworthy and directionless, considered the prospect awesome, and wrotethat "the Thoughts of it have almost amazed me so that I am much Per-plexed in my Studies." Judging from his later biography of Nathanael,Cotton felt a little awed by his brother's grave piety and talent for learningbut critical of his disregard for his health.

Among his numerous relatives Cotton most often visited his mother'sbrother, the minister John Cotton of Plymouth. A rather fat man with a"Handsome Ruddy yet grave Countenance," he could cite chapter andverse for almost any words of Scripture quoted to him. Although regardedas a "living Index to the Bible," something in him was quirky and unreli-able. He had had the unhappiness, in 1664, to be excommunicated fromthe church of his own father, the famous John Cotton, for "lasciviousunclean practises with three women." Perhaps because of this cloudedreputation, Increase often took a high-handed, suspicious tone with him,as if John Cotton were seeking some advantage.

But the many surviving letters of John and his "comely fat" wifeJoanna reveal a loving and good-natured couple, whose warmth extendedto and was returned by Cotton. His uncle saluted him as "Endeared Cou-sen," while Cotton dubbed his aunt Joanna his "Plymouth-mother." Hestayed with the Cottons in the summer of 1678, just after graduating fromHarvard, studying industriously but delighting in the pleasant air. Be-cause smallpox was then visiting Boston he considered his removal to

Plymouth "some special providence," although he feared, his unclewrote, "going into the jaws of infection." When he did return to Boston,he, his brother Nathanael, and his sister Sarah all became mildly infected,his sister Maria more seriously. During another Plymouth sojourn he be-came a party to an obscure but farcical-sounding lawsuit, in which JohnCotton brought a complaint against a man who allegedly had sold a watchbelonging to him. The man denied having the watch, but Cotton Mathertestified in court that he himself had delivered it to the man.

From Boston Cotton often wrote to his uncle, sending family news andpolitical intelligence in a respectful but rather showy tone:

Honored Sir,

You know I suppose how if a few of the eldest are vocales, then therest either semi-vocales or mutes. Behold! how I make a virtue of necessi-ty. Time and business have formerly forbad me to do that which at presentit but just [as much?], ut cants [ad nilum?].

This, the opening of Cotton's first surviving letter, written when he wasabout fourteen, inaugurates a monumental correspondence he would cul-tivate throughout life.

Within his family Cotton also found precedent and encouragement forhis keen scientific interests, already evident in his Harvard declamationsand his flirtation with a career in medicine. His grandfather John Cotton,although steeped in medieval notions of physical reality, had consideredit a divinely imposed duty to "study the nature and course, and use of allGods works." His brother Nathanael read natural philosophy and theworks of Francis Bacon, wrote up some experiments, investigated the"abstruse parts" of mathematics and astronomy, and expressed an alle-giance to "the Mechanical Hypothesis of the Honorable Robert Boyle"—an atomistic view of the universe as composed of identical elementaryparticles. Increase Mather, after the spectacular appearance of Halley'scomet in 1680, undertook a course of reading in the latest Europeanastronomical studies, from which he emerged (or which perhaps con-firmed him in being) a champion of observation and mathematical rea-soning and an opponent of the abstract logic of Aristotle. Increase ob-served stars through the Harvard telescope, but found it irksome to travelto Cambridge and proposed in 1682 that a telescope and other scientificinstruments be placed in the Town House. Although his Kometographia(1683) persists in treating comets as portents of coming events, it alsorecognizes that comets move like planets, cites the work of Johann Kep-ler, and dabbles in astronomical mathematics.

The Cotton and Mather families were hardly alone in their scientificinterests. Many Puritans experimented with and encouraged science, andin Cotton's youth the Copernican system, the materialist philosophy ofDescartes, and other revolutionary ideas that transformed the picture ofthe universe were beginning to take hold in New England. In 1683 wasfounded a Boston Philosophical Society, a step toward creating what be-came a Boston scientific community. Indirectly the group grew from theRoyal Society of London, which tried to promote the new science inAmerica and had corresponded with science-minded New Englanderssince at least the mid-seventeenth century. But the specific proposal for alocal scientific society came from Increase Mather, who hoped, he said,to lay "the foundation for that which will be for future edification." TheSociety first met in the spring of 1683, then fortnightly until 1688. Norecords of its meetings remain, if any were kept, so its membership andproceedings are largely unknown; but many persons in and near Bostonhad active scientific interests and may have participated. Cotton clearlybecame involved in the Society, for at least one meeting took place at hishome, and he was befriended by one of the members, Dr. William Avery.

Cotton later described the Society's purpose as "Improvements in Phi-losophy and Additions to the Stores of Natural History." Evidently themembers collected observations on novel natural phenomena in America,perhaps planning to compile a natural history of New England. Somesuch project may explain the obscure petition to the General Court in1684, signed by Cotton, his father, and Dr. Avery, requesting an eight-mile tract of land "to make Some Essays towards the promoting of Learn-ing together with and by the Improvement of Land among us." The Soci-ety also corresponded with at least one European scientist, WolferdusSanguerdius of Leiden, to whom it sent astronomical observations, anddrawings of a parhelion and of a double rainbow which he published inhis Philosophia Naturalis (2d ed. Leiden, 1685).

Although far older than Cotton, Dr. Avery enjoyed the young man'sfriendship. "I have longed more to have Commerce with your self," hewrote him in 1683, "than with most men that I know tho it be but in alittle paper well blotted." One of the first physicians in America, Averyowned scientific apparatus and invented medical instruments himself. Acontemporary described him as a "great inquirer," skilled in "chemicalphysick" generally and particularly in the work of the iatrochemist JeanBaptiste Van Helmont, a figure who would later become important toCotton also. Avery described to Cotton his work on digestion, advisedhim on purchasing recent works on chemistry, and employed him as an

amanuensis for some correspondence with the great English chemistRobert Boyle. Like many English scientists, Boyle was intrigued by the

New World as a potential source of new and unusual material for invest!gation, and he asked Avery for observations about the air of New England,and expressed interest in its minerals. A letter from Avery to Boyle inAugust 1683 discusses at length chemicals and vessels to be used in vanous experiments. Cotton transcribed the letter for the elderly Avery, andmay have written part of it himself, since some of the language soundsmuch like his own.

Cotton also took time during his candidacy to correspond with a Hart-ford minister about the change in polarity of a compass, and to observeHalley's comet through the Harvard telescope. He owned a microscope,too, and obviously found pleasure in viewing the "little eels," of which hecould see "incredible hundreds playing about in one drop of water." Hisfirst published work having been a poem, his second was a "mathemati-cal Composure," The Boston Ephemeris (1683). Together with the datesof court sessions and elections, and a section on biblical chronology, thisalmanac contains the times and dates of eclipses, and a technical descrip-tion of Halley's comet. It also includes an essay to encourage scriptureknowledge "because," Cotton wrote, "if we design only to edifie theStudents of Astronomy among us, Alas! there is scarce One of a City andtwo of a Tribe to be addressed." But in fact his observations throughtelescope and microscope were acts of devotion themselves, giving newgrounds for praising the Almighty by enhancing his sense of the perfectdesign of things. "Every Wheel in this huge clock" he preached in histwentieth year, "moves just according to the Rule which the All-wise Artist[ga]ve it at the first."

The beginning of the end of Cotton's much delayed ordination camein July 1684, when he had preached at the North Church for four years. Inthat time, the brethren said, they had "more than once expressed theirdesire of his being settled," and with some irritation they now votedagain that he "without further delays be ordained." Increase did not somuch consent as give way. Ill once again, he had urged his flock tosecure a second "Teaching officer." He accepted their choice of his sonfor the reason, he said, that they "could not agree in calling any other."

But Increase still did not consider Cotton an appropriate colleague forhimself. A month or so later, after another illness, he preached a peculiarsermon, comparing his recovery to that of Hezekiah, the Old Testament

king of Judah, who had fought against death although mortally ill. Hez-ekiah probably resisted death, Increase said, because he "had no son tosucceed him, so that if God had taken him away, there must have beengreat Trouble in the Kingdom." He thus implied that he himself hadstruggled against his illness because his church had no successor to him,although the brethren's insistent votes for Cotton suggest they wouldhave had no trouble choosing one. Cotton's ordination was postponedseven months more—and after another vote for it in April 1685, was near-ly postponed again. This time the reason given for the delay was theshocking news that the king, as we shall see, was about to reorganize thegovernment of New England. That, Cotton wrote, as if doubting the ex-planation himself, was how it had been "represented unto me."

Cotton's ordination was set, at last, for Wednesday, May 13, 1685. Asthe date approached he made fresh vows, promising the Lord to be afaithful pastor, contented with his condition and unresentful of slights.With his ordination only two weeks away, however, his "closing" withChrist remained incomplete. Woeful sights of his sinfulness alternatedstill with convictions that he was cleansed. Receiving assurances on May 4that all controversy between God and his soul had ended, he wrote upand signed a covenant, engaging to renounce worldly vanities and to haveHim as his chief Good. But like his many earlier assurances this one alsowaned. Days before his ordination he again felt confused and melan-choly, doubtful of his fitness for the weighty work, apprehensive thatGod's supporting presence might be denied him, altogether "Buffeted,and mortified and macerated with Strong Temptations, and broken topieces."

On the morning of his ordination, Cotton's assurances returned glow-ingly. He was in his study, praying on his knees and meditating on whatthe ministry entailed, when he experienced, in tears, an "astonishingIrradiation from Heaven," a guarantee that he would in his ministry enjoya mighty presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. The exaltation, the "rapturousTouches and Prospects" became nearly unbearable: "I was forced mostunwillingly to shake them off; they would have been too hard for me, andI would not have others take notice of any Effects thereby left upon me."

In this state of controlled rapture, his soul "inexpressibly irradiatedfrom on High," Cotton entered the North Church. Here he beheld "oneof the vastest Congregations that has ever been seen in these parts of theWorld." Exactly how many attended is unknown, but the church hadthree tiers of galleries, and a good congregation meant fifteen hundred totwo thousand persons, one-third to nearly one-half the population of Bos-

ton. Many ministers and other dignitaries from churches in Boston andneighboring towns took part, as did the governor of Massachusetts andthe revered, aged John Eliot.

Cotton began the daylong ritual by offering public prayers for aboutan hour and a quarter. Then to demonstrate, as the candidate customarilydid, that he understood the work for which he was about to be separated.he preached for an hour and three-quarters. Nothing indicates that hisstutter hampered him, but by the text he chose, John 21:17, he invokedhis troubled "closing" and the frequent postponements. When the resurrected Jesus asked his disciple Peter whether he loved Him, Peter repliedthat he did; but as if doubting him, Christ repeated the question two moretimes: "Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovestthou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thouknowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep."

Having spoken three hours in the morning, Cotton sat silent in theafternoon as Increase preached. He wrote down his father's words in hissermon notebook and, underlining certain statements, filled elevenpages. Increase took for his subject the nature of the ministry, emphasiz-ing its solemnity and high demands. Occasionally referring directly to"My son Cotton Mather," he said that the ministry was a "Work." It was awork, first, in the sense of a difficult labor, requiring wearisome preach-ing, meditation, and study. It was also an awful work, for the minister inwatching over souls does the Lord's work. Nor is everyone qualified forthis work. Among the earliest Christians there were "extraordinary Minis-ters" called directly from Heaven, qualified for the ministry by beingdivinely endowed with miraculous gifts. But the age of miracles havingended, the qualifications now were ministerial, not miraculous: largeknowledge, an ability to interpret Scripture, a desire to glorify God, and,most important, the experience of conversion, a calling from the HolyGhost. Ministers, Increase concluded, must "addict themselves to theMinistry," must be spiritual in discourse and conversation, spiritual inpreaching, indeed spiritually minded—for which Scripture comparesthem to angels.

Cotton's ordination as a minister followed. Such ceremonies well con-ducted could be moving and instructive, leaving, Cotton wrote later,"Floods of Tears in the affected Spectators, and lasting Impressions ofPiety upon them." The custom in the New England churches was for themoderator to ask the visiting elders and messengers of neighboringchurches whether they objected to the ordination; none objecting, themoderator then asked whether they knew of anything in the candidate's

doctrine or morals that might forbid his ordination; nothing beingnamed, the brethren were asked to signify with raised hands that theyabided by their choice of the minister.

Now Increase Mather and the ministers John Allen and Samuel Wil-lard lay their hands on Cotton's head. In this position Increase chargedhis son to feed dutifully the flock of God over which the Holy Ghost hadappointed him shepherd, to give himself to meditation, reading, exhorta-tion, and doctrine, and to make himself exemplary by his own purity,charity, and faith. If his son kept this charge, Increase said,

. . . the Lord of Hosts will give you a Place among His Holy Angels thatstand by, and are Witnesses of this Days-Solemnity, and of your being thussolemnly apart to the special Service of God, and of Jesus Christ; And ifyou do thus, when the Lord Jesus shall appear, you shall appear with Himin glory. He, who is the chief Shepherd will then give unto you a Crown ofGlory which shall never fade away.

After this dramatic "Imposition of Hands," a minister chosen to representthe elders and messengers of the churches customarily gave the newminister his right hand in token of fellowship in God's service, as James,Peter, and John to Paul and Barnabas.

The minister chosen to step forth was John Eliot. Now past eighty, hehad lived in New England since it was an unchristian wilderness, formore than fifty years. Giving Cotton the "Right Hand of Fellowship" asthe latest continuator of a sacred succession, he said to him: "Brother, Artthou a Lover of the Lord Jesus Christ? Then, I pray Feed his Lambs." Thesolemnity and tradition of the event, Cotton wrote afterward in his diary,produced a "greater Number of moved Hearts and weeping Eyes, thanperhaps have been at any Time here seen together."

Elevated into partnership with his father in a prestigious church, andto the honorable place designed for him in the line of Cottons and Math-ers, Cotton felt small and weak. Some time after his ordination, he tookthe notes he had written on his father's sermon and, using a different pen,interlined his private responses to them. Where his father had said "Solo-mon my son is young and tender," he wrote, "The like here." WhereIncrease told the congregation, "I have been at the gates of the Grave,"Cotton commented, "more than once within these four or five years."Increase may again have been ill at the time of Cotton's ordination, for hetook the occasion to announce once more that his death might be near.He did so indirectly, referring in his sermon to the story in Numbers20:26 of Aaron and his son Eleazar. The reference was not lost upon

Samuel Sewall, who noted in his diary that Increase had thereby Intimat-ed "he knew not but that God might now call him out of the World."Increase may have done no more than mention Aaron and Bleazar; tohave applied the larger episode in which they figured to himself and hisson, could be interpreted only as a gesture of bitter reproach. For Aaronthe priest did not simply transmit his ministry to his son. Rather, an angryGod stripped him of his priestly garments and put them upon Eleazar,immediately after his son replaced him, Aaron died. Whether or not Cot-ton interpreted Increase's reference to mean that his father consideredhimself demoted and mortally threatened by his ordination, he at leastwrote in his notebook that "When the priests garments were put uponEleazar, then Aarons death was near."

With this fearful prospect, and with how much guilt can only be con-jectured, Cotton also recorded a resolve to find some method of extraor-dinary prayerfulness for his father's life. Increase himself told the congre-gation that if his son were left alone he would need their prayers. AndCotton concluded the afterthoughts in his notebook with a brief prayer ofhis own: "O mighty Redeemer by whose Spirit I am call'd unto the workof the Ministry in this time and place, Help Help a frail creature to dis-charge all the Duties of it."

Within about a year after his ordination Cotton had been initiated intomost of the duties of the New England ministry. On June 28, 1685, he forthe first time administered communion; in July he for the first time gavethe "Country-Lecture"; beginning in October he participated in a formalexcommunication, taking testimony of witnesses who had seen a memberof the congregation, Ruth Fuller, holding on to the gate before her house,drunk; toward the end of the year he began catechizing visits, stopping bythe houses of his flock each afternoon to catechize their young, seldomdeparting without "many Tears of Devotion dropt by all sorts of Persons"in the family, work he found rewarding but also fatiguing. As an ordainedBoston minister he was also made an Overseer of Harvard, sometime in1685. The same year, the Overseers unanimously devolved the care of thecollege on Increase, asking him to act as president until the establish-ment of a permanent administration. Still refusing to reside in Cam-bridge, he acted as "Rector," commuting between the North End and theHarvard Yard by ferry and horse.

Cotton preached extensively. Over two days in January 1686, he gavefive sermons, and he filled pulpits in Watertown, Charlestown, Dorches-

ter, and other places around Boston. One particular sermon called on hisfullest abilities, brought him wide notice, and became the occasion, hesaid, "of my being shown unto Israel." In March 1686, a man namedJames Morgan, about thirty years old, was found guilty of murder andsentenced to be hanged. Condemned criminals were usually brought tochurch to be made the living objects of an exemplary sermon. Morganhimself asked Cotton to preach his execution sermon, as this genre be-came known, so that on March 7, Cotton found himself preaching at theNorth Church before a "vast Concourse of People." He addressed simul-taneously the congregation and the criminal, who sat in the auditorium,probably chained, holding a Bible. Using Morgan as a frightening exam-ple of the results of brothels, swearing, and other prevalent vices, heexhorted him to look toward Christ:

When the numerous crowd of Spectators are, three or four days hence,throng'd about the place where you shall then breathe your last beforethem all, then do you with the heart-piercing groans of a deadly woundedman beseech of your Fellow-sinners that they would Turn now every onefrom the evil of his way.

Cotton was not mistaken in predicting a large crowd, for on the morningof Morgan's hanging—the first execution in Boston in nearly sevenyears—Increase Mather preached to a gathering estimated, amazingly, atfive thousand persons. Amidst this huge crush in the North Church a"crazed woman," as Samuel Sewall described her, either screamed thatthe gallery was falling, or else beat another woman, whose flight from herwas mistaken for a rush to safety from a falling gallery. Either way, peoplefled the church in panic, and the governor moved the proceedings to theSouth Church. There Cotton took notes as his father preached on thenature of murder, praying at the same time that he might be as helpful aspossible to "the poor man."

Morgan perhaps sensed compassion in Cotton or felt some bond withhis youth, for he requested his company on the public march to the hang-ing. As they walked together to the gallows, about a mile outside Boston,they were followed by thousands of people. Some had traveled fifty milesto be present. En route, by Cotton's account, Morgan repeatedly thankedhim for his help, and reviled himself for lying, drinking, breaking theSabbath, and keeping evil company. Before a "huge Multitude" gatheredat the place of execution, near which was a coffin, Cotton prayed withMorgan. Although he constantly pressed on his flock the need for imme-diate repentance, he believed that no repentance could come too late to

make salvation possible, and he told Morgan to pray in his final momenton earth, that they might meet on Judgment Day at the right hand ofJesus. Morgan climbed the ladder to the noose. Cotton said to him, "Fare-well poor heart, Fare thee well."

Cotton's concern for Morgan's body and soul did not keep him fromrealizing that his role in the execution had brought him new prominence.His performance was so affecting, he recorded, that people throughoutthe country "very greedily desired the Publication," and the event produced his first published sermon, The Call of the Gospel (1686). It partic-ularly pleased him that the sermon appeared together with the executionsermons by his father and by the Rev. Joshua Moodey, placing him, asorry Youth, in conjunction with two of the venerablest Men in the Land."As he noted proudly too, these sermons "sold exceedingly," calling for asecond edition the next year, to which the publisher added a nine-pagetranscript of his conversation with Morgan on the death march. Havingstepped impressively before the public, the same fall he was chosen forthe first time to deliver the traditional "Artillery Sermon," marking theday for selecting leaders of the militia. In themselves such sermons were"things of considerable Observation." But Cotton took special pride inhaving been chosen to preach in Cambridge, to the artillery company ofMiddlesex County, while as a Bostonian he resided in Essex County. Nev-er before had the Middlesex militia chosen for their Artillery Day preach-er a minister from another county, "and this was my poor self." The eventproduced his second published sermon, Military Duties (1687).

While pleased by his early success Cotton was learning, however, thatto be "shown unto Israel" meant also to be exposed unto Israel. Somefound his florid language not entertaining but affected. Increase mayhave intended to warn him against verbal display when, in his sermon onCotton's ordination, he told of an "Elaborate young Man" to wThom some-one said, "I wanted the Spirit of God in your sermon." To others, Cottonseemed unmistakably "elaborate." One minister congratulated Increaseon his son's wealth of evangelical knowledge but added, "I only wish hedelivered truths in your style, in that plainness of expression which theGospel teach." Samuel Sewall too remarked that an otherwise excellentsermon by Cotton was found distasteful or "somewhat disgusted" forsuch expressions as "sweet-scented hands of Christ, Lord High Treasurerof AEthiopia, Ribband of Humility."

If Cotton's plush language hid from others his grave doubts about hisability, he was himself undeceived. Nearly a year after his ordination heagain cautioned himself to watch his tongue lest he be punished by stut-

tering, and to use a "deliberate, considerable, profitable speech." Acutelyconscious of being twenty-four years old in a role where venerablenesswas esteemed, he saw himself as "a young person, and a younger pastor.''His sense of his youthfulness also curbed any desire to outperform hisfather, toward whom he continued to act with respectful submission.When an address to the General Court was proposed, shortly before hisordination, he felt that "Little can be done by so little a person, as I am, inthis matter," and he decided simply to "confer with my Father, as a sorryRemembrancer." Increase fed this sense of subordinate littleness by hisreluctance, even after Cotton's ordination, to acknowledge him as a col-league. When their execution sermons on James Morgan were publishedtogether in a single volume, Increase referred in the Preface, less enthusi-astically than fatalistically, to "my Son {whom the Lord Jesus has fixed inthe same Church to which I am related)."

Especially, Cotton feared that by his inexperience he might do some-thing to bring the ministry into disrepute: "O Lord, " he prayed, "of allthe Plagues in the World, I beseech Thee, do not suffer this to come uponme." A year after his ordination he took part in a church council at Mai-den which voted to temporarily suspend Thomas Cheever, a minister ac-cused among other things of uttering obscenities at a Salem tavern. Sit-ting in a formal council and officially condemning the son of his oldschoolmaster, Ezekiel Cheever, he felt not like one of the judges, but likethe young offender: "having seen a poor young Minister terribly stigma-tized for his Misdemeanours, by a Council, whereof I was myself a Mem-ber, I thought; What if God should single me out now to be so publicklyloaded with Shame for Sin?"

Cotton completed his entry into the ministry, in mid-1686, by marry-ing. He chose very carefully, often seeking divine guidance, for a minis-ter's wife was not only his companion but must also be a model of wifely,motherly, and neighborly behavior to the community. At the same time,bachelor ministers were much sought after, and its paternal authority lentthe Puritan ministry a distinct erotic appeal, so that he found himselfsoon after ordination with "many Invitations" to marry. He seems to haveconsidered several eligible women, promising that if God directed him toone who would honor his calling he would twice a year, every year, joinher in keeping a private day of Thanksgiving to Him. Ministers in NewEngland being, as Increase often complained, underpaid, he also prayedto be afforded through marriage a comfortable and well-provided home,

"without the Distresses and the Temptations, which Poverty does expose

unto."

Around his birthday in February 1686, Cotton began courting AbigailPhillips of Charlestown, the daughter of "worthy, pious, and credibleParents." Her father, Colonel John Phillips, a justice of the peace prominent in military affairs, owned houses and pastureland in and nearCharlestown, plus an interest in a mill. Cotton pursued Abigail piouslybut vigorously. For three months he let scarce a week pass without spend-ing a day of prayer for his success, and he fashioned his addresses toAbigail after Christ's methods of engaging souls. To remind himself thathis courtship must serve the same purpose as all his other activities, toglorify God,he entered in his diary an anecdote concerning Rabbi Gama-liel, the teacher of Saint Paul, who, refusing to lay by the yoke of God'sKingdom a single hour, said over the scriptural passages in his phylacter-ies on his wedding night. What made the reminder necessary was perhapsthat during his courtship, perhaps because of it, he felt the sting of disbe-lief, a weakening of faith, in fact the beginnings of a severe religiouscrisis. "O that the wonderful, Amazing, Everlasting Love of God to me,"he cried in March, "might cause me to love Him again, with a Love asstrong as Death."

Despite mounting spiritual turmoil, Cotton married Abigail Phillipson May 4, 1686. He was three months past twenty-three, she one monthunder sixteen. He found some renewal of spiritual strength on the morn-ing of his wedding day, which he spent in secret prayer in Boston. Onceagain he experienced an assurance of Christ's love for him, and becametearfully certain that "in my married Estate, He had reserves of rich andgreat Blessings for me." Arriving in Charlestown with time to spare, hetook his Bible into a garden and read the account in John 2 of the mar-riage in Cana, turning each verse into one pious thought and one suppli-cation to God.

The wedding, Cotton decided, was an event—attended by many min-isters and other prominent persons, celebrated with "Splendid Entertain-ments" at Abigail's house, withal marked by "many Circumstances of Re-spect and Honour, above most that have ever been in these parts of theWorld." After living a while with Colonel Phillips in Charlestown thecouple moved to Boston around the early fall, to a house Increase hadtemporarily inhabited after the great fire of 1676 consumed his own.Here, as a very young college student, Cotton had many hundreds oftimes beseeched the Lord. "I could not but observe the Providence ofGod," he remarked, "in ordering my Comforts now■, in those very Rooms,

THE SOLEMNEST WORK IN THE WORLD 51

where I had many years before, sought Him with my Prayers."

From the first, Cotton felt happy in his marriage to Abigail andthanked God for granting him "a Meet Help, an extremely desireableCompanion for my Joys and Griefs" As he had hoped, he was materiallyprosperous too, having received a good portion "in, as well as with, myConsort." He went from room to room of his house, deliberately gazingon the "Parcels of the Estate, whereof I am now become the owner";rather, he reconsidered as he mentally gave back the parcels to God, thesteward. The novel sexual license of marriage seems to have troubled himsome, for he prayed to be freed from the "Slavery" of a "Lust seeming toassault me with a commission." But the household of course remaineddeeply devout. To aid Abigail in her so-far unconverted state, he offeredconference and example, and prayed with her daily. The couple alsoinvited neighbors for an hour of prayer and psalmody on Sabbath eve-nings, but their pious hospitality proved too inviting, bringing "such anunexpected Resort unto my House, that there was ordinarily near an hun-dred People at a Time, (and more than one Room could hold)."

Yet as happened to Increase just after his ordination, Cotton followinghis marriage underwent a tormenting assault of religious doubt, lastingabout eight months. Only weeks after the wedding he found his soul"daily Enflamed" by the "fiery Darts" of atheism. The Christ he so oftenbeseeched prostrate in the dust for his father's life and an unfetteredtongue seemed now a dubious being: "O," he prayed, "That the foolishprejudices which my unbelief is ready to entertain against Jesus Christ,may be all removed." After his innumerable pious contrivances and inge-nious devotions, his alchemizing street signs and flowers into prayers, hedoubted the reality of Spirit: "O That my firm Belief of Invisible thingsmay be as a shield unto me, defending me from those Temptations." Thevery soul whose sins of lust and pride he had striven in brokenheartedcycles of assurance and doubt to purge, might not exist: "O That I mightbeyond all Doubt or Darkness, be effectually convinced of the Immortal-ity of my own soul." Indeed, he had arrived at the place appointed forhim since birth, but as an unfamiliar being, disloyally changed: "O That Imay not in any wise Lose that kindness to the Truths and ways of God,which I have had in my younger years."

A year before his marriage Cotton had visited his friend Thomas Shep-ard, a minister in Charlestown about four and a half years younger thanhimself. Ill, Shepard had said to him as they parted, "5/r, / beg the LordJesus to be with you unto the End of the World!" The next night Sheparddied.

52 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COTTON MATHER

It was about four months after his marriage, in September 1686, thatCotton dreamed of being in a room with some other "Gentlemen,"among them Shepard. He felt "somewhat shy" of him because he wasdead and tried to slip out of the room. But Shepard "nimbly" approachedhim, took him by the hand, and said, "Sir, yon need not be so shy of me,for yon shall quickly be as I am, and where I am"

MR. COTTON MATHER

(1687-1703)

In the rear of the procession rode a figure on horseback, so darkly conspicuous, sosternly triumphant, that my hearers mistook him for the visible presence of thefiend himself; but it was only his good friend, Cotton Mather, proud of his well-wondignity, as the representative of all the hateful features of his time; the one blood-thirsty man, in whom were concentrated those vices of spirit and errors of opinionthat sufficed to madden the whole surrounding multitude.

—Nathaniel hawthorne, "Alice Doane's Appeal"(1834)

"It is difficult, my children," observed Grandfather, "to make you understand such acharacter as Cotton Mather's, in whom there was so much good, and yet so manyfailings and frailties."

—Nathaniel hawthorne, Grandfather's Chair

(1841)

Was Cotton Mather honestly credulous? Ever ready to dupe himself, he limitedhis credulity only by the probable credulity of others. He changes, or omits torepeat, his statements, without acknowledging error, and with a clear intention ofconveying false impressions. He is an example how far selfishness, under the formof vanity and ambition, can blind the higher faculties, stupefy the judgment, anddupe consciousness itself. His self-righteousness was complete, till he was resisted.

—george Bancroft, History of the United States(12th ed., 1846)

. . . those who know only the eccentricities of Cotton Mather know little about him.Those who suppose they comprehend him, because they are familiar with the cur-rent anecdotes about him, or imagine that he could be fairly sketched by a fewstrong touches, could not be under a greater misapprehension. The truth is, fewcharacters are less intelligible; few harder to describe; few are so many-sided; fewhave so little uniformity; few have so great a variety of qualities, in such strangeadmixture; few show such supposed inconsistencies; few present themselves insuch ever-shifting positions and hues, such kaleidoscopic changes and combina-tions; few exhibit such surprising contrasts, such an apparent jumble of great and

small, sharp and flat, wise and simple, saintly and ordinary. To group all theseelements together, to arrange and blend them into any thing like a complete andsatisfactory portrait, would be a task that requires more penetration and skill thanhave ever yet been exercised upon his biography. . . .

—chandler robbins, A History of the SecondCburcb (1852)

. . . though, in my previous night-readings, Cotton Mather had but amused me,upon this particular night he terrified me. A thousand times I had laughed it suchstories. Old wives' fables, I thought, however entertaining. But now, how different.They began to put on the aspect of reality. Now, for the first time it struck me thatthis was no romantic Mrs. Radcliffe who had written the Magnalia, but a practical,hard-working, earnest, upright man, a learned doctor, too, as well as a good Chris-tian and orthodox clergyman. What possible motive could such a man have to de-ceive? His style had all the plainness and unpoetic boldness of truth. In the moststraightforward way, he laid before me detailed accounts of New England witchcraft,each important item corroborated by respectable townsfolk, and, of not a few of themost surprising, he himself had been eye-witness. Cotton Mather testified whereofhe had seen. But, is it possible? I asked myself.

—Herman melville, "The Apple-Tree Table" (1856)

The Glorious Revolution

Over the next fifteen years, three convulsive events shook the political,social, and religious life of New England. Of Cotton Mather's reaction tothe first event, the Glorious Revolution of 1689, little is known, becausehis diaries between 1687 and 1692 are missing. That is doubly unfortu-nate because for most of the time his father was in London, leaving him inBoston alone. Although this biography otherwise narrates his life frominside, as he witnessed it himself, the present chapter perforce treats itlargely as seen by others.

Yet in reacting to the upheavals of the time, Cotton Mather sharedwith many other New Englanders a single interpretive framework. He andthey explained events according to a long-lived public sense of vulnera-bility. As a persecuted minority in England, Puritans had grown used toexpecting attack. Their settlement in America, however, did not easetheir apprehensions. Instead, it demonstrated that their entire communitywas unstable and precarious, that troublesome and vast change couldcome at any time, and they lived under severe strain of invasion anddisintegration.

The mentality of invasion arose from threats both external and inter-nal. However the first settlers hoped to leave behind the corruptions andviolence of Europe, they remained part of an international community.Holland, at war with England in the 1670s, made no distinction betweenmother country and colony, and seized vessels wherever New Englandtraded; a day of public fasting was kept in 1673 to implore divine protec-tion against Dutch attack. Invasion by a more potent and nearer enemy to

England, France, was a chronic threat, and Christian Israel had much tofear as well from its Indian neighbors, who raided often and bloodily. Itnot the Puritans' life and property, then their religious solidarity wasmenaced by incursions of other sects. Quakers—in the Puritan view,open heretics—first intruded on Boston in 1656 and kept returning de-spite severe punishments: for the first intrusion, loss of an ear; for thesecond, loss of the second ear; for the third, a hot iron through thetongue; for repeated intrusions, death: in the early 1660s three incorrigi-ble Quakers were hanged. Baptists opened a church at Charlestown in1665 and, although banished from the colony, managed to stay. And nev-er far off was the prospect of a still more disruptive settlement in NewEngland of Episcopal churches and an American bishop, backed by thecrown.

The elements in New England were harsh and invasive also, protec-tion minimal. An earthquake struck in and around Boston in 1663, trans-mitting six or more shocks over three days that moved objects on shelvesand drove people in fright from their rocking houses. As a busy portBoston also awaited sudden calamities of the sea. The churches constant-ly invoked prayers for congregants then upon the waves; there were fre-quent reports of lost ships, and many widows. A combustible heap ofcontiguous houses, Boston lived under the constant threat of fire, too.Three years after the blaze that destroyed Increase Mather's house andchurch, a major fire destroyed eighty homes and seventy warehouses witha loss of £150,000, a toll proportionate to that suffered by London in theGreat Fire of 1666. The very air threatened the community, bringing egg-sized hail, lightning to split houses, drought to blast wheat, and lethalmeasles, scarlet fever, and smallpox. As many as three of every ten infantsin Boston died, compared with one in sixty in present America. Thesmallpox epidemic that struck just after Cotton Mather's graduation killedan estimated eight hundred persons; the coffins passed each other in thestreet.

The Puritans' habit of interpreting such events as judgments of Godexpanded their feeling of vulnerability. When houses rocked in 1663 itwas thought, said one contemporary, that "these Earthquakes might por-tend the shaking the Foundations of our Churches, and of our CivilState." In the brilliant appearance of Halley's comet Increase Mather sawa portent of worse ahead:

I am persuaded, that the floods of great water are coming. I am persuadedthat God is about to open the windows of heaven, and to pour down theCataracts of his Wrath, ere this Generation (wherein Atheism and Profane-

ness are come to such a prodigious height) I say, ere this Generation ispassed away.

The idea that New England's plague of fire, war, disease, and droughtrepresented divine punishment for its internal rot became more vehe-mently proclaimed the more the rot spread. And the 1680s, many felt,climaxed an insidious religious and social deterioration that had beenevident for at least twenty years (see the note in Documentation). Writingin the eighteenth century, the minister Thomas Prince observed that adecay of piety occurred in New England a little after 1660, "And thisincreased to 1670, when it grew very visible and threatening, and wasgenerally complained of and bewailed bitterly by the Pious among them;And yet much more to 1680, when but few of the first Generation re-mained." Sermons preached throughout New England bemoaned this de-cay and articulated the fear of the godly that, as one wrote, "New Englandhath seen its best days."

Among the chief signs that the moldering foundations of church andstate might soon be overturned was the failure of many young persons toexperience grace, that inward supernatural cleansing of perception whichsignified salvation. According to the original Congregational theory, onlythe gracious—the Saints—were entitled to full church membership, thatis to taking the Lord's Supper and having their children baptized. Thefailure of many of the new generation to experience grace meant thatfewer persons took communion and far fewer were being baptized. Todeal with declining church membership, seventy church representativesmet in March 1662 at the Boston First Church to discuss the question"Who are the subjects of baptism?" Their answer modified the originaltheory, extending baptism to the children of godly persons who were notfull church members, that is, who had not experienced grace but hadbeen baptized themselves and who professed an intellectual faith andsubmitted to church discipline. This famous Halfway Covenant carried atthe Synod by better than seven votes to one, but resulted in a flood ofcontroversial pamphlets and bitter divisions in many churches. Indeed,Increase Mather had refused to vote with the majority, although it includ-ed Richard Mather, his eminent father. From his deathbed Richard askedhis son no longer to oppose the Halfway Covenant, but under Increasethe North Church still stubbornly refused to baptize children of the unre-generate. At issue was simply whether to adhere to original Congrega-tional theory and see church membership dwindle, or open the church tothe ungracious and, in the minds of some, betray the Fathers.

Christian Israel felt equally threatened by the social expression of this

decay, a transformation of manners and morals that weakened the Puri-tans' strict sexual code and their devotion to family life. In 1672, a countycourt convicted a woman named Alice Thomas "of great suspicion tokeep a brothel-house." This was apparently the first brothel in Boston.although from 1670 to 1680 the Suffolk County Court sat on eleven morecases of prostitution. Other signs of a growing sexual excess were moreviolent, exotic, or unfeeling. Samuel Sewall mentions a Haverhill manwho raped Goodwife Nash of Amesbury in a pasture; a boy executed forcommitting bestiality with a mare in broad daylight in an open yard; and,in 1685, the discovery in the stall of a tobacco shop of an abandonedinfant pinned in a cloth: "So far as I can hear," Sewall remarks, "this isthe first Child that ever was in such a manner exposed in Boston." By the1680s ministers had also to vie for attention with French and Englishdancing masters, such as the Francis Stepney who held mixed dances onlecture days and reportedly boasted that "by one Play he could teachmore Divinity than Mr. [Samuel] Willard or the Old Testament." Tavernsproliferated, and drunkenness, many alleged, was rampant; in April 1680the selectmen approved licenses to sell beer, wine, cider or all three tomore than thirty different persons. Others complained of widespreadcontention and a spirit of calumny, as if, Urian Oakes said in 1673, "therewere some Lying Office set up in New England." The deep, underlyingsocial change to which all these complaints and incidents point may havecontributed to an increase in suicide, against which several ministerspreached. In 1677, one diarist recorded within six months that a Plym-outh woman who had nineteen children killed herself while pregnantwith the twentieth; a man named John Tomlin, of Boston, hanged himself"under discontent"; an old man in Boston cut his throat; and anotherBoston woman "in trouble of mind" starved herself to death.

The courts and churches struggled to repel this social blight, but itonly spread. The courts passed new laws ordering constables to presentto the selectmen the names of idlers, allowing county courts to fine wom-en who disported naked breasts and arms, considering as riotous singlepersons who rode out of town to drink and revel, empowering grandjuries to bring to trial men who wore long hair, their own or wigs. Theministry took the part of the Old Testament Jeremiah, and joined in de-nouncing the degenerate younger generation, none more vigorously thanIncrease Mather. "Where was there," he asked in one of his many jeremi-ads, "ever a place so like unto New Jerusalem as New-England hathbeen?"—"hath been," however, for this was the New England, Increasesaid, of the unconverted, not zealous for God "but luke warm and wofully

indifferent in the matters of Religion." The great Reform Synod of 1679-80that gathered in Boston compiled a list of the "provoking Evils" of theland: pride in apparel, sleeping at sermons, neglect of church fellowship,Sabbath-breaking, lack of family prayer, naked breasts, mixed dances, un-lawful gaming, lying, swearing, talebearing, litigiousness, drunkenness,overcharging. In these cankers, the Synod declared, was engrossed "thisperishing people."

But however alarming it found the threat of war, elemental disaster, orinner decay, the mentality of invasion doted longest and most apprehen-sively on the undeclared intentions of the mother country. At the time ofCotton Mather's birth all New England waited anxiously to learn the dis-position of the new monarchy, restored after more than a decade of Puri-tan rule in England. The new king, Charles II, sent a letter in June 1662,expressing satisfaction in the loyalty of the people of Massachusetts andpromising to confirm and preserve their charter. But these gracious reas-surances came with some demands. The king expected that liberty ofconscience would be extended to Episcopalians. Congregational churchmembership, too, would no longer be required for voting privileges, butall landholders "orthodox in religion, (though of different persuasionsconcerning church government)" would be allowed to vote for civil andmilitary officials. To be sure that Massachusetts complied, the king dis-patched four observers, who arrived in July 1664. Ominously they camewith about four hundred troops aboard two ships of war—the first vesselsof the Royal Navy ever to enter Boston Harbor.

The royal commissioners were instructed to do more than observe.They also carried secret instructions to try to persuade the Massachusettsgovernment to seek a "supplement" to the original charter of 1629. AsPuritans understood this charter, it set forth and legitimated the purposesthat had impelled the first immigrants to cross the Atlantic and foundwhat John Winthrop called a City upon a Hill. To give up the charter wasnot only to deny their beginnings, however, but also to jeopardize theirfuture. The charter, granted by Charles I, created a joint-stock tradingcompany out of which the government of Massachusetts had evolved.Although the charter was little more than a commercial license for theMassachusetts Bay Company, the Puritans' view of their migration as amission made the charter in their eyes sacred. It became, Michael G. Hallsays, "illogically but in fact, a constitution as precious to the Boston Puri-tans in 1660 as the United States Constitution was to become for its citi-zens after 1789.' Under the terms of the charter the Puritans had man-aged to live and to think of themselves as a small independent

church-state, a purified American Israel separated from a corrupt OldWorld. The policy of the new king, however, was to make Massachusettsthink of itself again—as did the other North American colonies- as acolony, existing to benefit the mother country.

The move against the charter was aimed particularly at empoweringthe king to appoint the governor of Massachusetts himself. The charterhad granted the Massachusetts Bay Company the right, as a trading com-pany, to choose its own officers; as the Bay Company became the Com-monwealth of Massachusetts, the governor of the Company became ineffect an elected political leader. Now to deny Massachusetts the right ofelecting its governor was to snap the tie between church and state onwhich the continuance of Christian Israel depended. In Puritan theory,church and state, Moses and Aaron, were coordinate authorities, strength-ening each other jointly to enforce the moral law. The Cambridge Plat-form of 1648 assigned civil authority the duty of restraining and punish-ing idolatry, blasphemy, and heresy, and of coercing schismatical orcorrupt individual congregations. Beyond that, government was chargedwith declaring days of public fasting and humiliation, passing lawsagainst drunkenness or Sabbath-breaking, encouraging the college andschools, and supporting the ministry. Since a revocation of the charteralmost certainly involved appointing a non-Puritan governor, it meantweakening the church and altering the Puritan character of the state.

In their own behavior the royal commissioners afforded a preview ofwhat might be expected from a non-Puritan government in Massachu-setts. They sent reports to London depicting New Englanders (with con-siderable accuracy) as rustic and antimonarchical, and warning that Har-vard might continue to provide "schismatics to the Church" and "rebelsto the King." They also set up as a court of appeals to review sentencesalready passed by the Massachusetts court. One was the case of JohnPorter, about thirty years old. This unruly man had been sentenced forsaying, among other things, that he "cared not a turd" for Judge Hath-orne. He also set fire to his father's woodpile, beat the man's servants,chopped down his fence, threatened to burn his house and kill his cattle,and called him a "liar, and simple Ape, shittabed." On top of that Portertried to stab one of his own brothers, and cursed his mother as a "Ram-beggur, Gamar Shithouse, Gamar Pisshouse," placing her as "the rankestsow in the town." For this oversized contempt of traditional filiopiety, theMassachusetts courts sent Porter to the Boston jail. He escaped, however,and presented himself before three of the commissioners, who granted

him protection until his appeal could be heard.

Domestic and international political problems distracted the king'sattention from New England until 1676. Then Edward Randolph, a lead-ing advocate of strict royal control over Massachusetts, was sent on thefirst of his five portentous missions to America. He wrote home that thecolony's losses and heavy expenses during King Philip's War made it ripefor a change in government. Yet the status of Massachusetts remainedundecided for another decade. While Cotton Mather reached puberty,graduated from Harvard, and trained for his ministry, Randolph arrivedand departed, composing censorious accounts of the Puritans' antimonar-chical sentiments. Rumors often spread through New England that thecharter was about to be revoked and a royal governor appointed. Massa-chusetts authorities fended off or made small concessions to demandsfrom London, and reminded the king in petitions that for the liberty ofliving as they lived, "our fathers, and some of us with them, left theirnative land, with all their pleasant and desirable things."

In the public debate over how to deal with the long-threatening lossof autonomy, some urged submission, others compromise, others defi-ance. Perhaps the boldest spokesman for preserving the charter and itssacred privileges was Increase Mather. When the Rev. Samuel Willarddenounced as madness a suggestion for resisting to the end, Increase toldhim that had Willard's grandfather heard him, "He would have Boxed hisEars." At a town meeting in January 1684, Increase spoke passionately tothe question of whether, as he put it, to make "a full submission andentire Resignation of our charter and the privileges of it to the Kingspleasure." He answered that to submit was to "sin against God." Recall-ing the risky response of the biblical Naboth, when King Ahab demandedhis vineyards—"God forbid, that I should give away the Inheritance ofmy Fathers"—he said he hoped "there is not one Freeman in Boston thatwill dare to be guilty of so great a sin." By one account he even excitedhis audience to defend the charter by arms. The meeting voted unani-mously to resist the king's recent offer to "regulate" the charter for themutual good of New England and the crown.

That New England's existence was precarious, Increase of course un-derstood with special, visionary clarity. Foremost among the Jeremiahsrecalling the rising generation to their Fathers' ways, he had publiclyprophesied such other threats as King Philip's War, the smallpox epidem-ic that struck several of his children, and the fire that destroyed his home.A few weeks after his speech he spent a day of prayer and fasting in his

beloved study. Once more emerging from it prophetically moved, confident that God had heard his pleas, he called out: "God will deliver Neu

England! God will deliver New England! God will deliver New England

On Friday morning, May 14, 1686—ten days after Cotton Mather's marriage—Edward Randolph arrived in Boston from England for the fifthtime in a decade, bearing the revocation of the Massachusetts charter andthe king's commission for a new government.

The following Monday at the Town House the commission was shownto the General Court, in a room filled with spectators. Some judges urgeda protest, but Samuel Sewall spoke against it: "the foundations beingdestroyed," he asked, "what can the Righteous do." The possibility ofsome form of resistance was discussed at small private meetings over thenext few days, but laid aside. A week later the General Court met for thelast time. The Rev. Samuel Nowell prayed God to pardon the magistratesand deputies for capitulating, then thanked the Lord for the mercies Hehad shown to Massachusetts in the fifty-six years it had existed. Thoseassembled sang verses from Habakkuk. With "Many Tears Shed in Prayerand at Parting," Sewall recorded, the marshal-general declared the courtadjourned until October. But it was a gesture. The charter of the Gover-nor and Company of Massachusetts Bay had been nullified, together withall the rights and privileges founded on it. Massachusetts, formerly a Cityon a Hill, was now an English colony.

Until the arrival of the new governor later in the year, Massachusettswas ruled by a council, under a native of Massachusetts, Joseph Dudley.He understood his regime to be provisional and more or less preservedestablished laws and customs. Edward Randolph, however, immediatelychallenged the concept of a Puritan state. The Lords of Trade and Planta-tion in London had been advised for several years to create an outpost ofthe Church of England in Massachusetts, if only to offset the authority ofthe Puritan clergy. Randolph, now a councillor in the new government,had brought with him to Boston an Anglican clergyman named RobertRatcliffe; ten days after arriving he suggested that Ratcliffe be allowed toestablish a ministry in one of the three Boston meetinghouses. That wasresisted, but Ratcliffe was allowed to preach in a room of the TownHouse. The event, on Sunday, June 6, attracted a large audience, perhapsbecause of its novelty, although at least one listener also found Ratcliffe'spreaching "Extraordinary; he being as well an Orator as a Preacher." Forthe first time in New England's history a minister had worn a surplice and

had publicly read the liturgy from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer.

The full meaning to Massachusetts of the loss of its charter appearedwith the arrival of the new governor on December 20, 1686. EdmundAndros was sent to rule over the Dominion of New England, an enlarged,newly unified territory that incorporated Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth,New Hampshire, Maine, and the Narragansett country; by 1688 it wouldinclude Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and the Jerseys as well.Bostonians scrutinized his arrival for clues to his intentions, but cameaway uncertain. Ominously he debarked, Sewall noticed, in a "ScarletCoat Laced." Ominously too, when oaths were administered in the TownHouse he kept his hat on. To the ministers present he spoke about theneed of Church of England worshipers for one of the Boston meeting-houses, and suggested it could be used by two congregations. The Bostonministers met next day to consider his suggestion and agreed they couldnot consent; Increase Mather and Samuel Willard delivered their answer"in great plainness," Sewall said. But instead of confronting them, Androsapparently hedged. "He seems to say," as Sewall reported his response,"will not impose."

Andros's seeming appeasement hardly lasted through the New Year.He decided that members of the Church of England needed a place ofworship and, with Good Friday approaching, he sent Randolph to get thekeys to the South Church. Sewall and some others waited on him andshowed him a deed proving the land and house belonged to them andsaid "that we can't consent to part with it to such use." According toIncrease Mather, Andros then threatened to seize all the meetinghousesin the country. On Good Friday the sexton of the South Church was"prevailed upon," in Sewall's phrase, to ring the church bell and openthe door. For the first time a Puritan meetinghouse in New England wasused for Anglican services. Thereafter the services were held jointly inthe South Church with Congregational services. The arrangement pro-duced friction: Andros and other Anglican churchgoers were supposed toclear the meetinghouse by half past one; on one Sabbath they did notfinish until after two, filling the street outside with Puritans "gazing andmoving to and fro because had not entrance into the House"—a "sadSight," Sewall found it. At the same time plans moved forward to build aseparate Church of England chapel in Boston.

The new government affected not only the churches. It also abolishedthe Assembly (the lower house of the legislature), limited town meetingsto one a year, and required juries to admit more non-Congregationalistjurors. Trade, which thrived on evasions of the Navigation Acts, was cur-

tailed by the now strict enforcement of them. Andros also demanded theright to oversee the accounts of the college—to Puritans the nursery ofthe ministry, to the king's representative a seedbed of Congregationalsedition. He sent the Anglican minister Ratcliffe to sit conspicuously inthe pulpit during the 1687 commencement, with Increase Mather presiding. He gave the most injurious offense, however, by repatenting landtitles, on the ground that they had been voided by the revocation of thecharter. Land titles granted by the former government of Massachusetts,rather than by the crown, were invalid. When a sheriff was sent to dispos-sess a family inhabiting Deer Island in Boston Harbor and to take posses-sion of the place in the king's name, two selectmen protested on behalfof the town of Boston. Andros's attorneys told them "there was no town ofBoston, nor was there any town in the country." Those whose forefathersChrist had led as a chosen people into the wilderness now must petitionfor royal patents to land they already owned, and pay a fee for the repa-tenting service.

A possible means of protest arose around May 1687. Increase's pro-phetic assurance had been to some extent validated; on the same day thathe cried "God will deliver New England"—as he observed—KingCharles II died. Although Charles's successor, James, was a Catholic, thenew king issued a Proclamation of Indulgence declaring liberty of con-science to both Roman Catholics and Dissenters, news of which came toBoston in May. Some ministers apparently took the Proclamation as a signof James's sympathy to Dissenters, and saw in it the possibility of appeal-ing to him directly, bypassing Andros. Increase proposed that the minis-ters send an address thanking James for the Proclamation. When the ad-dress came off "very seasonably" in London, he proposed a secondaddress, not from the ministers only but from the churches. Andros, en-raged, forbade holding a day of thanksgiving for the address, and threat-ened to set troops by the church doors to prevent it. But the message ofthanks went ahead, with the added proposal that someone from Bostonpresent it in London. When several persons advised Increase himself tobear the address he spent a day of prayer, asking God to declare His willin the matter through the brethren of the North Church. Next day he"mentioned the thing to the church," which unanimously consented tohis mission.

Barely two weeks later, on December 24, Increase Mather was arrest-ed. He was charged with having defamed Edward Randolph, but he andothers considered the charge simply an effort to keep him in Boston.

Much mutual animosity had arisen between the two men, but the chargestemmed from some treasonable letters, allegedly written by Increase.One very lengthy letter, read to the king and Council and in part pub-lished in London, intimated that Randolph had set the great Boston fire of1676 (which broke out the day after one of his arrivals) and charged theEnglish people, including the king, with "whoring after their own lusts."Increase protested that "not so much as one line of it was ever written byme," and laid the forgery to Randolph, "a child of the Devil." The courtthat heard the case, on January 31, cleared Increase and required Ran-dolph to pay the costs of the suit. Exultant, Increase preached a powerfulsermon on Rom. 8:31, telling his congregation that "When God is for aMan, they that are Against him shall do him good; whether they will orno."

Increase now openly publicized his departure for England, while An-dros tried again to hold him in Boston. On March 18 Increase delivered afarewell sermon, reminding his congregation that Christ's love for theSaints is indestructible and everlasting—as, implicitly, was his for them—and that although he had often rebuked his flock, Christ too may bewrathful over sin, "But a Father Loves in his Anger." Andros brought anew court action on the same charge of defamation, and on March 27 sentan officer to arrest Increase again. But the officer was denied entry to thehouse, even though Increase was unaware of his purpose. As Increaselater reported the episode, he happened that morning to take some"working physic," which "caused me to refuse to speak with the officeraltho I knew nothing of his design." Not until rumors circulated that hehad been arrested did he realize that Andros was again seeking to detainhim. Then he stayed home several days with the doors shut.

About ten o'clock on the night of March 30, Increase commended hisfamily to God and left his house, disguised in a wig and white cloak. Aman named Thurton, whom Randolph had appointed to spy on Increaseand prevent his slipping away, saw him leave the house. But according toIncrease, Thurton told him that he lost heart and felt powerless to layhands on him. Increase spent the night in Charlestown, at the house ofhis son's father-in-law, Col. Phillips. With Randolph's men searching forhim, however, he fled to Rumney Marsh.

About eleven o'clock on the night of April 3, some of Increase'sfriends and his sons Cotton and Samuel came to Rumney Marsh and es-corted him to a ketch, which brought him to a ship bound for England,away from Randolph, Andros, and the others "whose names," Increase

wrote, "will stink in New England to the worlds end." He took with himyoung Samuel, leaving Cotton behind and, for the first time, without him.

Because Cotton Mather's diaries from 1687 through 1691 are missing,virtually nothing is known of his reaction to these events. Luckily, a fragment of his 1688 diary remains, recording his feelings during and justafter Increase's disguised flight. Increase had often warned of his departure, of course, and since childhood Cotton Mather had prayed earnestlyfor his health. With his father now departing in fact, and in dangerouscircumstances, he responded with extreme anxiety.

While Increase was hiding in Charlestown, Cotton Mather prayed andsang psalms that applied to his situation, and "kept wrestling with God,for his Preservation." He held a daylong fast after his father's removal tothe ketch, loathfully confessing his unworthiness for mercy but neverthe-less asking it, "especially such a Mercy, as the Enjoyment of such a Fa-ther, as mine." News brought to him the same day of fresh perils menac-ing his father's escape produced such distress that he threw himself onhis study floor and, mouth in the dust, begged for his father's deliverance.When his father-in-law, Col. Phillips, arrived at night to announce that asingle wind had sped Increase forward and retarded his pursuers, andthat Increase was now safely aboard ship, he believed the Lord had heardhis prayers.

Cotton Mather's anxiety was not only for his father's safety but also forhis own survival. Increase's mission put him in sole charge of a flockwhich had for years been denied his ordination, and thrust him to thefront of grave political affairs. Even while absorbed in praying for hisfather's safety it occurred to him that "my Father had now left me, alone,in a great Place and in a great Work." Above all he feared disgracing hisministry. The possibility that, deprived of his father's guidance, he mightdishonor God, "was to me, the dreadfullest Thought in the World." Heprayed for assistance, and felt an assurance that God would be with him.Yet like many earlier assurances this one faltered. Days or perhaps weeksafter Increase left, he dreamed that, being left alone, he was put uponpreaching a sermon for which he had no time to prepare. But as usuallyalso happened, fresh confidence followed doubt. Forced in his dream tothe "Extremity" of improvising a sermon, he chose the text "I will neverleave thee, nor forsake thee." Parts of the dreamed sermon were so vividthat he remembered them after waking and used them in preaching thenext Sabbath.

Other fragmentary evidence shows that however alarmed by the con-sequences of his father's political role, Cotton Mather was not whollyunprepared for them either. Moves against the charter, begun at the timeof his birth, persisted through his teens and the period of his candidacy.At the age of seventeen, six years before Andros arrived, he took notes asJohn Eliot preached that the civil and religious liberties secured by theFathers and enjoyed by their descendants might have to be defended:"shall we betray our Liberties ... Let us do as our fathers have done—Diein the possession of these things." Intermittently over the next few yearshe recorded new threats with dismay, expressing scorn for Edward Ran-dolph as a man "born to do mischief," reporting to his uncle John Cottonthe royal attempts in New Hampshire to offer Anglican communion andbaptism, praying mightily for "Deliverance for this poor Country." Whenthe Catholic King James was proclaimed in Boston by military display, hewithdrew for a day of private humiliation to lament the danger to Protes-tantism of his accession. He realized, too, that the troubled times mightdemand his public and active engagement. As news circulated in thesummer of 1685 that Massachusetts was about to have a new governor, heunderlined in his sermon notebook a statement by his father concerningtimes of persecution: "The Ministers of God must then stand in the fore-front of the battle, and be the first that shall be shot down."

Exactly how soon Cotton Mather came to stand on the front line isunknown, but it was no longer than five months after his father's depar-ture. The occasion was the birth of a son to King James by his secondwife. Previously, James's successor was his oldest daughter Mary, a Protes-tant married to the Protestant William of Orange. But the infant princenow took precedence, and would be reared as a Catholic. On September1, Andros sent an order to Cotton Mather, beginning, "In his Majesty'sname, you are hereby required. ..." Andros demanded that he publiclyread in the North Church a proclamation for a day of thanksgiving tohonor the royal birth—the inception, that is, of a possible Catholic rulerof New England—and there "stir up your hearers to the solemn work ofthe day, as is required by the same." Andros made clear, also, that this wasan order: "and hereof you are not to fail."

Andros had cause to impress on Cotton Mather his superior authority,but may not have known it fully. For one, Increase was relaying to his sonin letters, now unfortunately lost, news of his successes at court. By Junehe had had two audiences with the king, in the second of which Jamesasked him whether Andros had performed satisfactorily; he replied bynaming all of the governor's violations of New England's rights. He spoke

with James again in July and, very encouragingly, again in October, whenthe king told him that "property, liberty, and our College should all heconfirmed to us." Andros had another reason for showing his authority,although he may have been unaware of it also. At some time or other,Cotton Mather somehow obtained and copied passages of letters fromRandolph that made plain his animus toward New England. In the letters,sent to the Earl of Rochester and others in the English hierarchy, hedescribed New Englanders as a "perverse people" amenable only toforce, and said he considered it no crime "being the occasion of subvert-ing their old Arbitrary government."

One month into the new year, 1689, a warrant was sent out to arrestCotton Mather and hold him for trial. Details of the case are again miss-ing, but he was accused of having been, in Randolph's words, "the abet-tor, if not the author, of a scandalous libel." This obviously contrivedcharge involved a work published in Cambridge more than two yearsearlier, A Brief Discourse Concerning the unlawfulness of Common Pray-er Worship. The pamphlet appeared anonymously and was quite certainlywritten by Increase; Cotton, however, probably edited it and supervisedits printing. The author of the Brief Discourse, identified only as a minis-ter, attacked the Common Prayer Book and such Anglican practices as theuse of a ring in marriage, making a sign of the cross in baptism, andkneeling at communion. These he condemned as superstitious and "in agreat measure Popish and Heathenish." According to one supporter ofAndros, the thrust of the work was to insinuate "unto the Common Peo-ple, that the Governor and all of the Church of England were Papists andIdolators, and to stir them up to Faction and Rebellion."

The Mathers' longtime friend Wait Winthrop, a member of the Coun-cil, managed to squash the order of arrest, although Cotton Mather be-came the target of new threats shortly after his birthday in February. Thecourt now charged him with breaching the Act of Uniformity and began,he said, "tearing me to pieces, with their horrible Talons." Under a"Storm of Persecution from the Church of England," he offered himselfas an example of willing self-sacrifice for Christ. Amidst his troubles hepreached to a congregation of nearly two thousand persons on the sametext his father had used after being cleared of defaming Randolph—IfGod be for us, who can be against us—attempting to convey, he said, "aglorious Triumph, over Enemies and Sufferings."

The new threat of arrest apparently hovered over Cotton Mather fortwo months, until lifted by an event in England. The birth of James's son,and consequent prospect of a Catholic king, had induced William of Or-

ange to land in England with a Dutch army, hoping to overthrow Jamesand regain the throne for Protestantism. Rumors of his landing circulatedin Boston early in the year, but dependable news seems to have come thefirst week in April 1689, when John Winslow (grandson of the Plymouthfounder) returned from the West Indies with a copy of a document pro-claiming William as king. When Andros learned of this inflammatory ar-rival he demanded Winslow's papers; Winslow refused, and was jailed forbringing into the country a treasonous libel. Andros issued his own proc-lamation, requiring the people and officers to be in a state of readinessshould the usurper send forces to New England.

What remains of Cotton Mather's reaction to news of the GloriousRevolution in England are notes for a powerfully suggestive sermon hepreached on April 14, entitled "The Mystery of Providence." He spoke onthe cryptic prophetical text Ezekiel 1:16: "The fashion of the wheels andtheir work was like unto a chrysolite: and they four had one form, andtheir fashion, and their work was as one wheel in another wheel." Hejustified the Revolution by interpreting the wheels as the state of humanaffairs, intricately moved by God's providence "for the Best Issue andevent that can be, His own glory." Perhaps more personally, he preachedthat those chosen by God are sometime brought low, but then "the wheelturns again, upon the Foes of God." His surviving notes leave unclear,however, whether he tried to rouse his congregation to rise against An-dros. "Men do Gods Business," he told them, "when they go on theirown Errands"—rather ambiguous counsel which might be construed asadvising either rebellion or quietism.

Four days later, on April 18, Cotton Mather apparently was to be arrest-ed. The same day, Boston took arms against Andros's government. Matherleft no account of his direct part in the revolt, but Randolph later repeat-edly accused him of being one of the "chief designers." Randolphclaimed that although the uprising was defended as "the act of all thepeople," it was actually plotted by some prominent church members,some older magistrates, and six ministers: the Baptist minister Milborne,and the Congregationalist ministers Moodey, Morton, Allen, Willard, and"young Mather." (Mather was now twenty-six, while the average age ofthe other Congregationalist ministers Randolph mentions was nearly six-ty.) Randolph even charged that on the night of April 17, Mather held ameeting of armed men at his house.

Whatever Cotton Mather's part in fomenting the revolt, on the morn-ing of April 18 the captain of the frigate Rose, a warship guarding BostonHarbor, was seized, to prevent the ship's either firing on or sailing from

Boston. (Andros planned to escape on the ship to France, it was rumored,leaving the city open to French attack.) News of the captain's detainment,a contemporary said, ran "like Lightning" through Boston, inspiring "themost unanimous Resolution." Drums beat a call to arms, small groupsrounded up supporters of Andros, and by midafternoon more than a thou-sand armed colonists swarmed in from Charlestown.

Cotton Mather spent much of the day in the Council chamber of theTown House, the pillared two-story civic center at the heart of the SouthEnd. There the Boston ministers and other prominent citizens formed arevolutionary council, including the octogenarian Simon Bradstreet, whohad been governor before the charter was revoked. Around noon a state-ment was read from the gallery to a crowd assembled in the street below,entitled a "Declaration of the Gentlemen, Merchants, and Inhabitants ofBoston and the Country Adjacent." Contemporary sources differ onwhether this statement was prepared a few days before the uprising or inthe heat of it. Mather's part in composing and delivering it is also highlyarguable. Some later writers have ascribed it to him but no evidencewhatsoever exists that he wrote it; the style sometimes sounds like his,sometimes not. The author or authors of the Declaration would be worthknowing, for he or they composed a deeply innovative political docu-ment. The Declaration marks a secular drift in New England politicalthought from the theological and providential treatment of affairs to con-stitutional and legal ones, and from a communal conception of the rightsbelonging to God's Chosen People to a conception of the rights of Eng-lishmen. It also launches a New England revolutionary tradition thatwould culminate in 1776.

All that can confidently be said is that Cotton Mather enthusiasticallyapproved of the Declaration. Its pacific sentiments appealed to his wish,in defiance of his underlying anger, to act the part of the meek concilia-tor. He also feared and disapproved rash action that might be both bloodyand politically damaging to a New England already too well-knownabroad for its alleged disorderliness. Especially, as a "Gentleman" him-self, he scorned an armed rural mob. He and the other gentlemen hopedto contain the revolt, avoid bloodshed, and safeguard the political prison-ers while awaiting instructions from England. As Mather later summed uptheir thinking, the gentlemen agreed that although New England had ascompelling grounds for a revolution as Old England, yet they would ifpossible extinguish any popular attempt at an "Insurrection," awaitingorders from London. But "if the Country people, by any unrestrainableViolences" pushed toward revolution, then to prevent bloodshed by an

"ungoverned Mobile" they would appear with and present the Declara-tion.

As later printed, the Declaration of the Gentlemen (1689) consists oftwelve brief articles. They treat the Andros administration as part of alarger effort to extinguish Protestantism in the name of Rome, and re-hearse familiar grievances against the Dominion government: jail for re-fusing to swear on the Bible, revocation of land titles, Joseph Dudley'sinfamous statement in Council that New Englanders "were all Slaves andthe only difference between them and Slaves is their not being boughtand sold," and so on. While the gentlemen offer these grievances as justi-fication for the seizure of government officials, they painstakingly explainthat they intended only to secure the officials for the fate decided upon athome, "for what Justice, Orders from his Highness with the Parliamentshall direct." New Englanders, the document makes plain in every way,are not revolutionaries, but orderly, loyal subjects of the king.

Whether Cotton Mather wrote the Declaration or not, he probablydelivered it from the gallery of the Town House. He went there, accord-ing to his son Samuel, when it became clear to the provisional councilthat the people had become "driving and furious," and he "reasoneddown the Passions of the Populace." Had he "lisped" a syllable againstthose who had tried to jail him, Samuel said, perhaps "the People wouldby a sudden Council of War have try'd, judg'd and hang'd all those illMen, who would have treated him otherwise."

Cotton Mather seems to have been at the Town House also when,apparently later in the day, Andros himself was brought from the fort onFort Hill. When the governor demanded to know the reason for the upris-ing, he was told, by one account, that Bostonians would have his govern-ment and that he was now a prisoner. When asked to give orders for thesurrender of the fort, he replied he would sooner die. Mather was certain-ly present when Randolph was brought in, for Randolph later recordedthat he found Mather there "writing orders" along with four other minis-ters. Because Andros refused to command the fort to surrender, it wasdecided to have Randolph deliver the command in Andros's name. Some-one clapped a pistol to Randolph's head and threatened to shoot him ifhe refused. He was forced to go, and the garrison at the fort surrendered.When Randolph's captors demanded that he deliver the same false mes-sage at Castle William, in the harbor, he did so, but those at the Castleheld out for a day before capitulating.

By then apparently thousands on foot and horse had poured into Bos-ton from the countryside, in "rage and heat," by one account, insisting

that Andros be chained and imprisoned in the fort, as he was. Randolphand the interim governor Joseph Dudley were detained, together with asmany as fifty other sympathizers and supporters. By nightfall the Domin-ion of New England had ceased to exist, and Boston again lay underPuritan rule, ending a revolt that was managed, Mather said emphaticallylater, "without the least Bloodshed or Plunder, and with as much Order asever attended any Tumult, it may be, in the World."

Having filled his father's place at the front line during the revolt,Cotton Mather stayed there in the unsettled period afterward, especiallyin his role as peacemaker. The toppling of King James following therevocation of the charter left Massachusetts' form of government uncer-tain. Some New Englanders called for independence of the mother coun-try, others for a military government; but most desired to return to thecharter government that had existed before Andros. In the confusion,public affairs were conducted by the Town House group that styled itselfa Council for Safety of the People and Conservation of Peace, most ofwhose members doubted the wisdom and legality of returning to thecharter. Beset by demands for resumption, however, the council tried toresolve the issue by calling a convention of town representatives. Theconvention voted to reinstate the pre-Andros government, but becauseseveral towns had not submitted their views and others had failed toinstruct their delegates, a second, larger convention was gathered. It be-gan meeting in Boston on May 22, the time when for over fifty years,except under Andros, Massachusetts Puritans had held their annual elec-tion.

Cotton Mather preached to the convention the next day. The occasionwas doubly momentous. Not only was Massachusetts to decide its form ofgovernment, but to give this annual election sermon was also one of thehighest civic honors afforded the clergy. At twenty-six, Mather was by farthe youngest minister to do so in the history of colonial Massachusetts.Conscious of addressing "as much of New England in this great congrega-tion as can well be reach'd by the voice of one address," he acknowl-edged his youth: "For my own part, I confess my self but a Child, andamong the meanest, the smallest of your children too." His feeling ofinadequacy was probably compounded by uncertainty, for despite popu-lar determination to reinstate the charter, he seems to have felt that it hadbeen legally annulled, and to have grasped that the question must ulti-mately be decided by Parliament. He thus did not recommend a form of

government to the convention himself, but rather described the spirit inwhich the debate should be conducted. The convention, as had beenfeared, opened in heated division and contention. This contention Math-er depicted as itself the most dangerous of the many provoking evils forwhich God had been punishing New England by fire, drought, and civilstrife. Passionately imploring each man to stop considering his scheme ofgovernment best and accept the other man's as next best, he pleaded forpeace:

He that Considers the Feverish Paroxysms which this Land is now ragingin, through mere Misunderstandings about the Means leading to the Endwherein we are generally agreed, and how ready we are to treat one anoth-er with fiery Animosities, had need cry, Peace, Peace!. . . I am old enoughto cry Peace!and in the Name of God I do it. Peace! my dear Country-men;Let there be Peace in all our Studies, Peace in all our Actions, and Peacenotwithstanding all our Differences.

Many who heard the sermon, his son Samuel wrote later, "fell into Tearsand the whole Body of the People present immediately united in theMethods of Peace Mr. MATHER proposed unto them." Even so, Matherwas probably not pleased by the outcome. Next day at least forty-two ofthe fifty-one towns represented voted to maintain the "rights and privi-leges" of Massachusetts by returning to the old charter, and reappointedthe aged Simon Bradstreet as governor.

Whatever his doubts about the wisdom of the vote, Cotton Matherremained politically conspicuous under this restored but temporary gov-ernment. From his pulpit he continued to justify the revolt against the"Arbitrary disposals of four or five Men, that beyond all measure hatedus." He drafted a document proclaiming a day of Thanksgiving for the"Restoration of our Lately Invaded Liberties," and probably also had ahand in writing two addresses felicitating William and Mary on the suc-cess of the Revolution in England. He must also have helped produceThe Present State of New-English Affairs (1689), a broadside containing aletter to him from his father. Here Increase described his interview withthe new king in July, at which William "kindly" accepted the revolt inBoston and said, hedgingly, that New Englanders "Should have their An-cient Rights and Privileges Restored and Confirmed unto them"—if itwere in his power.

Cotton Mather remained a prominent political figure also in the eyesof Andros's former underlings and supporters, some of whom referred toMather privately as "the young Pope." Joseph Dudley, a native New Eng-

lander whose service under Andros made him much reviled, wrote toMather twice in June 1689 from jail, seeking his influence in "rollingaway the stone from the mouth of this Sepulchre, where I am buriedalive." Randolph, in jail himself, wrote to London complaining that"young Mr. Mather" and "others of the gang" continued to promote anti-monarchical principles, "and will oppose all commands from their Majesties which will not serve their interest (by them called the interest ofJesus Christ)." Other supporters of Andros accused Mather of stirring uphostility toward Church of England members in Boston. King's Chapel,the Anglican church for which subscriptions were raised under Andros,had opened for worship in June, just after the revolt. Its minister, SamuelMyles, charged Mather with fomenting acts of desecration against thebuilding: "Young Mr. Mather informs the people that the reason of all ourCalamities is permitting of the high place [i.e., the Church of England]among us, to this purpose hath he spoken in public several times of late."The new chapel, he said, was already "battered and shattered," its win-dows no sooner mended than broken again.

In July the king sent an order recalling Andros, Randolph, Dudley,and the others seized in the revolt to England, there to answer any com-plaints against them. Their removal did nothing to improve political af-fairs in Boston, for the temporary government under Simon Bradstreetproved unstable and ineffectual, a continuing source of contention. Let-ters from Boston in the summer after the revolt abound in such commentsas "All is confusion here" or "Every man is a Governor." Compoundingthe confusion, King William declared war on France in the summer of1689, after only three months of his reign. The war spilled over into thecolonies, opening seventy years of European warfare in America and ex-posing New England to a new invasion, this time, Mather wrote, from"whole Armies of Indians and Gallic Blood Hounds." Mather was diningat Samuel Sewall's house in February 1690 when Governor Bradstreetbrought confirmation of news of the destruction of Schenectady by theFrench and Indians, with the massacre of sixty persons, and reports ofpregnant women ripped up and of children having their brains dashedout or freezing to death during a march to Albany. In mid-March camenews of a French-Indian attack on Salmon Falls, killing or capturingeighty persons and burning all the houses.

To eliminate France from America became for Protestant New Englandnot only a victory over Catholicism and a dream of safety, but also a meansof showing loyalty to William and gaining his favor for a new charter.Cotton Mather actively supported the Bradstreet government's decision to

launch expeditions against Canada, regarded by many, he said, as "theseminary of our troubles from the Indians." On March 20, 1690, he deliv-ered a rousing speech to the General Court recommending the Canadaexpedition as "a great Service to be done for their Majesties: K. WILLIAM,and Q. MARY, whom God grant long to Reign." His language illustratesthe underlying significance to him and others of the revolt of 1689: oncestubbornly independent, Massachusetts was becoming an enthusiasticmember of the English Empire.

The expedition was led by a member of the North Church, Sir WilliamPhips. In May he took Port Royal and forced the inhabitants to swearallegiance to the English crown. His success emboldened more ambi-tious moves against Montreal and Quebec. These failed dismally. A largenew fleet under Phips, thirty-two vessels with about two thousand men,sailed in early August, a month after alarming rumors of a French landingat Cape Cod, and near the end of a smallpox epidemic that took some 320lives. Everything went wrong: smallpox erupted, commanders disagreed,supplies ran out, tempestuous weather mauled the ships. Phips estimatedthat by disease and casualty he lost two hundred men, but other estimatesrun as high as a thousand. The troops who survived returned to Bostonunpaid and mutinous, and complaining of neglect, of men found dead inholes before they were missed, some having their eyes and cheeks eatenby cats. The treasury of Massachusetts, moreover, squandered fifty thou-sand pounds. To pay for the war the government levied heavy taxes. Thedisastrous expedition left Massachusetts at the end of 1690 feeling morevulnerable than ever, burdened by an unstable government, a depletedtreasury, an exultant enemy on its borders, mourning in many homes, andthe sense of a miserable defeat.

In this edgy atmosphere, dissatisfaction with Bradstreet's shaky inter-im government greatly increased. Despite his many calls for peace, Cot-ton Mather may have covertly contributed to the unrest, for he was ac-cused of being the author of Publick Occurrences, sometimes called thefirst American newspaper. On its appearance in September, Bradstreetand the Council instantly ordered the paper suppressed, on the groundsthat it was unlicensed, contained doubtful reports of events, and criti-cized the government. One specific objection seems to have been a re-port of the Canada expedition to the effect that the Mohawk Indians al-lied with the English failed to supply the canoes they had promised andlied about providing additional forces. The government, the paper sug-gested, had "too much confided" in these "miserable Savages."

Cotton Mather found that people believed he wrote the paper. The

government, aware that his name was being "tossed about it,' issued asevere proclamation, whose first line "thunders against sonic.'' Mathersaid (interpreting "some" as himself), "that had published that scandalous thing." Yet he admitted agreeing with the criticism of the Mohawksand said he considered the newspaper "noble, useful, and laudable." Infact, his denial, as he gave it to his uncle John Cotton, sounds slippery:"the publisher had not one line of it from me, only as accidentally meeting him in the high-way, on his request, I showed him how to contractand express the report of the expedition." Whether or not he wrote thepaper, he took the accusation as an expression of ingratitude toward himself, "who have deserved so very ill of the country," and it awakened fearsof tarnishing his ministry: "a few such tricks will render me uncapable ofserving either God or man in New England."

The gap in Cotton Mather's diaries during this tumultuous time makesfor a surprising contrast. Where his diaries break off in 1687 they depict anewly married young minister hungry for applause but agitated by reli-gious doubt, worried about his father's health, cautious about his speech,and disturbed by morbid nightmares. But when he appears again in theaccounts of others after his father's flight to England, he is a "youngPope," threatened with jail for seditious libels, "writing orders" on arevolutionary council, calming angry mobs.

Although this contrast, we shall see, is less drastic than it seems, theseyears did bring Cotton Mather several maturative experiences beside thepolitical ones. Early in 1688, his and Abigail's five-month-old child, "per-haps One of the Comeliest Infants that have been seen in the world,"died of "Convulsions." Committed to the idea that a minister must be anexample to his flock, he preached the same afternoon on the nature ofaffliction, offering his hearers "such considerations as I would this dayquiet my own tempestuous, rebellious heart with," namely that afflictionis meant to induce us to seek the reasons for His chastisement. Yet he hadlooked often on the infant's "Lovely Features and Actions," and he ac-knowledged that "few outward, earthly anguishes are equal to these. Thedying of a Child is like the tearing of a limb from us."

In October 1689, Cotton Mather also journeyed to Salem to attend hisdying nineteen-year-old brother Nathanael. Endowed with the Mathers'prophetic streak, Nathanael had had a strange presage of early death, andsince at least early fall had been seriously ill, apparently with a malignant

tumor on his hip. A relentless scholar, he studied, in his own description,until "He thought his Bones would all fall asunder" An incision had beenmade on his hip, which Cotton believed gave good hope of recovery; butNathanael's continual sedentary studies, he said, had produced "putridJuices" in his blood, which the incision circulated, giving rise to a feverwhich ended his life. Cotton admired his brother's learning, but saw inhim a reprehensible contempt for his health. He disapproved of Nathan-ael's being less a pattern to young students than a caution, "for it may betruly written on his Grave, Study kill'd him." Taking this "humble Selfloathing Young-Man" as both a model of piety and a warning against self-abuse, within two weeks after Nathanael's death he had compiled a biog-raphy of him, Early Piety Exemplified, which he sent to his father forpublication in London, the first of his works to be published abroad.

Never able to "do enough" Cotton Mather recognized a similar ten-dency to self-abuse in himself. Indeed, while embroiled in decisive polit-ical affairs and tending a large flock he did much else. He drafted docu-ments for others, sat on church councils, joined an association ofministers in Cambridge, became in 1690 a Fellow of Harvard College, andpartook in a pamphlet war against some Quakers (one of whom dubbedhim "The College-Boy of New-England"). He also bought a new houseand land, where he would live nearly the next thirty years, for the sub-stantial sum of two hundred pounds. He had scarcely moved in before heinvited to stay with him and Abigail a tormented young girl whom hetried by fervent prayer to depossess of devils (see the next chapter). Be-tween 1689 and 1691 he also published some twenty-two titles, not tomention an extremely ambitious series of twenty connected sermons ontypology which he composed and preached between August 1688 andNovember the following year. Increase felt that people were unreason-able in giving Cotton more work than his "weak" constitution could man-age and that he was but "too apt to comply with their desires." Thusaware of his son's desire to please, he feared that his prolonged stayabroad might shorten Cotton's life. Twice from London he wrote to JohnRichards, probably the most prominent member of the North Church,imploring him: "do not Let him kill Himself. He will do it, if you do nothinder him." In fact the strain and overwork told. Partly by "excessiveToil" in his ministry, Cotton wrote in April 1692, "My Health, has beenlamentably broken for diverse Years."

Much of this may suggest new boldness and authority in Cotton Math-er during his father's absence. Yet when writing to Increase in May 1690,

he seems hardly the same person who, two months earlier, had exhorted

the government to attack Canada:

But have you indeed come to resolutions of seeing New England nomore? ... I am sorry for myself, who am left alone in the midst of morecares, fears, anxieties, than, I believe, any one person in these territories.and who have just now been within a few minutes of death by a verydangerous fever, the relics whereof are yet upon me.

This whining manipulation of his father's concern for his health was ap-parently the reply to a prior letter from Increase, in which he raisedbefore his son the dread prospect of his permanent settlement in Eng-land, because of criticism at home of his labors for the charter and inade-quate payment. Identifying himself in his reply with "This distressed,enfeebled, ruined country," Cotton petitioned Increase to return on be-half of all New England, pleading that the country (himself included)had resolved not only to repay "our debts, which our affairs in your handshave made," but also such a requital "of all your pains for us, as wouldhave been proper when you should have arrived here." Having learnedIncrease's lessons well, he closed with a veiled death threat:

I confess that I write with a most ill-boding jealousy that I shall never seeyou again in this evil world; and it overwhelms me into tears which cannotbe dried up, unless by this consideration, That you will shortly findamong the spirits of just men made perfect, Your son. . . .

Cotton Mather's missing diaries in this period leave his inner life hidden.Yet this anxious, exploitative letter suggests that much of the differencebetween "the young Pope" and the uncertain young minister was thatbetween others' view of Cotton Mather and his view of himself. Whiletemporarily assuming his father's place in public affairs, he remainedinwardly deferential and unconfident, and yearned for Increase to return.While awaiting his father, Cotton Mather was nearly forced to flee toEngland himself. Rumors spread that the king would appoint as the newgovernor Sir Edmund Andros or Colonel Charles Kirk. The possible resur-rection of Andros was frightening; he and his crew, Increase remarkedlater, would have "revenged themselves on and murdered the best menin New England." But the possible advent of "That Monster Kirk," asCotton Mather called him, was horrendous. To Kirk were attributed suchatrocities as having hanged ninety wounded men and having executedthirty more by tens during an officers' dinner, upon successive toasts tothe king, the queen, and Lord Jeffreys. When these rumors reached Bos-

ton, seemingly in the fall of 1691, they set off other rumors that IncreaseMather had sent for his family, or that Cotton had been bound over in jailawaiting the new governor's vengeful pleasure. In fact Cotton awaitedcertain news, having decided that if Andros was returned, he and half adozen important persons would flee to England.

The rumors came to nothing, for on Saturday evening, May 14, 1692,Increase Mather returned from London aboard the frigate Nonesuch,bringing with him his young son Samuel and the new governor, Sir Wil-liam Phips, the former leader of the disastrous Canada campaign. Eightcompanies of troops escorted Phips to his house, then brought Increaseto his. Cotton's pleasure and relief in his father's return was very likelydampened by illness, justifying his father's concern for his health. Justtwo weeks earlier he felt so overcome by "Vapour" and "an aguish Indis-position" that he could see "nothing but a speedy Death approaching."Ill or not, he wrote on the evening of his father's return: "Oh! what shall Irender to the Lord, for all his Benefits!"

Increase's four years abroad had not made him less disgruntled, orless awesome to his son. Perhaps with both himself and Cotton in mind,only three months after his return he was again warning his congregationthat the "faithful ministers of God are no less subject to death than othermen," and that "Prophets may be killed by laying too great burdens onthem." Dissatisfied anew with Boston, he began within a year havingprophetic inklings of his return to England and prayed for encouragingsigns, although now reluctant to leave because of the dangerous voyageand the anguish of departing again from his family, "and most of all thethoughts of leaving my son Cotton." Eight days after Increase's return,Cotton recorded in his notebook "My dear Fathers first Sermon, after hisArrival." In a blotchy, uncharacteristically infirm hand that suggests ill-ness he took twenty-five pages of notes—the lengthiest entry among thehundreds of sermons he set down. And instead of entering the sermonserially with those of other ministers he had recorded during the year, heplaced it in the middle of the notebook, numbering the page as "1," as ifbeginning a new year, a new existence. For eighteen months followinghe recorded virtually his father's sermons alone. A thirty-year-old manwho had led a political revolt, he sat in church time after time writingdown his father's words, taking over three hundred pages of notes onIncrease's sermons.

If the Mathers had not changed, the governor had. Sir William Phips'sspeech upon landing, presumably in the candlelit Town House, made anauspicious contrast to the arrival of the scarlet-coated Andros. By one

account he said that God had sent him to New England to serve hiscountry, and that "all the privileges and laws and liberties is was practical[i.e., practiced] in the days of Old should be as they were before." Auspiciously too, as he was reading aloud his commission as governor he noticed that the sun was setting, marking the beginning of the Sabbath; hestopped reading, explaining that "he would not Infringe upon the lordsday." It greatly pleased Cotton Mather also to have as governor a man"whom I baptised . . . and one of my own Flock, and one of my dearestFriends." (Phips had grown up in a frontier community lacking a settledminister, and had been baptized by Cotton Mather in adulthood.) ThatIncrease and the other agents had been allowed to nominate severalmembers of the governor's Council also promised renewed cooperationbetween the government and the clergy, Moses and Aaron: "instead, ofmy being made a Sacrifice to wicked Riders, all the Councellors of theProvince, are of my own Father's Nomination; and my Father-in-Law, withseveral related unto me, and several Brethren of my own church, areamong them."

Cotton Mather also considered the new charter obtained by his fatherbetter than the former one. In fact, although Increase lacked diplomaticexperience or training, his vigorous persistence had prevailed againstcourt intrigues, wrangling, and betrayals to win what he considered afavorable charter for Massachusetts. In April 1691, he had presented NewrEngland's case personally before Queen Mary, stressing the country'swillingness to enlarge the crown's dominion in America and its need for asettled government; the same month, in the king's bedchamber, he askedWilliam "that they may be restored to their ancient privileges." On No-vember 4, 1691, he formally accepted the new charter in the name of NewEngland, in the king's presence. The best political minds he could con-sult, he said later, counselled him to ''Takeyour NEW CHARTER and beThankful for it\"

Encouragement to accept the charter was needed, for it differed fromthe old charter in undeniably essential ways. King William did not com-pletely abandon the stricter colonial policy inaugurated by his predeces-sor, Charles II, at the Restoration. Although he allowed the Massachusettsagents to nominate Phips, the new charter empowered the sovereign toappoint a governor, lieutenant governor, and secretary'. The appointedgovernor was given large powers himself, including a veto over acts of theGeneral Court, and his consent was necessary for the appointment of allother officers nominated by the Court. The charter also granted liberty ofconscience to all Christians except Catholics and eliminated religious

THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION 81

discrimination by tying suffrage to property. Even though the new gover-nor belonged to the North Church, the irreducible meaning of the newcharter was that Massachusetts was not a Wilderness Zion but a royalpossession.

Opposition to the charter Increase accepted was widespread, includ-ing a faction that unrealistically insisted on nothing less than a restorationof the old charter. Increase preached many sermons justifying what hehad done, scorning the ingratitude of New Englanders toward their pub-lic servants: "A Government has been settled among us. And, what anungrateful generation of Men may think of it, I know not; but I am sure,Five years ago, such Favours, would have been of high Account with us."Cotton, defending at once the charter and his father, preached on June 9before Phips and the new General Court, praising the charter for securingto the country "all Christian Liberties, and all English Liberties." He saidnothing, however, about what had once been considered the distinctiveliberties of New England, which now scarcely existed.

Cotton also wrote and circulated in manuscript, around 1692, fourAesopian beast fables, works even more un-Puritan than his gaudy earlyelegies but indicative of his love for entertaining tales and his unmistak-able gift for narrative. One fable describes such favorable features of thenew charter as its confirmation of earlier land titles and its provision forthe election of the governor's Council by the lower house of the Assem-bly. Jupiter (King William) granted:

that the birds might be everlastingly confirmed in their titles to their nestsand fields. He offered that not so much as a twig should be plucked fromany tree the birds would roost upon, without their own consent. He of-fered that the birds might constantly make their own laws, and annuallychoose their own rulers. ... He offered that it should be made impossiblefor any to disturb the birds in singing of their songs to the praise of theirMaker, for which they had sought liberty in the wilderness.

Despite this benignly pastoral vision of freedom and security under thenew charter, in another fable Cotton presented Increase as Mercury atJupiter's court, laboring to rebuild the sheeps' fold but finding it "neces-sary to comply with such directions as Jupiter. . . had given for the newshaping of the folds; otherwise he saw the poor sheep had been leftwithout any folds at all." However Cotton wished to justify his father'senergetic and unselfish work, there was no denying that Increase hadaccomplished not what he wanted but as much as he could.

The charter's full implications for Christian Israel would appear later.

For now, New England had another problem, unrelated hut bedazzling.Increase Mather spoke of it in the first sermon he preached after hisreturn, when he found the jails filled with accused witches. Recentlyinvaded by Andros and Randolph, fire and smallpox, Quakers and Anglicans, French and Indians, New England amazedly faced a new invasion"There is," as Cotton set down his father's dark words, "a power of Devilsin our Air that are seeking to hurt us."

Letters of Thanks from Hell

To Cotton Mather and others, the enchantments that befell Salem Vil-lage early in 1692 seemed to repeat some earlier bizarre events in Boston.Three and a half years before, soon after his father's flight to London,Mather had visited the young daughter of a Boston mason named JohnGoodwin. When he tried to pray with the girl she turned deaf and couldnot hear again until the prayer ended. She and three more of Goodwin'ssix children had become subjects of widespread comment and amaze-ment. Scores of spectators saw their necks twist almost around or gazedon such tortures as Mather described:

One while their Tongues would be drawn down their Throats; another-while they would be pull'd out upon their Chins, to a prodigious length.They would have their Mouths opened unto such a Wideness, that theirJaws went out of joint; and anon they would clap together with a Forcelike that of a strong Spring-Lock. The same would happen to their Shoul-der-Blades, and their Elbows, and Hand-wrists, and several of their joints.They would at times ly in a benummed condition; and be drawn togetheras those that are ty'd Neck and Heels; and presently be stretched out, yea,drawn Backwards, to such a degree that it was fear'd the very skin of theirBellies would have crack'd.

These afflictions had begun after Goodwin's eldest daughter questioneda laundress who was suspected of stealing family linens. The washerwom-an's mother in turn "bestow'd very bad Language" on the Goodwin girl,who was immediately taken with fits, which soon after seized three otherGoodwin children as well.

Thus Goody Glover, "an ignorant and a scandalous old Woman/' asMather described her, was tried for bewitching the Goodwin children. AnIrish Catholic, she understood English but could speak only Gaelic, andconveyed her meaning through an interpreter. Small images were exhib-ited that had been found in her house, "Puppets, or Babies," Mather said,"made of Rags, and stuff'd with Goat's hair." She acknowledged that totorment objects of her malice she stroked the images with her finger,wetted with spittle. When she handled an image in court, one of theGoodwin children fell into fits. The judges asked whether she had assis-tants: "looking very pertly in the Air," Mather reported, she replied shehad, and then confessed, "that she had One, who was her Prince." Thecourt appointed five or six physicians to examine her and advise on hersanity. They found her sane, and she was sentenced to death.

As Glover lay in jail awaiting execution, Cotton Mather visited hertwice. Driven by both curiosity and duty, he hoped to learn about theinvisible world, to satisfy himself that her confession was credible, and topersuade her to repent her witchcraft. He asked many questions; afterlong silence, speaking through an interpreter, she said she wished toanswer "but they would not give her leave." When he asked, "They! Whois that They?" she said "They" were her saints or spirits (the same Gaelicword, he noted, served for both). She never denied practicing witchcraft,but revealed little more to him than that she had attended meetings withfive others, including "her Prince." He exhorted her to break her cove-nant with Hell and give herself to Christ. He asked a reasonable thing,she said, but she could not do it, nor without her spirits' permissioncould she desire or consent to his prayers. He prayed with her anyway, forwhich she thanked him with many good words. But he no sooner left, herecorded later, "than she took a stone, a long and slender stone, and withher Finger and Spittle fell to tormenting it."

Glover warned that because others cooperated in the witchcraft herexecution would not relieve the Goodwin children. After her hangingtheir torments multiplied. They barked like dogs, purred like cats, flut-tered like geese, "carried with an incredible Swiftness thro the Air, hav-ing but just their Toes now and then upon the ground, and their Armswaved like the Wings of a Bird." As though mad they climbed highfences. One of the boys groaned of being roasted on a spit run throughhis mouth and out his foot, shrieked that knives cut him, had his headinvisibly nailed to the floor, "that it was as much as a strong man could doto pull it up." Although many observed these seizures, including severalministers, Mather was kept away by other business. Yet he wished to ease

the tortured children, and hoped to gather eyewitness evidence to con-fute skeptics. He took the eldest Goodwin child, Martha, about thirteenyears old, into the three-story home he had recently bought for himselfand Abigail. The first few days she behaved normally, indeed seemedpious and industrious. But on the morning of November 20 she cried,"Ah, They have found me out!"

At once Martha Goodwin's fits resumed, only now in Cotton Mather'shouse. She would choke on a ball the size of a small egg; when she triedto bite a roasted apple her arms stiffened; she flew and dove, reeled andspewed as if drunk. They, she announced, were scheming a fall or blowor other harm to Abigail. Two phenomena fascinated Mather especially,the first involving an invisible chain. They would chain Martha and haulher from her seat toward the fire. When he stomped the hearth shescreamed, protesting that he jarred the chain and hurt her back. He man-aged—as he would not be allowed to forget—to defend her from thechain: "Once I did with my own hand," he wrote, "knock it off, as itbegan to be fastened about her." They also brought Martha a horse, uponwhich she sprang and, settling in a riding posture, sometimes ambled,sometimes trotted, sometimes galloped furiously. "In these motions wecould not perceive that she was stirred by the stress of her feet, upon theground; for often she touch't it not." Once she rode up the stairs throughthe open door of his study, where she dismounted and exclaimed, "Theyare gone; they are gone! They say, that they cannot,—God won't let 'emcome here!" Self-possessed again she sat in the study reading Scriptureand pious books much of the afternoon. But when she returned down-stairs "the Daemons were in a quarter of a minute as bad upon her asbefore, and her Horse was Waiting for her." Mather tried to return her tohis study, but she became "twisted and writhen," weighed three times asmuch as before, was pulled from his hands and shoved on him, and he atlast dragged her up the stairs only with help and by "incredible Forcing"while she screamed, "They say I must not go in!" As soon as she enteredshe stood up and said, in an altered tone, "now I am well."

However amazed by the workings of the invisible world, Mather re-mained alertly curious and made some wary experiments. He realized hemight easily "be too bold, and go too far"; but he also saw an opportunityto propose and solve many "Problems which the pneumatic Discipline isconcerned in." He tested the devils' telepathic abilities, although incon-clusively. That devils can read thoughts was indicated when he calledMartha by name, having in mind some religious expedient for her relief.Her neck went limp, as if broken, and he could not revive her until he

"laid aside my purpose of speaking what I thought." A different expertment, however, indicated that devils had no telepathic power. When theGoodwin children were being undressed, the body part involved becameso contorted there was "no coming at it." To see what would happen itone thing were thought but another thing said, an instruction was givento untie the child's neckcloth, followed by the untying of the child'sshoe. Yet what became "strangely inaccessible" was not the shoe but theneckcloth. The conflicting results led Mather to speculate that some dev-ils could read thoughts, others not, and that "Perhaps all Devils are notalike sagacious." He particularly wanted to determine Martha's ability toread religious books. Although such book tests were used as evidence ofwitchcraft or possession, he regarded them as a "fanciful Business" thatdevils might use as an ingenious trap. Just the same the book testsworked. When Martha tried to read the Bible her eyes became "strangelytwisted and blinded." She could read from Quaker or Catholic books, butthe sight of John Cotton's Milk for Babes convulsed her. And when sheopened Increase Mather's Mystery of Christ she was "immediately struckbackwards as dead upon the floor."

Even more than Cotton Mather hoped to learn about the invisibleworld he hoped to depossess Martha and the other "Haunted Children"by fervent and repeated prayer. But devotional exercises held for herrelief were the worst of all the provocations that could be given her.When prayers were begun, "the Devils would still throw her on the Floor,at the feet of him that prayed." To drown out the prayers she whistled,sang, and made odd noises, beating and kicking whoever prayed al-though her fist and foot always recoiled a few hairs breadths from him, asif rebounding against a wall. As prayer continued she lay for dead, "herBelly swelled like a Drum, and sometimes with croaking Noises in it."Nevertheless, and despite several seeming cures followed by relapses, theprayers of Mather and the other Boston ministers ultimately restored theGoodwin children. John Goodwin, regretting that his daughter had beento Mather "but a troublesome guest," publicly thanked him, grateful that"his bowels so yearned towards us in this sad condition."

Mather's experience with Martha Goodwin had important results inhis life. The five or six weeks she spent in his home brought him first-hand experience of evil spirits, and he resolved "after this, never to usebut just one grain of patience with any man that shall go to impose uponme a Denial of Devils, or of Witches." In January 1691, too, Martha washerself admitted to membership in his church. He also produced his firstimportant book-length publication, Memorable Providences, Relating to

Witchcrafts and Possessions (1689). He clearly intended to write an im-portant book on an important witchcraft case, comparable to works byoutstanding English ministers and demonologists. He succeeded, for hisbout with invisible horses and chains inspired him to some of his mostabsorbing narrative writing and his cleverest organization, the brief sec-tions and lively pace overcoming the repetitiousness of the events. Thework appeared in a second edition in London in 1691 and a third editionin Edinburgh in 1697, and was often remembered later as it merged into abroad stream of tales of the supernatural. The London edition contained arecommendation by the prestigious Richard Baxter, who rejoiced, Matherlearned, to leave behind someone "likely to prove so great a MasterBuilder in the Lords Work."

The book had another important effect also. About eighteen monthsafter it appeared, some other young girls became topics of comment andamazement as they too succumbed to convulsive fits. According to theminister John Hale, they were "in all things afflicted as bad as John Good-win's children at Boston, in the year 1689. So that he that will read Mr.Mather's Book of Memorable Providences, page 3 etc., may Read part ofwhat these Children, and afterward sundry grown persons suffered by thehand of Satan, at Salem Village, and parts adjacent."

The linking of Cotton Mather with the Salem witchcraft trials began inhis own time and persists to the present. In the popular imagining of theAmerican past the man and the event are nearly synonymous. Yet theexact connection between the two remains obscure. Two questions areinvolved: did Mather excite accusations of witchcraft at Salem? and did hepromote the trial and sentencing of the witches? For the first, John Hale'sremark suggests that at least some contemporaries viewed the eruption atSalem as Mather had taught them to see cases of witchcraft. At one peakof the trials, in June 1692, a man named Brodbent wrote from Boston that"young Mather spoke pretty true when he preached a sermon about twoyears ago that the old landlord Satan would Arrest the Country out of theirhands." Robert Calef, Mather's angriest and most dogged critic, chargedthat by being "the most active and forward of any minister in the country"in the Goodwin case, and by printing his account of it, Mather "conducedmuch to the kindling of those flames" at Salem that "threatened the de-struction of this country."

Even ignoring Calef's debatable accuracy as a historian and his per-sonal antagonism to Mather, there remains no doubt that in the eighteen

months or so between the Goodwin case and the Salem outbreaks, Mather kept calling public attention to the existence of devils and witches Ina last-minute "Notandum" added to Memorable Providences sometimeafter June 1689, he informed readers that since he had completed hishistory another "very wonderful Attempt" had been made on a differentfamily in Boston, "(probably by Witchcraft)," and he speculated that Godmay have permitted it in order to expose more witches. His preaching canbe charted to show that he continually reminded his congregation of ahostile invisible world. In 1690 he described how Quakers at their meet-ings are "taken with a strange Quaking, which look'd so like a DiabolicalPossession." The same year he told a youth group that while he waspreparing one of his works, "the Devil from the mouth of a possessedperson, in the Audience of several standers-by, threatened me with muchDisgrace for what I was about." Again in 1690, upon a new burst of fight-ing with the French and Indians, he preached that "The Devils are starkmad, that the House of the Lord our God, is come into these RemoteCorners of the World; and they fume, they fret prodigiously." In 1691,warning against the public discontent that prevailed after the revolt, heasked, "How many doleful Wretches, have been decoy'd into Witchcraftit self, by the opportunities which their Discontent has given the Devil, tovisit 'em and seduce 'em?" More examples from Mather's published andunpublished writings of 1690-92 could be cited. But these alone suggestthat given the size of his congregation and the frequency of his preach-ing, he did much to keep alive in Massachusetts a sense of the malice ofthe invisible world.

Yet in preaching about devils in New England, Cotton Mather was notthe first, and far from alone. Later history associates him with it becausehe published many of his sermons while other American Puritan minis-ters did not, although they held and preached similar ideas. The Charles-town minister Charles Morton, and three Boston ministers including Sam-uel Willard, wrote and endorsed a Preface to Mather's MemorableProvidences, attesting that they had been "Eye and Ear-Witnesses" tomany of the "most considerable things" in the Goodwin case as Matherdescribed them. Morton, in one of his own sermons in 1688, told hiscongregation that in such disasters as droughts, God "improves Evil An-gels as His Instruments and Executioners." Willard preached an entireseries of sermons on devils in 1692. Increase Mather preached two suchlengthy series, in 1683 and 1685.

More important, if obvious, belief in devils was not unique to CottonMather nor to New England Puritanism, but worldwide and ancient. Ac-

cording to a national Gallup poll taken in 1980, thirty-four percent ofAmerican adults believe in the devil as a personal being who directs evilforces. The possessed children in Boston and Salem represent only late,transatlantic instances of a vastly larger recurrence of witchcraft cases inEurope in the seventeenth century. In Bavaria, for example, a judgeclaimed the death of 274 witches in 1629; in Bonn, three- and four-year-old children were accused of having devils for lovers; at Bamberg a witchhouse and torture chamber were built and six hundred witches are said tohave been burnt in ten years. Witchcraft cases were chronic in seven-teenth-century America also, not only in New England but likewise inNew York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Colonial courts tried more thaneighty such cases from 1647 to 1691, resulting in twenty executions andmany more fines, banishments, and whippings. Dozens of other episodescirculated by conversation and gossip. Their number clearly increased inNew England during the 1680s, around the time of the Goodwin affair.Various sources tell of the devil appearing in 1684 to a Cambridge man,making a noise like a bird; of a 1683 case in Maine with ringing fryingpans, mysterious arm bites, and floorboards buckled by invisible feet; of afifty-year-old church deacon from Hadley who in 1684 suffered pinpricksand glossolalia, one of whose breasts was rendered like a woman's, andwhose genitals were wounded or burned—and many more.

It must also be stressed that if the Salem possessions resembled thoseof the Goodwin children, both were in many features stereotypical. Theyconformed to a pattern classic in European outbreaks of witchcraft sinceat least the early sixteenth century. Almost invariably, the accuser andaccused knew each other intimately, often as neighbors. The accuser hadsuffered some strange illness, accident, or other personal misfortune forwhich no natural explanation was apparent. He or she was aware, howev-er, of having offended a neighbor, usually by having failed to dischargesome hitherto customary social obligation, and accused the neighbor ofhaving produced the illness or accident in revenge. The victims' symp-toms were also stereotypical and monotonous—convulsions, speech diffi-culties, the sticking with or throwing up of pins and nails, appearances ofcats, hogs, or other animals. On both sides of the Atlantic, finally, cases ofwitchcraft were distinctly community events. Whatever the behavior ofministers and magistrates, the responsibilty for prosecution and hangingultimately rested on neighborhood people, who snooped on, accused,and gave evidence against each other. In their occasion, symptoms, andresolution, both the Goodwin affair and the Salem affair typify witchcraftcases throughout Europe and America throughout the seventeenth centu-

ry. The enormous likelihood is that the girls at Salem would haw becomepossessed, and their alleged tormentors would haw been tried andhanged, had Cotton Mather never existed.

To us, the Goodwin children seem not possessed but turbulently rebellious. From the secular viewpoint of modern psychoanalysis and anthropology, their antics merely ventilated severely repressed desires anddisapproved behavior. Similar demonic possessions of course still occurfrequently in many cultures, preventing psychotic breaks with reality byaffording underlying conflicts expression in a culturally shared idiom ofspiritual beings which relates them to the people's larger religious life.Instead of driving the burdened person to an isolating private reality, theidiom of demonic possession allows inaccessible experiences to be madepublic and intelligible. Cotton Mather was unwittingly correct in equat-ing diabolism with discontent, for much of the Goodwin children's be-havior represented hostility toward Puritan standards. Through their fitsthey acted out with impunity the worst fears of those ministers who de-nounced the rising generation for wanting to explore sex, taunt theirparents, and deride the ministry. "They" wanted Martha Goodwin "tokeep Christmas with them!" so at Christmas Martha and her sister "wereby the Daemons made very drunk." In Puritan New England, demonicpossession was a culturally comprehensible and permissible assault onPuritan ideals, a jeremiad against the Jeremiad.

When read in the awareness of a society that demanded utter submis-sion from the young, Cotton Mather's account of the Goodwin childrenbecomes a tale of sassy adolescents who loathed washing their hands,going to bed, or doing their chores:

If any useful thing were to be done to them, or by them, they would haveall sorts of Troubles fall upon them. ... at whiles, they would be so man-aged in their Beds, that no Bed-clothes could for an hour or two be laidupon them; nor could they go to wash their Hands, without having themclasp't so oddly together, there was no doing of it. . . . Whatever Work theywere bid to do, they would be so snap't in the member which was to do it,that they with grief still desisted from it. If one ordered them to Rub aclean Table, they were able to do it without any disturbance; if to rub adirty Table, presently they would with many Torments be made uncapa-ble.

Puritan religious life also angered the children. When John Goodwinspoke to one of his sons about going to church, Mather wrote, "the Boywould be cast into such Tortures and Postures, that he would sooner Die

than go out of doors." When Martha treated Mather with a "Sauciness thatI had not been used to," when she knocked at his study door sayingsomeone wished to see him although no one was there, when she calledto him impertinently and threw small things at him, Mather rightly intuit-ed that her tormentors designed "to disturb me in what I was about."These were no ethereal tormentors, however, but the restless spirit insideMartha and her generation, who would in his lifetime cease whistling andkicking and begin satirizing the ministry in essays, poems, and mocksermons. Martha Goodwin's heir in Boston, stripped of the grotesquelegitimating guise of demonic possession, was the archetypal rebelliousadolescent Benjamin Franklin.

Mather and his contemporaries of course located the source of Mar-tha's behavior elsewhere, in an ever present, ever malicious world ofinvisible devils. Like others, Mather often wrote and preached aboutthem, drawing his ideas from Scripture, patristic writings, demonologicaltreatises, and notes on his father's sermons, but often adding his ownspeculations. Devils are the moving force in witchcraft, as Mather definedit: "the Doing of Strange (and for the most part ///) Things by the help ofevil Spirits, Covenanting with (and usually Representing of) the wofulChildren of Men." For him and most others the essence of witchcraft wasthis diabolic covenant, a parody of Christian practice, wherein witchespromise to serve devils and devils promise to aid witches. The witch hasno innate magical power, but can act only by virtue of the confederacy;not the witch but the devil produces the supernatural events in witch-craft.

Mather held the traditional Christian view that devils are fallen angels:"A Devil was once an Angel, but Sin has brought him to be a FallenAngel; an Angel full of Enmity to God and man." Devils represent anentire order of creation, like human beings or animals, and can think andgo about. They are confined as punishment to the several miles of dark airabove the earth, where they mingle with the tormented souls of millionsupon millions of the damned, excommunicated from the company ofgood angels, who dwell in heaven near God's throne. The fact that somemen have been saved while they are damned fills the evil angels withtormented malice toward mankind, against whom they act with pitilesscruelty. Their number far exceeds the numbers of humanity, about whomthey "swarm like the Frogs of Egypt in every chamber of our houses."Since the myriads of devils are united in one enmity, however, we speakas if there were one devil, "as we say, The Turk, or the Spaniard." One ormany, they welcome an opportunity to do mischief in the world: "These

are they by whom Witches do exert their Devillish and malignant Rageupon their Neighbours."

In their physical natures, devils as Mather conceived them werespiritual and a rational Substance." The definition may seem self-contra-dictory, but by "spiritual" Mather did not mean immaterial. Rather, likethe Cambridge Platonists Joseph Glanvill and Henry More, he meantsomething between current popular conceptions of matter and spirit: thefinest imaginable materiality, light and invisible, capable of being de-tached from or infused into more solid substances. To Mather, "spirit"also connoted vigor, and especially when he speaks of devils as spirits heintends not some limp fog but the acrid quickness of "spirits" of ammo-nia. Devils are vivacious agents who "dart" or "buzz" blasphemousthoughts into the mind, always in motion to undo men's souls, filling theair like midsummer flies.

Mather's view of the devil as "a spiritual and a rational Substance"intensified his desire to witness and publicize cases of witchcraft. Tomany persons of his time, the philosophical assumptions used to disprovea belief in witches threatened to deny the reality of Spirit itself. Disbeliefin witchcraft joined declining manners, radical political theories, and thenew science in becoming linked with forms of atheism. A logic that ranNo Witches, No Spirit, No God, guides Thomas Browne's remark thatthose who deny witches "do not only deny them, but Spirits; and areobliquely and upon consequence a sort not of Infidels, but Atheists." AsMather himself told his congregation, "Since there are Witches and Dev-ils, we may conclude that there are also Immortal Souls." He and othersoften identified doubts about Spirit with the ancient sect of the Saddu-cees, who in the time of Christ denied the resurrection of the dead andthe existence of angels. Sadducism in the late seventeenth century7 be-came a code word for atheistical tendencies, and in the 1680s the targetof a burgeoning literature in England. Mather's Memorable Providencesbelongs with such works as Nathaniel Crouch's The Kingdom of Dark-ness: or The History of Daemons, Specters, Witches. . . obviating the com-mon Objections and Allegations of the Sadduces [sic] and Atheists of theAge (1688)—one of many works that assert the reality of supernaturalphenomena as an indirect way of defending Christianity itself. Mathereven reasons in Memorable Providences that God allowed devils to tor-ment the Goodwin children expressly to give modern atheism the lie:"The Devils themselves are by Compulsion come to confute the Atheismand Sadducism, and to reprove the Madness of ungodly men."

Mather also longed to receive such "Letters of Thanks from Hell"

because he sometimes doubted the reality of Spirit himself. Like everyPuritan he found that during his conversion and his later growth in grace,the devil darted blasphemous thoughts into his mind. He had resolved atthe age of eighteen to strive for a sharper sense of the "Reality of Invisi-bles" and had prayed during the religious crisis at the time of his mar-riage to be preserved from atheistic tendencies in himself: "O that myfirm Belief of Invisible things may be as a shield unto me, defending mefrom those Temptations which, O Lord, Thou knowest, I find to be fierydarts." His intense curiosity about the Goodwin children was driven inpart by a need to allay his own doubts. His dealings with them savor offolie a deux, as he played out his longing for evidence of Spirit while theyplayed out their hostility to it. Once he tried to get Martha to own that shedesired God's mercies and men's prayers, and to signify her desire byraising her hand. She refused, so he raised her hand himself and said,"Child, if you desire those things, let your hand fall, when I take mineaway."

Mather's determined defense of spirit may seem to imply that he re-jected the growingly materialistic view of nature in the late seventeenthcentury. Scientists of his time tried to dissociate the concept of matterfrom occult ideas with which it had been invested, so as to consider itspurely physical properties. Ultimately the more precise formulation ofcelestial mechanics and the other triumphs of the scientific revolutiondid create skepticism about witchcraft, and discredited Spirit. But theeffect was not immediate. In its early stages the experimental philosophyeven dignified belief in the supernatural because, having seen many oldideas about nature upset by new discoveries, it held that no belief shouldbe rejected out of hand and it regarded dismissive unbelief as a form ofdogmatism. Also, the new science never completely discarded the olderscience it evolved from; even advanced thinking in the period was shotthrough with Pythagorean mysticism, cosmological fantasy, and Neoplato-nist vitalism. Many scientists, being Christians as well, tried to harmonizeolder pneumatological views with new scientific theories. The chemistRobert Boyle wrote Some Physico-theological Considerations about thePossibility of the Resurrection (1675), discussing the Resurrection interms of chemical transformations; Joseph Glanvill was both a preemi-nent demonologist and a member of the Royal Society, which he urged toinvestigate apparitions and demons.

In the style of the leading Christian scientists of his time, CottonMather dealt with pneumatological questions in both religious and scien-tific terms. Preaching about thunder in 1694, for instance, he proposed

that thunder is produced according to "the Common Laws of Matter andMotion," perhaps by clouds clashing until their vapors take (ire fromcontact. He also presented (and favored) the alternative chemical viewthat thunder results from decomposing vegetable matter on earth, whichwafts to the atmosphere explosive "vapours of Niter and Sulphur:' Butneither account, he explained, denies diabolic agency: "it is a Scripturaland a Rational Assertion, That in the Thunder there is oftentimes by thePermission of God, the Agency of the Devil. The Devil is the prince of theAir, and when God gives him leave, he has a vast Power in the Air, andArmies that can make Thunders." God makes the mechanical or chemicallaws, but may allow good or evil angels to mobilize them, although theirinfluence is but the influence of instruments, "Instruments directed, or-dered, limited by him, who is the God of Thunders" Mather used thesame scientific-pneumatological thinking to explain how devils can usenatural causes of disease to spread plagues, or why women more oftenbecome possessed than men (owing to the physiology of menstruation).He found nothing in new scientific ideas contrary to his belief in Spirit.At the height of the Salem crisis he wrote Winter-Meditations (1693),which discusses the formation of fossils and gives thanks that "we areBorn in an Age of Light." For Mather devils and telescopes both provedthe existence of God and confuted Sadducism.

Cotton Mather's concern for Martha Goodwin was rewarded by reas-suring proof of an invisible world. But he also learned or became con-firmed in methods of dealing with devils, which he would bring to thenew cases at Salem. Like all Puritans he regarded holy water, crosses, andthe entire Catholic rite of exorcism as gross superstition. He equally op-posed the widespread efforts to relieve victims of witchcraft by popularmagic. To conjure with bottles, horseshoes, and spells, he said, was "tooppose Witchcraft it self'with Witchcraft." Such magic might even temptthe devil to intervene: "for ought I know, the frequent and constant Prac-tice of certain Magical Ceremonies may have Invested many Persons withall the Diabolical ministry of Witches, who have not been well aware ofwhat they have been adoing." Abjuring exorcism and magic, he followedMark 9:29: "This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fast-ing." In Reformed tradition, the most powerful, and the only acceptable,method of depossession was prayer. In liberating Martha Goodwin Math-er fought her devils with "no other weapons but Prayers and Tears, untoHim that has the Chaining of them."

The Goodwin case also confirmed Mather in certain ideas about de-tecting witches. For one, it persuaded him to abhor irresponsible accusa-

tions of witchcraft, such as apparently flourished in Boston: "An Ill-look,or a cross word will make a Witch with many people, who may on moreground be counted so themselves. There has been a fearful deal of Injurydone in this way in this Town, to the Good-name of the most crediblepersons in it." In his jail visits to Goody Glover and his work with Marthahe solemnly kept to himself the names of any other persons they impli-cated. In the "Discourse on Witchcraft" he preached during the case healso solemnly cautioned his congregation against taking reports of appari-tions as evidence of witchcraft: "Suppose that a Person bewitched shouldpretend to see the Apparition of such or such an one, yet this may be noinfallible Argument of their being Naughty people. It seems possible thatthe Devils may so traduce the most Innocent, the most praise-worthy."

The surest test for witchcraft, Mather believed, was credible confes-sion. Here he followed the eminent English theologian and jurist WilliamPerkins, who argued that "Among the sufficient means of Conviction, thefirst is, the free and voluntary Confession of the Crime, made by the partysuspected and accused, after Examination." Goody Glover had herselfdemonstrated her hellish trade by handling her images in court, and herconfession had stood up to the exactest scrutiny of her sanity by severalphysicians. Such confessions could not be disregarded without eliminat-ing all judgment of human affairs and making a conviction for any crimewhatsoever impossible: "all the Murders, yea, and all the Bargains in theWorld must be mere Imaginations if such Confessions are of no Ac-count."

The new invasion from the invisible world began around February1692, in Salem Village (now Danvers), Massachusetts. As described in AModest Inquiry (1702), the classic account by the Rev. John Hale:

. . . Mr. Samuel Paris, Pastor of the Church in Salem-Village, had a Daugh-ter of Nine, and a Niece of about Eleven years of Age, sadly Afflicted ofthey knew not what Distempers; and he made his application to Physi-cians, yet still they grew worse; And at length one Physician gave hisopinion, that they were under an Evil Hand. This the Neighbours quicklytook up, and concluded they were bewitched.

Choked, convulsed, pinched, and rendered speechless by invisibleagents, the girls were as badly afflicted as the Goodwin children hadbeen, Hale said, yet "there was more in these Sufferings, than in those atBoston, by pins invisibly stuck into their flesh, pricking with Irons."

Despite the prayers of ministers at Salem and nearby towns the afflic-tions continued. Other young girls complained of being similarly molested, and identified three women or their shapes as the tormentors a WestIndian slave, Tituba; a bedridden old woman, "Gammer" Osborne; and apauper who begged for food around the Village, Sarah Good. On February 29, warrants went out for their arrest on suspicion of witchcraft.

Pretrial examinations were held in Salem Village. Cotton Mather's oldteacher, Ezekiel Cheever, recorded the examination of Sarah Good, onMarch 1, as conducted by the local officials. Good's examination has spe-cial importance because of her prominence in the subsequent trials, butalso typifies the nature of the other examinations, and a part of it canstand for them all:

Q. Sarah Good, what evil spirit have you familiarity with?

A. None.

Q. Have you made no contract with the devil?

Good answered no.

Q. Why do you hurt these children?

A. I do not hurt them. I scorn it.

Q. Who do you employ, then, to do it?

A. I employ nobody.

Q. What creature do you employ then?

A. No creature. But I am falsely accused.

Q. Why did you go away muttering from Mr. Parris's house?

A. I did not mutter, but I thanked him for what he gave my child.

Q. Have you made no contract with the devil?

A. No.H [Judge Hathorne] desired the children, all of them, to look upon herand see if this were the person that had hurt them, and so they all did lookupon her and said this was one of the persons that did torment them. Presentlythey were all tormented.

Q. Sarah Good, do you not see now what you have done? Why do younot tell us the truth? Why do you thus torment these poor Children?

A. I do not torment them.

Q. Who do you employ then?

A. I employ nobody. I scorn it.

Witnesses brought in against Good, including the other accused witches,offered plentiful evidence of her diabolic behavior. Tituba testified thatGood had "a thing all over hairy," that she saw Good's name in thedevil's book, and that she and Good rode together on a pole, holdingeach other. A man testified that Good appeared to him when he was inbed, bringing an "unusual light"; she sat on his foot, but when he kickedat her she and the light vanished. William Good, Sarah's husband, testi-

fied that the night before his wife's examination he saw below her rightshoulder, and had never seen before, "a wart or tit." Good's own daugh-ter Dorcas testified that her mother had three birds which afflicted thechildren and other persons.

A jury found Good and Tituba guilty of witchcraft. They were remand-ed on May 25 to the Boston jail and apparently chained. Good was theneither pregnant or had recently given birth, for during her imprisonmentshe is known to have been nursing an infant, which died in the jail.Meanwhile, the number of afflicted and accused persons had jumped. Bythe third week in March the afflicted were not three but ten, including anold woman and four married women. More examinations were conductedin the thronged meetinghouse, where the cries of the enlarged group ofthe afflicted, one witness said, produced "an hideous scrietch and noise."Those examined included Sarah Good's daughter Dorcas. Only four orfive years old, she had testified against her mother but was now accusedof witchcraft herself. She was made to look upon the afflicted girls, whotormentedly complained of being bitten, and produced the marks of a setof small teeth. The court remanded Dorcas Good also to the Boston jail,where she would remain, chained, for about another eight months.

By April 11, the swelling numbers of afflicted and accused, and thegrowing uproar in the face of the Bradstreet government's uncertaintyabout what to do, meant that new examinations had to be moved fromSalem Village to Salem town. They were held not only before local offi-cials but before the deputy governor, six magistrates, and a large audi-ence that included several ministers, who saw and heard the afflictedspasmodically swoon, cry, and scream when the accused looked uponthem. How many persons were in jail by May 14, when at last the newgovernor, Sir William Phips, arrived with Increase Mather, is uncertain.Phips wrote that he found the prisons "full of people" and the number ofcomplaints increasing daily. Having to deal not only with them, but alsowith the fighting against the allied French and Indians to the east, hedecided to bring those who had been examined and jailed to trial. Beforeleaving for the east himself he appointed a seven-man commission ofoyer and terminer, including Samuel Sewall, Wait Winthrop, John Rich-ards, and, to head the court, William Stoughton—four very close friendsof the Mathers.

As these events unfolded, Cotton Mather was seriously ill, his health"lamentably broken," as he wrote, in part by "excessive Toil." At sometime he suggested that the afflicted girls be separated and scattered, andoffered to take in six of them himself, as he had taken in Martha Good-win, to "see whether without more bitter methods, Prayer with Fasting

would not put an End unto these heavy Trials." His offer was not accepted, however, and his continued poor health kept him from accompanyingJohn Richards to Salem for the court sessions, as Richards had requested:"the least excess of travel, or diet, or anything that may discompose me,"he explained, "would at this time threaten perhaps my life itself, as myfriends advise me."

However ill, Cotton Mather had pondered the happenings at salemmuch and carefully, reflecting on his experience with Martha Goodwin.On the day the accused witches jailed in Boston were ordered returned toSalem for trial, May 31, he wrote Richards a long letter (five printed pagesin modern editions), summarizing his views on the earlier examinationsand offering firm, considered advice on the impending trials, where Rich-ards would sit as a judge. The views he offered he probably kept through-out his life: first, that there are witches capable of enormous crimes, whoshould be executed; second, that witches who commit lesser crimesshould be punished in a lesser way; third, that the identification andconviction of all witches demands the most extreme caution—althoughthis last point, we shall see, he sometimes presented with disturbingqualifications.

Much as he cautioned his congregation at the time of the Goodwincase, Cotton Mather now particularly warned Richards about the use ofso-called spectral evidence: testimony that mischief had been done by aspecter or apparition of the accused. Such testimony had already beenoffered during the examinations at Salem, the Indian Tituba, for instance,testifying that Sarah Good afflicted the children "in her own shape." Suchevidence was admissible in English witchcraft trials for a century beforeSalem, and as late as 1712, and was enthusiastically endorsed by the chiefjudge of the new court, William Stoughton. Yet Mather adamantly op-posed using spectral evidence as proof of witchcraft. He reiterated toRichards that devils have sometime represented the shapes of innocentand even very virtuous persons, that spectral evidence lends itself to theaccusation of people who have acted maliciously but not diabolically,and that the devil's chief means of creating havoc in society might be tocause the condemnation of the innocent:

... if upon the bare supposal of a poor creature's being represented by aspecter, too great a progress be made by the authority in ruining a poorneighbor so represented, it may be that a door may be thereby opened forthe devils to obtain from the courts in the invisible world a license toproceed unto most hideous desolations upon the repute and repose ofsuch as have yet been kept from the great transgression.

Mather felt that for advancing these cautions some might consider him a"witch advocate" himself—that is, a defender of witches. Nevertheless heurged Richards that persons accused by spectral evidence should not bereckoned "witches to be immediately exterminated," but that such evi-dence should be used only as a "presumption" that might justify a searchfor further evidence against them.

Such further evidence might consist of information an alleged witchcould not have obtained without diabolical assistance, or of puppets usedto torment victims, or of teats and similar body marks used for the devil's"cursed succages." But Mather cautioned that such evidence was alsoinconclusive. It should be taken rather as an intimation of guilt, leadingto conviction only when found "in concurrence with other things." Themost reliable evidence of witchcraft, he told Richards—again as in theGoodwin case—was credible confession. He emphasized "credible," for-bidding the use of torture and dismissing confessions resulting from a"delirious brain, or a discontented heart."

On the ultimate question of punishment, Cotton Mather believed thatunmistakably identified witches who had acted destructively in a spirit ofintense malice should be executed. Just the same, he was deeplyschooled in lessons of restraint and meekness, and except when meetinga direct military threat, as from the French or Indians, he abhorred vio-lence. Only recently, in a sermon before the General Assembly, he hadaccused the Fathers themselves of overzealousness in sending Quakers tothe gallows. He urged Richards to consider whether it was necessary tohang or burn "every wretched creature that shall be hooked into somedegree of witchcraft." He recognized that the Mosaic law commanded"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." But he explained that devils easilyconvert "poor mortals" to witchcraft, particularly the forlorn or distem-pered—as he feared many had become, owing to the unsettled state ofthe country. Since devils easily lure the distressed into witchcraft he pro-posed lesser punishments for lesser witches, such as making a publicrenunciation of the devil.

By the standards Cotton Mather set forth to John Richards, the newcourt on which Richards sat was reckless and severe. Meeting for the firsttime in Salem on June 2 under Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton, itheard testimony against Bridget Bishop, the thrice-married owner of anunlicensed tavern, whose patrons drank late into the night and played

shuffleboard. The testimony included spectral evidence by John Londeiof Salem, aged thirty-two, that awakening in the dead of night he * didclearly see said Bridget Bishop, or her likeness, sitting upon my stomach." Two workmen testified that in Bishop's cellar they found puppetsmade of hog bristles and rags, stuck with headless pins. The court foundBishop guilty of witchcraft, and on June 10 she was led up a rocky eleva-tion on the western side of Salem town and hanged—the first of theaccused witches to be executed.

Bishop's execution alarmed many ministers, Cotton Mather amongthem. He drew up a statement entitled The Return of Several Ministers(1692), which was presented to Governor Phips and his Council aroundJune 15. In behalf of the group of twelve ministers he expressed dissatis-faction with the court's incautious treatment of evidence, and argued thatpresumptions on which accused witches might be jailed, much less con-victions on which they might be hanged, "ought certainly to be moreconsiderable, than barely the Accused Persons being Represented by aSpectre unto the Afflicted." He also criticized two other features of thetrials. Regarding evidentiary tests in which the accused witches weremade to touch or look at the afflicted, he and the other ministers saidthey could not "esteem Alterations made in the Sufferers, by a Look orTouch of the Accused to be an Infallible Evidence of Guilt; but frequentlyLiable to be abused by the Devils Legerdemains." Regarding the crowd-ed, noisy courtroom, he also cautioned the judges to admit "as little as ispossible of such Noise, Company, and Openness, as may too hastily ex-pose them that are Examined."

Had this document—and Cotton Mather's feelings—ended here,Mather might never have become a villain to history. But the documentconcludes with a flabbergasting "Nevertheless." Its final clause, as if dis-carding the preceding attack on the court's methods, urges the Phipsgovernment to push on the trials:

Nevertheless, We cannot but humbly Recommend unto the Government,the speedy and vigorous Prosecution of such as have rendered themselvesobnoxious, according to the Direction given in the Laws of God, and thewholesome Statutes of the English Nation, for the Detection of Witch-crafts.

The obscure, semiliterate Bostonian Robert Calef, soon to become Math-er's antagonist, remarked that although the Return of Several Ministersappeared anonymously, its nature plainly identified the author as Mather.For the document, he said, was "perfectly ambidexter, giving as great or

greater encouragement to proceed in those dark methods, than cautionsagainst them." Mather himself seems to have recognized the startlinginconsistency, for in later reprinting the document he omitted the final,blatantly contradictory clause.

Calef s very astute comment points to complexly intertwined featuresof Cotton Mather's personality and situation that would frustrate himthroughout the Salem trials. What in part betrayed him into offering "am-bidexter" advice were feelings of deference, loyalty, and youthful subor-dination to the judges. These often break through his earlier letter toJohn Richards, which speaks of "your honorable hands" or "your mostworthy hands" while offering "my poor thoughts" and "my little skill." Infact, the judges were not only older, prominent men but also longtimefamily friends. Richards was not only a wealthy merchant, captain of themilitia, selectman, and treasurer of Harvard, but also a property owner inthe Mathers' neighborhood and a member of their church for nearly thirtyyears, as long as Increase was its minister. When Cotton Mather becamean assistant to his father in 1680, Richards was the largest contributor tohis salary; when Cotton married Abigail Phillips, Richards performed theceremony; whenever some important church matter pended, Cotton con-sulted Richards, whose approval he deemed essential to gaining thebrethren's consent. Cotton's ties to the other new judges were similarlyclose. Wait Winthrop, who had squashed an order to arrest him duringthe Andros administration, he ranked "among the Best of my Friends";Adam Winthrop and John Foster were important members of his church;Samuel Sewall often went to hear him preach and admired his sermons,and they frequently dined together and corresponded.

And, in particular, Cotton Mather recognized "a real friend to New-England" in William Stoughton, the chief justice of the trials and themost vigorous prosecutor. This never married man, by whose signature ona warrant of execution witches were taken from jail and hanged, wasintimate with both Mathers. Before entering the magistracy he hadpreached together with Increase; when Cotton was sixteen he inscribedto him a gift copy of Theophilus Gale's The Court of the Gentiles (1672);he attended Cotton's ordination as a representative of the Dorchesterchurch; he was one of the judges before whom Edward Randolph lost hissuit against Increase for defamation; and it was through Increase's influ-ence that, when Phips became governor, Stoughton received a commis-sion as lieutenant governor. In writing to and about the Salem court,Cotton Mather was addressing not only judges whom he felt were abusingevidence, but simultaneously neighbors, old friends, members of his

church, persons to whom he owed favors and "for whom," he wrote, "noman living has a greater veneration."

Cotton Mather's relation with these judges was doubly compromised.however, for they also embodied the new government his father had allbut created. Richards, Sewall, Foster, and the two Winthrops were members of the Council; Stoughton was lieutenant governor; and the man whoappointed them, Sir William Phips, was "one of my own Flock, and one ofmy dearest Friends." To oppose the court meant opposing a governmentfor whose existence a revolt had been waged, and to open again thebreach, only recently healed, between ministry and magistracy, Aaron andMoses. Among the blessings of the new charter, Cotton had argued, wasto have "our Judges as at the First. . . and that no Judges, or Counsellors,or Justices can ever hereafter be Arbitrarily Imposed upon us." Moreover,in the murmuring between the revolt and the arrival of Phips, and themore recent disquiet over the charter, Mather had spoken and laboredstrenuously and publicly to still jealousies, contentions, and factions bypleading that the new government be respected. On almost the same dayhe wrote to John Richards urging caution at the trials, he lamented in asermon to the General Assembly how "every Public Servant must carrytwo Handkerchiefs about him, one to wipe off Sweat, of Travail, anotherto wipe off the Spit of Reproach." And he insisted that "'tis of inexpress-ible importance, that Public Servants be not abused for what they do."Whatever his own views on identifying and trying witches, he was notabout to pillory public officials for theirs. An inveterate peacemaker, aleader of the revolt, and Increase Mather's son, he felt obliged to defendthe new government, which meant he must also "wipe off the Spit ofReproach" from the court that was its first creation.

The "ambidexterity" of Cotton Mather's position had a less personalsource as well. He genuinely believed that "most of the Judges'' actedprudently and patiently, under "Agony of Soul" themselves. His respectfor their honest efforts only complicated his conflict: "tho' I could notallow the Principles, that some of the Judges had espoused," he wrote,"yet I could not but speak honourably of their Persons, on all Occasions."His belief that the judges had acted prudently caused people to revilehim, he said, "as if I had been the Doer of all the hard Things, that weredone, in the Prosecution of the Witchcraft." The charge was particularlyunjust in the sense that he was himself deeply uncertain about the mean-ing of the events at Salem, an uncertainty compounded by chronic self-doubt, by his view of the devil as a uniquely subtle adversary, and by hislonging for proofs of the invisible world to allay his own atheisticalthoughts and to combat Sadducism. Salem was, he admitted, a "thorny

affair," and to determine guilt in this "work of darkness'1 was itself amatter "much in the dark."

Indeed, Cotton Mather was not firmly convinced that the Salem girlshad been bewitched. Just before the trials began, he told Richards, inextremely circumspect language, that the girls' afflictions might be dueto possessions initiated not by witches but by devils themselves: "thedevils may (tho' not often, yet sometimes) make most bloody invasionsupon our exterior concerns, without any witchcrafts." A revised passagein his diary suggests that for a long while he remained uncertain whetherthe girls' symptoms came from devils invading their bodies or torturesinflicted from outside, whether they represented, that is, possession orwitchcraft. Originally he wrote that houses at Salem were "filled with thehorrid Cries of Persons possessed by evil Spirits"; at some time he de-leted the word "possessed" and substituted the word "tormented." Evenhere he remained uncertain, for in explaining the revision he added that"There seem'd"—still a qualification—"an execrable Witchcraft, in theFoundation of this wonderful Affliction." Other possibilities occurred tohim also. He speculated to Richards that the Salem outbreak might repre-sent neither witchcraft nor incidental possession, but the approachingmillennium, since Scripture foretold that at the time of the Second Com-ing Christ would dispossess the devils of their aerial abode to make aNew Heaven. Agitated signs of his uncertainty fill his early letter to Rich-ards—"I suppose," "I believe," "I do suspect," "Perhaps," "'tis proba-ble," "I am ready to think," "'tis worth considering." Indeed, hardly astatement by him in this early period of the Salem outbreak is free fromdoubts, and from qualifications and reservations within and atop them.

In sum, the situation created by Salem called on Cotton Mather foranswers he did not have, and he found it unmanageable. Any actionmight be wrong, no action was very certain. Emotionally and intellectual-ly zigzagging every way betwixt disapproval of the trial methods, rever-ence for the judges, desire to defend the new government, longing forsigns of the invisible world, uncertainty over the meaning of events, fearof speaking rashly, and lack of self-assurance, he on the one hand contin-ued to urge caution on the judges, and on the other continued to defendtheir rash judgments, meanwhile continually hoping they would turn outto be right.

The court turned out, however, to be energetic. By one contemporaryaccount, perhaps exaggerated, ten days after the hanging of Bridget Bish-op more than seven hundred persons stood accused of witchcraft and

over a hundred accused witches lay in prison. On June 28, Stoughton'scourt met for the second time, and in one day tried five accused witches.They included one of the original three accused witches, Sarah Good,who had been in the Boston jail for a month.

Despite the cautions of Mather and the other ministers against spectral evidence, Governor Phips wrote, Stoughton "persisted vigorously inthe same method, to the great dissatisfaction and disturbance of the peo-ple." Much of the evidence presented at Good's trial was spectral, but itwas overwhelming. Among others, Sarah Bibber, aged thirty-six, testifiedthat one night she found Good's "apparition . . . standing by my bedside,and she pulled aside the curtain and turned down the sheet and lookedupon my child 4 years old and presently upon it, the child was struck intoa great fit that my husband and I could hardly hold it." Johanna Childentestified that the apparitions of Good and her infant appeared to her, andthe infant's apparition accused Good of murdering it; Susannah Sheldon,aged about eighteen, testified that Good's apparition "most violentlypulled down my head behind a Chest and tied my hands together with awhale band and almost Choked me to death." Others connected Goodwith mysterious and strange deaths of cows or the transportation of abroom into an apple tree, and much more. The court condemned Goodand the four other accused women to death, and they were hanged atSalem on July 19. Before her execution Good reportedly said to the assist-ant minister of the Salem town church, Nicholas Noyes, "I am no more aWitch than you are a Wizard, and if you take away my Life, God will giveyou Blood to drink."

Considering Cotton Mather's adamant warnings about convicting sus-pected witches on spectral evidence and rushing them to the gallows, hemight be expected to find the five hangings shocking. Instead, he foundthe judges' sentences "miraculously" confirmed. Hardly were the fivehanged, he wrote, "impudently demanding of God a miraculous vindica-tion of their innocency," when God produced evidence of their guilt. Itarrived in the form that he, and William Perkins behind him, consideredmost reliable, as "credible confession." "Immediately upon" the hang-ings, five persons from the town of Andover made "a most ample, surpris-ing, amazing confession" of witchcraft, and declared the five newly exe-cuted to have been of their company.

The confession of the Andover witches is among the least-known inci-dents of the Salem witchcraft trials, but for Cotton Mather it was a turningpoint. Sometime in the early summer of 1692, an Andover man namedJoseph Ballard sent to Salem for some of the possessed girls, hoping they

could identify the specters afflicting his wife, who was ill and later diedof a fever. Others in Andover enlisted the girls for similar purposes. Thegirls acted in the Andover sickrooms as they had in the Salem court: theyfell into fits and named the persons whose specters they saw tormentingthe sick. Fifty persons in Andover were soon accused of witchcraft andthirty to forty sent to prison. Children, parents, grandparents, husbandsand wives, accused and implicated each other. They were probably moti-vated by fear. Many who confessed reasoned that so far only witches whohad refused to confess had been hanged. Six Andover women later drewup a statement explaining that they had confessed because "there was noother way to save our lives." According to an accused Salem witch, JohnProctor, a statement implicating the Salem witches was drawn from two ofthe Andover witches by torture. He wrote from the Salem prison to "Mr.Mather" (probably Increase, but possibly Cotton) and four other Bostonministers, that his own son and two of the confessing Andover witcheshad been tied "Neck and Heels till the Blood was ready to come out oftheir Noses."

Cotton Mather may have attended some of the trials of the Andoverwitches himself, for he wrote, seemingly in August, that he had "latelyseen; Even poor Children of several Ages, even from seven to twenty,more or less, Confessing their Familiarity with Devils." The confessingwitches divulged much information about the workings of the invisibleworld. They denied from firsthand experience that devils could take theshape of innocent persons without their consent. Cautions against theadmission of spectral evidence were discarded at the Andover trials. Thelocal minister, Francis Dane, surmised that the reason family membersturned on each other was that "the Conceit of Spectre Evidence as aninfallible mark did too far prevail with us."

Virtually all the confessed Andover witches offered the same accountof the devil's operation. The devil, they unanimously agreed, was a smallblack man. He got them to undo their allegiance to the Congregationalchurch by renouncing their baptism, and had them seal their covenantwith him by signing his book. Sixteen-year-old Richard Carrier, for in-stance, was one of many confessed witches who described the devil as ablack man with a "high Crowned hat" who promised to reward his ser-vice with new clothes and a horse: "he told me also that he was Christ,and I must believe him, and I think I did So, I Set my hand to his book itwas a little Red book I wrought with a Stick and made a red Colour with itand I promised to Serve him." The confessed witches all also describedthe devil's methods of rebaptizing people and of giving communion, of-

fering only minor variations on whether his book was reel or made ofbirchbark, and whether he dipped heads to baptize or flung initiatesbodily in the water.

But the most spectacular revelations concerned a diabolic conspiracy.Witch after witch testified to riding poles to meetings where as many asfive hundred witches plotted New England's ruin. Here too the evidencewas overwhelming. When Mary Lacey, Jr., was asked why the devil wishedto hurt the people of Salem, she replied, "the Devil would set up hisKingdom there and we should have happy days." William Barker. Sr.,testified that at a meeting of about a hundred witches in Salem Village helearned that "Satans design was to set up his own worship, abolish all thechurches in the land." Susannah Post testified that she had attended awitch meeting of two hundred, where she heard there were five hundredwitches in the country. Mary Toothaker said that at a Salem Village witchmeeting "they did talk of 305 witches in the country. She saith theirdiscourse was about the pulling down the Kingdom of Christ and settingup the Kingdom of satan." Many of the confessed Andover witches whohad attended these large meetings, moreover, identified the two ring-leaders of the conspiracy—a woman named Martha Carrier and a formerminister named George Burroughs.

To Cotton Mather the Andover confessions not only tended to confirmthe justice of the new court but also suggested that the Salem witchcrafthorribly and drastically differed from the Goodwin case, representing notthe possession of some young energumens but war from the invisibleworld aimed at destroying Christian Israel. This conspiratorial view ofwitchcraft outbreaks was common among European ecclesiastics. Indeedthe notion of a diabolic plot against Christianity can be traced to an-tiquity, in fantasies of the existence within society of another small andsecret society threatening its existence. Like cases of individual posses-sion, such fantasies disburden repressed material, in this instance unac-knowledged hostility to Christianity. Whether or not the Andover witcheswere projecting their covert animus against Congregationalism, their con-fessions struck deep and resoundingly into New England's mentality ofinvasion. Their talk of a plot to throw down all the churches in the landwas entirely familiar, only it attributed to diabolic agency what had re-cently been laid to Andros and Randolph, and what for years had beendecried as the inevitable result of exposed bosoms, dancing masters, andpublic drunkenness.

Cotton Mather himself was led to conclude that a diabolic plot was

afoot to destroy New England: "more than One Twenty have Confessedthat they have Signed unto a Book, which the Devil show'd them, andEngaged in his Hellish Design of Bewitching and Ruining our Land."Knowing the devil to be a wily adversary, skilled at sophistry, parody, andinversion, he had some doubt about the credibility of the Andover confes-sions. But the sheer number of them, and the support they gave to eachother and to other evidence from Salem, persuaded him that they must inessentials be true. Satan may have woven delusions into some circum-stances of the confessions, he allowed, "but one would think, all theRules of Understanding Humane Affairs are at an end, if after so manymost Voluntary Harmonious Confessions, made by Intelligent Persons ofall Ages, in sundry Towns, at several Times, we must not believe the mainstrokes wherein those Confessions all agree."

On August 4, Mather made known to his congregation his changedunderstanding of the outbreak at Salem. It was a portentous day. TheNorth Church was holding a special fast, as examinations of the Andoverwitches proceeded amidst continuing confessions. New trials of six morewitches were scheduled at Salem the day after. And in the morning camenews of a tremendous earthquake in Jamaica that reportedly killed overtwo thousand persons, sent the sea flowing across the island in a fewminutes, and sank the iniquitous town of Port Royal. Appropriately, Math-er chose the text Revelation 12:12: "Woe to the Inhabitants of the Earth,and of the Sea; for the Devil is come down unto you, having great Wrath;because he knoweth, that he hath but a short time."

Like other Puritan ministers, Cotton Mather usually did not preach atlength on biblical prophecy. Its obscurities invited reckless predictionsof the place and time of the Second Coming that often discredited itsstudy, so that the subject was usually confined to discourse among thelearned. Yet he had speculated in his early letter to Richards that Salemmight be a harbinger of the end of time, and now from his pulpit herecalled the notion that the span allotted from the first Sabbath at thecreation of the world to the founding of the New Jerusalem was twenty-three hundred years, of which at the time of Christ's resurrection seven-teen or eighteen hundred years remained. The present, then, was nearthe time Revelation signified as the "Evening of the World," when the"Evening Wolves will be much abroad." Then people shall hear oftenabout "Apparitions of the Devil, and about poor people strangely Be-witched." Then the devil, knowing Christ's Kingdom was at hand, wouldoffer baptism and communion and make other despairing efforts to erect

his own kingdom, "with a most Apish Imitation." Then, with the* devilclapped up prisoner in or near the bowels of the earth, there would comerepeated earthquakes, "and this perhaps by the energy of the Devil in theEarth" such earthquakes as had been reported this morning, whereinJamaica "was at once pull'd into the Jaws of the Gaping and GroaningEarth."

Knowing his time was near, the devil fretted especially, Mather toldhis congregation, over New England. There the Puritans had claimed "acorner of the World, where he had reign'd without any controul for manyAges." Mather here referred to a popular notion, elaborated as early as1634 by the English divine Joseph Mede, that before the coming of Christthe devil led the Indians to the New World as his own Chosen People,hoping to put at least some part of mankind beyond the reach of thegospel. Many persons thus viewed America at the time of its settlement asuniquely the land of the devil, an image reinforced and enhanced by theIndians' well-known practice of ceremonial magic. When a band of Puri-tans built evangelical churches and brought the gospel to the devilsdomain, Mather continued, New England became to him a "vexing Eye-sore" and he essayed by every means to "undermine his Plantation, andforce us out of our Country." Indian powwows "used all their Sorceries tomolest the first Planters"; fires often "laid the chief Treasure of the wholeProvince in ashes"; Andros and others schemed "to deprive us of thoseEnglish Liberties, in the encouragement whereof these Territories havebeen settled." The outbreak at Salem was the latest of the roiled devil'sfrantic attempts to invade and reclaim New England. At the hellish meet-ings revealed by the Andover witches, "these Monsters have associatedthemselves to do no less a thing than, To destroy the Kingdom of our LordJesus Christ, in these parts of the World."

Mather's sermon indicates that however convinced he had become ofthe existence of a diabolic conspiracy, he remained bewildered over thequestion of how infallibly to detect and prosecute the other conspirators,for his remarks on the matter were again perfectly ambidexter. He assuredhis congregation that the judges had used spectral evidence only as abasis for further inquiry, but that God had providentially strengthened itby supplying other evidence, so that "some of the Witch Gang have beenfairly Executed." Speaking as if fully convinced himself that the spectralshapes were those of guilty persons, he told his congregation that all ofthe witches "have their Spectres, or Devils, commission'd by them, andrepresenting of them," and he summarized at length the testimony of theAndover witches:

In the Prosecution of these Witchcrafts, among a thousand other unac-countable things, the Spectres have an odd faculty of clothing the mostsubstantial and corporeal Instruments of Torture, with Invisibility. . . .These wicked Spectres have proceeded so far, as to steal several quantitiesof Money from diverse people, part of which Money has, before sufficientSpectators, been dropt out of the Air into the hands of the Sufferers, whilethe Spectres have been urging them to subscribe their Covenant withDeath.

Mather's dozens of sober, unqualified references to "Spectres" torturing,filching, or molesting, however, confusingly give way to assertions ofdoubt concerning the justice of accusations and convictions based onspectral evidence. He warned that in this obscure affair the devil mightbe trying to shame New England with "perhaps a finer Thread, than wasever yet practised upon the World," and beside his assurances that thoseexecuted had been indeed guilty, he expressed continuing bafflement;"The whole business is become hereupon so Snarled, and the determina-tion of the Question one way or another, so dismal, that our HonourableJudges have a Room for Jehoshaphat's Exclamation, We know not what todor

The judges who met the next day, August 5, could have taken Mather'ssermon as either encouragement or warning. In either case they sen-tenced to death six accused witches, five of whom were hanged on Au-gust 19: John Proctor, George Jacobs, Sr., and John Willard of Salem Vil-lage; George Burroughs of Maine; and Martha Carrier of Andover.Another condemned witch, Proctor's wife, Elizabeth, was pardoned be-cause pregnant.

For the first time, Cotton Mather attended the executions. Until now,he seems to have avoided any direct contact with the judicial proceed-ings. He did preach to some accused witches imprisoned in Boston, andhe may have attended some of the examinations at Andover; his diarymentions, too, that his compassion for the judges' difficulty was increased"by my Journeys to Salem"—presumably only to speak with them, sincehe attended none of the trials. His presence at the hangings on August 19is the only documented instance of his personal participation in the pro-ceedings.

The two surviving accounts of Cotton Mather's appearance both makeit seem that he tried to justify the hangings, but both accounts are open tointerpretation. In the first, Samuel Sewall, who attended also, recorded

that before a "very great number" of spectators, George Burroughsprayed and made a speech protesting his innocence, which moved "unthinking persons" present to speak "hardly" about his sentence. All thoseabout to be hanged also protested their innocence, Sewall said, but "Mr.Mather says they all died by a Righteous Sentence." In the second account, by Robert Calef, Burroughs spoke so solemnly and seriously fromthe gallows ladder as to win "the Admiration of all present." His ferventprayers, concluding with the Lord's Prayer, moved many to tears, "so thatit seemed to some, that the Spectators would hinder the Execution." Butas soon as Burroughs was turned off, Calef continued, "Mr. Cotton Mather, being mounted upon a Horse, addressed himself to the People, partlyto declare, that he was no ordained Minister, and partly to possess thePeople of his guilt; saying, That the Devil has often been transformed intoan Angel of Light; and this did somewhat appease the People, and theExecutions went on."

Both these accounts, from which Mather's reputation has permanentlysuffered, have been questioned. Sewall refers only to "Mr. Mather," leav-ing it open whether he means Cotton or Increase; Calef disliked CottonMather, is often misleading, and wrote after the event. Yet it seems likelythat the accounts refer to Cotton Mather and are essentially accurate. ThatIncrease would have defended Burroughs' hanging is improbable be-cause, even though he attended Burroughs' trial earlier in the month, heobjected even more strenuously than did his son to the trial methods, andhad interviewed several Andover witches in prison, where he heard themretract their confessions. Calef's account, secondly, squares with CottonMather's consistent defense of the judges. Just two days before the hang-ings Cotton wrote a rather incoherent letter to one judge, John Foster,ending, "I entreat you that whatever you do, you strengthen the hands ofour honorable judges in the great work before them." Moreover, Cottondespised murmuring countryish mobs, such as he tried to pacify7 duringthe revolt of 1689. In political terms the spectators at the hangings wereto him essentially the same mob, a threat to the stability of New England'sfragile government. The one unconvincing note in Calef's account is thatto assure the crowd of Burroughs' guilt, Mather told them the devil oftenappears as an angel of light—meaning that Burroughs might be a witcheven though he had ostensibly been a minister. Whenever Mather in-voked this idea he applied it to specters, never to persons. When hespoke of the devil taking an innocent shape he always meant it as a warn-ing against condemning someone on the basis of spectral evidence. Tohave invoked the same idea to condemn someone presumed guilty im-

plies a vicious perversion of justice out of keeping with Mather's person-ality.

Although the accounts do remain open for interpretation, the stron-gest argument for crediting them is that Cotton Mather's new understand-ing of the conspiracy against New England made the hangings for himunique. Two of those executed, Burroughs and Martha Carrier, were iden-tified by the Andover witches as the very heads of the diabolic plot. Bur-roughs' trial produced testimony that, as the "chief of all the personsaccused for witchcraft," he sounded the trumpet to call other witchestogether. Martha Carrier's own children, as well as other witches, testifiedthat "the Devil had promised her, she should be Queen of Heb." Matherhimself called Burroughs the "Ringleader" and Martha Carrier a "ram-pant Hag." For him, the persons being executed included the veritableKing and Queen of American Hell.

With apparently hundreds of witches accused or jailed, reports of tor-ture, and new trials scheduled for early September, the hard words spo-ken at the Salem gallows spread. Public opposition to the trials had beenevident for months. In late June, the Baptist minister William Milborne, aleader in the revolt against Andros, was arrested for circulating a petitionto the General Assembly asking them to weigh the validity of spectralevidence. The accusations, moreover, had reached notable persons, in-cluding the eminent Boston minister Samuel Willard, several members ofGovernor Phips's Council, and Phips's own wife. Some of the originalafflicted girls had accused the prominent shipmaster John Alden, afounder of the South Church and son of the Plymouth settlers John andPriscilla Alden; he was jailed in Boston for fifteen weeks before escapingto Duxbury. It was even said that the accused included Cotton Mather'smother, Maria, although he denounced the story as a lie fabricated by aQuaker.

Accustomed to putting down rebelliousness in himself, Cotton Mathersaw in the mounting opposition to the trials a need to defend the newgovernment more vigorously both at home and abroad. Four days beforenew trials were to begin, he offered to assist William Stoughton in "theweighty and worthy undertakings wherein almighty God has employedyour Honor as His instrument for the extinguishing"—the word seemslethal—"of as wonderful a piece of devilism as has been seen in theworld." He sent for Stoughton's approval part of a work-in-progress inwhich he sought, "even with something of designed contrivance," to end

contention and restore peace, to "flatten that fury which we now so muchturn upon one another." Aware of New England's reputation in Londonfor disorder, he asked Stoughton's permission to include a digest of thetrials, to vindicate the country as well as the judges and juries. Unwillingto misrepresent current dissatisfaction with the trial methods, however,he told Stoughton gingerly that he would submit for his correction anyplaces where he had "let fall, as once or twice, the jealousies among us.of innocent people being accused." Anticipating criticism of the book, hehoped not only for Stoughton's permission but also for his protection,and ended with a blushing request for his endorsement:

For me to beg that either Your Honor singly, or the judges jointly, wouldin a line or two signify unto the world that my labors have your approba-tion. . . . This were an arrogance whereupon I dare not presume. Althougha favor of that kind bestowed upon me would somewhat lay before theworld an intimation of that holy, pious, fatherly frame of spirit, with whichyou are herein concerned for us, yet, I say, I dare not aspire so far as to askit.

This manipulative tactic of getting-by-renouncing, probably derived fromhis relation to his father, he would use increasingly to extort favors fromaustere or influential persons on whom he felt dependent.

While Cotton Mather wrote on in defense of the trials, the death sen-tences multiplied. New trials began in Salem on September 9; the courtcondemned nine persons. One of them, eighty-year-old Giles Corey, refused to plead his indictment; on September 19, heavy stones were laidon him in a field until he was crushed to death. According to RobertCalef, Corey's tongue came out of his mouth and "the Sheriff with hisCane forced it in again, when he was dying."

The next day, Cotton Mather wrote to the clerk at Salem, StephenSewall, saying he was beset by objections against the proceedings butwilling to "expose myself unto the utmost for the Defense of my Friendswith you." He asked Sewall to send narratives of a half-dozen or moretrials to include in his book. However willing to expose himself, he alsounderstood the risk in defending an increasingly unpopular cause. Want-ing the court to share the risk with him, he asked that the trial accountcome in some quasi-official form, such as a letter to him. His request wasstrengthened, he told Sewall, by Governor Phips himself having "laid hispositive commands upon me to desire this favor of you"—perhaps, heseems to hint, because of spectral accusations against his wife. Phips'sintervention suggests that he in some degree oversaw the writing of Math-

er's book, and may even have coaxed him into producing it. Or Phips mayhave wished to take over the direction of the work from Stoughton, ofwhose conduct he now wholly disapproved. In any case, two days afterwriting to Sewall, Mather met with him and Stoughton in Boston to dis-cuss publication of the book.

The same day, September 22, the trials at Salem neared a crisis withthe hanging of eight of the nine witches condemned earlier in the month:Mary Easty, Alice Parker, Ann Pudeator, Margaret Scott, Wilmott Reed,Samuel Wardwell, Mary Parker, and Martha (the wife of Giles) Corey. Aweek after this, the most numerous of the Salem executions, GovernorPhips returned from Pemaquid, Maine, where he had visited the scene ofcombat against the French and Indians. Throughout the examination andtrials, the fighting in the east had heightened the frenzied atmosphere byproducing apprehensive rumors of expected raids on Massachusetts. Onhis return, Phips found general dissatisfaction with the court and a wide-spread belief that some of those executed had been innocent.

Advice came to Phips, perhaps at his request, from a group of minis-ters, in the form of a short treatise written by Increase Mather and now orlater subscribed by the others, published afterward as Cases of Con-science Concerning Evil Spirits Personating Men (1693). ("Cases of Con-science" refers to works of casuistry, that is, resolutions of moral dilem-mas by skilled theologians.) In a postscript added for publication,Increase praised the judges as "wise and good Men" acting "with allFidelity according to their Light." But their light he saw as darkness, whatthe ministers in their Preface impugn contemptuously as "something vul-garly called Spectre Evidence, and a certain sort o/Ordeal or trial by thesight and touch." No less than his son, Increase believed unquestioninglyin the invisible world. In Cases of Conscience he speaks solemnly of"bewitched Water" that rubbed on the eyes affords supernormal vision.But unlike his son, he desired not to put down a diabolic conspiracy—which the treatise fails to mention—but to prevent innocent persons fromdisgrace or hanging. It became his vocation, he wrote, "to be very tenderin Cases of Blood, and to imitate our Lord and Master, Who came not todestroy the Lives of Men, but to save them." Refuting the court methodson scriptural, philosophical, and commonsense grounds, he made hismeaning personal and unmistakable: "This then I declare and testify, thatto take away the Life of any one, merely because a Spectre or Devil, in abewitched or possessed Person does accuse them, will bring the Guilt ofinnocent Blood on the Land." To show their concurrence with Increase'sviews, fourteen ministers signed their names to his work—perhaps all the

leading ministers in and near Boston, except one.

The one was Cotton Mather, who took this occasion to publicly dissent from his father for the first time. He declined the subscription, hesaid, "with all the modesty I could use" and explained to his colleaguesthat his own book, now in press, had his father's approval and would"sufficiently declare my opinion." But his certainty of a diabolic plot andhis scorn for popular unrest gave him larger reasons as well, which heconfided to his uncle John Cotton. For one, he feared that by concentrating on the weakness of spectral evidence, his father's treatise might serveto halt the trials but divert attention from the conspiracy which madethem necessary: "our witch-advocates" would be able to "cavil and nibble" learnedly at the proceedings against one or another witch, "whilethings as they lay in bulk, with their whole dependences, were not ex-posed; but also everlastingly stifle any further proceedings of justice." Healso feared that the treatise might, unwittingly, turn public wrath againstand thus endanger the judges, "who would (tho' beyond the intention ofthe worthy author and subscribers) find themselves brought unto the barbefore the rashest Mobile." Finally he hoped to uphold the authority andstability of the new government and to contain the growing quarrel be-tween it and the ministry. As usually happened, his efforts to bring peaceincreased contention. He found that his refusal to subscribe gained him"raging asperity" and filled the country with a "great slander"—"That Irun against my own father and all the ministers in the country, merelybecause I run between them when they are like mad men running againstone another."

Around mid-October, just as popular and ministerial clamor againstthe trials was bringing them to a halt, Cotton Mather's Wonders of theInvisible World (1692) appeared in print, defending them. He made nosecret of having written the book under wrenching stress: "None, but theFather, who sees in secret," he said, "knows the Heart-breaking Exercises,wherewith I have composed what is now going to be exposed." Describ-ing himself as "One of the least among the Children of New-England,"he opened with a nervously self-justifying "Author's Defence" that givesan agonized explanation of his motives:

. . . there may be few that love the Writer of this Book; but give me leave toboast so far, there is not one among all this Body of People, whom thisMather would not study to serve as well as to love. With such a Spirit ofLove, is the Book now before us written: I appeal to all this World; and ifthis World will deny me the Right of acknowledging so much, I appeal tothe other, that it is not written with an Evil Spirit.

Mather's distress may account for the book's formlessness. It is a jumbleof sermons and parts of sermons, snippets from English works, letters,attestations, "Matchless CURIOSITIES," heaped without beginning, mid-dle, or end around a digest of five of the Salem trials. Mather made noattempt to conceal the vicissitudes of composition. Having apparentlygarnered his material while impatiently awaiting trial transcripts from theSalem clerk, he made the reader wait with him, promising in the text topresent the trial accounts next, and failing to. After the first hundredpages he writes, "I shall no longer detain my Reader from his expectedEntertainment, in a brief account of the Trials." But what follows is anoth-er stall, a narrative of some English witchcraft trials in the 1680s.

Although the book remains a melange, Mather supplied an openingstatement of design. His main purpose, he said, was to extract fruitfulimprovements from the "amazing Dispensations now upon us." Theseappear as exhortations to reform the provoking causes of God's Contro-versy with New England. The "subordinate Ends"—to which he devotedby far the bulk of the book—were three. First, to expose the diabolicconspiracy: "I have indeed set myself to countermine the whole PLOT ofthe Devil, against New-England, in every branch of it, as far as one of mydarkness, can comprehend such a Work of Darkness." This purpose herealized by giving more than a third of the book to an expanded versionof the apocalyptic sermon he had preached following the Andover con-fessions. Insensitive or indifferent to redundancy, he here repeated muchof what he said in a previous section titled "Enchantments Encountered."Mather's second "subordinate" end was dual: to contribute to the ongo-ing work of such noted English pneumatologists as Richard Baxter, and toreassure the mother country that New England was orderly. In one, re-serving for a moment the other, he succeeded, for Wonders was adver-tised in large type in the London Gazette, reviewed and summarized atlength in the London Compleat Library, and published quickly in threeEnglish editions.

Mather's final "subordinate" end, however, outreached him, that ofclarifying his views, "taking off the false Reports, and hard Censuresabout my Opinion in these Matters." The book clarifies much less than itscreens. The assemblage of redundant fragments and the repeated stallsmake everything seem the prologue to a prologue, creating an effect ofendless jerky beginnings, obscured by tedious verbosity and an insuper-able difficulty in getting to the point. A simultaneous saying and unsay-ing, the book resembles a gigantic stammer. Cries of conspiracy alternate

with appeals for calm, and these with doubts that Satan might spreadhavoc by using genuine witches to implicate the blameless. Mather seemsto leave unquestionable that in the five cases lie treats at length, real andmalicious witches were executed. To vindicate the methods of the couflhe shows that the evidence against the accused, in the sheer numberswho testified for the prosecution, was conclusive. To reassure readers inLondon that the court followed established precedent, he prints promtnent English legal opinions on detecting and convieting witches, andsummarizes important English witchcraft trials.

Yet even this defense, straightforward in itself, seems in context halfhearted and forced, for Mather hedged it around with hints of coercion,warning winks at the reader, tipoffs to his discomfort. Although he hadasked Stoughton's permission to publish an account of the trials, he pre-sents the account as if written on command. One of his several prologuesconfesses that he has no prejudice against the persons convicted, "Buthaving received a Command so to do, I can do no other than shortlyrelate the chief Matters of Fact, which occur'd in the Trials." With a simi-lar plaint of duress, his account of Burroughs' trial begins: "the Government requiring some Account of his Trial to be inserted in this Book, itbecomes me with all Obedience to submit unto the Order." And hisdigest of the trials concludes, "Having thus far done the Service imposedupon me. . . ."

These insistent disclosures of unwillingness make the whole bookseem a sort of bluff. The likelihood is that sometime between conceivingand publishing the work, Cotton Mather became disenchanted by Stough-ton, whose tenacious trust in spectral evidence was under attack evenfrom Richard Baxter in England. In the book he clearly tried to disengagehimself from Stoughton. For instance, instead of the "line or two" ofapprobation he had requested, Stoughton provided a page-and-a-halfpanegyric to Mather as his defender, beginning:

Such is your Design, most plainly expressed throughout the whole; suchyour Zeal for God, your Enmity to Satan and his Kingdom, your Faithful-ness and Compassion to this poor People; such the Vigour, but yet greatTemper of your Spirit; such your Instruction and Counsel, your Care ofTruth, your Wisdom and Dexterity . . . that all Good Men must needs de-sire the making of this your Discourse public to the World . . . [italics re-versed.]

Mather included this self-interested endorsement, but placed it just before his embarrassed statement of purpose, which begins: "I LIVE byNeighbours that force me to produce these undeserved Lines." In his

"Author's Defence" too he carefully distinguished his own parts of thebook from the trial digests composed, he implied, at Stoughton's behest:"For the Dogmatical part of my Discourse, I want no Defence; for theHistorical part of it, I have a very Great One; the Lieutenant-Governour ofNew-England having perused it, has done me the Honour of giving me aShield, under the Umbrage whereof I now dare to walk abroad." But hisactual uneasiness under Stoughton's self-serving protection he confidedto his diary: "The Shield given by the Lieut. Governour, of the Province,under which, That Book is walk'd abroad, is enough, and, I confess, toomuch."

Cotton Mather's book appearing just as, to almost everyone's relief,the trials were halting, the result was predictable. Wonders of the Invisi-ble World became, and remains, as Mather called it, "that reviled Book."Inopportunely also, his father's Cases of Conscience appeared in print justafter Wonders, and many "besotted People" believed that Increase hadwritten in deliberate opposition to it. In a postscript to Cases of Con-science, Increase asserted that he had approved his son's work before itwas printed, and that "nothing but my Relation to him, hindred me, fromrecommending it unto the world"—his explanation also of his failure tosupport his son's ordination with him. Yet father and son always tried topresent a united front when they disagreed, as here they undeniably did.The drift of Wonders of the Invisible World is that devils have broke loosein New England, of Cases of Conscience that at Salem innocent peopleare being killed. Having refused to drink one king's health, and havingspoken with two other kings and a queen in their own quarters, Increasedid not find a William Stoughton awesome, unlike his deferential son,whose crime, morally, lay not in promoting the trials but in doing nothingto stop them.

But Cotton Mather had again been hauled in every direction. Finallywary of Stoughton but still certain that real witches had been hanged, hewas also at odds with his father, hopeful of making a place for himselfamong noted pneumatologists, and apparently under conflicting pres-sures from the governor and lieutenant governor, while remaining, asbefore, apprehensive of the devil's subtlety, cautious about contributingto public discontent, hopeful of combatting Saducees, fatally anxious toplease, and simply baffled. A passage of his manuscript autobiographywhich seems to have belonged to his original diary for 1692 speaks of his"Fear, Lest under my Extraordinary Trials from the Invisible World, I haveat any time gratified the Hidden Desires of Evil Angels, or Entertained anyDisposition to see broken the Good, Wise, Right Order wherein HumaneAffairs are fixed by the Lord."

Cotton Mather did receive some praise for Wonders of the Invisible

World, and later in the year he entered in his diary souk* approving,vindicating comments by others. Yet he remained unhappy over what hehad done, and wrote in the margin the hesitant, ambidexter consolation:"(Upon the severest Examination, and the solemnest Supplication, 1 stillthink, that for the main, I have, written Right.)i"

About ten days after the publication of Cotton Mather's book, on Octo-ber 26, a bill was sent to the Assembly calling for a fast day and a convocation of ministers to determine what to do next in the trials. Because of the"season and manner" of presenting the bill, Samuel Sewall wrote, theSalem court considered itself dismissed. The court was due to end anyway,since it had been established before the legislature could meet under thenew charter to arrange a system of courts, and it became defunct when thelegislature established a superior court for the whole province. A furthersession of the Salem court had been scheduled, however, and on October28 Stoughton went to discuss its fate with Phips and the Council. They methim, Sewall said, with "great silence," and next day Phips declared thatStoughton's court "must fall." Phips estimated that at least fifty accusedwitches were still in prison, some of whom he released on bail. Becausesome judges now conceded that the trials had been too violent and agreedto adopt a different method of evidence, Phips permitted the schedulingof a new court in Salem—the last—just after the new year.

Despite the suspension of the trials and his reservations about Won-ders of the Invisible World, Cotton Mather hoped to "do yet more, in adirect opposition unto the Devil." Late in the year he wrote to John Rich-ards, now not as a judge but as a leading member of his church, asking hissupport in making an important change in church policy. He told Rich-ards that the information given by the Andover witches about the devil'sparodic rites of baptism and communion had "increased my uneasiness,under that sin of omission wherein I reckon myself to live." The "sin"was the failure of the North Church to conform to the requirements forbaptism proposed by the Halfway Covenant Synod of 1662. To recall: theSynod met to deal, among other things, with the decline in membershipthreatening the existence of the New England churches. It voted to alterthe original Congregational ideal, by which only the children of parentswho had experienced regenerating grace were to be baptized and admit-ted to the church. Instead it recommended that the children of personswho were Virtuous Christians but had not received grace could also bebaptized and admitted, declaring their desire to attain a state of grace.

Increase Mather had strenuously opposed the compromise, and until thetime of the Salem trials the North Church admitted only children of theregenerate.

Because of Increase's opposition, the North Church evidently con-tained a large number of unbaptized adolescents and adults. And theclaims on such people by legions of devils, Cotton told Richards, madethe problem of their baptism urgent. He had been forced to turn away"scores of godly people" who sought baptism, because of antagonism tohalfway membership by two people, of whom Richards was one. He didnot ask Richards to support the new policy, but only to continue as amember of the North Church if it were adopted. Those who offered them-selves for baptism, he assured him, would be examined rigorously. Theywould have to be "instructed and orthodox" in Christianity, bring testi-mony signed by more than one full church member that they were of a"virtuous conversation," and declare their "study to prepare themselvesfurther for the table of the Lord." Richards presumably agreed, as In-crease Mather must have also, for on January 15, 1693, Cotton entered inthe church records the admission of Mary Sunderland and the baptism ofher son John, "the first, so Admitted" under the Halfway Covenant pro-posed thirty years earlier. Baptisms in the church quickly doubled, from54 in 1692 to 104 in 1693. Although it pleased Mather that his church hadpeaceably resolved a long-vexing issue, the resolution also gave himmore work, and he noted that "my Charge of such as now submittedthemselves unto my ecclesiastical Watch, was exceedingly increased."

About three years earlier, it should be added, Cotton Mather had deci-sively addressed the related issue of grace. Disappointingly to those whohad invented the tradition-breaking compromise of 1662, many childrenof the unregenerate who were baptized under the Halfway Covenant alsofailed to experience grace and were denied communion, thus kept fromfull church membership and voting privileges. To help bring such per-sons to the Lord's Table, Mather published in 1690 his extremely impor-tant Companion for Communicants, copies of which were distributed atthe North Church on May 25, the day when John and Martha Goodwin,parents of the depossessed children, were admitted to full membership.This work marks the beginning of an evangelistic sacramental piety inNew England intended to bring more worshipers to communion, thus tofill the churches again with Visible Saints, a movement climaxed by theGreat Awakening of the 1730s.

The crux of Mather's Companion is the test he provided by whichworshipers might decide whether they can rightfully approach the Lord'sTable. The issue contained hazards on either side: to stay away from com-

munion while in a state of grace and to take communion lacking a state ofgrace were alike sinful. Mather's test is answerable elusive, as arc those olother ministers in the period who tried to relax requirements for admission so as to fill the thinning churches while preserving an illusion ofmaintaining the Fathers' pristine requirement that only Saints could takecommunion. "We are to Examine our selves," Mather wrote, "and if uponthe Examination we do not find full cause to pronounce ourselves Unre-generate, we are to come, tho' we have many Eears, whether we be in-deed Regenerate or no." The principle that worshipers may take commu-nion if certain they are not wra-egenerate did prove effective in filling outthe communion table of the North Church. One church member, JosephGreen, took to heart Mather's rule that, as he put it, "if a person could notconclude themselves to be unconverted they ought to approach," andfound that Mather's Companion "so moved me to come to the Lords tablethat I began to think of closing wholly with Jesus Christ." However practi-cal, Mather's principle of "Probable" regeneration had little in commonwith the endless wrestling, doubts, and devotions he had undergone inhis youthful closure with Christ, or with the exacting admissions stan-dards of the earlier New England churches.

The acceptance of the Halfway Covenant by the North Church coin-cided with the ending of the Salem trials. The new court appointed byPhips met in Salem in January 1693, and using a different method oftreating spectral evidence, acquitted forty-nine of the fifty-two personsunder trial. The king's Attorney General advised Phips that the remainingthree should also be cleared. Stoughton, however, signed a warrant fortheir execution. Openly at odds with Stoughton now, Phips sent a re-prieve, which so enraged Stoughton that he refused to sit longer on thebench. By February 21, Phips felt confident enough that the witchcraftcrisis was over to write home that the elimination of spectral evidencehad "dissipated the black cloud that threatened this Province with de-struction."

Now Cotton Mather's face-to-face engagement with the invisible worldcould begin.

On November 29, with the Salem trials suspended, Cotton Mather tookseveral people to keep a day of prayer with a seventeen-year-old energu-men named Mercy Short. An orphan, she had been redeemed from Indi-

ans in the east, who had killed her father, mother, brother, and sister, andcarried her captive to Canada. In the summer of 1692 she was sent on anerrand to the Boston prison, where the convicted Sarah Good, awaitingexecution, asked her for a little tobacco. Mercy threw a handful of shav-ings at her, saying, "That's Tobacco good enough for you." Good cursedher, producing fits that disappeared and recurred for several months.Mercy seems to have been taken in by a family in Mather's neighborhood,in the "Haunted Chamber" of whose house groups of five to fifty personscame to fast, pray, or simply observe her possession. When Mather arrivedon November 29 she lay insensible, but when he began preaching onMark 9:29—"And he said unto them, This kind can come forth by noth-ing, but by prayer and fasting"—she sprang at him and tore a page out ofhis Bible.

With the trials ending, Mather felt reluctant to publicize the case.Although he wrote and apparently circulated an account of it, entitled "ABrand Pluck'd out of the Burning," he did not publish the manuscript, forMercy Short provided much information that confirmed the necessity andjustice of the trials. She gave fresh evidence against Sarah Good and Mar-tha Carrier, corroborating evidence that French and Indians attendedwitch meetings to "concert the methods of ruining New England," newsthat the devil planned to burn all Boston, and vindication of the judges'use of spectral evidence. Even in his manuscript Mather forbore commenton Mercy Short: "such is the froward, flouting sidred [cidered, i.e.,soured], and proud Humour, whereunto the people are now Enchanted,no man in his Wits would fully expose his Thoughts unto them, till thecharms which enrage the people are a little better Dissipated."

Yet Mercy Short's possession had several unique features that Mathercould not ignore. Her devils, like those of the Goodwin children and theSalem girls, pinched and scorched her, and showed their contempt forthe ministry by stopping her mouth and ears during prayer, attacking herwith special violence when she attended Mather's church. But MercyShort was not merely afflicted: she seemed borne to Hell itself. The devilscut off her sight and hearing from the visible world and routed them intodirect communion with the Powers of Darkness, her open but unrecep-tive eyes visualizing only "the Hellish Harpies that were now flutteringabout her." Cast into Outer Darkness she argued tremendously with hertormentors: "Oh You horrid Wretch! You make my very Heart cold withinme. It is an Hell to me, to hear You speak so! Are you God? No, be gone,you Devil! Don't pester me any more with such horrid Blasphemies!" InMercy Short, haunted by evil angels and tortured by cruciating fires,

Mather beheld the very state of the damned itself. In other ways tooMercy brought him and the other spectators close up to the invisibleworld. Once when invisible flames flashed on her the room smelled ofbrimstone; when devils stuck pins in her, "those we took out, with Wonderment"; when a hot iron plunged down her throat, we saw the skinfetch'd off her Tongue and Lips."

These and many other drawings-near to the realm of spirit led Matherto further pneumatological speculations, for instance that long fasts were"strangely Agreeable" to persons who "have something more than Ordi-nary to do with the Invisible World." His most far-reaching speculationconcerned the presence in Mercy's room of "a Substance that seem'd likea Cat, or Dog," experienced by several onlookers as invisible but palpa-ble. In trying to explain this quasi-material presence he invoked a con-cept that would, we shall see, fascinate him all his life: the view that spiritcontains "an Innate Power by which it can attract suitable matter out of allThings for a Covering or Body, of a proportionable Form and Nature toitself." He had already used this concept in Wonders of the InvisibleWorld io expand the traditional understanding of witchcraft as a diaboliccovenant: " Witchcraft seems to be the Skill of Applying the Plastic Spiritof the World, unto some unlawful purposes, by means of a Confederacywith Evil Spirits."

The notion of a plastic spirit—essentially an old idea new-named,similar to classical ideas of a vegetative soul—had the allegiance of near-ly every important thinker in England at the time. In effect the last holdon the supernatural, it appealed to those who, like Mather, recognizedthe new mechanistic picture of nature but clung to Christian belief. Plas-tic spirit was a DNA-like program for matter, an immaterial agent pervad-ing the universe, creating and upholding animated substances as a sort ofsurrogate of God, whom it at once involved in and disengaged from run-ning the universe. Instead of overseeing the creation and growth of everyleaf or ant, God imbued the universe with the plastic spirit, a vital forceacting for ends God assigned it, but not conscious of so acting. Matherrecognized that the concept in effect explained one unknown by anotherand could be attacked. Yet it was something to go on, and as an interme-diary between the visible and invisible worlds it offered a satisfyinglymaterialistic explanation of the means by which devils could take materi-al shapes.

Just as important, Mercy Short brought Mather information that thedevils had laid designs against him. She revealed that at one of theirmeetings the witches used a Catholic book of devotion, written in

French, fetched from his own study. When he examined the book hefound to his surprise a leaf of it doubled over. A night or two later he leftthe book on a table in his study, careful to see that every page lay flat, yetnext morning he found three pages unaccountably folded. A common-place of demonology held that the devil most plagues the best men. Therebukes of his playmates had taught Mather as much in childhood, butsince the time of the Goodwin case he had come to feel with increasingcertainty that the devils had chosen him as a special victim of their wrath.Even before he said so himself, he heard it remarked during the Salemoutbreak that the assault of evil angels was "intended by Hell, as a partic-ular Defiance, unto my poor Endeavours, to bring the Souls of men untoHeaven." He had spent a day virtually every week during the summer ofthe trials in a private fast, asking God for both a good issue from theamazements of Salem and for his own preservation "from the Malice andPower of the evil Angels." In August, after the wildly spreading Andoveraccusations, he twice raised to one of the judges, John Foster, the possi-bility of God permitting "such a terrible calamity to befall myself as that aspecter in my shape should so molest my neighbourhood as that they canhave no quiet."

On March 28, 1693, the devils assaulted Cotton Mather lethally. Be-tween four and five in ihe morning, Abigail gave birth to the couple's firstson, whom they named Increase. The infant looked comely and heartybut its bowels were obstructed, preventing the elimination of feces. Un-named correctives were made but the infant languished "in its Agonies"until the night of April 1, when it died. An autopsy disclosed that, inMather's words, the "lower End of the Rectum Intestinum, instead ofbeing Musculous, as it should have been, was Membranous, and altogeth-er closed up." The imperforate anus, he felt, gave "great Reason to sus-pect a Witchcraft." A few weeks before her delivery, Abigail had beenaccosted by "an horrible Spectre, in our Porch, which Fright caused herBowels to turn within her."

Mather may have expected some tragedy to befall him, for the specterswhich tormented Mercy Short boasted of having frightened Abigail, "inhopes, they said, of doing Mischief unto her Infant at least, if not unto theMother" But to Mather the most remarkable and portentous feature ofMercy Short's case concerned her deliverance. In addition to the evilangels buzzing about her she was attended by another spirit. It neverbecame visible, or more audible than a whisper; rather it communicated"chiefly by an Impulse, most powerfully and sensibly making Impres-sions upon her Mind." Mather compared it to the spirit New Found-

landers call "White-Hat," which before a dangerous storm appeared onshore crying "Hale up!"

Mercy's "Wonderful Spirit" told her how to answer the devils' tempta-tions and assured her she would triumph. It induced her to leaf through aBible randomly and alight at the most pertinent possible place, and toldher that on Thursday evening, March 16, between nine and ten o'clock,she would be delivered. Mather, present that evening, reported that thespecters tried all night to torture her, but could not; she was "Hedged bysome unseen Defence." When at last, in the name of Christ, she bid thedevils be gone, "they flew away Immediately, striking another youngWoman down for Dead upon the Floor as they went along." Her troublersnever returned. In January 1694, she was admitted to the North Church infull communion, not only depossessed, that is, but having experiencedgrace.

Such good angels as assisted Mercy Short, Mather noted, had madethemselves known during some important European witchcraft cases aswell. During the notorious outbreak at Mohra, Sweden, bewitched chil-dren talked of being forbidden to carry out the devil's commands by a"White Angel." Good angels lingered in the background at Salem also,where one of the afflicted girls testified to seeing "a man in white, withwhom she went into a Glorious Place . . . where was no Light of the Sun,much less of Candles, yet was full of Light and Brightness, with a greatMultitude in White Glittering Robes."

Mather began longing for communion with good angels himself.Around two and a half months after the depossession of Mercy Short, hekept a fast day whose special purpose was to petition for angelic favors.He asked God "please to grant unto me, the Enjoyment of those Angeli-cal Kindnesses and Benefits, which use to be done by His Order, for HisChosen Servants." Wary of slipping into an antinomian disregard forScripture, sermons, and other means provided by God for human worshipand understanding, he cautiously asked for only the angelical assistancesmentioned in Scripture as belonging to the elect, although in someheightened form, "in a Manner and Measure, more Transcendent, thanwhat the great Corruptions in the generality of Good Men, permittedthem to be made Partakers of." He also promised that if granted anydirect angelical communication he would not forsake the written Word,but on the contrary would contemplate it more reverently than before.And he would be discreet, concealing "with all prudent Secrecy, theExtraordinary Things, which I may perceive done for me by the Angels,who love Secrecy in their Administrations." Having prayed and resolved,

he wrote in his diary: "I do now believe, that some great Things are to bedone for me, by the Angels of God."

Mather's prayers for communication with angels were highly unusualfor a Puritan. Reformed tradition of course maintained that angels exist-ed, and he often spoke of their nature and function to his congregation.Like evil angels, good angels, as he described them, are "Spiritual andRational Substances," forming a mighty host, "Ten thousand times TenThousand." In heaven they throng around the throne of Christ, serving asministers to His pleasure, having in custody the souls of departed Saints,who with quiet expectation await the restoration of their bodies. Whenthey fly to earth they perform many of the same tasks as evil angels, but inreverse, curing diseases evil angels may spread, guarding the faithfulsome evil angels molest. As regents of the Prince of the kings of the earth,they mobilize decisive political events: "When Monarchs fall, and Nationsand Empires have Amazing Changes brought upon them, the Angels ofGod accomplish it." Especially they love to visit places of secret prayer, ason the other side it tortures devils to be there. So earth, like heaven,teems with good angels, invisible but ever present.

While Mather's views on good angels were entirely traditional, hishope for close communion with them was not. Since the time of Christ,according to the general Reformed position, good angels, but not evilangels, had ceased to appear. Increase Mather himself argued strenuouslythat although the angelic ministry continues, "it is an unwarrantable anda very dangerous thing, for men to wish, that they might see, and that theymight converse with Angels." Indeed Richard Baxter considered the non-appearance of angels a boon, for such appearances invite idolatry, fear,and error: angels "act according to their spiritual nature, without deceit;and they serve us without any terrible appearances . . . whereas if theyappeared to us in visible shapes, we might easily be affrighted, confound-ed, and left in doubt, whether they were good angels indeed or not." Theproblem of distinguishing movements of good spirits from those of evilspirits—St. Paul's diakrisispneumafon or spiritual discernment—particu-larly argued against the desire for angelic communion. Converse withangels, Baxter warned, was very probably "converse with Devils that areTransformed into seeming Angels of Light."

However it risked mistaking diabolical imposture for angelic visita-tion, Mather's hope of receiving "great Things" from the good angels wasquickly realized. One Sabbath about a month after his special day ofprayer, he went to preach on an island in Boston Harbor, to some troopsfrom a warship returned from the West Indies. Enroute to the island

aboard Governor Phips's barge he became "vehemently sick." His companions insisted that he return to Boston, and as soon as he came homehe recovered. It turned out that his sudden illness may haw rescued himfrom death. The troops he nearly visited were stricken with yellow fever,which became epidemic in Boston: "had I gone, and Conversed amongSo Infectious a Company," he wrote, "it would probably haw Cost me myLife, as it proved Mortal unto very many others of my Neighbours." He fellhe knew, too, how to interpret his deliverance: "I believe, 't was a GoodAngel, which there struck me sick."

Mather made another surprising journey the first week in September,to Salem. He hoped to collect material there for an ambitious new book,Magnalia Christi Americana, and to help preserve the trial record, so thatthe "complete History" of the recent witchcraft might not be lost. For thesake of public peace he had kept largely to himself confirming evidenceof the justice of the trials, which now was reinforced. While in Salem hespoke with a woman named Carver, who had been strangely visited by"some shining Spirits, which were good Angels, in her opinion of them."He kept secret some things she intimated, but recorded in his diary herassurance that a new storm of witchcraft would break out, for the purposeof chastising the "Iniquity that was used in the wilful Smothering andCovering of the Last." Many who had fiercely opposed the discovery ofthe Salem witches, she said, would at last be convinced. Once again theevil angels assaulted Mather. He had taken with him three sermons topreach in Salem but they were "stolen," under circumstances "that I amsomewhat satisfied, The Spectres, or Agents in the invisible World, werethe Robbers"

As if in fulfillment of Mrs. Carver's prophecy, when Mather returned toBoston he found that a pious young woman in his congregation, MargaretRule, had become "horribly arrested by evil Spirits." Her specters boastedof having stolen his sermon notes but confessed they could not suppressthem. (The notes were returned to him on October 5, although in eigh-teen separate quarters of sheets found scattered about the streets ofLynn.) Margaret Rule's afflictions lasted more than five weeks, duringwhich Mather assisted her and prayed for her deliverance as a sister of hisflock. Among other things her tormentors tried to get her to sign a thickred book (narrow but about a cubet long), and "before a very NumerousCompany of Spectators" once levitated her to the ceiling. Another timespectators thought they saw something stir on her pillow; a man set hishand there and, to his horror, believed he felt, but could not see, "aliving Creature, not altogether unlike a Rat."

In its other manifestations, Margaret Rule's affliction resembled MercyShort's, including the appearance to her of "a wonderful Spirit, in Whiteand bright Raiment, with a Face unseen." Comfortingly it stood by herbedside, counselling her to keep faith in God and resist the temptationsof the evil angels. The spirit also bid her consider Mather her father, andobey him, "for he said, the Lord had given her to me." Mather's severalpneumatological experiments had convinced him that an expulsion ofdemons could not be achieved until the holding of a third fast; whenRule's miseries had lasted more than five weeks, the white spirit notifiedher that Mather had now kept a third fast, and said: "be of good cheer youshall speedily be delivered." The evil angels as they approached her nowfound themselves forced to recoil, unable to stick pins in their puppets.Rule could see their "Black Master" strike and kick them, "like an Over-seer of so many Negro's" until tiring of their useless attempts they saidfuriously, "Well you shant be the last," and flew from the room.

It was probably during the possession of Margaret Rule—betweenroughly September 10 and the end of October, 1693—that there occurredto Cotton Mather "Res Mirabilis Et Memoranda,''a strange and memora-ble thing. He recorded it in Latin, on a separate page of his diary, proba-bly because of his earlier promise to respect the angels' love of secrecy.But he probably also wished to conceal the account from others. For thisexperience—although it far surpassed in intensity his many castings-outof demons, and although after long seeking it at last introduced him tothe invisible world himself—this experience contained the greatest pos-sibility of self-deception.

Mather wrote: Post Fusas, maximis cum Ardoribus, IejuniisquePreces—After outpourings of prayer, with the utmost fervor and fasting—apparuit angelus, qui Vultum habuit solis instar Meridiani Micantem—there appeared an Angel, whose face shone like the noonday sun—Cae-tera Humanum, at prorsus imberbem: Caput magnifica Tiara obvolu-turn;—He was completely beardless, but in other respects human, hishead encircled by a splendid tiara;—In Humeris, Alas:—On his shoulderswere wings:—Vestes deinceps Candidas et Splendidas; Togam nemp'e Ta-larem: et Zonam circa Lumbos, orientalium cingalis non absimilem.—His garments were white and shining; his robe reached to his ankles; andabout his loins was a belt not unlike the girdles of the peoples of the East.

The angel that appeared to Mather explained that he had been sent byChrist to answer cujusdam Juvenis precibus—the prayers of a certainyouth—and to bear back his reply. Many things the angel told him Matherthought it improper to transcribe. But among other things not to be for-

gotten the angel prophesied the great work he would do lor the churchin Revolutionibus jam Appropinquantibus—in the revolutions now athand. He declared that the destiny of this youth was best expressed In thewords of the prophet Ezekiel. Mather wrote down the texts of Ezekiel 313, 4, 5, 7, and 9 as spoken to him by the angel, a prophecy of fruitfulness,power, and fame:

Behold, he was a Cedar in Lebanon, with fair branches, and with a Shadowing Shroud, and of an High Stature, and his Top was among the ThickBoughs. The waters made him great, the Deep Set him up on High with herRit'ers running about his plants. His Height was Exalted above all theTrees of the Field, and his Boughs were multiplied, and his Branchesbecame Long, because of the multitude of waters, when he shot forth.

Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the Length of his Branches, for hisRoot was by the Great Waters. Nor was any Tree in the Garden of God likeunto him, in his Beauty. I have made him fair by the multitude of hisBranches, so that all the Trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God,envied him.

Interpreting the text for him as it applied to his future, the angel ex-plained that the lengthening of the tree's branches referred to de Librisab hoc fuvene componendis et non tantum in America, sed etiam inEuropa, publicandis—the books to be composed and published by thisyouth, not only in America, but also in Europe.

The appearance of the figure whose shoulders were wings left Matherfeeling both astonished and perplexed. Domine Jesu!, he wrote, Quidsibivult haec Res tarn Extraordinaria? Lord Jesus! What is the meaning ofthis marvel? Servum Tuum Indignissimum, a most unworthy servant, heprayed to be delivered and defended from the wiles of the devil.

However extraordinary, Cotton Mather's angelic visitation seems com-prehensible, even inevitable. It climaxed years of ever closer contact withthe invisible world, beginning with the two-and-a-half-year-old's wish to"go see God," through his adolescent closure with Christ, his grapplingwith Martha Goodwin's invisible chains, the diabolic death of his mal-formed infant. The visitation may have been more immediately inducedby Mather's preceding period of fervent prayer and fasting, since extremesensory deprivation, as in persons locked in a room or adrift at sea, canproduce hallucinations. Mather himself remarked on a connection be-tween fasting and supernormal experience in Mercy Short's case, and helater wrote guardedly that he knew "Certain Measures" which might

produce "Amazing Acquaintance with the Angelical Assistances."

As a Puritan, also, Cotton Mather was born into a society that daily feltthe nearness of the invisible world and wove magical and supernaturalnotions into the very texture of his thinking, beginning in childhood. Hisparticular childhood may have specially shaped him for a visitation, foradult beliefs in ghosts, spirits, and other supernatural beings sometimebegin in childhood fantasizing about absent parents, such a parent asIncrease often threatened to be and often was. It seems significant thatthe time of his visitation, the fall of 1693, coincided with an again re-newed prospect of Increase's return to England as an agent for Massachu-setts, at the suggestion of Governor Phips. When Increase prayed aboutthe matter, he himself received extraordinary suggestions that he must goabroad, suggestions he considered "either divine or Angelical." As theseimpressions lasted, he started a course of reading on angels, and aroundMarch began preaching an impressive series of sermons on angelology,lasting into February 1694, on which Cotton took twenty-three pages ofnotes. While angels were intimating to Increase Mather that he shouldleave Boston, an angel appeared to his son predicting that his lengthen-ing branches would reach Europe.

Like the demons who denounced ministers through the mouths ofteen-aged energumens, the figure whose shoulders were wings spokeCotton Mather's own thoughts. Among other things, the angel gave ex-pression to the "ambitious Affectation of Praeheminencies" that had trou-bled him since youth, the much censored longing for applause and famewhich the childlike view he maintained of himself helped restrain. Math-er's need to demonstrate copious productivity appears as early as hisyouthful stammer, of course, and all of his writings teem with images ofsize. The angel merely articulated these while omitting the guilty re-proofs that otherwise accompanied them, forecasting that a "certainyouth" would enjoy some enormous potency: he would be set on high,his height exalted above all the trees of the field, his branches becomelong because of the multitude of waters when he shot forth. ExplainingEzekiel's prediction of the "greatness, in the Length of his Branches," asreferring to the books Mather would publish not only in America but alsoin Europe, the angel in effect promised him a transatlantic penis.

Mather's need at this time for reassurance against his feelings of little-ness may have been due not only to the renewed prospect of his father'sreturn to England but also to mounting criticism of his activities. Alreadyunder attack for his behavior during the trials and for his "reviled Book,"he drew added criticism for his recent labors to depossess Mercy Short

and Margaret Rule and for his continued preaching about devils. He deserved it, too, because now he acted on his own, without governmentcoercion or the pressure of confused loyalty, having come to believe thathe had conspired in obstructing justice. He had always warned againstreleasing the names of persons identified by the afflicted as their spectraltormentors. But he now also believed that some specters, identified bypersons who had become afflicted since the trials ended, representedgenuine witches. And he worried that his extreme caution had led him"to Sin in what I have done, such have been the Cowardice and Fearful-ness whereunto my regard unto the dissatisfactions of other People hasprecipitated me." Thus he continued to withhold names while feeling"able to Convict some such Witches as ought to Die."

As Mather usually did when his judgment and his inclination conflict-ed, he adopted an inflammatory compromise. Although he accused noone by name, for eighteen months after the trials ended he kept alludingin his sermons to "the matchless Enchantments and Possessions, thathave abounded in our Neighborhood" and kept warning that "the DEVIL,is more desirous to Regain poor New England, than any one AmericanSpot of Ground." His remarks evidently provoked outrage, for he speaksin various places of the "cursed Reproaches'' of "this unworthy, ungodly,ungrateful People" or of the "hard representations wherewith some 111Men have given my conduct." The hostility toward him confounded hisbelief that he continued to act with enormous restraint for the sake ofpublic peace, doing far less to expose witches than he could or should. Itplainly touched on old, sore feelings of ingratitude, which the angelicvisitation, and its promise of future honor and potency, may have allayed."The very Angels of God," he told his congregation, "they take noticehow we do acquit ourselves under any of our Trials. It is no matter wheth-er our Neighbours dosee our virtuous Carriage or no; Gods Angels, theysee it."

Mather's most vigorous and persistent accuser was the otherwise ob-scure Robert Calef, probably a merchant, clothier, or dyer with whomMather had some earlier acquaintance. However socially inconspicuous,it was Calef who had correctly observed in Mather the dangerous ambi-dexter habit of "carrying both fire to increase, and water, to quench, theconflagration." Calef saw the Salem trials as an unmitigated horror, a"tremendous judgment of God upon this country," the trial methods such"that most would have chosen to have fallen into the hands of the barba-rous enemy, rather than . . . into the hands of their brethren in churchfellowship." And now, as Calef saw this sequel to the Salem trials, now

after the greatest blemish to religion that ever befell New England, afterthe governor with the crown's approval had stopped the executions, afterit began being acknowledged that a mistake had been made, now CottonMather was sitting beside Margaret Rule surrounded by spectators, inquir-ing "Who is it that Afflicts you?"

On September 13—near the probable time of Mather's angelic en-counter—Calef visited Rule's house, drawn by curiosity "and so much the

rather because it was reported Mr. M would be there that Night."

He found the energumen lying still and speaking little, attended by thirtyor forty people, including both Mathers. Shocked by what followed, hewrote out the same night an account highly discrediting to Cotton, whotries to get Rule to name her specters publicly, asks her leading ques-tions, and lewdly feels her body:

. . . they being sat, the Father on a Stool, and the Son upon the Bedside byher, the Son began to question her, Margaret Rule, how do you do? then apause without any answer. Question. What, do there a great many Witchessit upon you? Answer. Yes. Q. Do you not know that there is a hard Master?Then she was in a Fit; He laid his hand upon her Face and Nose, but, as hesaid, without perceiving Breath; then he brush'd her on the Face with hisGlove, and rubb'd her Stomach (her breast not covered with the Bed-clothes) and bid others do so too. . . . Q. Who is it that Afflicts you? A. Iknow not, there is a great many of them (about this time the Father ques-tion'd if she knew the Spectres? An attendant said, if she did she wouldnot tell; the Son proceeded) Q. You have seen the Black-man, hant you?A. No. Reply; I hope you never shall. Q. You have had a Book offered you,hant you? A. No. Q. The brushing of you gives you ease, don't it? A. Yes.She turned her self and a little Groan'd. Q. Now the Witches Scratch youand Pinch you, and Bite you, don't they? A. Yes. Then he put his handupon her Breast and Belly, viz. on the Clothes over her, and felt a Livingthing, as he said, which moved the Father also to feel, and some others; Q.Don't you feel the Live thing in the Bed? A. No. . . .

Calef secured two persons willing to verify his account, which he showedto several of his and of Mather's friends.

This "lying Libel," as Mather called it, presented him doing exactlywhat he strove mightily not to do, disparaged him for discharging thesolemn obligations of his ministry, and produced "Paroxysms in theTown." According to Calef, Mather made the episode "Pulpit news,"called him "one of the worst of Liars," and threatened to have him arrest-ed for slander. Mather's indignation must in this instance have been part-ly justified. Calef s memory cannot have served him well enough to write

up at home, hours later, what poses as a verbatim transcript of the dialogue between Rule and the Mathers, occupying nearly two closely printed pages. Just the same, Mather seems to haw been uncertain how torespond. Calef was brought before a justice of the peace on a warrantissued by Increase and Cotton Mather, to answer at the next court tor''Scandalous Libels." But when Calef appeared no one appeared againsthim, and he was dismissed. Why Mather dropped the suit is unclear.Always wary of his tendency to blurt out resentment, he perhaps came tofeel that he had overreacted in bringing the suit: "I did at first," he con-fided in his diary, "it may be too much resent the Injuries of that Libel."

Instead Mather indignantly attacked Calef's account in a lengthy letterto him on January 15, 1694. Calef's "pretended Narrative," he said, pre-sented nothing about him or his father either truly or fairly. Where Calefportrayed them as coaxing new accusations from Rule, they on the con-trary always charged her to "rather Die than tell the Names of any whomshe might Imagine that she knew." Where Calef attributed to them suchleading questions as "how many Witches sit upon you?" they on the con-trary never used and deliberately avoided such questions. Especially,where Calef said that Cotton Mather "rub'd Rule's stomach, her Breastnot being covered," spectators could confirm the charge to be "a gross (ifnot a doubled) Lie," a lie contrived to besmirch him. You "cannot butknow," he told Calef, "how much this Representation hath contributed,to make People believe a Smutty thing of me."

Calef, however, retracted nothing. Replying to Mather's letter threedays later, he reiterated his accusations but denied having said that Rule'sbreast was uncovered. Mather in paraphrasing his account, Calef said,omitted "those material words 'with the Bed-Clothes'"—an unfair retort,since Calef s account clearly implies that Rule was partly naked. The sug-gestion of prurience, he added, was created by Mather himself, in public-ly discoursing about the event at dinner at the home of Governor Phips.Chiefly Calef indicted Mather for evading the potentially explosive socialimplications of the episode, "as if I were giving Characters, Reflections,and Libels, etc. concerning your self and Relations."

Mather and Calef continued their dispute through an exchange oflengthy letters and documents lasting into 1696, debating in detail manymore pneumatological issues than can be discussed here. The entire epis-tolary duel evinces class antagonism: Mather the Harvard-educated minis-terial son of a prestigious family writing to a semi-literate clothier with acondescension that makes evident his suppressed contempt, Calef writ-ing with a cuttingly exaggerated respect occasionally breaking into open

denunciation that makes equally plain his irritation with Mather's as-sumption of superiority. Although Calef's expression of his ideas is oftenelliptical and murky, it conveys, sometime eloquently, his conviction thatat Salem innocent people had been legally murdered, and that by con-tinuing to cast out alleged demons and to promulgate his pneumatology,Mather was brewing new Salems.

On his side of the debate, Calef hammered with impassioned insis-tence at a fundamental point which he pressed Mather, and other Bostonministers, to answer. Shifting his focus from spectral evidence to an issueprominent in earlier witchcraft literature—that of God's permission ofwitchcraft—he accused the judges of attributing to human beings, andpunishing them for, powers belonging only to devils or to God. Thejudges acted on the principle that a witch can commission the devil toafflict mortals; but for Calef "only the Almighty that sets bounds to hisrage . . . can commission him to hurt and destroy." With Mather moreparticularly in mind, he also challenged the notion that devils can invisi-bilize matter. His letters to Mather are pervaded by scorn for his credu-lousness and gleeful taunts for his memorable statement that with hisown hands he had knocked off Martha Goodwin's invisible chains. Overand over with grinding sarcasm, Calef proposed to Mather that the meth-ods used to defeat supposed witches savored of witchcraft themselves,such as "knocking off invisible chains."

Calef kept needling Mather to deal with his "Fundamentals," butMather ignored him until February 1695, when he sent a thirty-two pagetreatise on witchcraft. Written as an epistle to someone else, as if hedisdained addressing Calef directly, it was his last substantial work on theseven-year-long invasion of spirits. He devoted about a third of the trea-tise to elaborating a "preliminary Position": that by their fall, the evilangels did not lose all their angelical powers. He offered both scripturaland "experimental"'proofs—"the pinches that I have seen given to them;the Blisters that I have seen Rais'd on them"—and concluded by explain-ing manifestations of the invisible world, more assuredly than before, interms of the plastic spirit:

That there is a Plastic Spirit permeating of the World, which very power-fully operates upon the more corporeal parts of it: and . . . the Angels,both good and bad, are on the account of their Natures, the most Able ofall creatures, to Apply that Spirit unto very many and mighty purposes.

He devoted another third or more of the treatise to such miscellaneousquestions as the form of witch-covenants, and most of the rest to the

question of God's justice in permitting diabolic attacks on mankind.

But to Calef's fundamental question, whose importance he acknowledged, Mather allowed about one page of obfuscation, evasion, and con-tradiction. Indeed, Calef's question exposed a serious confusion in Mather's understanding of the invisible world. If, as Mather remarked himself,"The Devils can do no Evil, without a special permission from our GreatGod," how could mortal witches "Commissionate" them? In his sketchyanswer, Mather agreed with Calef that God limits the devils' power andmust permit them to act. But he suggested, in characteristically elasticlanguage, that "It seems possible that the Devils having a sufficient andantecedent Permission to do mischiefs may yet Hook in cursed Witches toconsent with them." As Calef later pointed out to Mather, if the devils"Hook in" the witches then the witches do not commission them. Matheralso proposed that if witchcraft is the "Skill of Applying the plastic Spiritof the World unto unlawful Purposes," then the witches' consent as muchcontributes to the effects wrought by the devils as the longings of a preg-nant woman, by means of the plastic spirit also, contribute to shaping thefetus. Here Mather simply forgot or disregarded his own earlier defini-tion, quoted in the last paragraph, which assigns the power of using theplastic spirit not to witches but to devils. Finally, Mather speculated thatGod "seems to have made a Grant unto those Destroying Spirits, thatwhen they are with such and such wicked Ceremonies called for, theyshall make a mischievous Descent." This very slippery statement of whatGod "seems to" have done glides by the real question of whether, havingmade their descent, the devils also carry out the witches' desires. In thisfeeble, final show of answering Calef, Mather managed to be no morelucid or persuasive than in Wonders of the Invisible World.

Mather loaned his treatise to Calef with the condition that he return itin two weeks and promise not to copy it. After reading it, Calef repliedthat he did not wonder at Mather's stipulations, considering its "crudematter and impertinent absurdities." Before returning the manuscript hecovered the margins, in most cases justly, with about a hundred jeeringannotations for Mather's perusal. He accused Mather of begging the ques-tion by bare assertions, of evading it by lengthy discussion of the power offallen angels, and of confusing it by introducing the occult concept ofplastic spirit. In outraged marginalia he spat out his horror over the Salemhangings and slashed Mather for his credulous innocence: "You havetold the world that already in your several books . . . Plastic Spirit, whatsthat. Sure some inkhorn term. ... An easy trick for any Salem hocus toperform . . . turning men to cats and dogs riding a pole through the air,

and the rest of such ridiculous and brutish stuff.... is this worse thanknocking off invisible chains with the hand. . . ."

The good angels who appeared to Mercy Short, Margaret Rule, andMrs. Carver of Salem made their largest descent on Boston in the fall of1694, about a year after Cotton Mather's own visitation. This epilogue tothe Salem trials is very little known, mainly because Mather's diaries for1694 and 1695 are missing, and the events survive only in fragmentaryand sometimes considerably later accounts. But by August 1694, the num-ber of reported visitations, it seems, prompted the Cambridge Associationof ministers to propose for discussion the topic, "Whether angelical visitsby visible appearance to the people of God in these days are whollyceased; or, if not ceased, what are the marks whereby we may distinguishthem from diabolical?"

The counterdescent of good angels apparently coincided with, andperhaps inspired, a religious revival in the North Church. On a single dayin September 1694, Cotton Mather entered in the church records thirteenadmissions to full membership (that is, thirteen recent experiences ofgrace)—exceeding the number of admissions to the church for most en-tire years. (In all of 1695, only eight persons were admitted.) "In theAir," Increase observed the same month, "Angels have been descendingand there making melody to the Lord." The angelic music seems to haverung loudest in October, when there occurred in the North End, Cottonwrote later, "a strange Descent of Shining Spirits, that had upon themgreat marks of their being such Angels as they Declared themselves tobe." The angels told the persons they visited that Increase Mather neednot perplex himself about going to England, for God would bring to passwhat would be most for His Glory, "And the Angels o/GOD will attendhim, wheresoever His Providence may dispose of him.'"

Both Mathers regarded these visitations warily, alert to diabolic impos-ture. In one case a spiritually troubled woman in the North Church ap-plied to Cotton for advice. While in his study she fell into a lifelesstrance, eyes transfixed. When she revived she pointed to a place in theroom where, she said, she had seen a "a most Glorious Appearance of AnAngel in a Shining Apparel." Fearing a trick of the devil, Mather told herto be very cautious. But at a private religious meeting of young womenshe again became entranced and was told, she said, "Our Friend Matheris Apt to doubt we are good Angels, but tell him for to Convince him thatwe are these things, for he'll be here in half an hour, that he's now

136 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COTTON MATHER

Studying Such a Sermon on Such a Text." When Mather arrived tie revealed that he had indeed been thinking of a sermon on that text. Ulti-mately the angels told the woman, however, that because their appearance puzzled Increase Mather, "we will because we loath to grieve him,never visit you any more."

A second young woman in the North Church heard a voice offeringher religious counsel. Cotton Mather at first suspected a "loose Imagina-tion,'" but again learned that the "Invisible Whisperer" disclosed to hersecrets which he knew to be true and she did not. Yet two features of herstory disturbed him. She balked at visiting him as her pastor, and whenshe did visit she developed a strange inability to relate her experiences,suggesting that she was "under the Enchantments of a Spirit who waslothe, I should examine too narrowly his Devices." Also, the spirit re-vealed to her some hidden miscarriages of others and commanded her tospeak with them about their iniquities. Mather knew these persons to beinnocent and foresaw that her accusations would endanger neighborhoodpeace. On balance he concluded the woman's voices "had no AngelicalAspect" and he required her to discountenance the unseen speaker andbe afraid of hearing from him. When the spirit returned next she told it:"I desire no more to bear from you; Mr. Mather says yon are a Devil, andI am afraid you are. If you are an Angel of the Lord, give me a Proof ofit."The spirit did not answer, and never returned, persuading Mather thathis skepticism had aborted a "Begun Witchcraft of the most explicit son."

However cautious about his own and other visitations, Mather neverdoubted that his life had been "wondrously Signalized, by the SensibleMinistry of those Angels." Loath to be guilty of ungratefully neglectingthe angels, as did "the Generality of the Faithful," he kept a day of secretthanksgiving, probably late in 1694, to offer extraordinary praises to Godfor them and obtain "a more Notable Share of their Influence, than hadever yet been granted me." In the morning, aside from singing manyhymns relating to angels, he contemplated with the aid of Scripture theexistence, properties, and relations of the good angels, and the honorowing to them. In the afternoon he searched his diaries for entries con-cerning divine mercies which might have been subordinately executedthrough the operation of angels.

Reinterpreting decisive moments in his life in view of his recent un-derstanding of angelic agency, Mather listed fourteen particular mercies.Among them were the wise parental governance afforded him in child-hood, which "had a Biasvery often given to it, by the Angels of God"; hischildhood preservation from dangers, "by the Angels Looking after me";

LETTERS OF THANKS FROM HELL 137

the kind conduct of his tutors, "which doubtless the Angels influenced";his preservation from epidemical illnesses, "by an Hedge of Angels aboutme." His call to the ministry in so remarkable a place as Boston, too, was"full of Angels." He found many more angelically guided mercies in hislater life also, which he similarly avowed from his study floor with raptur-ous Hallelujahs. In the surprising opening of his "Door of Utterance," inthe "astonishing Impulse" that often impinged on his mind when speakingand writing, in his marriage, family, and household provision, here too "Iwere Blinder than a Stone, if I should not see Angels my Providers."

Nor, ever mindful of repaying gifts, did Cotton Mather fail to considerwhat returns he should make to God for these angelic benefits. A properreturn, he decided, was to become angelical himself, like the angels con-tinually to behold and to admire God's glories, continually to study themysteries of redemption and the approach of the millennium, continuallyto aid the churches of Christ, continually post on God's errands. Indeed heclosed his special day of thanksgiving with something itself "a Little Angel-ical," making a list of poor people in his flock and resolving with somecare to have their necessities relieved against the approaching winter.

The Parter's Portion

Sir William Phips was not John Winthrop. The first royal governor underthe new charter, he had been baptized in adulthood by Cotton Matherand was a member of his congregation; Mather looked for close associa-tion with him. But Phips had spent his life adventurously at sea, andwhatever he imbibed of the piety of the North Church did not extinguishin him the temperament of a corsair.

Six months into his governorship, Phips brawled on Scarlett's Wharfwith a man named Richard Short. Phips was uncommonly tall, as Matherdescribed him, "and Thick as well as Tall, and Strong as well as Thick."Short, at the time Phips called him a liar, was lame in one hand and hadbeen ill in bed for a week. When Short denied being a liar, Phips struckhim with his cane, and when Short fell over a gun, Phips kept strikinghim until his head was fractured. Phips exploded again when he cameacross a customs collector named Brenton unloading seized goods. Ac-cording to one witness, Phips began caning Brenton and pushing himaround the wharf, calling him villain, demanding that he return the goodsimmediately or "he would beat him until he broke his Bones."

The governor treated members of his own government hardly moresubtly. When the Speaker of the Assembly opposed him he declared theman "no more Speaker." The Speaker protested, but Phips stopped him,saying, "I have declared you to be no more Speaker, and so I do not allowyou to speak." Having governed less than three years Phips was orderedhome in 1694 to answer complaints against him, including some £20,000in damages. On November 17, Mather and others accompanied himaboard his yacht as he departed. About three months later he died in

138

London, and the affairs of Massachusetts again passed to a temporary rul-er, the lieutenant governor and former chief justice of the Salem court,William Stoughton.

The unreliability of the government under the new charter was bornein on Mather again by the arrival in May 1699 of the second crown-ap-pointed governor, the Irish peer Lord Bellomont. Except for Andros, hewas the first person to govern Massachusetts as neither a native nor animmigrant. Being also the first who was a nobleman, he received a lavishwelcome—military guard, toasts, drums beating, trumpets sounding, fire-works, colors displayed, ordnance booming, "such a vast Concourse ofpeople," one Bostonian said, "as my poor eyes never saw the like be-fore." Five days later the ministers, hoping for the governor's favor, wait-ed on him as a body. Cotton Mather prepared an address, which Increasehanded to Bellomont; but the governor, Cotton wrote proudly, "immedi-ately gave it back into my Hand; asking me to read it unto him," as he did,requesting Bellomont's goodwill toward the churches and toward lan-guishing Harvard.

Cotton Mather's hope for renewed influence in government proveddoubly short-lived, first because Bellomont quickly came to regard him asgiven "to preach moderation, and not to practice it," then because asgovernor of both New England and New York Bellomont spent only four-teen months of his three-year reign in Boston. In his absence, the govern-ment again devolved on Stoughton. Stoughton himself died in 1701, how-ever, and after fifteen years of bobbing and flux the government ofMassachusetts passed, again temporarily, to the Council.

The succession of brief and sometime exotic governments showedthat in one of its concerns the old mentality of invasion had not beenunrealistic, for the loss of the charter and the accession of William andMary7 were transforming the meaning of New England. As the impositionof royal government began being defined in practical political terms, lo-cal politics were reshaped along English lines, and Massachusetts adjust-ed itself to the tone and demands of the mother country. Mather waskeenly aware that an exclusivist Christian Israel could no longer exist,and he tried strenuously to adapt the New England churches to thesedrastically changed circumstances. Despite his cries about the devil re-claiming a uniquely sanctified New England for his own, in the decadefollowing the trials he continually proclaimed that New Englanders werenot a special purified remnant but were, above all, loyal colonial English-men. "It is no Little Blessing of God, that we are a part of the English

Nation" he told the General Assembly in L700. "Our Dependence on,and Relation to, that brave Nation, that man deserves not the Name of anEnglish man, who despises it."

In this spirit of reunion, Mather also proclaimed New England Con

gregationalism restored to the Church of England, and sought a rapprochement with other English Protestants, particularly PresbyteriansThe two sects had long been divided by their view of a national churchPresbyterians viewed local congregations as part of the Church of England, responsible to church courts; Congregationalists insisted on theindependence of local churches, joined only by informal fellowship andadvice. But upon William's accession, leaders of the two groups met inLondon, with the active participation of Increase Mather, and tried toeffect a union. They produced in 1691 a document that demonstratedtheir agreement on basic articles of faith and abolished the distinctionbetween them: Heads of Agreement Assented to by the United Ministers Inand About London: Formerly called Presbyterian and Congregational.Cotton Mather joined in giving up the identity of Congregationalism,whose name had been conferred by his own grandfather John Cotton.The Nonconformist churches, he wrote in 1700, "have needlessly beensometimes Distinguished into Presbyterian and Congregational, but arenow, I hope, losing the Distinction, in that more Christian Name of Unit-ed Brethren."

Mather moved even further from Congregational exclusivism in re-sponse to King William's Toleration Act of 1689. The Act profoundly af-fected English Nonconformists, for in legally recognizing their right toworship it left them without a cause to fight, sapped their zeal, and spedtheir decline. In abolishing religious persecution, the Act in effect alsomade New England Puritanism unnecessary, for it removed what had im-pelled the first settlers to flee old England. The Toleration Act embold-ened in Mather a latent ecumenism. Not long after his father's return fromEngland he had run "the Hazard of much Reproach" by preaching to theGeneral Assembly against civil punishment for conscientious religiousdissent, making him, he believed, "the only Minister Living in the Land,that have testified against the Suppression of Heresy, by Persecution."

To show himself a true Englishman, respectful of English law, Matherwould now no more regard Episcopalians as a danger to New England,any more than Episcopalians after the Toleration Act would regard Non-conformists as a threat to them. Indeed he took pleasure in observing thatthe New England churches welcomed Episcopalians and others to tran-sient communion: "we have with delight seen godly Congregationals and

Presbyterians, and Episcopalians, and Antipaedobaptists [i.e., Baptists], allmembers in the same churches; and sitting together without offenceabout their Lesser Differences, at the same Holy Table." Beginningaround 1692 he began urging Congregationalists not to "Monopolize allGodliness to our own Little Party," since Christians who keep differingmodes of worship can still be in a state of salvation: "every Difference inReligion, does not make a Different Religion. And if we think our ownUnderstandings to be a Standard for all the Rest of Mankind, we docertainly, Think of our selves above what we ought."

While opening Christian Israel to non-Congregationalists and reach-ing beyond it for union with English Presbyterians, Mather also forwardedimportant innovations in the relation of the Congregational churches toeach other. For one, he tried to promote interchurch councils and synods.His desire to strengthen the churches through cooperation was influ-enced by Presbyterian practice and probably by the new charter, whichweakened the churches in depriving them of dependable governmentsupport. In recommending various unions of churches he ventured ondangerous ground, however, for Congregationalism stressed the autono-my of individual churches and viewed overseeing bodies as a movetoward episcopacy and even papacy. Largely because Increase Matherfeared a drift in that direction, it was said, no church synod was held inNew England for forty years.

Yet in an unpublished essay on the utility of synods, written around1699, Cotton Mather professed his "Abhorrence of unaccountable Inde-pendency" in churches and depicted the congregations of New Englandas "bound up" with each other in the "Same Common Interests of Chris-tianity." He recommended that each church respect the advice of promi-nent ministers, pledge to maintain intimate association with otherchurches, and freely account for its practices to any church inquiring afterthem. He also recommended the calling of church councils to consult oninflammatory disputes in individual churches. If the council when calledfailed to reclaim an erring church, it could declare the church unfit forcommunion with other churches and deprive it of the legal privilegesthey enjoyed—for instance, forbidding members of the wayward churchto take communion at other churches. In fact, such councils and assem-blies were multiplying at the turn of the century, and Mather attendedseveral himself in Salem, Marlborough, and other places.

In the same spirit of innovation, Mather also promoted clerical associ-ations. Congregationalists had long mistrusted these also: several NewEngland ministers who gathered fortnightly at one of their homes, Gover-

nor John Winthrop recorded in 1633, met with objections and stirred fearthat they might become a presbytery. On the other hand, many ministersamong Cotton Mather's generation saw in clerical associations a means otreaffirming the importance and independence of their office. In L690twenty-two ministers meeting in Charlestown had founded a CambridgeAssociation of Ministers, modeled after similar groups in England. WithCotton Mather often acting as secretary they met at Harvard even silweeks to discuss religious topics and hear cases from individual churchesor persons. Drawing material from their records, Cotton published ThirtyImportant Cases (1699), in the Preface to which he noted that such meet-ings had been approved by the United Ministers in England, "formerlycalled Presbyterian and Congregational" and encouraged ministers elsewhere to hold regular meetings on the Cambridge model. While recog-nizing that no more than occasional meetings could be expected, he sawno danger, he said, of "overwhelming the Rights of Particular Churchesby Classical Combinations."

Mather also wished clerical groups to test ministerial candidates, toprevent the ordination of the unqualified or fraudulent. Two cases illus-trate the need. The first Mather recounted in a delightful narrative, AWarning to the Flocks (1700), which tells the adventures of a preachernamed Samuel May, who arrived with his wife from England in 1699.May's "Ragged, Wretched, Forlorn Circumstances" at first moved Math-er's compassion. Mather found him work preaching to private religiousmeetings, and soon May had a large following. Soon also, Mather foundhim unable to name a single minister in London. Mather's suspicionsmounted when he received from May a short note containing eighteenmisspellings. He declared May "a BARBER" and prayed that he would beexposed. The chance came when he heard May preach at a private meet-ing and identified his sermon as a plagiarism. May not only denied it butalso induced his followers to requite Mather's defamation of him bythrowing into his house "insolent, bitter, bloody Libels." After May at last"went off with a Stink" to England, several Boston women deposed that ifa young woman became affected by his ministry he spent hours counsel-ing her to lie with him, "which he said, was no Sin, for David and Solo-mon did as much." They need not fear becoming pregnant by him, headded, "for none ever were so.r May's alleged wife turned out to be hismistress, and the impostor himself turned out to be Samuel Axel, a Hamp-shire brickmaker. The case notified churches, Mather said, to beware ofhiring "New Preachers, of whose Endowments and Principles, they havenot had a Reasonable Attestation."

A more dolorous case occurred in Mather's own family. His uncle JohnCotton—the son of the great John Cotton, and his dearest relative sincechildhood—was charged in 1697 with what Samuel Sewall called "Noto-rious Breaches of the Seventh Commandment" or what a Plymouth ship-builder described as "attempting to be too Familiar with one of hisChurch Members Wife." A council of neighboring churches recommend-ed that the Plymouth church dismiss him, as it did. Although greatlydistressed over the "terrible and amazing Circumstances, of my poor Un-cle," Cotton Mather considered the recommendation just. A few monthsafter the dismissal he apparently sent the Cotton family, as he often did,one of his recent publications. But it arrived with an anonymous letter,John Cotton lamented, with "no superscription to it, no inscription nosubscription . . . neither is there a word who sent the Book." The snubhurt the more because he had damaged his standing with the churchcouncil by defending Mather, although one of the council members "verymuch" despised him. (Desolate and confused, John Cotton managed tosecure a ministry in South Carolina. En route he visited his nephew inBoston and "very peremptorily," Cotton Mather said, denied "the most,and the worst" of the charges against him, but in less than a year he wasdead, of an epidemic of yellow fever in Charleston that killed nearly twohundred people.)

In or out of his family such cases worried Mather, and in hopes ofensuring a learned and ethical clergy he published Proposals for the Pres-ervation of Religion in the Churches, by a Due Trial of Them that StandCandidates for the Ministry (1702). Here he recommended giving groupsof ordained ministers a part in the process of candidacy and ordination,otherwise the concern of individual churches. He proposed that everyministerial candidate be examined by and preach before such a group,and obtain from four or five already ordained ministers testimonials to hisknowledge of learned languages, skill in preaching, theological learning,soundness of principle, and ability to refute error. Although concurred inby nearly thirty ministers, Mather's proposals were not adopted. In factthey lay well outside the spirit of primitive New England Congregational-ism, amounting to a crypto-Presbyterianism by which more or less formalpanels of ministers might if not license ministerial candidates, at leastpolice them.

In calling for more frequent church councils and for clerical associa-tions, Mather departed from Congregational principles in the name, ofcourse, of preserving Congregational orthodoxy. The inconsistency is un-comfortable but understandable. It becomes perplexing, however, if one

adds that while calling for a Congregational Presbyterian merger and forhospitality to all Protestant sects, Mather at the very same time continuedto act the part of a Jeremiah, bemoaning and chastising the decline fromthe religion of the Fathers, for example in Things for a Distressed Peopleto Think Upon (1696):

New England once abounded with Heros worthy to have their Lives written, as Copies for future Ages to write after; But, These are Ancient Things'A Public Spirit in all that sustained any Public Office, and a fervent Incli-nation to Do Good, join'd with an Incomparable Ability to do it, once ranthrough New England; But, These are Ancient Things!. . . There seems tobe a shameful Shrink, in all sorts of men among us, from that Greatness,and Goodness, which adorned our Ancestors: We grow Little every way;Little in our Civil Matters, Little in our Military Matters, Little in our Eccle-siastical Matters; we dwindle away, to Nothing. . . .

In fact, during the same years that he forwarded ecumenism and tolera-tion, Mather published more works than ever before on the urgent needfor reformation, aimed at restoring (if it ever existed) a special, spirituallyminded Puritan community of praying families, children who did not playat the rear of the meetinghouse on Sabbaths, boys and girls who shunnedmixed dances, cheerfully obedient servants catechized by caring masters,and sailors who sang psalms instead of bawdy songs.

Mather did not concede, or perhaps could not see, the conflict be-tween his simultaneous calls for openness and exclusiveness. But thediscrepancy has led modern historians to offer directly contradictory in-terpretations of his views in these years. Richard Lovelace, for instance,argues that Mather "put himself on record in favor of toleration in hisearliest published sermons" and that he "seems to have been considera-bly in the vanguard of the conservative leadership of the colony." Con-trarily, Robert Middlekauff writes that Mather's endorsements of tolera-tion in the early 1690s were "undoubtedly insincere" and that he in fact"confined the guarantees of toleration as tightly as possible."

If not insincere, Mather's several innovations may at least have beenpolitic. The demonstration of New England's loyalty to the empire was anold game. Mather's many expressions of loyalty to the crown often camein the presence of crown officials such as Lord Bellomont, and several ofhis ecumenical writings were published in England, perhaps to showNew England's appreciation for William's policy of toleration. Mather hadother compelling reasons for urging a reconciliation with England, in-cluding strong ecumenical tendencies that had long existed within Puri-

tanism (Richard Baxter was a pioneer ecumenist), the hope of regaining avoice in English affairs, the need for allies in the raging struggle againstCatholic Europe and the looming war against rationalism, and his pro-phetic sense, as we shall see, of impending revolutions that would uniteall of Christianity.

It is more likely, however, that Mather's insincerity (or political trim-ming) lay in the other direction, that his simultaneous calls for liberalismand orthodoxy deferred not to English Protestantism but to Boston Puri-tanism. His policy on admission to communion was more liberal than hisfather's, and he may have been genuinely attracted to ecumenism andchurch union but maintained a show of greater orthodoxy than he felt outof respect to his father's ideals. However that may be, he undoubtedly inmany ways enjoyed the more various and cosmopolitan world in partcreated by the new charter. While he deeply respected the WildernessZion of the Fathers, his yearnings for bigness and fame, his lively sympa-thy with new fashions and ideas, and his identification with the morearistocratic and urbane sections of society did not relish the sense ofliving in some isolated city on a hill. Something of unashamed worldli-ness appears in his attitude toward the wearing of large perriwigs, whichbecame fashionable in New England around 1690, as they had in Englandthirty years earlier. The English Puritan William Prynne denounced thosewho "purchase the hairy excrements of some other person," for to himand most other Puritans wigs smacked of effeminacy, pride, and affecta-tion, suggesting Stuart courtiers, theatrical costumes, and old men tryingto look young. Yet in his one surviving portrait Cotton Mather wears aprofuse perriwig, nearly shoulder length. Samuel Sewall considered wigsa profane abomination and was surprised when in 1691 he understoodMather to be defending them in a sermon as "an innocent fashion, takenup and used by the best of men." "I expected not," Sewall said, "to hear avindication of Perriwigs in Boston Pulpit by Mr. Mather."

Sewall's surprise, in what it registers about Cotton Mather, does notdiffer from the contrary interpretations of Mather's ideas offered by mod-ern historians, nor from Robert Calef's earlier perception that Matherbrought both fire to increase and water to quench the conflagration. Infact, hardly a trait of Mather's maturing personality is more striking thanhis preoccupation with seeming irreconcilables and his view of himselfas a peacemaker between warring factions—originating, it seems clear, inhis unsuccessful youthful attempt to settle conflicts in himself, of whichan earlier expression was his stammer. The discrepancy now between histwin attraction to the metropolitan world of London and the world of his

grandfathers indeed seems a continuation of the earlier conflict betweenthe pride and ambition he recognized in himself, and his dutiful wish touse his ministry in God's service alone.

Whether trying to calm contending political factions after the revolt orrunning between Moses and Aaron during the Salem trials, Cotton Mather's conciliatory efforts often brought him enmity from both sides, whathe called the "Parter's Portion." He suspected, as he wrote in BlessedUnions (1692), that his current calls for toleration of rival religious claimsand his attempt to close the gaps between different Protestant sectswould get him the "Parter's Portion" also. That happened, his dole arriv-ing through what he saw as a new invasion of the New England churches.

In another dozen years, Lydia Lee George would become the chiefdelight of Cotton Mather's life, and his greatest torment. But in 1701 shewas the young wife of a prosperous organizer of a new Boston church,concerned that she had spent too much time and thought on her appareland indulged the vanity of vying with others. Reassuringly her twenty-eight-year-old pastor, Benjamin Colman, counseled that her dress suitedher birth, rank, age, and education. He criticized those who equate reli-gion with plainness and "morosely judge all that wear more buttons, thanthey allow themselves." Since she had been brought up to dress richly,and her wealthy husband approved it, he said, "it is not offensive norgrievous to sober Christians: It is not good to indulge scruples too much,for they will grow upon you apace to your great discomfort."

This genial advice typified the young minister, who was known for hiscourtly tenderness toward women, and for powdering his hair. Those whoknew Benjamin Colman invariably depicted him as pious but polished—atall, spare figure neatly dressed, with a fair complexion and kindly mien,notable for his "Politeness and Elegance in Conversation" and his "inimi-tably soft and tuneful" voice—in short, a ministerial man of fashion. Hehad begun life less genteelly. Born in Boston and a member of the NorthChurch, he had his early schooling from Mather's schoolmaster, EzekielCheever, graduated from Harvard in 1692, preached a while at Medford,and added an M.A. in 1695. Shortly after, he went to England where, likemany later Americans, he underwent a sea change. French privateersseized his ship, put him in the hold, and imprisoned him in France. Setfree, he reached England with a few shillings in his pocket, of which aspark in Portsmouth bilked him. Finally settled in London, he preachedthere and in other English cities, attended the conference at which In-

crease Mather worked for the union of Congregationalists and Presbyteri-ans, and wrote a poem on his flirtation with the daughter of the Massa-chusetts agent, Sir Henry Ashurst, comparing her to a candle and himselfto a fly.

A Presbyterian board appointed Colman minister at Bath—a choicesituation because of the resort there of the gentry. In his two years at Bathhe met many fashionable families, including that of the poet "Philomela"(Elizabeth Singer), a "Heavenly maid," as he called her. "Music, poetry,and painting were her three beauties and delights." Upon visiting thefamily's home he versified the paradisal beauty of its grounds, viewingthem as an eligible bachelor:

Such Eden's streams, and banks, and tow'ring groves;Such Eve herself, and such her muse and loves.Only there wants an Adam on the green,Or else all Paradise might here be seen.

Such an Adam Elizabeth's family seem to have desired Colman to be-come. But he responded instead to a call that came in the summer of 1699from the organizers of the new Boston church, inviting him to be theirpastor. Apparently suspecting that opposition to their church might pre-vent his ordination in Boston, they advised him to be ordained by a boardin London. Their advice defied Congregationalist principles, by which aminister could be ordained only by a particular church. But like someother ministers in his generation, Colman saw his identity as a ministerless in terms of native tradition than in terms of English modes of reli-gious life. When he returned to Boston in November 1699, he had beenordained, though still a member of the North Church, by the LondonPresbytery, in the Presbyterian manner.

The organizers of the new church were a group of Boston merchants,several of whom had subscribed in 1689 toward building a Church ofEngland chapel. Led by the wealthy Thomas Brattle, the church laterbecame known as the Brattle Street Church. The organizers claimed that anew church was needed because the older meetinghouse lacked enough"convenient seats." In fact, their new building—in the South End, abouttwo streets from the Town House—was meaningfully innovative. Insteadof the central turret distinctive to earlier New England meetinghouses, ithad a full tower and spire at one end, like the churches of England. Thebuilding stood out from the other Boston churches in more than architec-ture, for the organizers also desired to make what they said were neededchanges in worship.

In December, shortly after Colman's return, the organizers publisheda three-page Manifesto setting forth their principles. Calling in their de-fense upon the recent spirit of ecumenism, they said they intended onlythe true and pure worship of God as revealed in Scripture hut conformable to the "Churches of the UNITED BRETHREN in London, andthroughout all England." Only in a few particulars, they said, did they"see cause to depart from what is ordinarily Professed and Practised bythe Churches of CHRIST here in New-England." The particulars includedthe reading of Scripture by the minister without explication; the omissionof a public relation of converting experience as a requirement for entry tocommunion; and the extension of the power of choosing a minister beyond communicants to every baptized adult person. (In psalm singingthe church also very soon abandoned the custom of "lining-out," that is,of alternately reading and singing psalms line by line—an important steptoward the development of musical literacy in New England.) A contem-porary later described the Brattle church as "midway between the Churchof England and Dissenters." That seems correct, for the new church triedto retain its Congregational roots but inclined to benignity rather thanzeal, sought contact with moderate Anglicans, and identified the churchmore with the entire congregation than with the core of Saints.

In fact the Brattle church was a somewhat advanced version of thevision of transatlantic and intersectarian harmony Cotton Mather hadbeen popularizing for the last half-dozen years. Mather's response, how-ever, was not welcoming but wrathful. He denounced the new church asthe work of "Head-strong" men whose Manifesto, coming in the wake ofAndros and the evil angels, attempted once again to "utterly subvert ourChurches." In seeing "another Day of Temptation begun upon the Townand Land," he resembled the man to whom promiscuous means someonehaving one more affair than himself. He damned as dangerous innova-tions ideas only slightly left of innovations he had introduced himself.Having relaxed admissions requirements in his own church, he scornedthe new church's still more lax failure to require a relation of conversionexperience. While speaking proudly of sharing the communion tablewith Presbyterians, Baptists, and moderate Anglicans, he had no desire tocreate them out of Congregationalists, as Colman had in effect been inaccepting Presbyterian ordination. Chiefly he seems to have objected tothe Brattle group's rejection of church covenants—explicit public agree-ments by groups of Saints to worship together—not so much for its de-mocratizing tendency as for making the operation of the church secretiveand unneighborly. Ministers who would be faithful to Christ, he believed,

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would have to appear on the front lines again, and no little part must"unavoidably fall to my Share."

As a first maneuver, Mather sent the "Innovators" a long monitoryletter. Although "most lovingly penn'd," he said, it only raised their "im-petuous Lusts, to carry on the Apostasy." Colman, while not yet formallydismissed from the Mathers' church, was installed as minister of the newchurch on December 12. On December 24 the Brattle church worshipedfor the first time in its new meetinghouse and apparently drew, as it didafterward, a large crowd; Sewall remarked that his own congregation was"pretty much thin'd by it." The Brattle organizers had requested Colmanto ask the other Boston ministers, as a token of fellowship, to join them ina day of fasting. Perhaps thinking it futile to resist Colman's influence,and perhaps serving his sense of himself as a peacemaker, Mather drewup a letter to Colman on December 28, signed also by his father and bythe Boston minister James Allen, offering to preach and pray with theBrattle congregation provided they lay aside their Manifesto and simplydeclared their adherence to the Heads of Agreement of the United Breth-ren. Otherwise they could not join in fellowship, "Lest we partake in theguilt of those great Irregularities whereby you have given just cause ofoffence." The Brattle group's response has not survived but must havebeen unfavorable, since a week later Mather denounced them afresh inhis diary as "ignorant, arrogant, obstinate, and full of Malice and Slander,and they fill the Land with Lies, in the Misrepresentation whereof, I am avery singular Sufferer."

With Sewall and some others acting as intermediaries between theMathers and the Brattle church—"Was some heat," Sewall said, "butgrew calmer"—a compromise was reached whereby the church agreed toannounce its adherence to the Heads of Agreement and to follow Congre-gational practice in making a public declaration of church covenant. A"wonderful Joy fill'd the Hearts of our good People, far and near," Matherwrote, "that we had obtained thus much from them." On January 28 heformally dismissed Colman from the North Church and three days laterhe and his father joined the young minister in a public fast at the Brattlechurch. Increase, who did not easily put bygones to rest, preached on thedoctrine that we must follow peace—so far as it consists with holiness.Cotton, Sewall recorded, prayed "excellently and pathetically for Mr. Col-man and his Flock. Twas a close dark day."

But the darkness had only begun. While negotiating with the Brattlechurch, the Mathers had prepared for press a lengthy blast at it. Cottonspeaks of the book as a joint effort, but it seems to have been very largely

Increase's work. After devising a compromise with the church, Cottonwrote, "we laid aside what was in the Press; resolving in a more comfortable, and I hope, effectual Way, to endeavour the Establishment of ourChurches." But Increase decided to publish the book anyway, perhapsbecause the Brattle Street innovations seemed more dangerous to himthan they seemed to his son. Although Increase had already preached andprayed at the new church, his book attacking it appeared in March, enti-tled The Order of the Gospel (1700). In 144 pages he argued againstseventeen distinct principles of the Brattle church, defending the right ofchurches to demand written or oral evidence of regenerating experiencebefore admitting a member to communion, questioning the ordination ofministers without the approbation of neighboring churches, and conclud-ing that to espouse Brattle principles was to "give away the whole Congre-gational cause at once, and a great part of the Presbyterian Disciplinealso."

By coincidence, Increase's arguments against the Brattle church antic-ipated the announcement a few months later of some new but relatedinnovations which gave the controversy redoubled intensity. This timethe apostate was not a youth but a nearly sixty-year-old member of In-crease's generation, the Northampton minister Solomon Stoddard, whoseDoctrine of Instituted Churches appeared in London in the spring or earlysummer. Stoddard was, and remains, a highly controversial figure in thedevelopment of New England, whom some historians have seen as anearly voice of democracy. His book gave comprehensive expression toviews he had been promoting in western Massachusetts for twenty years,particularly that communion should not be limited to those who hadexperienced grace. In this he probably intended no more than to halt thewidely lamented decline, where other attempts at reform had failed. Butto open the communion table to all church members was to discard themost fundamental ideas of Puritan theology and church government, thedistinctive Congregational understanding of the church as an elite groupof Saints. Some saw Stoddard's views as the fatal outcome of the under-mining doctrine of halfway membership promulgated since 1662, andIncrease Mather had attacked Stoddard as early as 1677 for advancingnotions certain to "corrupt Churches and ruin all in a little time."

Now, atop the opening of the Brattle church, Stoddard argued in printthe even more extreme idea that communion might itself lead to Saint-hood, might be "a means also to work saving Regeneration." Some emi-nent Presbyterians had advocated this view earlier, but to most Congrega-tionalists it conjured up a communion table surrounded by thieves,

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drunkards, and adulterers hoping to drink and eat their salvation. To hisvery radical proposal, Stoddard added an astonishing concept of thechurch. He would conceive a congregation not as a coterie of Saints butas merely a group of people assembled by God in the same place. Since achurch was only a neighborhood phenomenon it deserved no indepen-dent ecclesiastical power. Stoddard forthrightly advocated Presbyterianiz-ing the churches, subjecting them to collective governance under synodscomposed of representatives from various churches. Even more broadlyhe questioned the whole vision of a supposed primitive Congregationalchurch of uniquely pure principles. Many mistakes in church govern-ment, he said, had been made by people who "have a Veneration forantiquity and adopt the sayings of Ancient Fathers for Canonical."

Having seen vast changes in the political and social life of his child-hood, Cotton Mather now began to witness the transformation of its reli-gious life as well. Although dismayed by the appeal of Stoddard's"wretched Novelties to a "carnal, giddy, rising Generation," he notedsorrowfully that hardly any but himself and his father dared "appear withany Strength of Argument, or Fortitude, in Defence of our invadedChurches." Undaunted himself, when Stoddard visited Boston in thesummer to assert his views before an assembly of ministers, he stood upand spoke at length against "a Book of a reverend Person, here present."In choosing the "Patter's Portion" he found himself having somehow todenounce Stoddard's and Colman's Presbyterian ideas plausibly whilecontinuing to celebrate the Congregationalist-Presbyterian union. He at-tempted this feat by identifying them as Presbyterians- manque, observingthat "the Gentlemen in the Design against our Churches, will needs becall'd Presbyterians: but they very unjustly arrogate that Name. . . . OurControversy with them indeed is, because they will not be Presbyteri-ans." He warned that of the continual attempts to unhinge the New Eng-land churches, none was more daring and explicit than Stoddard's. Increating national synods Stoddard would divest individual churches oftheir power of self-reform, and give over their governance to synodswhose decrees would be impotent in New England, lacking "a civil Mag-istrate, that will make them cut." Wishing to abolish conversion as arequirement for communion, Stoddard would have "those that knowthemselves ungodly Wretches come to the dreadful Mysteries." The dev-il's initial plot against New Englanders, now far advanced, was to extin-guish their godliness: "The next plot of Satan, is to confound our HolyChurch-Order, and make us, with our own Hands pull down our House."

Caught in the odd logic of his situation, Mather turned his dispute

with Stoddard and Colman into a bizarre quarrel over which Congregationalists were the true Presbyterians. He prepared a Boston edition ofthe work of a well-known English Presbyterian, John Quicks You?ii> MansClaim unto the Sacrament of the Lords-Supper. In doing so he hoped toshow the close similarity between true Presbyterianism and orthodoxNew England Congregationalism, to vouch for which he added to thework signed attestations by such Puritan elder statesmen as John Higgin-son. At the same time he also tried to show how Stoddard and Colmanexploited the name Presbyterian to cloak their "Disorderly Undertak-ings" and, while nominally Congregationalists, "would not have Thingsto be as the Eminent Planters, and General Synods, of our Churches haveleft them unto us." He prefaced Quick's work with a fifty-nine-page essay,signed by him and his father but seemingly written by himself, entitled"A Defense of Evangelical Churches." While he felt "Tenderness" forStoddard he characterized him caustically as an "Ingenious and Contem-plative Gentleman, in his Retirements" and condemned "the Presbyteri-anism that runs down Connecticut River." Lunging also at Colman andother "Raw youths . . . under the name of Presbyterians," he labeled bothmen "Presbyterian Formalists," as opposed to the true or "ReformingPresbyterians." Stoddard's call for national synods of clergymen—as op-posed to his own call for clerical associations—he attacked as a movetoward episcopacy and thence to papacy. Stoddard's wish to open com-munion to the knowingly unregenerate—as opposed to his own (liberal)view that a "probable hope" of grace qualifies for admission—he called a"Popish Fancy," rejected by Presbyterians and even Episcopalians as un-doing the very form and matter of the churches. Those most eminent forholiness, he concluded, had failed to stand up against the "New model-lers of our Churches," leaving him and his father to do so though they"bring all the raging Obloquy imaginable upon us."

Raging obloquy, however, was hardly Benjamin Colman's style, whichinclined rather to well-bred reasonableness, with a reserve of saucy wit.In mid-December appeared a delayed reply to Increase's Order of theGospel, a pamphlet entitled The Gospel Order Revived. Published anony-mously, it was taken as the work of Colman and some others sympatheticto the Brattle church, whose principles it defends on scriptural, logical,and historical grounds against Increase's charges. Through these patientarguments, however, runs a vein of rather sneeringly sly personal attack.The writers refer to Increase repeatedly, with accumulating irony, as the"Reverend Author." Where Increase objected to what he called "DumbReading"—the Brattle practice of reading Scripture without explica-

tion—they snip at the "complicated . . . Malignity in the Phrase" and atIncrease's immodesty in thinking "any one of his Sermons or short Com-ments, can edify more than the reading of twenty Chapters." Sometimesthus needlingly and sometimes brusquely, they accuse Increase of mis-representing the authorities he cites, treating as the practice of all theNew England churches what are simply his own views, and crying upPresbyterian principles in London but denouncing them in Boston,where his own interest is touched. Particularly they deride his overzeal-ousness in storming over niggling issues and wailing " Oh Apostacy! Apos-tacyr In scoffing at Increase's emotionalism, Colman and the others ineffect repudiated the whole theory of decline. They note that a genera-tion ago the change in baptismal policy was decried as a woeful declen-sion, but the present generation feel "the happy effects of it, and risingup at the Reformers names, do call them blessed." Declaring themselvesnot apostates but simply "less Rigid than others of the Reverend Authorsseverity," the writers end by vowing not to answer any further charges,however noisy.

The publication of The Gospel Order Revived created new issues be-tween the Mathers and the innovators, calling attention to the Mathers'political influence in Boston. The pamphlet had been published in NewYork, as Stoddard's Doctrine of Instituted Churches had been publishedin London. The Brattle group charged that the Mathers' control of theBoston press was responsible for the New York imprint, and a six-monthdelay in publication, Boston printers being "so much under the awe" ofIncrease Mather that the printer Bartholomew Green refused to issue thework. Green denied the charge in a ten-page pamphlet, to which CottonMather supplied an anonymous endorsement. Green said he neither re-fused to print the pamphlet nor was told anything by Increase to discour-age its printing. When members of the Brattle church brought him themanuscript, he explained, he agreed to print it; but when they insistedthat it be published anonymously he asked them first to secure the gover-nor's approval, at which they went away angrily. Two of those whobrought the manuscript to Green, however, attested that they asked him ifhe would print it with the permission of Cotton Mather; Green readilysaid he would, and they told him "it was a shame so Worthy a Minister asMr. Stoddard must send as far as England'to have his Book printed, whenyoung Mr. Mather had the Press at his pleasure."

The publication of The Gospel Order Revived exposed a far deeperissue as well. Although Increase refused to answer Colman, considering itbeneath his dignity to notice, he said, "the impotent Allatrations of so

little a thing as that Youth is," Cotton retaliated against the "Young Pseu-do-presbyterian" in a twenty-four-page pamphlet entitled A Collection, ofSome of the Many Offensive Matters, Contained in . . . The Order of theGospel Revived (1701). To damn the Brattle group in their own words hesimply listed the "vile Things" in their pamphlet, "barely to Recite whichis enough to refute them." But in his controversy with the new church hehad come to detect a more profound threat to New England than anydispute over ordination or church membership—a growing temper ofdisrespect. Colman and the others did not so much oppose the GospelOrder as "Elegantly Scoff' at it. The inner meaning of the Brattle church,he now saw, was that New England having just repulsed devils was beinginvaded by satirists.

The two were of course the same, for those who tweaked IncreaseMather as the "Reverend Author" crying "Oh Apostacy!" embodied spiritsakin to those who prodded the Goodwin children to howl and stomp atthe ministers who prayed for them. The organizers of the new church,Cotton wrote, "have not only departed from the Religion of their Fathersbut are become Mockers of it." Slightly exaggerating the actual languageof their pamphlet, he denounced Colman and the others for their "Squib"on "The Old Men and Women, that are for the Good Old Way," theirtreating public relations of conversion experiences as "Talkative Breth-ren Standing up to Relate Experiences." "Mocking is Catching" hewarned, and having often preached against disrespect for elders, he fore-saw that the children of New England might learn from the innovators toderide "the most Serious things that are done in our Churches, and carryon the Mocking Humour" Nothing in the Brattle church seemed to himmore dangerous than its airiness toward authority and tradition: "There isno one thing, which does more threaten or disgrace New-England, thanwant of due Respect unto Superiors; even that Abomination, In thee theyset Light by Fathers."

All of the issues dividing the Mathers and the new church weresummed up deliciously in some anonymous verses written on a copy ofThe Gospel Order Revived and handed around Plymouth. "Blackman," inthe first stanza, is Colman; the second stanza puns on the names of theministers Bradstreet, Woodbridge, and Stone—taken by some to be theauthors of the pamphlet; "Relations," in the third stanza, refers to publicrelations of conversion experiences; in the last stanza, "Mico" is JohnMico, a wealthy founder of the new church. The writer depicted the Math-ers defending the religion of the Fathers against Brattle Street's romaniz-ing tendency and gentility:

A Simple Poem on the Authors and Designs of This Book.

Begging Manifesto proves but a great Pesto.

Blackman is Synodalian.Pray stay there and stop, lest next hap & hopBen't Peters chair Italian.

The old strait Gate is now out of Date,

The street it must be broad;

And the Bridge must be wood, tho not half so good

As firm Stone in the Road.

Relations are Rattle with Brattle & Brattle;Lord Brother mayn't command:But Mather and Mather had rather & ratherThe good old way should stand

Saints Cotton & Hooker, o look down, & look hereWhere's Platform, Way, & the Keys?O Torey what story of Brattle Church TwattleTo have things as they please

Our merchants cum Mico do stand Sacro Vico;Our Churches turn Genteel:

Parsons grow trim and trigg with wealth wine & wiggAnd their crowns are covered with meal.

More revealing than the content of the poem is its bantering treatment ofboth the innovators and the Fathers, both Blackman and Saint Hooker.The lighthearted tone confirms Cotton Mather's insight that the BrattleStreet controversy foretold the erosion not only of the Gospel Order butmore deeply of Puritan gravity, of the particular sensibility of New Eng-land, of not just the Fathers' principles but of their spirit.

Despite the uproar over the "great Pesto," within a year or so Mather'senmity toward Colman gave way to what became lifelong cooperationwith him, and slightly tense respect. The circumstance that resolved theirquarrel is one of several important details lacking in what informationabout the controversy remains, another being Colman's part in writingThe Gospel Order Revived. Their reconciliation probably involved no dra-matic event or change of principle, for Mather's behavior toward Colmanresulted as much from personal feelings as from religious ideals. As weshall see, in Mather's later life his stifled feelings of competition withColman and envy of his popularity erupted. They may have existed fromthe first, for throughout the controversy his bitterest attacks on Colman,

ten years his junior, dwell on youthful brashness, intimating resentmentover Colman's indulging expansive qualities he shared but harnessed.

Indeed Colman and Mather may haw been drawn together by simpleaffinity, for they were in many ways alike—learned, courteous, pious,conciliatory, and fancying themselves among the better sort. Raised InMather's church, Colman greatly respected the founders of New England.But acknowledging himself to be "something of a Presbyterian under ourCongregational Form," he felt no disloyalty in adjusting the founders'vision to changed times. Mather, adding constant professions of rever-ence for the Fathers, did the same. In preaching a new toleration, callingfor councils and associations, and offering an attenuated test for commu-nion, he surely fostered a climate of innovation where ideas like Col-man's and Stoddard's could thrive, and conspired in creating what hecondemned. Rather guilty acknowledgment of siding more with the inno-vators than he made known appears in his keeping his quite Presbyterianessay on the utility of synods unpublished. At a convention of ministers inBoston in 1705, however, he openly joined Colman in recommendingstanding councils of ministers to determine church affairs in a geographi-cal area—a real move toward Presbyterianism. Increase Mather did notendorse the proposal, and later publicly declared his opposition to it.

If Cotton Mather restrained his views out of respect for his father itwas ironic, for the New England Increase held up against the innovators,the primitive Congregationalism of the Gospel Order, was a New Englandwhose destruction many people accused him of having negotiated. Cot-ton's defense of his father's acceptance of the charter rightly placed himin some minds among the innovators himself, while his attack on Colmanand Stoddard made him seem conservative to others—The Parter's Por-tion. But his quarrel with the Brattle church was less over their innova-tions than over their flaunting them. Without a show of loyalty to theFathers and an appearance of historical continuity, he feared, all authorityand all forms of social order would collapse.

Because of its public nature, Mather's quarrel with Colman and Stod-dard is the most conspicuous event in his life in the decade following theSalem trials. Yet it stands out only as a boulder in a stream, for other deepconcerns flowed around and beyond it. The next chapter describes howfor years following his visitation by the angel, Mather experienced exhila-rating but finally disillusioning psychical phenomena. In the same periodhe also conceived two magisterial works, including the book for which

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he remains best known, his history of New England, Magnalia ChristiAmericana.

Mather proposed the work to himself in the early summer of 1693 andin July received formal encouragement from the Cambridge Associationof Ministers, which offered him all necessary assistance for the "exactforming" of it and requested a monthly progress report. The dying off offirst-generation American Puritans, however, had long made the need forsuch a history a subject of public discourse. Increase Mather considered it"one of New England's Sins that no better course hath been taken that thememory of the great things the Lord hath done for us be transmitted toposterity." Several people encouraged Increase to undertake the workhimself. In writing Magnalia, Cotton answered a call that had soundedfor nearly twenty-five years and had seemed likely to be answered by hisfather. A simultaneous call had gone out since the 1670s for a relatedhistory of God's providences toward New England, proposals for whichwere drawn up by a group of church elders in 1681. In March 1694,Increase in conjunction with the Harvard Fellows and some other minis-ters issued renewed proposals for compiling such a history, asking minis-ters around the country to submit credibly attested accounts of deliver-ances of the distressed, judgments against the wicked, fulfillments ofscriptural prophecies, "Apparitions, Possessions, Inchantments, and allExtraordinary Things wherein the Existence and Agency of the InvisibleWorld, is more sensibly demonstrated." Cotton Mather filled this call alsoby including as Book VI of Magnalia a history of memorable divine provi-dences in New England.

Mather having begun writing the book toward the end of 1693, it wasprematurely announced for publication in London as early as 1697. Buthe did not ship the heavy manuscript until June 1700, near the height ofhis quarrel with Colman. While working on Magnalia and trying to ar-range its publication, he published parts of it as independent short works,no fewer than seventeen of which he reprinted virtually verbatim in thebook. For two years after sending the manuscript he lived in repeatedlythwarted hope of seeing the book in print. One ship from London afteranother brought him no news at all or reports of ceaseless clogs, delays,and possible failure—the London booksellers were "cold" toward theproject, subscriptions were "uncertain," everything stood in "extremeHazard of Miscarrying." Sometimes resigned, sometimes painfully disap-pointed, Mather now consented to "so humbling a Trial, as the Loss of myChurch-History," now fretted over the waste of "the vast Pains I havetaken in composing it." Even the hews of its imminent publication, as it

came to Mather in a letter from the London Presbyterian minister JohnQuick, was discouraging. Quick told him that because the presswork hadbeen given to the London printer Thomas Farkhurst, truncations could beexpected, and interpolations, and textual errors, and type and paper thatwould "afflict" him. That had been Quick's own experience with Parkhurst, who "horribly maimed and wounded" one of Quick's works, send-ing it into the world as his when, he told Mather, "Sir, it's no more mine,than if you should chop off my hands, arms, and legs, and [binding:']pieces of wood to those parts, you should say, this is whole Mr. Quick."As published in London in 1702, Magnalia Christi Americana didcontain perhaps three hundred typographical errors. Just the same it wasunmistakably a grandly imagined and formidable work: about eight hun-dred folio pages of double columns, divided in seven substantial books—history of the settlement of New England; lives of the governors; lives ofthe leading ministers (the longest book); history of Harvard College, withthe lives of eminent graduates; account of the New England manner ofworship; "Remarkables of Divine Providence"; and a history of the inva-sion of the New England churches by heretics, Andros, devils, Indians,and others. Mather gathered this information industriously and frommany sources: surviving diaries, letters, and other papers; his father's cor-respondence; the manuscript histories of New England by William Hub-bard and William Bradford; personal acquaintance with surviving mem-bers of the earlier generations, the sermon notebooks in which he hadtaken down their words firsthand, informants who had known them. Theminister Samuel Stone seems to have loaned him the "ChronologicalDecads" he composed, fastened by rings so they could be hung up awayfrom rodents. It amounted to less information than Mather desired, andhe complains several times in Magnalia of having to scant a subject be-cause people failed to send him adequate material. But of course henever felt he had given enough, and despite his apologies the enduringimportance of his book partly lies in its sheer amassment of preciousinformation about the early history of New England—about leaders inchurch and state, Puritan relations with the Indians, the development ofHarvard, the 1689 revolt, the expeditions against Canada, the Salem trials.He also included many significant documents (for instance, relating tothe Halfway Covenant), and verses (usually elegies) by such leading Puri-tan poets as Benjamin Tompson, so that Magnalia also contains a docu-mentary history of early New England and a small anthology of earlyAmerican Poetry.

What unifies this seven-vault archive of fact, reminiscence, document,

verse, and legend is Mather's ever present narrative voice—learned, face-tious, emphatic, at once intimate and grand, distinctively showmanlike, asif history were some banquet and he the master of ceremonies. His ge-niality again suggests the conciliator, and indeed the vast, miscellaneousmaterials take shape under two not very harmonious intentions. First heconceived the work as a contribution to his ceaseless call throughout the1690s for reform, as a way, he wrote, "of keeping Alive, as far as this poorEssay may contribute thereunto, the Interests of Dying Religion in ourChurches." To do so, as Sacvan Bercovitch, the most profound interpreterof his works, remarks, he lifted New England history into the realm ofheroic action. Beginning with the epical opening, modeled on the open-ing of the Aeneid, he created an archaic-seeming World of the Fathers.Before the appearance of his life of John Eliot in 1691, only two biogra-phies of New England ministers had been published: of his grandfatherJohn Cotton (by John Norton) and of his grandfather Richard Mather (byIncrease Mather). But Magnalia contains, depending on how one definesthe term, about fifty biographies of eminent New Englanders, rangingfrom a few pages to nearly book length, plus perhaps dozens of briefbiographical sketches. The subjects of this Puritan pantheon are mostlydead or aged members of the earlier generations, called to life as embodi-ments of standards from which the present generation has fallen away.The book's most pervasive image is probably resurrection: to halt the"visible shrink in all Orders of Men among us, from that Greatness, andthat Goodness, which was in the first Grain," Mather decided, "I'll showthem, the Graves of their dead Fathers." The lives accordingly take exem-plary patterns, illustrating the behavior of ideal Saints, ministers, andmagistrates. Yet Mather's unfailing zest for the curious also provides indi-vidualizing scraps of memorable conversation, and such enlivening vi-gnettes of personal conduct as Thomas Hooker closing his eyes with hisown hand just before dying.

Typical of Mather's revival of the heroic past is his fine biography ofJohn Eliot, the first Puritan preacher to the Indians, whom he had knownand revered since a child. Having come to Boston in the first wave ofemigration and died in 1690 at the age of eighty-six, Eliot appears inMather's ideal portrait as a summa of New England Congregationalistideals—a model father, a great Bible student and Sabbath keeper, a com-forter of the poor and distressed, a skilled spiritualizer of earthly objects,and a prophet, a majestic man who walked all day in the light of God'scountenance and grew more heavenly and savory toward his end. AsMather describes him, Eliot preached without froth, carrying Christ with

him wherever he went, so that "like Mary's opened Box of Ointment, hefill'd the whole Room with the Perfumes of the Graces in his Lips." As anevangelist he personally catechized blacks, whose brutal treatment hedeplored, and brought the Indians no diluted Christianity but pure Scripture worship, the creed of primitive believers. Above all he was a manalthough pleasant and affable yet uniquely mortified, "so nailed unto theCross o( the Lord Jesus Christ, that the Grandeurs of this World were untohim just what they would be to a dying Man." He ate but one plain dishfor supper, never drank wine, spoke with "boiling Zeal" against men whowore their hair with "Luxurious, Delicate, Feminine Prolixity," anddressed himself utterly without adornment, his loins, like John the Bap-tist's, circled with a leather girdle. When he saw a minister looking self-satisfied he told him, "Study Mortification Brother, Study Mortification!"

Eliot's wonderful rebuke, however, speaks from a world which thenew charter had forever doomed to silence. While Mather resurrected thevanishing first generation as a model for the degenerate present he didnot share its zeal for separation and did not cherish the tribal myth of aChosen People that once gave New England meaning. He also intendedthe book specifically for an English audience, anxious again to exhibitNew England's affection for the mother country, aware, and not dis-tressed, that New England's place in history was that of one outpost in ataut new transatlantic imperial network. Magnalia accordingly looks backat the World of the Fathers across the Glorious Revolution, the Act ofToleration, and other dramatic events that made its heroism seem not somuch epically nation-building as superfluous.

Virtually the whole book qualifies the Virgilian opening sentence: "IWRITE the Wonders of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION, flying from the De-pravations of Europe, to the American Strand." What drove Christianityto America, Mather shows repeatedly, were not the "Depravations of Eu-rope" but, far less cosmically, a knot of high-Church romanists acting inan aberrant moment of English history. His "General Introduction" de-fines his subject as the history of "PROTESTANTS that highly honouredand affected The Church o/ENGLAND, and humbly Petition to be a Partof it." The theme of flight from English persecution becomes a matterless for tribal mythologizing than for apology:

Good men in the Church of England, I hope, will not be offended at it, ifthe Unreasonable Impositions, and Intolerable Persecutions, of certainLittle-Soul'd Ceremony-Mongers, which drove these worthy Men out oftheir Native Country, into the horrid Thickets of America, be in their Livescomplained and resented. For, distinguishing between a Romanizing

THE PARTER'S PORTION l6l

Faction in the Church of England, and the True Protestant ReformingChurch of England . . . the First Planters of New England, at their firstcoming over, did in a Public and a Printed Address, call the Church ofEngland, their Dear Mother. . . . Nor did they think, that it was their Moth-er who turned them out of Doors, but some of their angry Brethren, abus-ing the Name of their Mother, who so harshly treated them.

Many individual biographies similarly emphasize the forefathers' alle-giance to England. Mather records John Higginson telling emigrantsabout to leave in 1629 for America, "We will not say as the Separatistswere wont to say at their leaving of England, Farewel, Babylon! FarewelRome! But we will say, Farewel Dear England! Farewel the Church ofGod in England and all the Christian Friends there!" The world of theFathers recreated in Magnalia is populated not only by doctrinal puristsbut also by loyal Englishmen pining for home. Although the book hasjustly been described as a monument of New England orthodoxy, thegreatest of the Jeremiads, it disharmoniously embodies another form atwhich New England had also become adept, the petition to the throne.

Indeed Mather recreates even the world of doctrinal purity in the lightof his current vision of toleration and reunion. He depicts New Engend-ers as model ecumenists who "dare make no Difference between a Pres-byterian, a Congregational, an Episcopalian, and an Anti paedo-baptist,where their Visible Piety, makes it probable, that the Lord Jesus Christ hasreceived them." In the course of Magnalia he frequently promotes theCongregationalist-Presbyterian union, significantly including in BookFive, among such essential Congregational documents as The CambridgePlatform, the London Heads of Agreement, declaring it the best exposi-tion of existing Congregationalism and placing it in the very mainstreamof New England Puritanism. He remarks that he expects to be criticizedfor what he has done not only by the High Church party in England andthe degenerate young at home, but in effect by the Fathers themselves, by"some among us, who very strictly profess the Congregational Church-Discipline, but at the same time they have an unhappy Narrowness ofSoul, by which they confine their value and Kindness too much unto theirown Party; and unto those my Church History will be offensive."

Although Mather set out on one hand to halt the "visible shrink" fromthe Fathers' grandeur, the Puritans of Magnalia exist as a Chosen Peoplein only a sorely diminished sense. The Fathers' role in history, he specu-lates, may have been to serve as a model to Protestant churches elsewherein the impending worldwide Reformation (see the next chapter), illus-trating the qualifications needed in those attempting the reformation and

the solutions for problems that might obstruct it. To play this illustrativerole may have been why Christ brought His servants to America, that "Hemight there, To them first, and then By them, give a Specimen of manyGood Things, which He would have His Churches elsewhere* aspire andarise unto." But in the reformed, panchristian world it might inspire. NewEngland itself would not survive as New Jerusalem; indeed it might hawno place. "Thisbeing done," Mather speculates, "He knows not whetherthere be not All done, that New-England was planted for; and whether thePlantation may not, soon after this, Come to Nothing."

Perhaps no feature of the book more dramatically reveals Mather'sdrift from the Fathers than his devoting the longest section of "The GreatWorks of Christ in America"—eighty pages in the most recent edition ofMagnalia—to Sir William Phips. Before becoming governor and caningpeople on Scarlett's Wharf, Phips made his mark in the world as a rowdytreasure hunter commanding a debauched crew: "for swearing and curs-ing," one sailor said, 'T bless God I never heard the like before in all theships as ever I have sailed in." Phips did not hold himself aloof. A decadebefore becoming governor he made a ten-week stay in Boston with hiscrew, some of whom began brawling in a tavern. When constables or-dered the crew members to return to ship, Phips defied them. They prom-ised to tell Governor Bradstreet but he said "he did not care a t d for

the governour for he had more power than he had," and when brought totrial and rebuked by Bradstreet he threw his orders at him.

Yet Mather gave this choleric adventurer star billing in his gallery ofEcclesiarum Clypei—Shields of the Churches. His reasons for doing soare largely obvious. At the time Increase Mather was allowed to nominatePhips as the first governor under the new charter, he represented forbetter or worse the future of New England. As a member of the NorthChurch, we have seen, he also represented the Mathers' hope of renewedaccess to government circles. While Mather did not conceal from hisreaders Phips's hot temper, he emphasized his piety and his concern forNew England. Eligible for important posts at home, he preferred to liveamong the people of God in Massachusetts, invariably desiring theirgood, sharing the motto of the Emperor Hadrian, "NOT FOR MY SELF,BUT FOR MY PEOPLE."

Mather had a less obvious reason for featuring Phips as well: he rel-ished his derring-do. Phips's dashing assaults and squeaky escapes in-spired his capacity for imaginative identification with his subjects andgave scope to his considerable gift for narrative. As a result, his biographyof Phips often reads like something less from Foxe's Book of Martyrs than

from Les Trois Moitsquetaires. Mather retails, for instance, Phips's repulseof an attempted mutiny:

One day while [Phips's] Frigot lay Careening, at a desolate Spanish Island,by the side of a Rock, from whence they had laid a Bridge to the Shore,the Men, whereof he had about an Hundred, went all, but about Eight orTen, to divert themselves, as they pretended, in the Woods: Where they allentered into an Agreement, which they Sign'd in a Ring, That about sevena Clock that Evening they would seize the Captain, and those Eight orTen, which they knew to be True unto him, and leave them to perish onthis Island, and so be gone away unto the South Sea to seek their Fortune.Will the Reader now imagine, that Captain Phips having Advice of this Plotbut about an Hour and half before it was to be put in Execution, yet withinTiro Hours brought all these Rogues down upon their Knees to beg fortheir Lives? But so it was!

The mutinous knaves, Mather continues, fetched the ship's carpenter tothe woods and asked him to join them. He begged for time to think itover and was returned to the ship, with a spy to keep watch over him.Pretending to be seized by a fit of cholic, he ran to Phips's cabin for adram. Instead he told Phips of the plot. Phips gathered his seven or eightremaining crew, including his gunner, and

demanded of them, whether they would stand by him in the Extremity,which he informed them was now come upon him; whereto they reply'd,They would stand by him, if he could save them; and he Answer'd, By thehelp of God he did not fear it. All their Provisions had been carried Ashoreto a Tent, made for that Purpose there; about which they had placedseveral Great Guns to defend it, in case of any Assault horn the Spaniards,that might happen to come that way. Wherefore Captain Phips, immedi-ately ordered those Guns to be silently Drawn'd and Turn'd; and so pull-ing up the Bridge, he charged his Great Guns aboard, and brought themto Bear on every side of the Tent. But this time the Army of Rebels comesout of the Woods; but as they drew near to the Tent of Provisions, they sawsuch a change of Circumstances, that they cried out, We are Betray 'd! Andthey were soon confirm'd in it, when they heard the Captain with a sternFury call to them, Stand off, ye Wretches, at your Peril!

The mutineers fell on their knees to beg Phips's pardon, but he seizedtheir weapons, took them aboard, then got rid of them in Jamaica.

Although Magnalia places Phips as a successor in the honored guber-natorial line of William Bradford and John Winthrop, he seems an exem-plar not of the Governor but of the Self-Made Man. "Reader, enquire nofurther who was his Father?" Mather writes. "Thou shalt anon see, that he

was, as the Italians express it, A Son to his own Labours/" As the Story ofthe son of a gunsmith in a frontier village on the Kennebec Kiwr who"rose from so little" the life of Phips falls between such Puritan spiritualbiographies as that of John Eliot, and the Autobiography of BenjaminFranklin. In Phips the Fathers' piety can be seen overlaid with "Enterprizing Genius" the Puritan Saint has shaded off into the "Knight of Honesty.for it was Honesty with Industry that raised him." To the several differences between Mather's viewpoint and that of the world he resurrects, thelife of Phips adds another, which Mather equally celebrates—the growthof business enterprise in America.

Like John Eliot, Phips enjoyed prophetic foresight, but what it assuredhim of was material success. When he was eighteen his friends urged himto settle permanently in Maine, but he had, Mather writes, "an Unac-countable Impulse upon his Mind, persuading him, as he would privatelyhint unto some of them, That he was Born to greater Matters" Instead hebound himself apprentice to a ship's carpenter, which trade he followed awhile in Boston, where for the first time he learned to read and write. Healso married the widow of a "well-bred Merchant." He confided to herhis belief that "the Providence of God" would ultimately make him the"Owner of a Fair Brick-House in the Green-Lane of North-Boston."Phips's assurances, like John Eliot's, came true, not after fervent prayerbut after six years hunting sunken Spanish galleons. Mather describeswith zestful wonder how in January 1687 Phips reached a wreck in PortoPlata, Hispaniola, and after diving three months brought up thirty-fourtons of treasure. This fantastic horde included copper guns, silver candle-sticks and stirrups, gold chains and cups, and more than 37,000 poundstroy in silver pieces-of-eight. The find was reported in newsletters andpamphlets, communicated to the kings of Europe, and made the talk ofLondon. As his share Phips received more than £11,000, some of whichhe invested in Boston real estate, plus part of the spoils. His wife receiveda gold cup worth nearly £1000. In consideration of his services to thecrown he was knighted. The turning point in Mather's account of Phips'sfabulous strike is the remarkable cry of this Shield of the Churches, after adiver disclosed to him a lump of silver at last dredged from the deep:"Thanks be to God! We are made."

The disparate voices of Phips's "Thanks be to God! We are made" andEliot's "Study Mortification Brother, Study Mortification!" together or-chestrate Magnalia Christi Americana and define a historical moment.Mather's attempt to make them both bespeak "The Wonders of the

CHRISTIAN RELIGION" dramatizes the survival in fact and memory ofthe first generation's mortified living, reverence toward ministers, andrelation of conversion experiences into the new epoch of commercialenterprise, imperial expansion, and perriwigs. They survived tenuously,of course: mortification was not the style of young ministers like Benja-min Colman, and Phips was the last governor for at least twenty years whocould be included without deliberate mockery among the Shields of theChurches. That Mather could comfortably celebrate both Eliot's leathergirdle and Phips's golden cups testifies also to how much he remaineddrawn to both heaven-mindedness and worldly ambition. It seems likelythat he welcomed the new atmosphere of toleration and reunion exactlybecause it legitimized his suppressed urbanity. In his life of Eliot, he firsttells how the saintly evangelist hated men's wearing long hair, then re-marks indulgently, "Doubtless, it may be lawful for us to accommodatethe length of our Hair unto the modest Customs which vary in theChu rches of God.''

For all its ideological weight, Magnalia is a deeply literary work.Whether bringing to life the mortified piety of the Fathers or defendinglong hair and the Heads of Agreement, Mather was above all bidding forinternational attention as an American writer. Mixing the largest politicaland eschatological events with "Entertainments for the Curious," thebook abounds in such vivid narratives as the captivity of Hannah Dustonand the depossession of the Goodwin children, in wonder stories ofghosts and strange premonitions of death. With his appetite for believe-it-or-nots, Mather could not resist appending to his life of the ministerThomas Thacher a long account of a deaf and dumb member of Thacher'schurch who learned to convey her understanding of the doctrine of theTrinity in sign language. Mather's literary ambitions also declare them-selves with stentorian gorgeousness in his "Massy" style—the copiousmatter, the intricately witty, graceful, or dense openings (the first sen-tence of the life of Phips runs 254 words), the formal invention, thetrilingual puns and quotations and universal allusions. The style itselfreveals much about New England at the turn of the century, rendering thefirst generation's heaven-mindedness in a language that reaches for cos-mopolitan elegance but attains provincial grandioseness. If the epic am-bitions of Magnalia, its attempt to put America on the cultural map, recallsuch later American works as Moby-Dick (to which it has been com-pared), its effort to rejoin provincial America to the mainstream of En-glish culture recalls rather The Wasteland. Genuinely Anglo-American in

outlook, the book projects a New England which is ultimately an ei)larged version of Cotton Mather himself, a pious citizen of "The Metropo-lis of the whole English America."

For all its aspiring bulk, Magnalia is dwarfed beside the leviathanMather "set upon" at about the same time, "another, and a greater" bookon which he would labor the rest of his life. In this gigantic "BibliaAmericana" he intended nothing less than to interpret all of Scripture inthe light of "all the Learning in the World." The dazing scope of the workwas probably inspired by the angel's prophecy of the books he wouldpublish to exalt his height above all the other trees of the field. Its con-tent, however, derived from his opinion that none of what he called the"professed Commentaries" on Scripture had yet afforded "a thousandthPart of so much Illustration unto it, as might be given."

In several ways the project uniquely suited Mather's temperament andtalents. It satisfied his vaulting ambition, his taste for combining pietyand elegance, and his continuing need to allay feelings of smallness andshow extraordinary fecundity in producing language. It also put to use hisability to read with unusual speed, which several persons who knew himobserved:

In two or three Minutes turning thro' a Volume, he cou'd easily tellwhether it wou'd make Additions to the Store of his Ideas. If it cou'd not,He quickly laid it by: If otherwise, he read it, passing over all those Partswhich contained the things he had known before, perusing those Partsonly that represented something Novel, which he Pencil'd as he wentalong . . . and all this with wonderful Celerity.

Swift and wide reading was essential, for he hoped to create, in contrastto the "professed Commentaries," something at once entertaining, mod-ern, and comprehensive. He would gather in one work more scripturalglosses from the "scattered Books of learned Men, than in any of theordinary Commentators" He would also search out strikingly pungent orfresh illustrations, "more entertaining for the Rarity and Novelty of them,than any that have been hitherto seen together." Since he and many oth-ers considered their age one of abundant new insight into the meaning ofbiblical texts, he would include as well all the "Improvements, which thelater Ages have made in the Sciences." Approaching Scripture from everyconceivable angle—scientific, patristic, classical, chronological, philo-logical, theological, typological, historical, geographical—he would as-semble "in one Heap, Thousands of those remarkable Discoveries of thedeep ThingfsJ of the Spirit of God, whereof one, or two, or a few some-

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times, have been, with good Success, accounted Materials enough to ad-vance one into Authorising He does not exaggerate: for the Mississippianflood of handwriting he disgorged in composing the work he might havepublished two hundred separate titles.

Mather began the trunk-sized manuscript in the late summer of 1693.He secured six huge folio volumes and divided them according to booksof the Old and New Testaments. Then he laboriously entered glosses onvarious texts, in double columns and in catechistical form ("Q. SomeRemark, I pray you, upon that great word, HALLELUJAH?"). He did notwork serially through separate books of the Bible but on the entire Bibleat once, filing glosses here and there in his folios as he came across themin his reading. Nearly every page of the manuscript thus shows severaldistinct stages of his handwriting over thirty years or more. He also began,but at some time gave up, separate double-columned auxiliary notebooksto list his authorities for each chapter of every book in Scripture, intend-ing an eight-hundred page index of his sources. Originally he planned towrite one gloss each morning, believing that in seven years—a godlikenumber—he would have a set of "learned, charming and curious Noteson His Word, far beyond any that hath yet seen the Light." Praying oftenfor divine aid in coming upon apt illustrations, he found by 1697 that healready had "an huge Number of golden Keys, to open the Pandects ofHeaven, and some Thousands of charming and singular Notes." In 1702he included in the Preface to Magnalia a sort of progress report on hiswork to the learned world.

Later chapters will follow Mather's woeful frustrations with "BibliaAmericana." But one earlier-written section deserves notice here becauseits date makes it evident that although the political turmoil of the late1680s ended the Boston Philosophical Society (the fledgling scientificgroup founded by Increase), Mather's scientific interests remainedstrong. His treatise-length illustration on the first chapter of Genesis oc-cupies over fifty-one double-columned folio pages, written over a decadeor more. A portion of it dated 1702 represents his summary of EdmundDickinson's Physica Vetus et Vera, published the same year. In a mannertypical of all of "Biblia Americana" he follows Dickinson's ideas closelybut clothes them "very- much in my own Expressions," trying to show thatcurrent atomistic ("corpuscularian") conceptions of matter not onlyagree with the biblical account of creation but in fact offer one of thechief proofs of God.

"Let it not surprize you now, if, I tell you," Mather writes, "That theMosaic philosophy, was no other than the Corpuscularian." Following

Dickinson, he interprets the "Water" mentioned at the opening of Genesis as in fact referring to atoms, on the ground that in Moses' time theword ordinarily meant an immense multitude. Then he gives a whollyatomistic account of creation, beginning with the first day:

In the Beginning was universal Matter by God first created of nothing; awondrous congeries of all sorts of particles, unform'd, and unmov'd; andEvery where separated from one another with Empty Spaces. This Univer-sal Matter was put into Motion, by the Spirit of God, and not Left unto afortuitous Motion and Concourse. Thus was there given unto Matter, thatForce which we call Nature; for Nature is nothing but that Motion whichthe Spirit of God has imprinted upon Matter, and which He perpetuallygoverns with his infinite Wisdom.

In forwarding Dickinson's view of Genesis, Mather was following a some-what conservative train of scientific thought. The corpuscularian philoso-phy, devised and named by Robert Boyle, was widespread in Englandbefore the end of the century, but soon outmoded by Newtonian ideas—some of which Mather entered into later-written portions of his illustra-tion on the same text. But although conceived in the spirit of Descartesand Boyle rather than of Newton, this early portion of "Biblia Americana"looks forward to Mather's becoming probably the most in-fluential spokesman in New England for a rationalized, scientized Chris-tianity.

In many sermons of the time and in two notable published works—Winter-Meditations (1693) and Christianus per Ignem (1702)—Matheralso popularized for American audiences the language, discoveries, andhabits of thought of the new science. The same capacity for wonder thathe invested in his accounts of devils, Indian captivities, or treasure huntshe here devoted to such current matters of scientific study as fossils,volcanoes, and the formation of snow, and to rapt descriptions of themiracles unveiled by microscope and telescope, from the "exquisiteworkmanship" in the eye of a frog to the "Innumerable Millions" ofstars—"How Regular to the Hundredth part of a Minute, are they in theirMotions?" Such discoveries of modern science, he told his readers andlisteners, "Declare the Glory of God, and show forth His Handy work,"and invite our meditation on the deity revealed in the creation.

Particular Faiths

Until May 1702, Abigail Mather is a shadowy figure in Cotton Mather'sdiaries, disembodied but clearly loved, "My dear Consort." But in May,ill, she miscarried of a son after a four or five months' pregnancy. Matherobserved that it was the very week of their sixteenth anniversary, and atthe time of their marriage Abigail herself had been just sixteen. He toldhis father: "I seem to feel in my Mind, the Bodings of a dark Cloud hang-ing over my Family." Lapsing into a serious illness that puzzled theablest physicians, Abigail became the central figure of her husband'sdiary as, with a few illusory remissions, she lay dying over the next sevenmonths.

Cotton Mather's bodings both heralded grave doubt about his pro-phetic powers and climaxed nearly a decade of heightened psychicawareness, an agitated inner drama played out privately against his publicconflict with Colman and Stoddard and the other events of the 1690s. Inthe years following his angelic visitation he spent much time fasting,often melted to tears by his psychical intimations, exalted but also un-nerved by his nearness to the invisible world. Whether the angel itselfreturned is uncertain, owing to his caution in speaking of the event andto the loss of his diaries for 1694 and 1695. If no angels became visiblethey at least came close. Praying on the evening of his birthday in 1697 hefound that "the good Angels of the Holy Spirit, were so near unto me, inmy rapturous Praises of my Lord-Redeemer, that the Prae-Libations ofHeaven which I enjoy'd ... are not fit here to be uttered." Another timehe received a promise that an angel would appear to him in the future.He recorded the message in Latin, as he had done before, so that if Abi-gail looked at his diary she could not read it. In June 1698, it was infused

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(infusum) into him that a heavenly angel of my dearest Savior quod

Coelestis quidam charissimi mei Salvatoris Angelas—would at sonic timebefore his death when it seemed good to God show himself to me visible—mihi se visibiliter exhibuerit. The angel would appear in order toreveal certain matters de Ecclesia, et Rebus novissimis—concerning thechurch and the Last Things.

Such revelations would be of the keenest interest to Mather, for heprized the study of Last Things, of eschatology. His millennial expectations had been aroused by the Revolution of 1689, the invasion of devils,and his own angel, who prophesied the great works he would do "in therevolutions that are now in hand." A belief that the millennium mightbe near had also quickened his calls for reform and his enthusiasm forsuch signs of the extension of Protestantism as the Act of Toleration. Thelong series of European conflicts that began soon after the accession ofKing William, often pitting Protestant against Catholic interests, broughtMather many prophetic intimations of the collapse of infidelism and pa-pacy and the establishment of God's true Kingdom. Several times he re-ceived "a strong Persuasion, that some very overturning Dispensations ofHeaven, will quickly befall the French Empire," or felt a "marvellousImpression upon my Spirit" about a great religious revival in England,Scotland, and Ireland. He often prayed fervently for the fulfillment ofthese intimations, believing that secret prayer does "an incredible deal,towards Jogging the High Wheels of Providence, and Shaking ofChurches, and Empires." Suspecting that the Lord might be preparing totake possession of the Spanish Indies he published a catechism of basicProtestant beliefs in Spanish {La Fe del Christiano, 1699, seemingly theonly work in Spanish produced in seventeenth-century America), andalso addressed an open letter "To the JEWISH Nation," bidding themdesist from "your Damnable Rebellion against the CHRIST of GOD!" Hisprayers and publications were rewarded, he noted in 1698, with "aston-ishing Answers," such as the revival of Protestantism in the principality ofOrange, "in the Bowels of France." He thanked Christ for having "in-formed, inclined, and assisted ... a vile Sinner, in a Corner oi America, toforesee, and put on that Work of His."

Like many others, Mather read such events in the light of the pro-phetic books, especially Daniel in the Old Testament and Revelation inthe New. He tried to fit them to the obscure imagery of vials, seals, beasts,woes, and candlesticks in which the scriptural prophets were understoodto have laid out the approach of the millennium and of the Second Com-

ing of Christ. Many viewed the revival of Protestant persecution in Franceupon revocation of the Edict of Nantes, for instance, as the realizationof the Slaying of Witnesses described by Revelation. Mather fully appreci-ated the weakness of human learning in penetrating the dark language ofthe prophetic books, and the likelihood of interpretive error. He alwaysapproached them cautiously, and although he encouraged his congrega-tion to read them he regarded eschatology as a subject for the elite:"Apocalyptical Studies are fittest for those Raised Souls," he wrote,"whose Heart-Strings are made of a Little Finer Clay than other mens."

At this time Mather's eschatological views followed those of his fatherand of the learned Joseph Mede of Christ's College, Cambridge. He setthem forth in a ninety-one-page manuscript which he completed in 1703but did not publish, entitled "Problema Theologicum." Here he drew asort of schedule for the Second Coming, whose harbingers would be,among other events, the collapse of the papacy, the ceasing of Turkishhostilities against Europe, and the enlargement of the church by the con-version of the Jews. Increase Mather mentioned the same preconditionsin his many sermons on the subject in the same years, but added theappearance of such awful works of God as famines, eclipses, pestilences,and huge earthquakes. Cotton's eschatology put less emphasis on naturalupheavals, although in an almanac published in 1699 he too observedthat the course of nature had recently been "every where most Wonder-fully Altered"—plagues raging, the sun beginning to darken (accordingto astronomers), the seasons not as they used to be, "Earthquakes prodi-giously multiplied," all suggesting "Further and Greater CHANGES uponthe World." Mather shared these eschatological intimations with his con-gregation, filling his sermons of the period with prophecies of "a REVO-LUTION and a REFORMATION at the very Door."

Together with hints of the impending fulfillment of Daniel and Reve-lation, Mather received other strange intimations and providential favors,sometime less cosmic than comic. Several times when on journeys hefound that threatened storms would be delayed until he returned home.Once, traveling to Salem and Ipswich, his road became swarmed, toeveryone's alarm, by a "strange Descent of Hundreds of Bears"—"but Imet none of them." When suffering heartburn he found it "darted into myMind" to apply "Philip Paris's Plaister" to his chest, which he did andwas cured. His acts of self-sacrifice were mysteriously repaid. Lackingmoney to buy a new cloak although he needed one, he recalled Christstripped of His garments and assured himself he would never want proper

clothing: "Immediately after these Thoughts," a woman in his congregation surprised him with a present of a handsome and costly cloak. Again,after leaving some pious books or pamphlets behind during a pastoralvisit, as he usually did, he reflected that no other minister in New England would put himself to such expense, and perhaps he should not do soeither. Feeling a mental "Impulse" that something would happen to encourage his practice, he gave way to a "sudden inclination" to step in thehouse of a certain widow. She had come into part of the library of thefamous Charles Chauncey, and pressed him to accept some forty booksnot only an encouragement to continue distributing free religious worksbut also a help, he added, in filling his "Biblia Americana."

If the caliber of Cotton Mather's psychical experiences did not quitematch his father's supposed ability to predict wars and other major eventsaccurately, they did cause surprise. Once he felt God incline him to men-tion in public prayers the name of a church member held in captivity; thesame afternoon that very person arrived home safe, "whereof much No-tice was taken by the people of God in the Place." It seemed to him alsothat his intimations had their price, and that his moments of communionwith heaven were often followed by some illness, public dispute, or othervexation. In one such case, he received what he considered intimationsabout the time and manner of his death. While he was preaching the nextday, a chimney on his house caught fire, threatening his and his neigh-bors' homes. The large congregation ran from the church to quench theblaze, "and I was thus mark'd out for Talk all over."

With these many unsettling paranormal experiences seems to havecome a return of Mather's youthful speech difficulties. How or whetherthe two were related—indeed, whether the difficulties did recur—isagain uncertain because Mather's 1694 and 1695 diaries are missing. Afterthe gap, however, his 1696 diary suddenly contains much new concernabout fluency. On a day of secret prayer in March he asked Christ for "amore free, and fit, and useful Speech." Lying prostrate on his study floorin May he received a vivid assurance, as if "spoken from Heaven," thatspeech would be supplied him, "and a greater Freedom of it . . . than everI yet enjoyed." In October, for the first time in years, he set down rulesfor the governance of his tongue, reminiscent of the measures he oncelaid on himself to control his stammer: to let fall from his tongue onlythoughts that glorified Christ, to avoid loquacity but on the contrary to"affect much Deliberation." Whatever the origin of these renewedspeech difficulties—if that is what the entries represent—they seem tohave recurred over several years, for again in August 1699 he particularly

thanked God "that I should be a great Stammerer, and yet be made notonly a Preacher of the Gospel, but also my Utterance in preaching be notthe least Ornament of it."

One sort of psychical experience came to Mather more often than anyother, and more troublingly: the Particular Faith. He meant by the term "alittle degree of the Spirit of Prophecy" granted by God to the devotionalelite for abounding in secret prayer—some divinely sent intimation, per-haps conveyed through the invisible ministry of good angels, that a par-ticular prayer would be answered. He seems to distinguish the ParticularFaith from other forms of prayerful assurance by its quasi-hallucinatorydefiniteness. It is a vivid persuasion that one shall "Receive this Particu-lar Mercy from the Lord: And this persuasion is not a mere Notion, andFancy, but a Special Impression from Heaven." The impression comeswith a "certain powerful, Heart melting, Heavenly Afflatus," quite as if anangel had spoken directly. Being entirely sensory, its actuality defies de-scription: "How do I know this Operation from a counterfeit? Niy Answeris, That no words of mine can answer the Question; I know it, as I knowthe Fire to be the Fire; I feel it, but no words of mine can express, how itfeels."

Most of Mather's Particular Faiths concerned subjects of his secretprayers, often his own family, especially his children. Prayer was needed,given Boston's susceptibility to high infant mortality, fatal accident, andepidemic disease. By early 1696, when Mather was thirty-three, he andAbigail had had six children, of whom four were already dead, all but onein infancy. His firstborn child, Abigail, had died in 1687, aged fivemonths; the most recent to die, in February l696,was his infant daughterMehetabel, probably smothered accidentally in its swaddling clothes byits nurse. Understandably his other children became the subject of fer-vent prayer, and then of Particular Faiths. In January 1699, his daughterHannah ("Nancy"), about a year old, fell into the fire, so badly burningthe right side of her face and her right hand and arm that her life seemedthreatened. The fire that burned her, Mather wrote, only fired the zeal ofhis prayers for her, which God raised to a "Degree of a Particular Faith inher behalf." Nancy lived, but the following year she became ill of a painin her bowels, which grew extreme. Again Mather found himself "Irradi-ated from Heaven with a Particular Faith, for some Help to be sent fromHeaven unto the dying Child." Nancy began vomiting, however, and oneof the physicians concluded she would certainly die. Astonishingly, on a

Sabbath, she began "running and laughing the whole Forenoon, aboutthe House," and survived.

Only two months later, Mather's newborn son Samuel was taken withconvulsions. Since Samuel's birth Mather had often tried to get his HeartRaised, unto a Particular Faith for that Child," assuring him that Godwould accept Samuel, his only son, for the ministry. His failure to receivesuch a Particular Faith, however, made him continually apprehensive thatthe child, though hearty, would die in infancy. After Samuel survivedmore than a hundred convulsive fits, as Mather put it, "an odd thing"happened. Coming out of a fit about midnight, Samuel "most unaccount-ably fell a Laughing, yea, into a very great Laughter, and this held fordiverse Minutes." The spectators were amazed, "indeed were so amazed,that they could hardly keep from Swooning." After its laughter the infanthad no more fits until about ten o' clock in the morning, when it wasseized with another fit and died.

Mather's longing for Particular Faiths regarding his children was mostfervent on behalf of the son whose development, we shall see, wouldpreoccupyingly both cheer and darken much of his later life—Increase,Jr., born to him and Abigail on July 9, 1699. In several ways Increase, Jr. s,birth seemed portentous. Years before, Mather wrote, "A Son had beenforetold unto me, in an Extraordinary Way." He always felt acute empa-thy, close to fear, with women's labor pains, and as signs of Abigail'sapproaching travail grew on her he set aside the day for prayer and fastingin his study. Abigail did not give birth, however, and to be fit for churchservices the next day, a Sabbath, he commended her to God and retired.At around one in the morning he awoke, feeling a "Concern upon mySpirit." He returned to his study, threw himself on his knees, and im-plored God's mercy on Abigail in her distress. At about a quarter to two,while he was pleading with God, "the People ran to my Study-door withTidings, that a Son was born unto me." As he continued praising God, onhis knees, he received wonderful advice from heaven. The boy, he wastold, would become a minister to continue the tradition of Cottons andMathers, already three generations long, "a Servant of my Lord JesusChrist throughout eternal Ages."

The Christ-like birth announcement makes clear how much hopeMather invested in the boy—the first of his male children to survive—from the beginning. This was a "Son given to me in answer to manyPrayers among the People of God, and a Son of much Observation andExpectation." The day of the birth he entered in his church records, inlarge letters, his baptism of "My INCREASE." He decided on the name in

honor of his father, as he had done before in naming the infant whichdied of an imperforate anus. (Increase, Sr., commented that he preferreda different name, but his neighbors "would not be satisfied except hisName were Increase.") To mark the baptism Cotton preached a sermonon the duty of parents to bring their children to Christ, especially sincetheir children derived through them the misery of original sin. In hope ofcreating a son of unceasing heaven-mindedness, he began writing for himan exemplary, book-length autobiography, on which he worked over thenext three years, relating his own spiritual development from childhoodto the time of Increase, Jr.'s, birth. Entitled "Paterna," it consists largelyof his methods of private devotion and his search for new ways of praisingGod, depicting his inner life as a continuous hum of praise.

Increase, Jr., became the subject of Particular Faiths as Cotton learnedhis father's lesson that strong affections bring strong afflictions. In hiseighth month, the child was also taken with dangerous convulsions.Mather fasted two entire days, praying for his son's life yet resigning himto God. In one of his fits Increase somehow sucked in a pin through thesilver nipple of his bottle and almost choked to death. Mather continuedhis prayers, awaiting a sign; once "a strange Thing was from Heaven saidunto me: my Son shall yet live." But for at least another month Increase'sconvulsions returned, ceased, and then returned again, as Mather nowfeared the death of "My little and lovely and only Son" and then heard ittold him from heaven that the child would live. In late April Increase'sconvulsions grew extreme and seemed incurable. Still Mather receivedassurances from heaven that his son would recover—"The good Angel ofthe Lord has told me so!"

Increase, Jr., did survive, confirming his father's Particular Faiths. Butat the same time Mather received a surprising disappointment, in thiscase involving his father, and the older Increase's decade-long struggleover the Harvard presidency. The complex details of the episode—whichdrew in several governors and governmental bodies, the Harvard Corpo-ration, and many influential persons—belong more to the biography ofIncrease Mather than of Cotton. They became subjects of Cotton Mather'sParticular Faiths as they affected his father's desire, as acting president or"Rector" of Harvard, to obtain a charter for the college in England.

Under the Phips government, Harvard had been declared a corpora-tion, with power to receive gifts and grant degrees; but this charter wasdisallowed in England, largely because it failed to provide for royal visita-tion and royal oversight of the college. Two further charters were drawnup in Boston and also disallowed. Supporters of Increase Mather urged

that he be returned to England to seek a college charter. But they metopposition from a party headed by Elisha Cooke—a Boston physician andthe town assessor—who adamantly held out for the old Massachusettscharter and reviled Increase for having negotiated the new one. In-crease's own desire to take up the new agency went beyond the college-Uncomfortable in Boston since his education abroad, he wished to besent to England because he was a peevish man of sophisticated intellectand worldly experience who felt cramped and unappreciated in provin-cial circumstances. Also, his discontent swelled on accusations that hehad betrayed the country, and the prospect of leaving it became moretempting with the Act of Toleration, granting new liberty in England toDissenters like himself. As he said in one of his continuing threats ofdesertion, his congregation well knew "that I have had a strong bent ofspirit to spend ( and to end) the remainder of my few days in England."

For years after Increase returned from his original charter agency,moreover, the belief that he would return to England had come to him,often and repeatedly, as a Particular Faith—for him also, a cherished phe-nomenon of devotional life. Cotton, having made a team with his father inalmost every other aspect of their ministry, now joined him in experienc-ing Particular Faiths concerning his agency. They came for the first timein June 1699, as the General Court again considered the settlement of thecollege. He had prayed over the matter many times, without having hismind lifted to a Particular Faith one way or the other. But this day he forthe first time experienced it: "it was in a powerful Manner assured mefrom Heaven, that my Father shall one Day be carried into England. . .and that the Particular Faith which had introduced it, shall be at lastmade a matter of wonderful Glory and Service unto the Lord." Probablyspurred by his Particular Faith, he drew up an address on July 7, signed bysome other ministers, asking the governor and General Assembly to con-sider sending an agent abroad for Harvard. The Assembly again took upthe question of a college charter on the 18th, which Cotton reserved for aday of fasting and prayer. About noon, as he was crying to heaven toarrange his father's voyage, and while the Assembly was voting or debat-ing, there came to him an unutterable assurance from heaven that hisfather would be carried into England, "and that at this very7 Time therewas occurring that which would one Day accomplish it."

This time Mather's Particular Faith was answered by "a most unintelli-gible Dispensation." At just noon, as he received his assurance, the billfor the college was not being enacted by the Assembly but vetoed byGovernor Bellomont. Bellomont apparently tried to get the Assembly to

reconsider the matter, but the members had sat for many weeks and wereanxious to return home, as many had done already; they refused to takefurther action until their next session. The confused outcome—occur-ring, Mather believed, even as he was receiving a contrary Particular Faithin his study—left him troubled. "Lord," he called, "preserve my Faith,and assist me to wait with an holy and humble Patience, for the Issue ofthese mysterious Things!" The issue was nearly a year in arriving, how-ever, and meantime his father also, he recorded, became discouraged"about the accomplishment of the Particular Faith, which had seemed sooften infused from Heaven into our Minds." On the last day of 1699 heonce more lay the matter before God in his study, at noon. He failed tohave a Particular Faith, however, until, as he ended his petitions, hismind "suddenly felt a strange and a strong Operation from Heaven uponit," causing him to say aloud: " The Lord will do it, The Lord Will do it, myFather shall be carried into England."

The test of this Particular Faith came the following June. During theMathers' controversy with the Brattle church, the question of a collegecharter again arose in the Assembly, in such circumstances that if it failedit was unlikely to be revived again. Cotton's conviction having been sev-eral times aroused then defeated, he found himself "in extreme Distressof Spirit." His distress also grew, he recognized, from his knack for land-ing in uncomfortably conflicted situations. "My Flesh," he observed,would be "on all Accounts imaginable against my Father's Removal fromme"; but "my Faith" having been "so supernaturally raised for it, theThoughts of that's being wholly disappointed, were insupportable." Hecast himself on his study floor, pleading that he had always believed aParticular Faith to be a work of heaven on the minds of the devout, tellingGod that if his belief proved wrong he would be thrown into confusion.His distressed plaints failed to rouse him—"my Heart had the Coldnessof a Stone"—until he suddenly felt the inexpressible afflatus: "if an Angelfrom Heaven had spoken it articulately to me, the Communication wouldnot have been more powerful and perceptible." It was "told" him thatGod "had not permitted us to be deceived in our Particular Faith." As-sured that God delighted in him and his father as faithful servants, hecalled out in tears, "He will do it, He will do it!"

But it, Mather added lugubriously, "All came to nothing!" GovernorBellomont, who had favored Increase's agency, deserted it, and insteadwas allowed to present the case for the charter in England himself: "allExpectation of a Voyage for my Father into England on any such Occa-sion," Mather wrote, "is utterly at an End." The end, although real, was

hard to accept. "Wait!" he advised himself. "Waittx

But by the next month there was less than ever to wait tor. as theGeneral Assembly began ousting Increase from the Harvard presidency

altogether. The Council had several times voted a requirement that thepresident reside in Cambridge, and had repeatedly pressed Increase tomove there. He had sidestepped their resolves by threatening to resign.and by offering such objections as his unwillingness to give up preachingto fifteen hundred souls in Boston "only to expound to *<> or 50 childrenfew of them capable of edification by such exercises." Although duringhis sixteen years as president Increase had resided in Cambridge onlv sixmonths, he had been able by staying in Boston to consult often with thegovernor and legislature, and had helped reshape Harvard's policies andhalt its slide. At the same time, his abhorrence of Cambridge became aneffective weapon for Elisha Cooke, who together with some supporters ofthe Brattle church tried to oust him from Harvard by forcing him to livethere. In July, the General Assembly voted that the president must residein Cambridge, and appointed a committee to tell Increase it was expectedthat he repair to and reside at Cambridge as soon as possible.

Perhaps because there no longer seemed a hope of his going to Eng-land, and because friends advised him that if he resisted he would bewidely reproached and would die with infamy, Increase hastened discon-solately to Cambridge, the place, Cotton said, "which of all under Heaven,was most abominable to him." Cotton felt as he had when his fatherescaped to England, "left alone, in the Care of a vast Congregation,"concerned lest he fail to perform his duties adequately. His worn7 under-estimated his father's disgust with Cambridge, for in three months In-crease was back in Boston, having preached only once in the CollegeHall. He held out until the following March, when the House approved anew order providing that if he refused the presidency the governance ofthe college should go to the Rev. Samuel Willard. Increase moved toCambridge again. On his father's birthday. June 21, Cotton found "to myAstonishment" a new hope of Increase's charter agency to England,"which had such a Sentence of Death upon it, about a year ago." Herecorded experiencing no Particular Faith about it, however, and it toocame to nothing. Increase, after living in Cambridge another threemonths, asked the General Court to choose a new president and deliv-ered a farewell sermon to the scholars, telling them to expect for theirservice to Christ not honor but "rather to be Despised and Rejected ofMen; rather to have all manner of Indignities heaped upon you."

Both Mathers felt the effects of Cooke's success in maneuvering In-

crease into resigning the presidency. Added to the uncertain dependabil-ity of the government and the popularity of the Brattle church, it meant tothem a serious loss of influence. Cotton later viewed the episode as hav-ing ended his father's public life. Increase, stricken with gout and feelinghimself aging, not only gave up hopes of returning to England; some-thing gone of his old sour vitality, he also became, he said, "desirous todie where I am." He speculated, too, that the angels who transmit Partic-ular Faiths might actually be ignorant of "some" future events. Theymight cause motions in men's spirits not according to what will certainlyhappen but according to what might come to pass "in probability."

Abigail Mather had already been ill when in May 1702 she miscarriedof a son. The illness worsened, so that not even the most capable physi-cians, Mather wrote, knew "what to judge of or what to do for." She seemsto have had breast cancer, later probably complicated by an infectiousdisease. Mather says little of her in his diaries until this illness, but inchoosing her he had sought a wife who would honor the ministry and bea model to the community. From the beginning of their marriage he hadresolved to help her toward her conversion by example, conference, andjoint prayer, and his efforts succeeded in the fall of 1689, when she wasadmitted to the North Church as a full member. He praised not only herpiety, however, but also her "obliging Deportment" to him, her discre-tion in ordering their affairs, "and the Lovely Off-Spring I have receivedby her." Later he would add that she also had a "melancholy Temper,"her spirit having been broken by her father's second marriage, "bringinghome a Mother-in-law, tho' he did well in it."

A week after Abigail's miscarriage Mather fasted and prayed for her inhis study, hoping for an irradiation from heaven concerning her recovery.Instead, deprived of "the agreeable Charms of her Person" he found hismind buffeted by sexual longings, "impure Thoughts, which exceedinglyabased me before the Lord." He set apart another day of fasting and prayer,this time with Abigail in her room. And this time, thankfully, he felt "theblessed Breezes of a Particular Faith, blowing from Heaven upon mymind." The breezes returned when he prayed alone in his study thatafternoon, and encouraged him to assure Abigail that she would live longer.

Yet the very next day Abigail seemed to have in fact died. A physicianwas summoned from church. Although Abigail revived, Mather was calledto her room the next night because she again seemed to be dying. Aboutone or two in the morning he held a vigil in his study, and assurances

came to him that God intended to restore her, and came again the nextmorning with hope, joy, and wonder when he prayed with her That day,indeed, a "critical Salivation" began in Abigail. The salivation was auspicious, for it reduced her fever. But it did not stop, it became profuse andcontinued for a week and left her drained. Mather observed another clayof prayer and fasting on June 24, and his Particular Faith was astonishingly renewed despite the extremity of Abigail's condition: "God, and Hisgood Angel, has assured me from Heaven, that tho' my Consort be in suchdying Circumstances, yet she shall not die, but live." But next Friday, shegrew still worse, "if it could be," and her progressive deterioration, indefiance of his heavenly promises, was unmistakable, leaving no likeli-hood of anything after all but her death. For Mather the likelihood wasdreadful enough, "But Lord!" he wrote, "how aggravated a Calamity mustbe her Death, if such a Sting, as the Disappointment of my ParticularFaith, must be added unto it!"

Instead of dying, Abigail continued languishing through midsummer.Mather knew well enough the Puritan lesson of weaned affections, thatwe must love this life as children who although they cling to their moth-er's breast must give it up inevitably. Yet while he freely gave his wife upto the Lord, he admitted, "I could not give her over." If God spared herhe would do much in return—study new methods of family prayer, usehis ordeal to glorify Christ, try to be more exemplarily chaste and holythan ever. Part of one night he spent calling on God from his bedroomfloor, "with so little of Garment on as to render my lying there painful tomy tender Bones." Once he allowed himself a respite of bitterness: "I amkept up all Night, that I may see her die, and therewith see the terribleDeath of my Prayer and Faith." But again prophetic certainty returnedand, on the evening of August 23, with visionary intensity. As he sat in hisstudy it was said to him, "Go into your great Chamber and I will speakwith your He did so, confessing from the floor his loathsome worthinessto be thunderstruck into dust and ashes, until the inexpressible afflatuscame, leaving on his agitated soul a sweet, calm, and sanctifying impres-sion that caused him to say:

My Father loves me, and will fill me with His Love, and will bring me toEverlasting life. My Father will never permit anything to befall me, butwhat shall be for His Interest. . . . The Condition of my Dear Consort, myFather will give me to see His Wonderful Favour in it.

At the end of August, after fourteen weeks of pain and continued saliva-tion, and now with feverish scurvy as well, Abigail took such a bad turn

that she terrified him "with extreme Apprehensions of her Dissolution."The weeks—as Mather began tallying the ordeal—of Septemberpassed amid the same wearing counterpoint of assurances from heavenand alarms from the sickroom. News arrived of the death in London ofAbigail's second brother, a young merchant, "her Darling." Ill himself,he had gone abroad in hopes of a curative sea voyage, but after he left,Mather wrote, Abigail said with a "more than ordinary Passion and Agony,that she desired, God would never let her live to hear of the Death of thatyoung man!" When the news of his death arrived, Mather and the rest ofthe family put on mourning costume but by "prudent Management" keptAbigail uninformed. He tried meanwhile to keep up his many other activ-ities—writing, preaching at other towns and before the recently arrivednew governor, Joseph Dudley, awaiting with great consternation thelong-delayed publication of his Magnalia.

Mather pondered, too, this latest engagement with the invisible world.Perhaps, he considered, God had designed by these trials a special exer-cise of his prayer and faith. Or perhaps he had interpreted too casuallythe meaning of the Holy Ghost and His angel in the Particular Faiths theyhad given him. It might be that God, in demonstrating His being loatheto deny anything Mather importunately asked, intended not to preventAbigail's death but only to delay it until she and he were better prepared.Or when God says "that He has heard me" He might intend somethingother than Abigail's recovery, a future blessing he could not possiblyanticipate, but in which the Particular Faith would be accomplished.

By October, after more than twenty weeks' languishing, Abigail fellinto the symptoms of a "hopeless Consumption" and was now "wasted."Yet the end of the month seemed to bring one ground for hope and onefor thanksgiving. Abigail had a prophetic dream, perhaps a visitation. A"grave Person" appeared to her—in her sleep, she supposed ("in hersleep, no doubt," Mather wrote years later)—accompanying a woman insuch wretched circumstances that Abigail praised God for making herown condition less so. The grave person told her that the intolerable painin her breast could be eased by applying to it warm wool cut from a livingsheep, and that her continued salivation would be stemmed if shestrengthened her glands by drinking gum mastic and gum isinglass dis-solved in a tankard of spring water. She told the dream to her main physi-cian, who encouraged trying it. To Mather's great surprise she revivedquickly. Twice she managed to get up from her sickroom and visit him inhis study, where they gave thanks together to God. A week later, onThursday, October 29, at last arrived from England a copy of Magnalia

Christi Americana. For a change Mather set apart the next day for thanksgiving, praising God for "His watchful and gracious Providence over thatWork, and for the Harvest of so many Prayers, and Cares, and Tears, andResignations, as I had employ'd upon it."

Pleased with seeing his large book in print, Mather learned, the sameday, that Abigail's namesake, their eight-year-old daughter "Nibby," hadsmallpox. The deadly disease had arrived in Boston in June, for the firsttime in thirteen years. The town selectmen had tried to contain it, movingan infected family, isolating an infected black person, quarantining someinfected seamen, but in its sweep through Boston, twice-envenomed by asimultaneous epidemic of scarlet fever, it would kill more than threehundred persons. "God prepare me, God prepare me," Mather cried, "forwhat is coming upon me!"

Within a month Mather's house became a hospital, where to attendAbigail and now his children also, he ultimately used "near one hundredWatchers." Soon the maid became "horribly full" of pocks and distracted;five-year-old Nancy succumbed; three-year-old Increase, Jr., was smitten"pretty full and blind, and sore; tho' not so bad as his Sister." Although itwas a large house, Mather decided that no room was better suited tocaring for his sick children than his study—a "large, yet a warm chamber"filled with books, from which his "little Folks" called him to pray withthem scarcely less than ten or a dozen times a day, as he did.

Always busy, Mather became doubly so. He also prayed with his sickneighbors, large numbers of whom he visited. Finding it impossible tovisit them all, but considering it his duty to counsel them in the epidemic,he had three men distribute to the many stricken families in his neighbor-hood copies of his Wholesome Words; or, A Visit of Advice to Familiesvisited with Sickness (1702?), which he had published at his own ex-pense. While Abigail and the children lay ill, he also continued preach-ing elaborate sermons from his pulpit. "Our afflictions," he told his con-gregation in November, "must not prevent, no, they must promote, andprovoke our glorifying of God." He interpreted the epidemic as he did alluntoward events. That his study happened to serve ideally for the chil-dren's sickroom he saw as God's humiliation for not serving Him as heshould have done in his study, "which provokes Him to chase me out ofit." With the same reasoning he urged the afflicted to examine their con-dition, to see whether "perhaps the Spotted Faces of the Sick in theFamily, are such as our Heavenly Father has been Spitting upon: Shall HeSpit in our Faces, and shall we not be Ashamed?" In facing death too, hecounseled, the family's duty was to exhibit, as a token of faith, the pro-

foundest resignation: "Whatever Flower in our Garden be Cropt, tho' itbe our Isaac, yet Resign it, and let it be said of us, Gen. XXII. 12. Now Iknow that thou Fearest God, because thou hast not witheld any thing fromHim!"

Whatever Mather's fears for his children, still "the most exquisite ofmy Trials," he wrote, "was the Condition of my lovely Consort." Abigailhad decayed for six months and her condition was hopeless. Obviouslyaware that her enfeeblement had taxed those around her, she once said,"I shall make you all wearyV" Seemingly aware of her husband's pride inhis capacity to give inexhaustibly, she added, "/ don't mean you, Mr.Mather!" He felt unsure how to glorify God to her amid the enclosingdistress and confusion, yet set himself to doing so "after my sorry Man-ner"—praying with her, catechizing her, discoursing on heaven, prepar-ing her for death, which came on December 1. "At last, the black Day,"Mather wrote. "I had never yet seen such a black Day, in all the Time ofmy Pilgrimage. The Desire of my Eyes is this Day to be taken from me."

Abigail lingered in pain the whole morning. Presumably because ofhis grief, Mather was later unable to recall his conversations with her. Hedid remember asking her to tell him what fault she had observed in hisbehavior that she would advise him to correct; she replied, to his wonder,that she knew of none, but that his behavior had helped bring her nearerto God. As she began dying Mather wished to signify his acquiescence, ashe counseled others to do, thereby to glorify God. It occurred to him tokneel by her bedside and take her hand, "a dear Hand, the dearest in theWorld." Then he showed his Savior his utter resignation to His will: "Igently put her out of my Hands, and laid away a most lovely Hand, resolv-ing that I would never touch it any more!" It was, he said, "the hardestand perhaps the bravest Action, that ever I did." To acknowledge hisresignation, Abigail, who had called for him continually, ceased to callfor him during the two hours she remained alive. Immediately after herdeath he prayed with her weeping father and the other mourners in herroom.

Mather took pride in the many who honored Abigail, the next Friday,at her funeral: "Indeed, I do not know of a Gentlewoman, who has diedin this Land, these many years, more generally esteemed and lamented."Her five infants and young children by Mather who had died before herhad been buried with common grave stones, but now some members ofthe North Church built a costly tomb to contain Abigail's and the chil-dren's remains together. At the funeral Mather gave each person who hadattended her a copy of one of his works, containing a twelve-line poem,

pasted in on a paper, that began, "Go then, My DOVE, but now no longermine; / Leave Earth, and now in heavenly Glory shine Two days later hepreached her funeral sermon. Taking for his text the death of the prophetEzekiel's wife—Son of Man, Behold I take away the Desire of thine Eyeswith a Stroke—he presented himself as a sad commentary upon it: "YourEyes do behold," he said, "what it is, for the God of Heaven, to take awayfrom a Son of Man, the Desire of His Eyes with a Stroke."

While stressing such customary pulpit themes as the need for self-examination under affliction, Mather did not conceal his own mood ofsorrowful deprivation. He composed for the occasion perhaps the loveli-est of his several paeans to married love, in the tradition of Anne Brad-street's intimately domestic but scriptural poems to her husband. Somerelatives, he remarked to his congregation, do not like each other. But theconsorts in a loving marriage know a special joy at once erotic, spiritual,and natural. They can never see each other enough, for the sight of thebeloved is the very condition of their happiness:

The God of Love sometimes does dispose them whom He has made Con-sorts in the Conjugal Relation, greatly to Love and prize one another. TheConsorts are to each other the Desire of their Eyes, and they so love eachother that they Love to be as much as may be in the Sight of each other. . . .They live together Like Abraham and Sarah; Like Isaac and Rebeckah; LikeJacob and Rachel. They Live together in such Love that they could freelyDie for one another; and when either of them does Die, it gives a thou-sand Deaths to the Survivor. ... He loves her and her Love, and rejoices inhis loving Hind, and his pleasant Roe. He had rather lose all his posses-sions, than suffer the loss of one whom God has thus Enriched him withal.He can scarce Relish any thing in his House, if his Eyes have not her alsobefore him.

If the passage suggests the strength of Mather's attachment to Abigail, theunusually many blots and strikeouts in the surviving manuscript betrayhis strain in recalling it. He wrote the sermon, he said, under "the mostgrievous Desolations of his Mind, as well as of his House, that ever wereupon him."

As the year ended, Mather reviewed the events of the last eightmonths to see what mercies they contained to balance his heavy loss. Forone, his children had almost been consumed in the "Fiery Furnace ofthe Small pox," but had all emerged alive; he had made many pastoralvisits to "venomous, contagious loathsome Chambers," and had beenpreserved as well. Abigail's death could itself be considered a mercy, hedecided, for it spared her painful knowledge of reverses in her family.

Given her melancholy temper, she would have suffered greatly to learn ofthe death abroad of her second brother, as she nearly did. Oddly, Matherthought, a letter addressed to her from London containing an account ofhis death arrived at the house about three hours after she died. There wasmore bad news to oppress her also. Her youngest brother had recentlybeen captured by the French, and her sottish eldest brother was disgrac-ing his family and hastening to his ruin. All this had been concealed fromAbigail during her illness but would, Mather believed, "without a Mir-acle, have brought such a Disorder of Mind upon her, as would haverendered my Condition insupportable."

Mather's concern for "my Condition" perhaps sounds selfishly un-comprehending, icy. But he recognized and admitted that he himself feltrelieved by Abigail's death. Her illness, on display before helpless physi-cians, attendants, and children, had been long and dehumanizing, sixmonths of wasting fevers, incapacitating feebleness, severe breast pains,and bedridden hallucinations. So at last after her death Mather acknowl-edged, with weariedly grim realism, "all the Fatigues, which her longIllness obliged me to go through, and with all possible Tenderness." Hadshe gone on as she was, "my Health would infallibly have been destroy'd,if she had recovered a little more, and so far that I should have run theventure of sleeping with her, My feeble Constitution, would undoubtedlyhave run into a Consumption. And my Children would also have sufferedmiserably in their Education."

Still, it was a sore death, more trying by far, Mather felt, than theearlier deaths of his children. He had resignedly "laid away a most lovelyHand." Perhaps Abigail's extreme weakness, or the children's education,and his own vulnerable health made her death a mercy; but, he added,"my extravagant Fondness for her, would upon any Terms have detainedher here." Until recently, he realized in January, he had rarely cried ex-cept when thinking of salvation, and then in joy. "But now, scarce a Daypasses me without a Flood of Tears, and my Eyes even decay with weeping."

To the extent that Mather could escape his grief over Abigail's deathhe only ran into what locked him back in it, the "Miscarriage of a Partic-ular Faith!" Abigail had died despite repeated assurances from heaventhat she would live. "Truly, nothing has ever yet befallen me, that hascome so near to it." He had many thoughts on this "astonishing Sting."He believed that in her misery Abigail had prayed, at cross-purposes fromhim, for her release, which in the court of heaven had overruled theeffect of all his own prayers and hopes for her recovery. Or perhaps asGod does nothing without purpose, He may defeat Particular Faiths as a

warning against pride. Mather observed that the phrase "Son of Man.stressing human limitation, is used nearly a hundred times about Ezekiel,even though the prophet was admitted to familiarity with angels. Godmay have taken Ezekiel's wife to remind him that despite his angelicconverse he was mortal: "The Angels of God, would have this brave mansee That he was but a Son of Man," and they supplied "Enough in thatone point, I take away the Desire of thine Eyes with a Stroke, to convincehim of his being so."

Or, Mather speculated, God may have confounded him so that hecould be serviceable in cautioning others about self-deceit. He conveyedthis message in a sermon he preached two weeks after Abigail's death, onthe doctrine, "Tho' Faith be no Folly, yet Faith may be mixed with Folly.''When we pray for some worldly thing, he told his congregation, Godsometime favors us with "so much of a Particular Faith, as to say, theLord hath heard the Voice of my Weeping." But our strong desire for thething may lead us to interpret the Particular Faith too literally, as if mean-ing that "the Thing must be done in just such or such a manner." All thatis meant in a Particular Faith, he cautioned, is that something will bedone toward the blessing we desire which will demonstrate God's will-ingness to gratify us.

Yet Mather's puzzling over God's purpose in raising then frustratinghis hopes produced no answer. He contented himself with thinking thatGod might allow him in the future to understand the working of a Partic-ular Faith. And meanwhile he would be wary: "I have met with enough,to awaken in me a more exquisite Caution, than ever I had in my Life,concerning it."

Only two months after Abigail's death, a young gentlewoman wroteseveral letters to Mather, then visited him at his house. He had just turnedforty, she was twenty-three, and she proposed that he marry her. Sheconfessed to him that, his widowerhood having allowed her more liberty7to think of him, she found him irresistible, "charmed with my Person, tosuch a Degree, that she could not but break in upon me, with her mostimportunate Requests, that I would make her mine." She assured himthat what impelled her was the more than ordinary value she placed onhis ministry, and that her highest consideration in wanting to be his wifewas her eternal salvation.

Mather never names this young gentlewoman, so forward for her salva-tion, but she was almost certainly Katharine Maccarty, the daughter of a

Boston landholder and shopowner who had helped found King's Chapel.Mather thought Kate attractive and suitable, "a young Gentlewoman ofincomparable Accomplishments .... one of rare Wit and Sense; and of acomely Aspect; and extremely Winning in her Conversation." Yet he triedto discourage her, portraying his life to her as a regimen of prayers, fasts,and "macerating Devotions and Reservations." But Kate told him shedesired nothing so much as to share his macerations; his macerated wayof living was exactly what "animated" her, she said. Considering heryouth, and that she had been a "very airy Person," Mather was not entirelyconvinced. Yet he remained drawn to her and flattered by her attention,and suggested they take time to see if the question could be resolved. Forhimself he would pray and fast, and wait and see: "What Snares may belaying for me, I know not."

As Mather pondered this "odd Matter" he saw clearly that his wishesand his ministry conflicted. In himself he found "a mighty Tenderness fora person so very amiable." Breeding required that she be treated withhonor and respect; religion required that instead of rashly rejecting herhe continue the relationship so as to make her Christ's. But he foresawviolent opposition to the match, worried about the example he might setto young people in his flock, and feared making a bad mistake. His confu-sion sent him to his study floor often, calling for God's assistances untilafter midnight, and so wracked and wasted him that in mid-February hewrote Kate to "vehemently beg, as for my Life" that she end her pursuit.But to give up seeing her was not so easy: "such was my flexible Tender-ness, as to be conquered by the Importunities of several, to allow somefurther Interviews." He determined to make these interviews revolvearound her conversion, drawing from the "witty Gentlewoman" her tear-ful consent to the articles of the covenant of grace.

Gossip about the piquant affair tightened Mather's agitation. His "Rel-atives" (probably his father) believed he overvalued Kate, took the situa-tion with extreme distaste, and treated him strangely and harshly. As the"ingenious Child" continued pressing him, news went around Bostonthat he was courting her. With most people Kate had a bad name, hediscovered, partly because of "the Disadvantages of the Company whichhas continually resorted unto her unhappy Father's House." People alsoblamed him for his earliness in courting. The noise made him suspect adesign of Satan to destroy his ministry—"Is it because I have done muchagainst that Enemy?"—a possibility which as always left him over-wrought: "There is Danger of my dying suddenly, with smothered Griefsand Fears." By mid-March, after long deliberation, he saw unquestionably

that marriage with Kate would damage his name and vocation. He resigned himself once again to laying aside a lovely hand, a person who"for many charming Accomplishments, has not many Equals in the En-glish America." In thus giving himself to Christ, howbeit in novel form,he discerned "no unhappy Symptom, I hope, of Regeneration in mySoul."

Sign of grace or no, Mather's decision only sharpened his distress. Thestubborn appeal of Kate's physical attractiveness and social charms evidently aroused severe guilt and anger. A highly sexual man, Mather be-came tempted, he wrote with indefinite frankness, to "Impurities" and,worse, sometime to blasphemy, atheism, "and the Abandonment of allReligion, as a mere Delusion; and sometimes, to self-Destruction itself."His imagination began giving shape to a new trouble: Kate might retaliatefor being rejected. Apparently he had not let her down lightly, for hespeaks of the "coarse, tho' just, Usage that she has had from me." Thesemight provoke her to a "thousand Inventions" to scandalize a townwhere new lies about him and the broken courtship were being inventeddaily anyway. Despite his disappointment in Particular Faiths he soughtrelief from his misery by pleading the question to heaven. On April 13 hedecided to spend no less than three successive days fasting and praying inhis study, something he believed had never been done before by anyone.The extraordinary devotions produced "Extraordinary Things . . . thatcannot be related. I will only say, the Angels of Heaven are at work forme." He set aside other days of fasting and prayer of similar fervency,whose rapture exhausted his spirit, "made me faint and sick; they wereinsupportable; I was forced, even to withdraw from them, lest I shouldhave swoon'd away."

Mather's heavenly messages had to contend, however, with Kate'smother, Elizabeth—a woman, he thought her at first, "of an extraordinaryCharacter for her Piety." While he was out of town on a trip to Salem, sheand her daughter both wrote to and visited his father, and some of hisneighbors, to renew their suit. By now he was bent on hearing nothingmore of it, whatever the risk of revenge. But Elizabeth wrote to him her-self; if her letter is any clue to her daughter's personality, Mather's jitteri-ness is understandable, for although semiliterate, its pious flattery iscrafty, winning, and exquisitely manipulative. Elizabeth blessed him andGod for the little conversation the minister had granted her daughterbecause it concerned, she knew, "that noble Design of bringing her nearerto the Lord-Redeemer." Her daughter's interest in Mather was whollysoteriological: "I am sure, Heaven knows, that was her whole Design, in

PARTICULAR FAITHS 189

Addressing your worthy person." Her daughter thought, she said, thatheaven might have ordered for the everlasting good of her soul "a Rela-tion to so Heavenly a man (which she always thought more Like an Angelthan a man)."

Susceptible to flattery but not to idolatrous armbending, Mather seemsto have sent back a stiff warning that the Maccartys' hounding him wasboth unwanted and dangerous to his strained health. His letter is lost butits content reverberates in the reply Elizabeth wrote on June 7, which shedelayed sending, she said, knowing it was his day for administering theLord's Supper and concerned lest anything in it "might in the least dis-compose you at such a time." She had never, she said, received "any ofthe like unkind Letter from any person." Her own letter is poorly pre-served and difficult to read, but seems to imply that Mather had sent otherno-nonsense letters as well, which she sat on her couch afraid to open,crying to God that "this holy man means thus to distress me." In oneletter he apparently spoke of his dying by excessive perturbation, so thatshe drenched "the paper throwly with my tears," hoping God would notsuffer "such a star of the first magnitude to be removed from us, by whicha great part of the world will be darkened." Mather's show of resentmentand nervous strain seems to have convinced Elizabeth to retreat, for sheassured him her greatest grief would be to be shut out of his and hisfather's prayers. In closing she presented Kate's thanks for a book Matherhad given or sent her, presumably by him. Her daughter was reading hisworks, she added, "with the greatest Delight imaginable."

Mather felt that the Maccartys, in affirming that he had treated themhonorably and righteously, had fully vindicated his behavior. Yet morethan ever impertinent stories spread through Boston that made him con-temptible, tales that he was actively wooing Kate, insinuations that he hadgone too far in the suit to abandon it decently. The falsehoods and notori-ety atop months of frazzling temptation and resistance swelled his anger:"these things do exceedingly unhinge me; and cause me sometimes tospeak unadvisedly with my Lips. Tis well, if they do not perfectly kill me."

Unexpectedly Mather found relief just two houses from his own. Hisneighbor Mrs. Elizabeth Hubbard, widowed four years and nearing thirtyyears of age, offered the sobriety and respectability Kate lacked. She was"a Gentlewoman of Piety and Probity, and a most unspotted Reputation; aGentlewoman of good Wit and Sense, and Discretion at ordering anHousehold; a Gentlewoman of incomparable Sweetness in her Temper,and Humor; a Gentlewoman honourably descended and related; and avery comely person." Yet Mather had reservations, among them that Eliz-

190 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COTTON MATHER

abcth had a son, about the age of Increase, Jr. He reasoned thai he hadoften urged Abigail to take some fatherless child into their family, feedand clothe it that God might bless his own children: "Why then should Ithink much to educate the Son of a Gentlewoman from whom I expect somuch service to mine?" Visiting Elizabeth's house the firs! time on July14, he found himself entertained if not exactly like an angel, yet with"more than ordinary Civility, Affection, and Veneration." His reservationsalso faded some, as Elizabeth turned out to be "an abundantly moreagreeable Person, than ever I imagined," a reparation for his grief inAbigail's death, his disappointment in Particular Faiths, the resignationsof the last fifteen months.

The lingering possibility that Kate might demand revenge for her "de-feated Love" had kept Mather uneasy, and now came to life. Enraged, shethreatened to be a thorn in his side, to contrive every possible way "to vexme, affront me, disgrace me, in my Attempting a Return to the marriedState with another Gentlewoman." Now able to see unconfusedly that shewas a person perhaps of rare wit but of little grace, he did not try tomollify her. Instead he carried the matter to Christ, who this time an-swered; Kate wrote to him promising not to execute "those Disquiet-ments, which in her Passion she had threatened." Astonished at this workof heaven, he offered God a sacrifice of love and praise.

His engagement, it also amazed Mather to think, created satisfactionin town and country alike. He too felt satisfied, and eager. Having livedcelibate more than a year, it pleased him to think of "arriving speedily tothe Enjoyment of a most lovely Creature," although in connection withthis prospect a strong fancy troubled him, smacking of guilt, that beforehe could be married he would die. Rather, on the evening of August 18,he was married. He spent the entire day in his study in thanksgiving,tendering particular thanks to God for "my astonishing Preservations,from undoing myself, my Ministry, and my Family, under the amazingTemptations, which in the Time of my Widowhood, I have met withal."By God's help he had not made some scandalous, unredeemable mistake.

But he had come close; Kate had had her attractions. With his geniusfor compromise, he offered thanks too, if not exactly fervent ones, thatGod had provided "the most agreeable Consort (all things considered)that all America could have afforded me."

Ill

THE REVEREND COTTON MATHERD.D. & F.R.S. (1703-1713)

Cotton Mather came galloping down

All the way to Newbury town,

With eyes agog and ears set wide,

And his marvellous inkhorn at his side;

Stirring the while in the shallow pool

Of his brains for the lore he learned at school,

To garnish the story, with here a streak

Of Latin, and there another of Greek:

And the tales he heard and the notes he took,

Behold! are they not in his Wonder-Book?

—john greenleaf whittier, "The Double-HeadedSnake of Newbury" (1859)

A field near the graveyard. GILES COREY lying dead, with a great stone on hisbreast. . . .

MATHER

O sight most horrible! In a land like this,Spangled with Churches Evangelical,Inwrapped in our salvations, must we seekIn mouldering statute-books of English CourtsSome old forgotten Law, to do such deeds?Those who lie buried in the Potter's FieldWill rise again, as surely as ourselvesThat sleep in honored graves with epitaphs;And this poor man, whom we have made a victim,Hereafter will be counted as a martyr!

—henry wadsworth longfellow, Giles Corey of theSalem Farms (1868)

The tendency of the stately old families of New England to constitutional mel-ancholy has been well set forth by Dr. Cotton Mather, that delightful old New

England grandmother, whose nursery tales of its infancy and childhood may well bepondered by those who would fully understand its far reaching maturity. As l havebefore remarked, I have high ideas of the wisdom of grandmothers, and t he re fort-do our beloved gossip, Dr. Cotton Mather, the greatest possible compliment ingranting him the title.

—HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, OldtOWTl Folk's ( 1869)

In 1721, this disease [smallpox], after a respite of nineteen years, again appeared as an epidemic. In that year it was that Cotton Mather, browsing, as was hiswont, on all the printed fodder that came within reach of his ever-grinding mandibles, came upon an account of inoculation as practised in Turkey, contained in the"Philosophical Transactions." He spoke of it to several physicians, who paid littleheed to his story; for they knew his medical whims, and had probably been bored,as we say nowadays, many of them, with listening to his "Angel of Bethesda," andsatiated with his speculations on the Nisbmath Cbajim.

The Reverend Mather,—I use a mode of expression he often employed whenspeaking of his honored brethren,—the Reverend Mather was right this time, andthe irreverent doctors who laughed at him were wrong. . . .

—Oliver wendell holmes, "The Medical Professionin Massachusetts" (1869)

Joseph Dudley

<^^)<S^^>

As the new century opened, Cotton Mather was newly remarried, nearingforty, and about to replace his father as the most prominent minister inAmerica. Increase's declining role in public life was partly owing to hisouster from the Harvard presidency and his decision to abide in NewEngland, but also to his advancing age and failing health. In 1704, agedsixty-five, he had fits of what he understood to be apoplexy. He alsosuffered kidney pains and began urinating blood and stones. Over thenext half-dozen years he recorded having insomnia, cholic, and pains inhis jaw and teeth, and took to wearing fur gloves for the gout in his hands.To treat his losses of memory he administered to himself sixty drops of oilof lavender and a mouthful of gingerbread. Extremely fearful that hismind would fail, he hoped to die soon: "If I die quickly some few willlament my death. Whereas if I live a while longer I shall be useless. It is agreat mercy for a minister not to outlive his work."

Increase conspired in his decline by his inveterate view of himself asmoribund, now to a degree justified by objective conditions of his health.His announcements of his imminent death multiplied: "It is but a verylittle Time that I have now to be in the World," he told his congregationin 1703, "I am wasting continually." "/ must shortly put off this my Taber-nacle" he told his readers in 1705. "The Time of my Departure hence,drawing on apace," he prefaced another work in 1711. In 1704 he consid-ered choosing his successor, a partner to his son. Not anyone would besuitable for their large congregation, and he found the younger candi-dates not as loyal to the Cambridge Platform as he wished, and grownaccustomed, lazily he thought, to reading all their sermons. He believed

193

the most suitable choice was Cotton's younger brother Samuel, new inhis mid-twenties and preaching in England. But Samuel was disinclined,and Increase decided to promote his candidacy no further, leaving thematter of his successor open.

Ironically, Increase's waning effectiveness and the troubled events ofthe next decade brought Cotton Mather not only greater prominence butalso lessened influence in Boston. Cotton's pain over the discrepancymay be more complexly appreciated by sketching, before the narrativeresumes, the more intimate side of the ministry he had established twentyor so years after his ordination—not its shifting involvement in publicaffairs, but something of its little-changing daily color and routine.

The congregation Mather served remained probably the largest inNew England, containing about fifteen hundred people. Of these aboutfour hundred were admitted to the Lord's Supper. He preached, that is, toa largely unregenerated audience, hoping to supervise their conversion,although in the more than forty years of his ministry the new admissionsto communion amounted to only 574 women and 342 men. The congre-gation included such prosperous and notable persons as John Richardsand Samuel Scarlett; a large number of maritime people (perhaps a quar-ter of his flock); a large number of widows (about a sixth of the commu-nicants); many children; and numerous blacks. At least after 1711, he andhis father received identical salaries of £3 per week, raised from weeklycontributions at the church that averaged around £10, the remainder buy-ing wood, bellropes, or casks of communion wine, or paying the numer-ous guest preachers, who received £1. Increments over the succeedingyears brought Cotton's salary to £4 by 1725. These meager salaries werefilled out by free repairs and firewood for their homes and gifts of moneycustomarily left them in the wills of wealthy congregants, or occasionallydonated by the church itself or by wealthy and pious friends who be-longed to other churches.

Mather approached his ministry with thoughtful devotion and exceed-ing care. He strove to preach "as excellent and well studied Sermons asever I can and contrive all my public Exercises in the most edifying man-ner that I am able." He undoubtedly succeeded; much other evidenceconfirms his several comments that when he preached outside Bostonpeople flocked to hear him, and that in his own church he attracted verylarge audiences: "Few Ministers in the World, preach unto the like; itwould be beyond the Strength of a mortal Man, to preach unto muchbigger." Preaching once on Sunday, and often a second time at the so-

called Thursday Lecture (a practice introduced to New England by hisgrandfather John Cotton), he produced seventy or so formal sermons ayear, neatly handwritten in small booklets. In his earlier, and perhaps alsohis later, ministry he composed part of the sermon kneeling at his chair ina prayerful position, writing on a "Table-Book" of slate open beforehim—carefully weighing the meaning of his texts in their original lan-guages, consulting scriptural commentaries, and praying much. In pre-paring each sermon, he reckoned, he usually spent seven hours.

Differing considerations dictated Mather's choice of sermon subjects.Occasionally he preached on a text "assigned" him in a dream or took hiscue from a local event. Once as a thunderstorm broke outside his churchhe began preaching extemporaneously on thunder and later publishedthe sermon. Other times he addressed his sermon to a particular publicoccasion—an execution, a funeral, Election Day—or to a specific groupin his congregation, to sailors or children or merchants or women, by thismeans making his pulpit a forum for commenting on the life of the town.Sometimes he preached a series of connected sermons on the same text.His ministry required him to return again and again to such crucial pointsas conversion, prayer, and affliction, both to remind older congregantsand instruct new ones who had not heard his message before. His inge-nious aesthetic sense enjoyed the challenge of varying the presentationwhile repeating the substance. He noted in the Preface to one publishedsermon that he had published many sermons on youthful piety, using "aVariety of Tunes, for the Engaging of Young Minds. . . . And yet the Tunesare not All Spent; Early Piety is here Set unto a New one." The otherwisebewildering fact that much of his published writing repeats the sameideas is partly explained by his practical need to keep driving home thesame essential ideas over forty years while varying the "tune" to keep thesame congregation interested.

Mather devoted equally energetic care to delivering his sermons,which usually ran an hour and a half or an hour and three-quarters, aboutaverage for New England sermons. When he began his ministry his uncleNathaniel urged him to follow other ministers in the family in preachingwithout notes. Yet sermon notes came into general use in Mather's life-time and, as his many surviving manuscript sermons indicate, he oftenwrote out in full the major portion of his sermon—the lengthy expositionof doctrine—with brief notes for the concluding application, to encour-age a freer, semi-improvised delivery for the ending. Just the same, hedistinguished between the "Neat using of Notes, and the dull Reading of

them," and advised other ministers to use notes only for reference:

Let your Notes be little other than a Quiver, on which you may cast yourEye now and then, to see what Arrow is to be next fetch'd from thence;and then, with your Eye as much as may be on them whom you speak to,Let it be shot away, with a Vivacity becoming One in Earnest

As this comment suggests, he endeavored to leave his congregation bothinstructed and stirred. To begin preaching in a heightened spiritual state.he urged ministers to "go directly from your Knees in your Study to thePulpit." Beginning neither too fast nor too loud, he tried to make hissentences short enough to be intelligible to the listeners and transcriba-ble by those who wrote as he preached, speaking deliberately and em-phasizing key words. He followed conventional Puritan theory in alsourging ministers to conclude vigorously, to abandon exposition and argu-ment and in parting strike by lively questions, appeals, and expostula-tions for the worshiper's own conscience, "that flaming Preacher in theBosom of the Hearer." Pouring similar fervor into the public prayers heoffered before and after sermons, he once became so enraptured that heprayed aloud before his congregation the better part of two hours, hissoul "soaring and flaming towards Heaven." He apologized for the un-usual length, in the sermon that followed.

However demanding, preaching comprised only part of Mather's min-istry. He also faithfully kept the church records, made pastoral visits, bap-tized and catechized children, married couples (fifty-two of them in1709), appeared at funerals, wrote letters of recommendation, and pro-moted private religious societies, of which he was connected at one timeto more than twenty. Many hours he spent comforting the afflicted anddying; by the age of thirty-four, he estimated, he had beheld the deathagonies of others hundreds, perhaps thousands of times. As a member ofthe clerical fraternity he also preached at ordinations and sat on churchcouncils, still occasionally writing up their decisions. But in fact he per-formed as a minister all the time, his congregants ever in mind, everaware of serving them as a model. He prayed for them in his study andtried to say something serviceable when passing them on the street.Once, in addition to other devotions of the day, he prayed for each of thefull communicants of his church distinctly and by name—nearly fourhundred of them.

Some at least of Mather's efforts were rewarded, for many peopleloved and honored him for his ministry. They often commented in theirdiaries or to others on his soul-saving power and warmth, appreciatively

left him small bequests in their wills, or wrote to him commending his"Compassionate Regard for the Good of Souls" and asking for his help. Adistressed man named Edward Goddard, for instance, wrote him a touch-ing letter concerning his son, a ministerial candidate who had been do-ing poorly at Harvard. The boy had been suffering head and stomachpains so that his father had to remove him from school. Goddard seem-ingly sensed that his son's problems were as much emotional as physical,for he told Mather that the boy felt depressed by his intellectual limita-tions and had a habit of "looking at things as Almost Insuperable to makethem really so." He prayed Mather's advice and assistance in findingsome method to release his son's abilities by making him feel less dis-couraged. Nor is there reason to doubt the several stories Mather tellshimself of deathbed thanks for his ministry, such as the expiring personwho cried to him: "O^/ Dear Sir, you are the Man! You are the Man, thathave brought me home unto God! It is by your Means, that the Lord hasbrought me home to Himself. I must love you dearly; I shall do so, to mylast Breath."

But no aspect of his ministry brought Mather greater prominence thanthe prodigious number of his publications. He quite outdid the angel'sprophecy in 1693 that a certain youth would compose and publish manybooks in America and Europe, for from then through his quarrel withColman he published around 90 works, and from 1702 to 1713 no fewerthan 135 more, for the rest of his life averaging each year 10 publishedworks. Ultimately he would publish some 388 separate titles. Viewed incomparison with the output of other New England ministers the totalseems even more incredible, for publication was seldom more than asmall part of a minister's work and most ministers eschewed it altogether.Of the over five hundred ministers born in New England before 1703, 66percent never published anything, 11 percent published only a singlework, only 5 percent published ten or more. Mather not only publishedfar more than any other New England minister; he probably publishedmore than all the New England ministers before his time combined. Thetitles range greatly in nature and length from a batch of funeral sermonson women (containing paeans to New England womanhood), to a longaffectionate elegy on his old schoolmaster, Ezekiel Cheever (notable forthe relative smoothness of its rhyme and meter), to the magisterial Mag-nalia. Intermittently he seems to have tried to pace or stamp some designon this deluge, for instance by deliberately publishing one title a month,or by roughly alphabetizing his titles over two years, producing in 1710,for instance, Bonifacius, Christianity Demonstrated, Dust and Ashes, Eliz-

abeth in her Holy Retirement, and so on.

One reason Mather published so much is that he often left one of hisbrief works behind on pastoral visits, with the caution: 'Remember, that Iam speaking to yon, all the while yon have this Book before you!" Thesehousehold tokens of his ministry, he felt, enabled him to preach to hisflock every day. He sometime published a new work only because theimpression of an earlier work on the same topic had run out, a practicewhich again helps explain the large amount of repetition among hisworks, for he must have exhausted printings of his works quickly. In a dayof pastoral visits he usually gave away half a dozen copies, and he estimat-ed that he gave away at least six hundred copies of his works annually. Inthe first decade of the new century he also tried to expand greatly thedistribution of his inexpensive religious books and pamphlets outsideBoston, "sprinkling the Salt ol Religion," as he said, "about the World."Thus he had a bundle of one thousand copies of his Family-Religion,Excited and Assisted (1705) sent for distribution to prayerless families in"every Town in all these Colonies, and to some other Places," and had hisSailours Companion (1709)—reproving smutty talk, masturbation, andsodomy—lodged in every sizable ship sailing out of New England. Con-cerned that his own behavior might fail to exemplify his widely dissemi-nated advice, he reminded himself to read over his own works on Sabbathevenings, "lest my own Books, do not at last prove my own Condemna-tion." Considering that many of his other publications were bought brisk-ly—Good Fetch 'd Out of Evil (1706), a collection of captivity narratives,sold a thousand copies in a week—it is imaginable that numerous peopleoverseas, many people in the colonies, most people in New England, andnearly everyone in Boston owned some of his works. By 1710 he may wellhave become the best-known man in America.

The sheer number of Mather's works, however awesome, misrepre-sents in several ways the nature and actual scope of his writing. He wrotemany thousands of pages which were not published in his lifetime, andthey include such ambitious works as the dozen connected, lengthy ser-mons he preached between March 1701 and April 1703, on the first twochapters of Ephesians (texts he considered of "a peculiar Excellency"),covering such basic Christian doctrines as original sin, providence, pre-destination, and communion—enough for a sizable volume of theology.Between 1700 and about 1723 he also cultivated a series of commonplacebooks or "Quotidiana," about six hundred pages of which remain. Valu-able as a guide to his very wide reading, the books contain choice pas-sages in English, French, Latin, and Greek about geography, science, de-

monology, Martin Luther, religious customs among the Jews, as well asmaxims, comments on prose style, and rather surprising quotations fromDryden, Waller, and Cowley, and references to the Louvre and to Hol-bein. As before he also kept detailed diaries, wrote (sporadically now)after the preacher in church, and swelled his mammoth ongoing "BibliaAmericana."

Mather also maintained a voluminous correspondence. There is noknowing how many letters he wrote, for many have been lost, but by asingle ship to England in 1712 he sent more than thirty letters. His sixhundred or so surviving letters make the largest extant correspondence ofany American Puritan, but represent only the remains of what may havebeen more than five thousand letters, sent literally around the world.Through his European correspondence he tried to keep informed on reli-gious and intellectual developments abroad, but also to extend his repu-tation and influence and to show the Old World what an American coulddo. He wrote to Germany, Holland, India, France, the West Indies, Scot-land, and often to England, where his correspondents included such lu-minaries as Daniel Defoe and Isaac Watts, and perhaps Joseph Addisonand Sir Isaac Newton. At home he kept in touch with other ministers andwith friends far and near, such as John Winthrop, Jr., in Connecticut andeven Samuel Sewall at the other end of Boston, with whom he oftenexchanged by mail ideas about scriptural prophecy, bits of verse, transla-tions. To some friends he sent very lengthy news letters, commenting forpages on recent European events as reported in America's first genuinenewspaper, The Boston News-Letter, begun in 1704. Conscious of oftenaddressing, he said, "the politer sort of Persons," he read attentively theletters of other learned men, gathered into a commonplace book for hisown use some of their "taking Flowers" of rhetoric, and worked many ofhis letters into polished, bantering literary epistles. And he seems to havemade a preliminary draft of nearly every letter he sent.

Mather alternately gloried in and condemned his vast verbal fecundi-ty, still troubled in middle age by "that particular Lust, my Pride . . .affectations of Grandeur, and Inclinations to be thought Somebody."Writing in the 1690s, he at one time thanked God for "publishing more ofmy Composures than any Man's, that ever was in America," and at anoth-er time blamed himself for publishing too much: "I do confess, That Ihave written too many Books, for one of my small Attainments." Recur-rently he discovered that other people, too, were "prejudiced against mefor printing so many Books," including his own father. In print Increaseoften condemned the publishing of many books as a "Vanity which the

Earth Groans under"; less indirectly, in his Preface to one of Cotton's ownworks he chided those who neglect the Bible "and go to the endlessWritings of Men.''

The intensity of Mather's conflict over his writing may be judged fromthe evident abundance in his works of unconscious strategies for resolv-ing it, stammerlike devices that at once express and cancel. In trying tomake peace between his ambition and his guilt, he often simultaneouslyconcealed and revealed his authorship. To give one of many examples: hepublished his Decennium Luctuosum (1699) anonymously, and in someintroductory remarks asked the reader's indulgence for not revealing theauthor's name: "All the Favor he desires of you, is, That you would notEnquire after him; or ask, who he is? but that, as he is at best, but anObscure Person, he may continue in yet more Obscurity." In short spacehe repeated this request three times, asking that the book be read like thewriting on Belshazzar's wall, "where the Hand only was to be seen, andnot who's it was"; reporting the existence of an academy of "Innominateat Parma, into which "the Author of this History, would be glad of anAdmission"; citing a Ludovicus Nihili {"Lewis of Nottingham") and re-peating that "the Author will count himself not a little favoured, if he maypass for one of no more Account, than a, No body." As if the facetiouslylearned style of these requests for anonymity were not enough to identifythe work as his, Mather managed to litter the book with clues to hisauthorship. The "Nameless Writer" includes a dialogue between a Quak-er and a Puritan identified as "Friend M.," reveals himself to be a Harvardgraduate, refers to the Life of Phips and Wonders of the Invisible World,and compares his father to a famous rabbi who had an also famous rabbifor a son. The book ends by announcing publication of a new work "byMr. Cotton Mather."

In a variant of this ambidexter tactic, Mather several times publishedin the character of an anonymous friend of Cotton Mather's, for instancereprinting one brief piece as the work of "Mr. Mather the Younger, as Ihave been inform'd." A charming instance of Mather's ability to preenhimself even in hiding appears in his diary for 1700. He wrote down aquatrain, presumably sent him by an admirer, interpreting his name asgreater than the sum of its Cotton and Mather parts:

For Grace and Act and an Illustrious FameWho would not look from such an Ominous Name,Where Two Great Names their Sanctuary take,And in a Third combined, a Greater make!

Through these four lines of tribute he ran a threadlike line of ink, strikingthem out in a way that presents no obstacle to their being read. Beneaththe (un)obliterated verses he wrote an explanation, in whose parenthesishis conflict only surfaces again in fresh form: "Too gross Flattery for meto Transcribe; (tho' the Poetry be good.)"

Most revealingly of all, Mather often presented himself as being asked,begged, or virtually forced to produce a work. His Small Offers (1689), forexample, begins with a statement that he is publishing the work unwill-ingly, on command of his patron:

It is indeed a piece of Self-Denial that your Commands have obliged meunto; for whatever others may think of Appearing in Print, my own Opin-ion of it is, that unless a man be extremely unacquainted both with him-self, and with the world, he will be rather Afraid or Asham 'd of it, thanTaken with it.

This denial of responsibility for his own writings seems mirrored in manyfacets of Mather's career and of the style and form of his works. As anamanuensis for others, a dedicated recorder of others' sermons, an an-thologist of others' choice comments, a practitioner of a "massy " stylewoven of allusions to others and quotations from others, he often pro-duced with great labor works at once his own and not his own, the ex-treme case being of course his "Biblia Americana," a gigantic collectionof the works and words of others, at once toweringly self-aggrandizingand utterly self-effacing, distinctively by Cotton Mather and not by him atall.

Whatever his misgivings about the extent of his writings, Mather feltnone about the busyness of his larger ministry, and took sly pleasure inidentifying himself with the Spanish bishop named Fructuosus—BeFruitful. To get through his "vast Variety of Employments" he arose atseven or eight in the morning (and, constantly accusing himself of sloth,constantly resolved to rise earlier), and usually retired around eleven atnight or later, taking an agreeable book with him to read until he fellasleep. A general picture of his activities, leaving aside his also-busy fam-ily life, appears at the end of his diary for 1711. Every day of the year, hewrote, he had spent something on pious uses and had recorded somedeed for someone's benefit; nearly every day he had written illustrationsfor "Biblia Americana," many more than a thousand for the year. Duringthe year he had also preached many sermons to private societies in addi-tion to his public sermons, published nearly as many works as there aremonths (and prepared others yet unpublished), made "many hundreds"

of visits, managed "scores of Correspondences," performed "numberless" devotional exercises, and read over "many scores of books, it was ayear, he added, in which "I have been a most unprofitable servant

Unlike his father, Mather accepted his heavy load with uncomplainingzest, at least in this period of his life. Indeed, although the two mencontinued working as a ministerial team, their personalities had come todiffer distinctly. Both were deeply devout, studious, sensitive to criticism,inwardly taut; but while Increase remained disgruntled, private, laconic,melancholy, Cotton, although moody himself, was very often sociable,ornamental, jocose, amiable. The difference stamps their handwriting—Increase's brambled to the point of illegibility, Cotton's gracefully lucid,meant to be read—and appears perhaps most winningly in a facet ofCotton Mather's personality now beyond reach. Everyone who knew andliked him commented on his ability to extemporize, to convert his vastlearning and tenacious memory entertainingly into inventive and fancifulconversation. The "Abundance within his /#xsoverflow'd," Benjamin Col-man wrote. "Here he excell'd, here he shone; being exceeding communi-cative, and bringing out of his Treasury things new and old, withoutmeasure." Atop Mather's inner conflicts and unceasing activity, the strainit must have cost the youthful stammerer to become the best-rememberedconversationalist of his time can only be guessed, and was successfullymasked. His prot£g£ Thomas Prince later remarked that anyone whoknew Mather casually might suppose from his erudition that he spent allhis life studying, but on becoming aware of his constant instruction ofothers would decide he spent ail his time in conversation, and on know-ing him more intimately and learning of his numberless labors wouldconclude he had no time for study or talk but must spend his whole lifein action. Yet while giving out the energy of three lives, Prince wrote,"He never seemed to be in a Hurry. ... He would always entertain uswith Ease and Pleasure, even in his Studying Hours, as long as we pleas'd,or cou'd venture to hinder Him."

The political influence otherwise owing to Mather for his prominencewas denied him by the arrival of a new governor. Under the administra-tion of Joseph Dudley he became more estranged from the governmentthan at any other time since the reign of Sir Edmund Andros fifteen yearsearlier.

Both Mathers had been friendly with Dudley long before he becamegovernor, and were related to him through marriage. His family's renown

in New England's political history, indeed, was only slightly less thantheirs in its ecclesiastical history. Dudley's father, Thomas (seventy yearshis senior), was the second governor of Massachusetts; his sister Annemarried another governor of Massachusetts, Simon Bradstreet, and be-came famous as the poet Anne Bradstreet. Joseph Dudley himself, born inRoxbury in 1647, had been graduated from Harvard and trained for theministry. Increase Mather, whom he regarded as a spiritual adviser, at onetime recommended that his congregation call Dudley as his assistant inthe North Church. But Dudley entered politics, became a representativeto the General Court from Roxbury, and was invested with several impor-tant public trusts.

With the appointment of Governor Andros, Dudley lost the respectnot only of the Mathers but also of most of New England. Under Androshe willingly became censor of the colony press and chief justice of theSuperior Court. To him was attributed the infamous remark, deliveredfrom the bench, "that the people in New England were all slaves, and thatthe only difference between them and slaves was their not being boughtand sold." How the son of a former governor of Massachusetts mightcome to consider his countrymen all slaves was perhaps explained byDudley's colleague, Edward Randolph, who accused him of misappropri-ating funds, and wrote that he would "cringe and bow to anything; hehath his fortune to make in the world."

Particularly because of his judicial role in enforcing laws passed underAndros, Dudley was scorned by many as a traitor to Massachusetts. WhenAndros was overthrown he became, by one account, "in a peculiar man-ner the object of the people's displeasure," and was jailed in Boston. Tohelp get himself released, we have seen, he called on Cotton Mather's"steady friendship and respect," and sent him a lengthy letter from jailjustifying his past. He claimed that he had worked to preserve the originalcharter, refuted charges that he had become tainted with popery, deniedhe had taken bribes, and insisted he privately had argued with Androsagainst repatenting lands. What if anything Mather did toward Dudley'srelease is unknown; popular enmity with Dudley left little to do. Whileimprisoned, Dudley fell ill and the Council allowed him to return toRoxbury under a guard; the same night, two to three hundred Bostoniansbroke open his house and, it was said, "led him back to gaol like a dog."When he was at last returned to England he was confronted with a list ofcharges prepared by a committee of colonists accusing him of 119 illegalacts.

Dudley's political career seemed finished. But he greatly desired to

204 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COTTON MATHER

return to office in New England, and clearly understood that he mightturn the growth of royal authority in the colonies to his advantage. And heabounded in one indispensable quality of a politician, resilience. WhenSir William Phips was recalled to England, Dudley succeeded in havinghim arrested in an action for twenty thousand pounds. To his disappointment, however, upon Phips's death the government of Massachusettspassed not to him but to the Earl of Bellomont. Instead Dudley was madedeputy governor of the Isle of Wight; he also obtained a commission,after which he was known as Colonel Dudley. Returning to England as amember of Parliament, he used his position to satisfy his intellectualcuriosity and cultivated taste, and to gain a place in English society. Hebecame friendly with Sir Richard Steele and with John Chamberlayne,gentleman-in-waiting to Prince George and a member of the Royal Soci-ety, to which Dudley submitted two scientific papers, one about the cir-culation of juices in fruit trees. He also seems to have made a fourth in astring quartet with what he called a "gang of halfpenny viol-players." Hewished to be regarded as an English gentleman, had indeed become anEnglishman. Yet he remained also a pious and affectionate husband andfather, and missed his family, who remained in Roxbury. He often wrotelongingly to his wife, "My Dearest Soul," describing his life in England asan "exile" and asking that God "in his Mercy restore me to my family andcountry."

Dudley began determinedly pushing his return to New England in thesummer of 1701, apparently upon the death of the perennial acting gover-nor, William Stoughton. Dudley enlisted support in London by advertis-ing himself as a loyal servant of the king, who designed as governor tofoster the Church of England, enforce the Acts of Trade, and keep NewEngland "in a strict dependance upon the Crown and Government ofEngland." He neatly parried criticism against him, the most slashing andpersistent of which came from the Massachusetts agent in London, SirHenry Ashurst. Ashurst made opposition to Dudley virtually a crusade,"standing at the sluice alone," he said, "and fencing against friends andenemies in the cause." Ashurst reiterated in conversation and letters hispassionately certain belief that if Dudley became governor, New Englandwould be ruined. "You must, gentlemen, look about you," he wrote toBoston, "I think your all is in danger." Dudley charged Ashurst withspreading a smear that he had promised the Bishop of London that, if hebecame governor, he would immediately make every man in New Eng-land conform to the Church of England. To counter such charges Dudleygot several London Presbyterian ministers to sign and send to Increase

Mather a letter approving him as prudent and sober, respected by thepresent government, and loyal to his birth, a man whose "family Estateand Interest is in your Country."

Dudley also sought support for his governorship from New Englanditself, especially from the Mathers. That took skill, for it had been said inBoston that "both the Mr Mathers Intend to deal with him for his wicked-ness." Ashurst, moreover, had warned Cotton Mather that Dudley's "soulis as black as his hat and would ruin both you and I if in his power."Undeterred, Dudley began corresponding with Cotton Mather early in1701. Mather seems to have ignored his first few letters but Dudley wrotea particularly well-calculated letter in May, chiding his silence and deftlyworking the carrot and the stick. Ingratiatingly, he suggested that he hadpersonally mellowed and wanted peace, reminded Mather that he was aNew Englander by birth and education, and assured him that his longexile abroad had given him "a New Value of my Country and the Religionand Virtue that dwells in it." Threateningly, he reported that the House ofLords was debating a new bill to repeal the Massachusetts charter and thatmany pretenders to the government of New England had come forward,many of whom might feel far less affection for the country than himself.

Mather of course had no little gift for transmitting crossed signals, andhe sent Dudley an exceedingly wary reply. To Dudley's chiding his initialsilence, he responded in an excessively polite tone which could be takenas flattery should Dudley succeed in becoming governor or as contemptshould he fail: "I have obtained for myself a most agreeable pleasure inthe rebuke which I have incurred from you. For what can be more pleas-ant than to be rebuked, when the rebuke itself is the greatest expressionof kindness and service, only to chastise me and fall the more sensiblyupon me." Fudging masterfully, Mather said that "the tribes of New Eng-land are now generally conspiring in their wishes to see Your Honourbrought back in the highest capacity of usefulness unto them,"—leavingDudley to decide whether "generally conspiring in their wishes" meant"wish" and whether "highest capacity of usefulness" meant the governor-ship, and in effect telling him he was both wanted and not wanted. Justthe same, having suffered under Andros and Bellomont and having hadbefore him the prospect of the murderous Kirke, Mather acknowledgedDudley's basic argument that unless he were appointed a worse governormight be. He told Dudley that he and his father had often declared that ifDudley were returned he would serve the mutual interest of the crownand of New England "beyond what could be expected from any otherperson."

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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COTTON MATHER

Like his defense of the Salem judges, Mathers endorsement of Dud-ley, however it insinuated his displeasure, remained an endorsement.Apart from its pragmatic recognition of the realities of imperial politics, Ifprobably reflected his and his father's hope that Dudley's avowals of personal change were sincere, and their sense that his return was probable,so his goodwill worth cultivating. They also had a common enemy withDudley in Elisha Cooke, who as an adamant supporter of the old charteropposed Increase Mather and Dudley both. The Mathers' support forDudley incensed the still battling Sir Henry Ashurst. He described toIncrease his audience before the king and Council, himself on one side,the hated Dudley on the other. The king had been unwilling to appointDudley, Ashurst said, believing the people disliked him; but Dudley pro-duced and read a letter from Cotton Mather (perhaps the one discussedabove), as evidence that all the ministers in the land, and the wholeAssembly, were "impatient for his coming." By one account, Ashurst ac-cused Cotton Mather of betrayal, claiming he once described Dudley tohim as "the cause of the Evil that has come upon this Country" and nowcalls him"the fittest person to be our Governour." When Ashurst demandedto know the reason for Mather's conversion, according to this account,Mather pronounced him a "madman" and denied having written anythingagainst Dudley in seven years.

However recent or tactical, Mather's conversion was premature, asDudley's arrival in Boston intimated. Memories of Dudley's conduct un-der Andros made a cordial welcome uncertain; some people said publiclythey would oppose his landing. Still, convoyed by two armed vessels,Dudley reached Scarlett's Wharf on June 11, 1702, saluted by cannonsfrom ships in port, Castle William in the harbor, and forts in town. SamuelSewall, always adept at reading character out of attire, noticed disapprov-ingly that he arrived wearing "a very large Wig." Dudley was accompa-nied, too, by an elderly minister, George Keith, who he explained hadbeen sent to America by the Bishop of London. After being congratulatedin the name of the Council, Dudley was escorted by a large entourage oftroops and prominent gentlemen from waterside to the Court chamber inthe Town House, where before the court, the ministers, and as manyothers as could crowd in, his commission as governor was read. ThenIncrease Mather, Sewall recorded, "crav'd a Blessing" and Cotton Mather"Return'd Thanks." Dudley in taking his oath laid his hand on and kissedthe Bible, contrary to Puritan custom. When he addressed the representa-tives in the chamber he made no apology for his career under Andros, nordid he try to conciliate the men who had imprisoned him in 1689. He

departed for Roxbury in a coach drawn, Sewall added, by six horses "richlyharnessed."

Five days later Cotton Mather was afforded another spectacle, this ofhis own gullibility. When Dudley visited him on June 16, he advised thenew governor to adopt a bipartisan policy amid the various squabblinglocal factions. Ever the peacemaker, he offered his opinion that Dudleywould be wise to treat the different parties—"if in our case, I may use soCoarse a Word as Parties"—evenhandedly, including himself and his fa-ther. In this connection he mentioned Nathaniel Byfield, a longtimemember of the Executive Council, and Byfield's father-in-law, John Lever-ett, the Speaker of the House. Dudley should act, he recommended, sothat no one could say "you take all your Measures from the two Mr.Mathers" or by the same token that "you go by no Measures in yourConduct, but Mr. Byfield's, and Mr. Leverett's." He gave this advice, heexplained, not from prejudice against the two men but as a service toDudley, considering that in their attitude toward the new government thepeople already stood divided. The value Dudley attached to Mather's ad-vice became known to him quickly. "The Wretch," he groaned, "wentunto those Men, and told them, that I had advised him, to be no waysadvised by them: and inflamed them into an implacable Rage againstme."

Dudley proved divisive, and largely unpopular, from the day he landed.Far from heeding Mather's bipartisan advice, he granted office only to hisown supporters, and favored a narrow group composed of Anglicans,overseas merchants dependent on their British connections, and reli-gious liberals such as Brattle, Leverett, and Colman.

From the beginning and repeatedly over the next few years, Dudleyclashed with the House of Representatives. He fought them over his sal-ary, over some pressing issues of defense, and over their choices forSpeaker and for members of the governor's Council. His instructions fromQueen Anne requiring him to see that the Council was "well affected" tothe crown, he tried to purge it of diehard defenders of the old charter,men presumably tainted by antimonarchical sentiment. He vetoed fivecouncillors chosen by the House in the 1703 elections, all supporters ofthe old charter, including Elisha Cooke. Cooke and another of the fivewere elected again the following year, and again Dudley vetoed thechoice, and vetoed Cooke again a third time in 1706. Loftily he explainedto the House that in choosing councillors they had passed over men of

ability and station who were disposed to serve the crown, tor others lessqualified and in some cases of "little or mean estate." Cooke in fact wasallied to the best families in Massachusetts and had a greater estate thanDudley; but in England he had zealously prosecuted complaints againslDudley and Andros. To some, the real irritant between Dudley and theHouse seemed to be the unhealable wounds of 1689. One contemporarywrote in 1703 that Dudley "hath given several instances of his remember-ing the old quarrel, and they [the House] resolve on their parts never toforget it; so that it is generally believed he will never gain any point fromthem."

Dudley offended others by his favor to the Church of England. Math-er's ecumenical vision of Episcopalians joining Congregationalists atcommunion never included High Churchmen, whom he counted as virtu-al papists. But Dudley's governorship paralleled the reign of QueenAnne, whose tone—by contrast with that of the deceased Calvinistic KingWilliam—was High Church. George Keith, the Quaker-turned-Anglicanminister who had accompanied Dudley, published soon after his arrivalin Boston a sermon listing six rules which would bring Dissenters intothe Church of England. The Church of England chapel, surviving butseemingly quiescent since the time of Andros, flourished under Dudley.The governor headed a petition in 1703 to the Archbishop of Canterburyasking assistance in erecting a new building; a decade later the congrega-tion numbered about eight hundred persons and the chapel had beendoubled in size by the addition.

Dudley's patronage encouraged others to extend the Church's influ-ence in New England. The ministers of King's Chapel set about trying toopen other Church of England chapels in neighboring towns, and theAnglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel relayed to Dudley in1705 the idea of enticing Harvard students to take holy orders in Englandand work for the SPG. Members of King's Chapel repaid Dudley for hissupport by countering complaints against his administration that reachedLondon. In 1706 they addressed the Lord Bishop of London (a member ofthe queen's Privy Council) testifying to the success of his leadership andpromising that his continuance in government would be "most Accept-able to all her Majesty's Good Subjects, Merchants and Planters, that havetheir Dependance on the Government of England as well as the Churchhere."

Quid pro quo was not only the reward for Dudley's support of theChurch but clearly also one of the motives. For all his polish, warmth, andother attractive personal qualities, Dudley had his fortune to make in the

world, as Edward Randolph said, and his politics could be whorish. Muchof his favor to the Church amounted to obeisance to people of possibleinfluence. George Keith returned to England after only about a year inBoston, complaining that Dudley after inviting him along on the crossingtook not the least notice of him from the day he left England. Dudley'ssupport for the chapel seems to have been ideological and personal aswell as political, part of his dedication to the imperial ideal of an Englishcolonial administrator, of a piece with his profuse wig and large outlaysfor food, his wish to marry his children into prominent families, his per-mitting public celebrations of coronation day or the queen's birthdayeven when they fell on the Sabbath. "Let us," he told the Council, "beEnglish-men."

At first the Mathers treated Dudley characteristically, Increase direct,Cotton ambiguously indirect. Increase, dismayed that Dudley nominated"very ungodly men to be in place of power," bluntly and publicly toldhim that he believed the governor still brooded over his earlier imprison-ment in Boston and still sought revenge. He dedicated to Dudley a ser-mon on The Excellency of a Publick Spirit (1702), in which he askedleave "to speak freely to you," and advised him to put memories of hisjailing behind: "In some Remarkables you have been like Joseph. Let mepray you to imitate Joseph, not only in Seeking the good of those underyour Government, as He did; but in a perfect forgetting whatever mayhave seemed grievous unto you." He also warned Dudley away from the"wicked men that solicited to have our former Charter taken from us,"and, calling attention to his alleged Anglicanism, reminded him that peo-ple still spoke of his honored father, the former governor, as "one thatloved the true Christian Religion, and the pure Worship of God." Whenopposition to Dudley later mounted, Increase told him to his face that inhis position "I would sooner go 3000 miles than continue to be a gover-nour." Increase also took on George Keith in a pamphlet war and, withCotton, preached and prayed publicly against attempts to open other An-glican churches outside Boston.

By contrast, Cotton Mather approached Dudley sounding complexharmonies of respect for his family, scorn for his untrustworthiness, grati-tude for his treatment of the old-charter faction and, above all, recogni-tion of his power and its usefulness to the ministry. In the sermon hepreached to the General Assembly two weeks after Dudley's arrival heneither reproached the governor nor flattered him; with Dudley present,and the occasion demanding a panegyric, he described an ideally goodman without mentioning him. In emphasizing that a good man governs

his resentments and forgives his enemies, however, he drew a patten) olvengefulness to which Dudley could fit himself if he chose:

There are men of an implacable and inveterate Malice. If once they appre-hend that another man has, it may be, stood in the way of their littleInterests, they will pursue that man, with an immortal Malice and Venom.They will never be Reconciled unto one, whom they imagine to havesome way or other Lessen'd them; No, but watch all occasions to vent theirSpite against him, though they should go contrary even to themselves indoing it.

Actually the Mathers' and others' fear of Dudley's vengefulness was prob-ably misjudged, and in Cotton's case probably intensified by projection.The nineteenth-century historian John Gorham Palfrey was closer to thetruth in seeing Dudley as an adroit politician who had "schooled himselfto humiliations," and understood too well the conditions of success toseek to satisfy his pride at the expense of his effectiveness.

Mather and Dudley managed to acknowledge both their mutual dis-like and their mutual recognition of each other's usefulness by keepingtheir contacts politely tart. The flavor can be sampled in two letters Dud-ley sent Mather around 1706. Mather evidently gave him part of "BibliaAmericana," hoping Dudley might use his influence abroad to have thework published. In reply Dudley sent an amiable and pious letter pervad-ed by mocking self-assurance, at once respectful and cutting. In tellingMather that he profited greatly from men of learning, for instance, herebuked his halfhearted support: "if such men knew the value I have fortheir Conversation and the benefit I have by it, They would give it memore." In return for the perusal of "Biblia Americana" he offered, outra-geously, corrections of its biblical learning, explaining that "If I shouldnot offer at these two or three [trifles?], you would not believe I had readit." In language rivaling in fuzziness Mather's own pseudo-assurances tohim, he described the mountainously rising "Biblia" as "an Elaboratework, which I should be glad to see made public"—leaving Mather todecide whether "elaborate" meant "good," whether "I should be glad"meant "I will help," and whether "made public" meant "published."

While playing now-you-see-it-now-you-don't with Dudley personallyand publicly, privately Mather dubbed him "a fop in boots" and workedto overthrow him. Efforts to remove Dudley began virtually as he steppedashore; a month after his arrival, rumors circulated of a plot to assassinatehim. New Englanders complained continually to London of the gover-nor's hot temper, violations of the charter, packing of courts, attempts to

secure offices for his son. Sir Henry Ashurst, having tirelessly fought Dudley's appointment, just as tirelessly spent money and sought allies to re-move him.

Mather's main choice to replace Dudley was Sir Charles Hobby—achoice no less pragmatic than his initial endorsement of Dudley, sinceHobby's morals were considered loose and he belonged to the Church ofEngland. But Mather believed that Hobby treated Nonconformists re-spectfully and seems to have felt he might wean him to Congregational-ism. In November 1703, he sent a florid letter to the parliamentary leaderLord Nottingham, recommending Hobby as governor because "the gen-tleman who is our present governor has rendered himself so universallyunacceptable that there is a likelihood of his removal." As governor,Mather urged, Hobby would not cut himself off from other branches ofgovernment, as Dudley had done, by so "trampling on them, as to renderthem intractable." His efforts to promote Hobby, however, were tem-pered by fears of enraging Dudley. When in 1704 he saw a possibility forgetting Hobby the governorship by piling up complaints against Dudleyin London, he advised Hobby against making the complaints lest they"unhinge" Dudley. Mather's hopes for Hobby were thus aroused andthen thwarted repeatedly. In January 1706 he looked forward to Hobby'sappointment by May, but May brought news that just when Hobby was toreceive his commission Dudley's official life became "wondrously re-vived" by the arrival of five thousand pounds of Portuguese gold, "withadvantageous representations."

This hint of bribery foreshadows Mather's eventual break with Dudley,which resulted in part from the governor's conduct of Queen Anne's War.Dudley's appointment coincided with the outbreak of over a decade offighting between England and the combined French and Indians inAmerica—one theater in a far larger struggle between the France of LouisXIV and a coalition of England, Austria, Prussia, and several minor states.For Bostonians the war meant French privateers capturing vessels almostin sight of the town and recurrent frightening rumors of a massive Frenchinvasion of New England. The war also brought Indian attacks on outly-ing towns and villages, such as the 1704 nightime raid on Deerfield,when fifty French soldiers and two-hundred Indians killed fifty of thethree-hundred inhabitants and carried off more than a hundred, includ-ing the Rev. John Williams and his wife, Eunice, Cotton Mather's cousin,who remained with her captors and married into the tribe. It meant, too, afurther threat to the loosening moral atmosphere by the presence in Bos-ton of English and American sailors, increased numbers of poor, the de-

pletion of the Massachusetts treasury at the rate of about thirty thousandpounds a year, and the making of many private fortunes through wartimecommerce.

Mather preached and published much on the attendant social andeconomic problems. In The Souldier Told What He Shall Do (1707) andFrontiers Well-Defended (1707) he animadverted against prostitution,gambling, and other "VICES OF THE CAMP" and provided an ami -Catho-lic catechism for use in frontier communities who might be exposed toFrench papists. Some of Mather's beliefs could only encourage economicindividualism, for instance that social distinctions were ordained by Prov-idence and that wealth might be used for pious ends. Yet in his preachinghe always tried to Christianize the marketplace, and now he ferventlydenounced cutthroat or questionable business practices. In such wartimesermons as Lex Mercatoria. Or, the Just Rules of Commerce Declared(1705) he blasted as "detestable Hobbianism" the "General Scramble"of unbridled economic exploitation, of men reverting as if in a state ofnature to "Sharks, that are all for themselves, and that wTould gladly makeMinims and Morsels of all mankind beside themselves."

That Dudley's handling of the war gave his enemies a noisy issueagainst him was ironic, for the need of wartime unity reduced factionalstruggle in Boston, and whatever his other limitations, Dudley made aneffective wartime governor. Patriotically dedicated to eliminating themenace of France, and much experienced in Indian affairs, he tried vigor-ously to raise troops, introduced the use of snowshoes (enabling scoutingparties to operate in winter), and strengthened fortifications in BostonHarbor, a labor involving hundreds of tradesmen, artisans, soldiers, andslaves in digging trenches and building a blockhouse and powderhouse.

Nevertheless, in the early summer of 1706, some men employed byDudley to effect a prisoner exchange with the French were said to havebeen trading with them, including Dudley's friend Captain Samuel VetchAllegations of this illegal trade with a despised enemy, Mather wrote"raised a mighty Flame among the People." Those accused were stifflyfined by the General Court, despite doubts over whether the crime, committed if at all in Nova Scotia, came under the jurisdiction of a Massachusetts court. More fateful, Dudley himself was accused of allowing andperhaps profiting from the trade. In June 1707, twenty New Englanders,headed by the respected Salem merchant Nathaniel Higginson, peti-tioned the queen to remove Dudley from office for having "counte-nanced a private trade and correspondence with the French of Canada

and the Indians in their interest, and furnished them with ammunitionsand provisions."

Mather and Sir William Ashurst seem now to have joined in a majorattack on Dudley, a forty-six-page pamphlet entitled A Memorial of thePresent Deplorable State of New-England. . . by the Male-Administrationof their Present Governour (1707). Probably written and compiled byMather and published in London by Ashurst, the work appeared anony-mously and under a Boston imprint. Despite his pleas to Dudley to forgetthe past, Mather began by rehearsing charges of twenty years ago, thatunder Andros Dudley had given offices to cronies, silenced opponents bythreatening to seize their estates, called New Englanders slaves. ThenMather brought a plethora of new charges against Dudley, supported bymany letters and affidavits: that Dudley sold public offices; extorted let-ters of support for his administration; accepted bribes to grant tavernlicenses; raised three times as much money to prosecute the war as wasneeded; hushed up the discovery of bullets, bought in Massachusetts,found concealed among peas in a French ship; and, most damaging, thathe "countenanced" the sale of gunshot and other supplies to the Frenchand Indians by his son William and his friend Vetch, under cover ofredeeming captives. One letter Mather included drew on the old mental-ity of invasion, making Dudley seem not just corrupt but sinister. Thewriter gave his belief that Dudley was deliberately leading on the Frenchand Indians to destroy all they could, thereby to put New England "tosuch vast Charges, as will Ruin the whole Government, by Killing someand Impoverishing the rest." The Memorial's many charges and attesta-tions in effect build a case against Dudley for high treason.

Copies of Mather's pamphlet and of the petition to the queen did notreach Boston until late October or November, by which time Dudley hadbecome the target of new charges. He had proposed to the General Courtin March an expedition against Port Royal, in French Acadia. Mather,entirely sharing Dudley's hatred of the Sun King's France, enthusiastical-ly approved the assault, which was accompanied, he wrote, by "as greatan army of prayers to Heaven as we had employed on any occasion."Dudley mustered fifteen transports and eight sloops, defended by guardships. The large fleet anchored off Port Royal near the end of May, butfound itself barricaded by thick woods and marshes from the fort, whosestrength had been underestimated. Instead of besieging the fort the expe-dition turned aside and attacked nearby French settlements, burninghouses, drowning corn, destroying cattle and sheep. The utter failure to

attempt the fort produced uproar in Boston. Officers returning from theexpedition were met at Scarlett's Wharf by several women, who gave themlarge wooden swords, calling to each other, "Is your piss poi charg'd,neighbor? So-ho, souse the cowards. Salute Port Royal." A drove of jeer-ing children and servants followed the soldiers to the Town House, andby afternoon hundreds of boys with wooden swords and daggers or oldgunstocks were marching through town crying "Port Royal! Port Royal!"to drumbeat. The debacle inspired new rumors about Dudley, this timethat he had tried to restrain the expedition, hoping to preserve the fort formore lucratively treacherous trade with the French.

The new accusations put Dudley in no mood to act the forgiving Jo-seph when copies of the anonymous Memorial and of the petitionreached Boston. Whether he attributed the pamphlet to Mather is un-known, but enraged in any case, he sent off for publication a counter-pamphlet in his defense. He also demanded a vote from the Councilclearing him of charges in the petition. Here his determination and hiscanniness at infighting triumphed. Samuel Sewall, a member of the Coun-cil, asked that the question of the petition be delayed until after theSabbath, but Dudley wanted action. He ordered the Council secretary todraw up a vote, which was rushed through and sent to the House forconfirmation. The House delayed, however, until Dudley himself assuredit that the Council had unanimously voted to vindicate him—which"gall'd me," Sewall wrote, "yet I knew not how to contradict him beforethe Houses." According to Sewall, Dudley read before a House confer-ence extracts of "many" letters by Cotton Mather—letters dated later thanthe Memorial but "giving him a high character." The House too clearedDudley by voting that the charge against him of trading or allowing atrade with the French and Indians was a "scandalous and wicked accusa-tion." To clinch Dudley's case, one subscriber to the petition to thequeen, being brought before the Council, said he knew nothing of thetruth of the charges, had signed "under provocation," and was sorry forwhat he had done.

Dudley's remarkable comeback left Mather sputtering in private. "Ev-erything," he wrote, "is betrayed." The governor's official vindication hesaw as a case of the best lacking all conviction and the worst being full ofpassionate intensity: indecisive opposition and delays in the House, "vot-ing, and unvoting, in the same day, and at last the squirrels perpetuallyrunning into the mouth open for them," attempts to "blanch Ethiopiansand blacken honest men," the "castration of all common honesty." Dud-ley's vindication, he told a correspondent, represented a debasement of

civic morality: "Bribery, a crime capital among the Pagans, is already apeccadillo among us." If the climate of Dudleys administration contin-ued, there would soon be "not so much as a shadow of justice left in thecountry."

The justness of Mather's indignation is debatable. Dudley's scrupu-lous biographer, Everett Kimball, argues that the accusations against himrested on doubtful rumor and malicious suspicion, and that the Houseprobably voted his innocence because they had no evidence of his com-plicity. Yet Samuel Sewall came to believe that Dudley at least knew ofillegal trading and, resentful as well of Dudley's steamrollering, he pub-licly withdrew his vote of vindication on the Council. Suspicions of brib-ery, also, hung continually over Dudley, who undoubtedly understoodwell-placed money. Once when someone remarked in Council that noman in England was made a captain without giving the Duke or Duchessof Marlborough five hundred guineas, Dudley observed that "there hadnot been any admitted these thousand years but in a way like that." Hintsof securing places for friends and squeezing money from New Englandalso appear in letters to Dudley from others during his governorship. Hisfriend at the Royal Society, John Chamberlayne, for instance, suggested tohim that "a little provender from New England will make my horses lookplumper and slicker . . . and your land Sr., I hear, is famous both for oatsand hay!" Dudley, he said, "is so great an husbandman and knows so wellhow to cultivate the most barren and ungratefull grounds, that next har-vest you will not only have a crop sufficient to supply your own occasions,but even to export to the most remote and distant regions."

Dudley did send Chamberlayne what may have been some "proven-der"—gifts of precious and costly walnut, for making into cabinets. At theleast, Dudley's long experience in colonial administration made himaware of the perquisites a governor might enjoy, and his genuine devo-tion to the crown entailed a sense of station that required concern for hisand his family's comfort.

In the added uproar of one further fracas, Mather's wary restrainttoward Dudley at last cracked. He and his father both realized that Dud-ley's connections could be helpful in securing from London a permanentcharter for Harvard, without which the school could not give the doctor-ate degree, and the legitimacy of its B.A. and M.A. was questionable. Thehope of obtaining a charter was very likely one of his strongest motivesfor avoiding a break with the governor. But on October 28, a few days

before the Council met to vindicate Dudley, the Harvard Fellows chose astheir new president Dudley's own candidate, John Leverett. The choicevirtually ended Mather's influence at the college. It had declined anywaybecause the temporary president, Samuel Willard, was Dudley's brotherin-law, and because since his father's ouster he had absented himselffrom meetings of the Harvard Corporation and was regarded as havingabdicated his place, which the Corporation filled.

But the man Dudley supported as president and helped elect was inMather's mind close to the worst possible choice. John Leverett was thegrandson of a governor of Massachusetts, and at one time or other hadoccupied nearly every important public office short of the governorship.But as he was also a lawyer by profession and, at the least, an Anglicansympathizer, Mather considered him unqualified and potentially danger-ous. It was preposterous, he said, "to make a Lawyer, and one who neveraffected the study of Divinity, a president for a College of Divines," andgiven Leverett's religious leanings, it would be less hypocritical for thecollege to be "directly Voted in the hands of the Bishop of London." Hesaw Leverett's election as an overt effort "to betray the College, and todestroy all the Churches of New England."

In behalf of Leverett's credentials it could be said that he had studiedlaw rather for public service than personal profit, had served as a Harvardtutor for a dozen years, and that although never ordained he read divinityand could preach. As for his menace to the Congregational identity ofHarvard, Leverett himself dismissed the charge as a scare, an attempt to"put every body into Terrour that I have led the voyaging Israelites backto Egypt." Some recent scholars have agreed, seeing Leverett as at most areligious liberal on the model of Benjamin Colman or as a complex mannot very different from Mather himself in remaining doctrinally orthodoxbut magnifying Reason and moving toward the idea of a benevolent deity.

Yet Mather's view of Leverett as basically an Anglican was shared bymany contemporaries, including Leverett's supporters. The Massachusettsagent Henry Newman had been a pupil at Harvard under Leverett, andwrote approvingly that while Increase Mather as president thunderedagainst all who went over to the Church of England, tutors Leverett andBrattle dared to recommend the reading of Anglican writers and "mademore Proselytes to the Church of England than any two men ever did thatliv'd in America." As president, Leverett stayed closely in touch with theAnglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, which hoped to re-cruit potential Anglican ministers from New England youths at Harvard.Sir Henry Ashurst, a benefactor of Harvard, became unwilling to support

the New England schools because under Leverett, he said, Harvard was"bringing up a strange generation," and because Dudley was using thepresident to "defeat the religious designs of founders and benefactors."Mather's vision of a Harvard supervised by the Bishop of London wasexaggerated but not irrational.

In one of the several deft political maneuvers of his administration,Dudley while pushing through his own vindication by the House alsoforwarded Leverett to the presidency. Probably at Dudley's instigation,thirty-nine ministers signed an address recalling that it was under Lever-ett as their tutor that most of the "now Rising Ministry in New Englandwere happily Educated," and affirming that no one else would be soacceptable to them as president. With two exceptions, however, all theministers who signed came from towns outside Boston. Mather scoffed atthis "Sham-recommendation" as having been concocted in the "most fal-lacious and fraudulent manner, that ever was heard of." It misrepresentedthe Corporation's choice of Leverett as unanimous when in fact only sev-en or eight members voted for him, he said, and Dudley's "Tools" usedlying insinuations to collect the signatures.

However Dudley obtained the testimonial, he presented it to theCouncil on November 11, amidst his own struggle for vindication, and onJanuary 14 met with the Council again, in the College library, to installLeverett as president. Taking Leverett by the hand, Dudley led him intothe College Hall, where he ceremonially transferred to him the Collegeseal, keys, and records. With a "Noble Fire" lighted and before an audi-ence including Colman, Sewall, and ministers from six neighboringtowns, the erudite governor delivered a Latin address, observing that Le-verett's appointment had been approved by the ministry, hoping that anagain flourishing Harvard would benefit New England, and promisingthat the new president could depend on the government for patronageand counsel.

For Mather, who of course did not attend, the ceremony could haveseemed only a grisly parody of his hoped-for cooperation between Mosesand Aaron. Coming atop Dudley's resilient recovery from accusations oftreason, it ended Mather's six-year dalliance with the governor and unfet-tered his much guarded tongue. Both Mathers joined the attack. A weekafter Leverett's inauguration, Increase sent Dudley a long letter charginghim, among other things, with the failure of the College to obtain a char-ter. This time Cotton outdid his father in frankness. The same day he sentDudley a letter over twice as long, some seven full pages in modernprinted editions. Coming from him, this essay-length malediction was

unprecedented, for in his writings and from his pulpit he had alwayspreached obedience to rulers. Indeed, except under Andros, probably noother minister in the history of New England spoke as vehemently againsta governor as Mather did now. Aware of this himself, he began by explaining that he had always offered his earlier reproaches in "the language ofthe tribe of Napthali," pastorally counseling Dudley rather than revilinghim. But he had learned the futility of applying to him "modes of addressing used among persons of the most polite education." Now he feltcompelled to speak in a manner befitting rather "an ignorant mob."

It was his own letter, read to King William, Mather began, whichhelped deliver Dudley the governorship—a letter sent in the belief thatDudley repented his "wicked and horrid things," a letter sent despite the"venoms" Dudley streamed against him following the 1689 revolt, a letterthat earned him nothing but "extreme displeasure in the country." And itwas his duty to tell Dudley wherein he had not pleased the Lord: "Sir,your snare has been that thing, the hatred whereof is most expressly required of the ruler, namely covetousness." The many ways in which Dud-ley's administration declared his "disposition to make haste to be rich"he would now specify. There was, he said, bribery, in which Dudley's sonjoined; there was, many believed, his countenancing "unlawful trade withthe enemies"; there was the sham vindication by a House which votedseveral times over to "generally declare that they could not clear youfrom that unlawful trade."

And there was, more recently, the fort at Port Royal—an easy capturebut that Dudley "absolutely forbad" it, "preemptorily forbad" it. Buthere the history of Dudley's covetousness grew "too black" to be pur-sued, darkened into treason:

The expedition baffled. The fort never so much as demanded. The forcesretreating from the place as if they were afraid of its being surrendered.. . . And all possible care taken that after all, nobody shall be to blame! Idare not, I cannot meddle with these mysteries. ... All I say is, the countryis ruined, and the premises declare whose conduct very much of the ruinis owing to.

And there was also, Mather did not forget, the governor's abuse of him.Dudley intercepted and distributed his correspondence, told lies abouthim in public, affronted people for no other reason than their living inhis part of town. By his covetous deceit, plotting, and manipulation thegovernor had brought himself on ill terms with heaven and for the sake of

his soul must reconcile himself with the Divine Majesty before the com-ing Judgment, when the Lord would demand to know how far he hadaimed in his government at serving Him. In concluding, Mather called uphis former ambidexter politeness with Dudley, but raised to a key ofgracious bitchiness: "if the troubles you brought on yourself should pro-cure your abdication and recess unto a more private condition, and yourpresent parasites forsake you, as you may be sure they will, I should thinkit my duty to do you all the good offices imaginable."

Taken aback by Mather's bluntness, Dudley did not reach for spiteful,or any other, courteousness. "Yours of the 20th instant I received," hebegan his reply, "and the contents, both as to the matter and manner,astonish me to the last degree." In astonishment he was not alone, forMather's letter created commotion and expectation. Samuel Sewall, towhom Mather lent a copy, waited with concern to see "what the issue ofthis plain home-dealing will be!"; Dudley's supporter Ebenezer Pember-ton, the minister of the South Church, said that if he were governor hewould "humble" Mather "though it cost him his head." Dudley tried todo that, reminding Mather of the Christian forbearance appropriate in aminister and the respect due a governor:

I must think you have extremely forgot your own station, as well as mycharacter; otherwise it had been impossible to have made such an openbreach upon all the laws of decency, honour, justice, and Christianity, asyou have done in treating me with an air of superiority and contempt,which would have been greatly culpable towards a christian of the lowestorder, and is insufferably rude towards one whom divine Providence hashonoured with the character of your Governour.

As Mather had invoked for Dudley the ghost of Andros, Dudley broughtback some specters himself. He said the Mathers based their chargesagainst him on town gossip, that they intended "to withdraw the Queen'sliege people from that duty and subjection which the laws of our holyreligion do enjoin," and that they had concealed their animosity towardhim for twenty years, awaiting a time when "you thought you could serveyourselves by exposing me"—the old case against the Mathers as credu-lous, antimonarchical, and self-interested. And authoritarian: their rage athim, Dudley said, betrayed their selfish insistence on having their ownway—"the college must be disposed against the opinion of all the minis-ters in New England, except yourselves, or the Governour torn in pieces."While offering to satisfy their complaints if they visited him in a respect-

ful spirit, the governor also laid down the law: "In the mean time, lexpect you as subjects to the Queen, as christians, as messengers of thegospel of peace, to lay aside all methods that tend to blow up sedition."

Dudley's stiff personal rebuke to Mather was followed by the gover-nor's public ridicule of him. Sometime later in the year appeared Dudley's earlier-written Modest Inquiry into the Grounds and Occasions of aLate Pamphlet (1707), published in London in response to the Memorialprobably put together by Mather and Ashurst. Dudley countered vigor-ously the various affidavits they brought against him, for instance retort-ing that the Boston-made bullets found in the French peas amounted toenough smallshot "to shoot a few sea Fowl." At the same time he causti-cally derided Mather's "Hereditary Rancour" his boasts about his largenumber of publications, and his opposition to all government, "eventhough it were Angelical." To show up Mather's "seeming Sanctity" healso dragged into print Kate Maccarty, the young woman who had courtedMather five years earlier, before his remarriage to Elizabeth HubbardClark. In Dudley's version of the affair—offered as factual but seeminglyan old joke refurbished—Mather frequently called on a local "Gentle-woman of Gayety." Because his visits offended some of his congregationhe promised to avoid her, but his "ViciousInclinations" sapped his goodintentions. The intrigue went on, Kate and Cotton mutually swearing that"NEITHER OF THEM SHOULD CONFESS THEIR SEEING EACH OTH-ER." Their clandestine visits, however, again became public news, andthis time Mather was accused by his own father, a scene Dudley under-took to reproduce. Cotton, "after two or three HEMS to recover himself,"said to Increase: "INDEED, FATHER, IF I SHOULD SAY I DID SEE HER,I SHOULD TELL A GREAT LIE."

Later generations can savor the ironic Tightness of this canard—Math-er existing in the American imagination as a sort of un-George Washing-ton—but Mather's own reaction is unknown. Some time during the yearappeared a forty-eight-page fusillade entitled The Deplorable State ofNew-England. The pamphlet more amply documents earlier chargesagainst Dudley, and implicates Leverett in reducing the charges againstthe convicted traders; but the range of the barrage also takes in the Coun-cil and many of the New England clergy for supporting them both. Matherwas suspected of having a hand in writing the pamphlet, earning him the"Malice" not only of Dudley, he said, but of his Council and of the clergyas well. While the other North End ministers sat "feasting with our wick-ed Governor" in September 1709, he was excluded because, he felt, of

his "provoking Plainness and Freedom, in telling this Abab of his wicked-ness." Banished from the table of the governor, he took his reproofs tothe pulpit. A scriptural anecdote he related to his congregation was un-derstood by Samuel Sewall to mean that "not the prophet, but the K[ing]was hurt by his Estrangement." As Sewall also understood, Dudley re-sponded with conspicuous absence: "Dr. Cotton Mather Preaches fromthose words, That which is Crooked cannot be made Straight. . . . Gover-nor not at Lecture."

For Mather, the cost of his exchanges with Dudley was increasingisolation. This itself may explain why many others were now emboldenedto attack Mather as well. Their freedom with him, unimaginable thirtyyears earlier, also sprang from the vast change of mores in his lifetime,occurring too organically to be traced step by step but palpable to mem-bers of his generation. In 1688 it was "They" who wanted Martha Good-win to keep Christmas with them and got her "very drunk"; by 1711, boysand girls in the North Church, without becoming energumens, openlycelebrated Christmas with a frolic, a reveling feast, and a ball.

Pranks had often been played on Mather; in 1703 someone threw athis gate a picture of a hanged man with his name over it. But in hisgrowing prominence, in the increasingly permissive social atmosphere,and now with his public chastisement by the government, he becamefrequently the butt of scurrilous letters, defamatory broadsides, derisivegossip, and even physical threats. To mention only a few in 1711 and1712: he learned, for instance, that some "Finished Rake" was making it apoint in his travels to "load me with his lying Calumnies, wherever he hascome." A ship captain, a stranger to him, imagined himself the subject ofsome reproofs Mather delivered from his pulpit and came to his housedrunk about nine at night with a drawn cutlass, swearing he would be"content to lie a year in Hell, if he might have the Satisfaction of killingme." Several times "knots of riotous Young Men" gathered under hiswindow at night to sing "profane and filthy Songs," on one occasionattacking people with clubs taken from his woodpile.

Abuse issued from abroad also. Some Quakers printed in London in1710 a broadside entitled A Just Reprehension of Cotton Mather, accusinghim of "Scribling against the said People, tho' Covertly, as if ashamed ofhis Work." John Winthrop came across a "sort of farce or comedy" abouthim and his father, "pretended to have been acted at the play-house in

London," where it was apparently written and printed. To Mather themost enduringly hurtful of these stabs, by far, came in the historian JohnOldmixon's two-volume The British Empire in America ( London, 1708),In mocking Magnalia Christi Americana as resembling a schoolboy'sexercise, Oldmixon unknowingly turned his knife in a still livid ulcer, theplace Mather probably remained most sensitive, his use of language:

The History of New-England written by Cotton Mather, a Man of Fame Inhis Country, as appears by the barbarous Rhimes before it in Praise of theAuthor, is a sufficient Proof, that a Man may have read hundreds of LatinAuthors, and be qualify'd to construe them, may have spent his Youth in aCollege, and be bred up in Letters, yet have neither Judgment to knowhow to make a Discourse perspicuous, nor Eloquence to express his Sentiments so that they may please and persuade. . . .

No other work of history ever published, Oldmixon continued,

is so confus'd in the Form, so trivial in the Matter, and so faulty in theExpression, so cramm'd with Puns, Anagrams, Acrosticks, Miracles andProdigies, that it rather resembles School Boys Exercises Forty Years ago,and Romish Legends, than the Collections of an Historian bred up in aProtestant Academy.

Throughout his life Mather alluded to these remarks in letters and pub-lished works, reviling with the sarcasm of smothered fury "the maliciousand satanic pen of one Oldnixson (some such name)," whose own histo-ry, he added, has "far more lies than pages in it."

Mather of course had many admirers also, and his isolation in Bostonwas to some degree offset by prestigious recognition abroad—compli-ments about Magnalia from the Anglican Lord Mayor of London, unex-pected letters and gifts from Sir Richard Blackmore and other eminentpersons he had not met. Most comfortingly of all, in May 1710, the Uni-versity of Glasgow awarded him a Doctor of Divinity degree, representingthe highest scholastic honor attainable. Mather considered this a distinc-tion to be greatly cherished, the "apex and summit of academic digni-ties." Besides, he esteemed the Church of Scotland for its notably pureworship and outstandingly able ministry, "a Set of Burning and ShiningLights ... no where to be Equalled on the Face of the Earth." As the firstAmerican recipient, moreover, he took special pride in being shown suchproofs of international respect as no person in America had won beforehim, and as news of the award spread he received many letters of congrat-ulation.

Inwardly Mather always sought acclaim, but how deeply in this diffi-cult time he craved it appears in his response, which was both guilty andeffusive. It was "proposed and advised" to him, he said—as if rationaliz-ing one of his too numerous publications—to wear a ring in token of hishonorary doctorate. Inscribed on the ring were a tree and a quotationfrom Psalms 1:3. ("And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of thewater"), the whole encircled by the words GLASCUA RIGAVIT— Glasgowwaters, or irrigates. To convince himself that he might wear the ring with-out pridefulness, he drafted more than a page of possible justifications,for instance that the sight of it would continually prompt him to cry, "Omake me a very fruitful Tree, and help me to bring forth seasonable Fruitcontinually/" Apparently still unconvinced, several weeks after making acase for himself he added that if prideful thoughts arose he would quashthem by considering his humiliating circumstances, "and alas, I haveenough of these!"

But however guilty Mather felt, he felt far more grateful. His reply tothe University of Glasgow—a learned, gracious letter promising to provehimself worthy—was published in Boston as a pamphlet of twelve pages.Thus began his voluminous, years-long correspondence with members ofthe University and of the Church of Scotland. The depth of his apprecia-tion can be gauged by the obligatory character of his earlier letters. Hewrote in August 1713, for instance, that "I have not much material to addunto my Last, which I wrote three or four Months ago." The reason hewrote when he had little to say, he explained, was to "just Let you see,that we can't forget you"—as if the esteem accorded him had to be repaidevery other day. Later, however, Mather settled into an unusually richcorrespondence with divines and academicians in Scotland, sending longdiscussions of biblical prophecy or detailed news of missionary work, andreceiving lengthy admiring letters in return. The learned Scottish minis-ter and ecclesiastical historian Robert Wodrow relished his own ex-changes of letters with Mather as "one of the greatest satisfactions kindProvidence has allowed me." The correspondence not only demonstratesMather's eminence abroad but also marks the beginning of a century-longand mutually fruitful communion between Scottish and American intel-lectuals—men drawn together by their sense of shared problems in livingin cultural provinces of the British empire.

However honored abroad, Mather could do little right in Boston atthis time. Detractors jumped on his degree. A man named John Banisterpublished verses on what he called Mather's "Diploma," hailing him not

as a distinguished fellow citizen but as a verbose megalomaniac:

On C. Mr's. Diploma

The mad enthusiast, thirsting after fame,By endless volum'ns thought to raise a name.With undigested trash he throngs the Press;Thus striving to be greater, he's the less.

In Banister's account, the degree was not awarded to Mather but wheedied by him, to restore his crushed pride after the publisher of Magnalia,Thomas Parkhurst, fed up with Mather's outmoded theology and history,refused to publish "Biblia Americana": "Parkhurst says, Satis fecisti,/ Mybelly's full of your Magnalia Christi." Thwarted, and envious of the doc-torate his father "stole" from Harvard, Mather longed for a doctorate him-self, but was repulsed by President John Leverett (the "Keeper" below);rather than go unhonored, he decided to beg a degree abroad:

Daz'd with the stol'n title of his Sire,

To be a Doctor he is all on fire;

Would after him, the Sacrilege commit

But that the Keeper's, care doth him affright.

To Britain's Northern Clime in haste he sends,

And begs an Independent boon from Presbyterian friends;

Rather than be without, he'd beg it of the Fiends.

Facetious George brought him this Libertie

To write C. Mather first, and then D.D.

The writer and publisher of these verses were brought before Judge Sam-uel Sewall, who fined them and bound them over to the Sessions Court.Mather's enemies John Leverett and Ebenezer Pemberton visited Sewallto protest his action. Leverett reminded him that in their letters the Math-ers had treated Governor Dudley "barbarously," and the animated Pem-berton began "capering with his feet," Sewall reported, and exclaimedthat if the Mathers ordered it Sewall would shoot him through. The libelcase came before a grand jury, to whom Mather seems to have sent amessage in Banister's defence, but the outcome is unknown.

The question of the respect due Mather for his honorary degree stayedalive another year, because the Harvard Corporation voted to cite thedegree next to his name in a forthcoming cumulative catalogue of Har-vard graduates. Hugely grateful for this recognition also, Mather sent theCorporation a long florid Latin letter making clear that he prized theiracknowledgment, but characteristically assuring them that, despite his

JOSEPH DUDLEY 225

recognition from Glasgow, Harvard retained its own: "once alumnus, al-ways a son most observant and most obedient." President Leverett, forcedto decide whether to insert the title beside Mather's name, asked Dudleyabout some "dutifull Letters" that, he heard, Mather had recently writtenthe governor; but Dudley was "pleased to assure him" he had received noletters from Mather "since the undutiful One" of 1708. When Leverettlearned, however, that Dudley told Pemberton he would not have thetitle omitted on his account, Leverett "Upon the whole of All Consider-ations" ordered a "D.D." printed beside Mather's name.

The addition did nothing to restore Mather's influence at Harvard, anymore than Dudley's tacit consent restored his place at the governor'stable. Since the 1689 revolt, Mather had grown accustomed to having asay in the political affairs of New England; a decade later, the sphere ofhis influence had shrunk to the North Church. And in the spring of 1712this began slipping from him also. To deal with some crowding in hischurch, resulting from a growth in the population of the North End, heapparently allowed the building of some pews, contrary to earlier practicein New England meetinghouses, where people sat on benches. Somemembers of the North Church—perhaps objecting to the idea of pews, orwanting pews for themselves, or simply feeling crowded—resented thenew seating arrangements and, Mather wrote, "made me the object ofmany Calumnies." There began to be talk of leaving his ministry, D.D. orno, and building a new church. Wary of doing something intemperatethat might make things worse, he decided not to oppose the move. Butthe prospect of losing part of his congregation stunned him, and in theprivacy of his diary he excoriated these "Uncivil, Uncourteous, Unthank-ful, Unhelpful, Disobliging People."

Within a year a fourteen-man committee of the North Church hadasked and received permission from the brethren to form a new church.Anticipating that many others might follow this nucleus out, Increase toldthe swarmers that if they set their meetinghouse at a healthy distancefrom his own, he would "do all for them that a Father could do for hischildren." They erected the New North Church about three streets away,provoking him to predict that "a blasting from God will be upon themfirst or last." How many persons left the Mathers' ministry is unknown,but they made a visible emptiness. To Cotton the congregation seemed in"very diminutive Circumstances," even approaching "something of a Dis-solution." He worried not only about the possible design of Satan todestroy the North Church but also about the intensity of his aging father'sgrief, and cautioned himself to stay calm. As a gesture of amity he

preached to the swarmers, on whom his "courteous and candid way"made such an impression that they volunteered to publish the sermonalthough, he added with suppressed spite, "I were hardly six minutespreparing it"—compared to his normal seven hours.

Publicly forbearing, Mather raged in his diaries against the "ProudCrew, that must have Pews for their despicable Families." Behind sceneshe tried to frustrate them. The new congregation desired for its pastorJohn Barnard, himself a member of the North Church. According to Bar-nard, the Mathers feared that his selection would entice prominent mem-bers of their church to desert them and flock to him. Cotton Mather toldhim candidly, he wrote: "Mr. Barnard, do you think we could easily bearto have the best men in our house leave us. . . . No, sir, we cannot partwith such men as these." Increase Mather, he said, styled him a "manifestoman" because of his friendship with Benjamin Colman and blocked hiselection by persuading five members of the fourteen-man committee notto vote for him. The new minister, John Webb, was chosen by a minorityof the committee.

At Webb's ordination in the nearby New North Church, Increase andCotton Mather nevertheless assisted in the ceremonial laying on of hands,and Cotton Mather offered the ceremonial hand of fellowship—for thema humbling occasion at which Governor Joseph Dudley, not humblinglyfor him, lent his dignifying presence to the strayed sheep.

Bonifacius

"The Minister's Tongue," said Cotton Mather, "is the chief Instrument ofhis profession. . . . How extremely difficult is it, for a man that speaksmuch and often so to govern his Tongue, as to speak nothing amiss." Hisown tongue had always given him trouble, of course, not only by stutter-ing. Once after a rumor reached him that Samuel Sewall had criticized hisfather before the Council, he denounced Sewall so loudly in a Bostonbookshop that people could hear him in the street. And now as the manyhumiliations, snubs, and desertions of Dudley's administration weighedheavily on his fragile self-esteem, they severely tested his impulse, whenhe felt unappreciated, to snarl. Always defiantly struggling to master histemptation to speak rashly, he now made the governance of the tongue amajor topic of his ministry and diaries, while his isolation in Boston em-phasized perhaps the most distinctive features of his personality and redi-rected some of his energies for a decade.

With unrelenting, sometimes ferocious, sternness, Mather admon-ished himself not to let fly when excluded from the governor's table, orfaced with a depleted congregation, or versified as a drone. Impatientwith his weakness in suffering slights, he constantly scolded his inabilityto "preserve that Sedate, and Serene, and Comfortable Frame of Mindwhich belongs to the Peace of God," constantly fretted that "I am tooready to express my Resentment," constantly resolved to "Keep a mightyGuard on my Language, that I may not Speak unadvisedly with my Lips."Preoccupied with his own self-control, he became more condemnatorythan ever of angry reviling and gossip in others. For men, even good men,to speak evil of one another was the "special Vice" of Boston, he be-lieved, and he lashed his townspeople with the same hard reproaches he

227

laid on himself: "On your Knees," he commanded in one sermon, "Abhoryour selves, Condemn your selves, for the Sin of your Unruly Tongue'And again: "beware of Rash Words in your passion. . . . Cursed is the An-ger, for it is raging, it is Hellish." Hellish it would, yet again, be punishedin Hell: "O Tongues, that are set on Fire of Hell. . . . The Owners of suchTongues. . . must one Day gnaw their Tongues for Anguish, and Cry out,'Oh! For a drop of Water to cool my Tongue!' "

In whole works devoted to the problem of temperate speech, such asGolden Curb for the Mouth (1707; rpt. 1709), Mather counseled twomethods of treating insult. First, conformity to Christ in mortification—becoming invulnerable by becoming nothing: "Be always really, heartily,inwardly loathing your self really esteem others Wiser and Better thanyour self; really shun Honours, be averse to them, afraid of them; never beuneasy at being over-looked by other Men." Second, unrelaxing self-con-trol: "Upon the first advice of any Abuse offered unto you, resolve . . . /will keep my Mouth with a Bridle, while I have before me what the unbri-dled Mouth of Wickedness has uttered of me." When abusive letters ar-rived he received them emotionlessly, adding them to the large tied bun-dle on which he had written "Libels: Father, forgive them!" As infollowing Elisha Corlet's "Method of Deliberation" he once paused be-fore every syllable, he now scrutinized every word. "I so took heedagainst Sinning with my Tongue," he noted approvingly in 1712, "that Idid not Utter One Word all the Day, (though I Spoke on many occa-sions,) but what, I think, I may say, I did well to utter it."

In his mighty effort to wall in his outraged sense of rejection, Matheralso hit upon one strategy that altered his life and in part determined hisparticular place in American history. He decided to deal with malice andbetrayal by Doing Good. The design of Doing Good, of course, was hard-ly a novelty in Christianity or in Mather's career. His early notebooksrecord several sermons on the theme by Boston ministers, including hisfather; he preached on it himself during his earliest ministry, telling hiscongregation in one youthful sermon that "We all came into the Worldupon a very important Errand, which Errand is, To Do and to get Good."Indeed, the question "What Good may I do?" had been, he recalled inhis autobiography, the subject of his daily thoughts "ever since I was aLad."

Yet Mather's acts of Good beginning around 1710 differed from theseearlier preachings and resolves in being specifically prompted by feel-ings of isolation and disregard. He made it a practice Tuesday morningsof each week, for instance, to single out his personal enemies, "as many

of them, as I can know of," and to consider "what good may I do untothem?" He applied this method of substituting good for evil to his ownthoughts and fantasies as well, promising himself that whenever he per-ceived the upwelling of some ill thought he would "extinguish it, andcontradict it, with forming a good Thought, that shall be directly contraryunto it." Somewhat later he came to see Doing Good as God's reward towell-intentioned men enfeebled by rage. A good man, he wrote,

if he should happen to be of an /// Temper, the Grace of GOD in himovercomes and mortifies this /// Temper; Tis a Burden to him; and hetakes a Revenge upon it, by multiplying Acts of Goodness, that shall repairthe Errors into which Base Passions have betray'd him.

This description of an inherently good man betrayed by strong inclina-tions of which he disapproves, not only conveys the way Mather hadcome to see himself but also comes near summarizing the man he was.

With incitements to his ill temper multiplying, Mather's effort to con-tain it became virtually a way of life. He returned to the straining generos-ity of his adolescence, when because one could "never do enough" forone's father he transcribed Increase's manuscripts and gave him a cher-ished watch, or poured forth novel devotions to God with boundlessingenuity. Now again he would be fertile and inventive, but in DoingGood. "Oh! may we be men always devising of Good!," he exhorted hiscongregation in 1709, "May our Devices of Services wherein we shall dogood be Exquisite, be Numberless! May we be full of that wisdom whichwill find out well-devised Inventions, to do good in the world."

How fully Mather now dedicated himself to this "virtuous Epicurismin Usefulness" is registered dramatically in the changed form of his dia-ries. Previously he had kept a separate daily record of attempts to DoGood, from which he annually culled the most important and transferredthem to his diary at the end of the year. But now he resolved that each dayof his life he would ask the question, "What shall I render to the Lord"and he would enter the answer in his diary as a "GOOD DEVISED,"abbreviated as "G.D." Beginning in 1711, he overhauled the entire formatof his diaries, making the heart of each day's entry a "G.D.," some particu-lar, intended act of Good. A five-day sample will illustrate the whole:

2. [Second day of the week, in February 1711] G.D. Unto the Sacrificesof the Lord's-Day Evening in my Family, I would often add this; take aBook of Piety, and make each of the capable Children read some shortpungent Passage in the hearing of all. . . .

3. G.D. I have a little Nephew, for whom I have not hitherto done all

that I have to do, towards his Conversion and Salvation ... I will send forhim; and bestow on him the little Book of the Religion of the Morning. . . .

4. G.D. By a vessel now going for Carolina, and thence for Scotland. 1would send some Instruments of Piety. . . .

5. G.D. One of our Societies for the Suppression of Disorders, havethro' I know not what Feebleness, disbanded. I would, by the means of anactive Person or two, try to revive it. . . .

6. G.D. An aged and pious Man, fallen into great Penury. ... I willprocure needful Garments for him. . . .

Although Mather continued to memorialize his prayers and fasts, for atleast the next several years he wrote far less than before about his innerspiritual struggles and far more about his services in the world. "Thegrand Intention of my Life is," he declared conclusively in 1713, "to DoGood."

Mather's numberless acts of Good did not escape contamination fromthe contrary feelings of envy and resentment from which they often arose,a subject to which the end of this chapter will return. Just the same, hewas a deeply charitable man, whose keen sympathy for others' distresspervades his many earlier, empathetic accounts of persons captured byIndians, vexed by evil angels, or hounded by ecclesiastical authorities.Outcast himself during Dudley's administration, he grew more and moreto identify with other outcasts. "I see no Person miserable," he wrote in1705, "but my Heart is very sensibly touched with their Miseries, I would,if I could, with all my Heart, help them in their Miseries." The growth inthe numbers of poor during Dudley's reign, largely as a result of the longwar effort, inspired him also to keep a "Catalogue of the Poor," to visitimprisoned debtors, send money to indigent persons in neighboringtowns, provide books for impoverished ministerial candidates or clothingfor a poor Indian and his wife. His humane concern was well enoughknown so that when the Boston selectmen ordered a town meeting in1710 to take up the question of poor relief, they specifically desired hispresence. His whole life substantiates his later statement to his son thathis ability to write in seven languages, his pleasure in feasting on "theSweets of all the Sciences" his enjoyment of history ancient and mod-ern—none of this afforded him as much delight "as it does, to Relieve theDistresses of any one Poor, Mean, and Miserable Neighbour"

Mather's program for Doing Good gained confidence and directionfrom his reading of the German Pietists, one of the most pervasive spiritu-al and intellectual influences on his adult life. Their names begin appear-ing in his diaries in late 1709, as he also begins mentioning "the Devices

of Good which I form and write in the Morning." He shared the Pietists'concern that the Reformation of the sixteenth century had reformed doc-trine without reforming society. To complete this partial Reformation thePietists hoped to abolish slavery, refine social justice, ameliorate the con-dition of the poor, and curb exploitative business practices in the emerg-ing commercial state. Mather admired much else in German Pietism aswell: its emphasis on pastoral work and involvement in community life,its far-flung missionary work, perhaps especially its ecumenical attemptto reduce dogma to essentials. Elements of these of course existed inMather's religion already, and there had been much earlier interchangebetween German Pietists and English Puritans.

Some more personal sources of Mather's attraction to the Pietists atthis time are implied in his admiration for John Arndt, often consideredthe founder of Pietism. The true Christian described in his True Chris-tianity (De Vero Christianismo, London, 1708)—a work Mather praisedfor bringing "Millions of Souls into the Life of GOD"— was someoneMather wished and felt compelled to become, combining profound ethi-cal concern with self-denying Christ-mysticism. For Arndt, true faith fruc-tifies into good works organically, by its inward impulse and nature. Inlanguage Mather well understood, the Preface to the English edition ofTrue Christianity describes good works as "fruits of the Spirit, rivers ofliving water; because they are brought forth by a believer as freely as agood tree yields its fruits, and a plentiful fountain its water. The truechristian is constantly employed about doing good, and laying out whathe has received." Mather understood equally well Arndt's complementarystress on benign deadness to the world, "heroic meekness." Having tast-ed true love, Arndt wrote, the true Christian is gentle, courteous, andpatient, "not apt to conceive any bitterness, much less to utter it by curs-ing and railing speeches, which even unman a man; but to imitate ChristJesus, who did not cry out, or so much as open his mouth against thewrath of his crucifiers, but spake from the cross mere benediction andlife."

One other side of Pietism that deeply appealed to Mather was thespiritual entrepreneurship of its organizer, "the incomparable Dr. Franck-ius." Just Mather's age, August Hermann Francke served for thirty-sixyears as both a minister and a professor of Greek and Oriental languagesat the University of Halle, the most famous theological center in Europein its time. With something of Mather's own zealous ingenuity, Franckeerected at Halle an exemplary educational-philanthropic community, de-voted not to transmitting information but to creating ideal Christian

adults—persons who would be pious, well-mannered, honorable in busi-ness, and sensitive to human needs. Mather found the size, boldness, andsuccess of Francke's enterprise dazzling, and initiated a fifteen year cor-respondence with him in Germany. Around March 1711, he sent Franckea long adulatory Latin letter declaring that Francke's piety had crossed theAtlantic and "inflamed the same piety in American churches." As proofhe enclosed some of his own sermons which he said reflected Francke sideals, plus a donation for Francke's school and an appeal for his friend-ship. Francke responded, magnificently, with a Latin letter seventy pageslong—a further demonstration to Mather that he was better appreciatedabroad than at home.

Mather publicized Francke's remarkable institution in his own Nun-cia Bona (1715), largely based on Francke's own account of it to him.Seeing in Francke much of himself, he depicted the German as eruditeand pious, but above all a man of "peerless Industry," the inventor andoverseer of more vast projects in thirty years than a succession of equallycapable men could have completed in a century and a half. Emphasizingthe numbers and the scale, he described with wonder the components ofFrancke's benevolent Utopia: the sixteen-hundred-scholar Germanschool; the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew school where "Vast numbers" ofpoor children received free tuition; the Tynaecium for young gentlewom-en and the Cherotrophea for poor widows; the printing presses that dis-patched pious books as far off as Siberia and in a few years issued moreeditions of the Bible—some in modern Slavonic and other lessertongues—"than in the whole Period of the Time, from the Reformationuntil Now" and never before so cheaply; especially the five-hundred-student Orphano-Tropheum or orphan house, with its huge auditoriumand dining room, and its Officina Pharmaceutica, where "the noblestRemedies upon Earth are known"—and many and much more. In sum,Mather depicted Francke as a seminal force in modern Christianity: "TheVast Number of Souls brought Home to God and made Instances of Seri-ous Piety!—the Vast Number of Instruments qualified here to do goodabroad in the World! More than all Europe will soon feel, yea, has alreadyfelt the precious Effects of the Franckian Education."

The impact of Arndt's self-abnegating charity and of Francke's imagi-native enterprise marks several other works by Mather at this time, such asThe Heavenly Conversation (1710; an essay in "AMERICAN PIETISM")and Orphanotrophium (1711), but especially Bonifacius (1710), one ofhis major writings and a representative product of American culture. Firstpublished in Boston as a book of just over two hundred pages, it was

quoted by the Pietists themselves and, remaining popular into the nine-teenth century, appeared in more than fifteen later editions. AlthoughFranckean ideas are here tempered by Mather's elitism and indignation,the work exudes enthusiasm for the vast opportunities of Doing Good.The world, Mather notes with Franckean zest, now contains by some com-putations more than seven hundred million people—"an ample fieldamong all these, to do good upon!" These large numbers need threeessential kinds of good:

There needs abundance to be done, that the great GOD and His CHRISTmay be more known and served in the world. . . . There needs abundanceto be done, that the evil manners of the world, by which men aredrowned in perdition, may be reformed. . . . There needs abundance to bedone, that the miseries of the world may have remedies and abatementsprovided for them; and that miserable people may be relieved and com-forted.

The Good Mather intends, that is, consists of spreading the Reformation,correcting provoking evils, and relieving those in need.

Mather offered his suggestions for doing these three sorts of Good inchapters addressed to individual social groups, such as ministers, physi-cians, and rich men. To spread Christ and reform manners, for instance,he recommended that ministers distribute books of piety, that thewealthy devote a tithe of their income to pious purposes, and that neigh-bors exhort prayerless families among them. But he more prominentlyemphasized relieving the poor and miserable: he advised, for instance,that the wealthy provide scholarships for orphans and that lawyers under-take pro bono work to help the poor and needy. His concern in the bookoften extends beyond such immediate objects of relief to the long-rangewelfare of humanity, in terms already touched by Enlightenment ideals ofprogress. In addressing physicians, for instance, he urged them not to restcontent with the present state of medicine but rather to read and thinkmuch, so as "to find out, and give out, something very considerable forthe good of mankind." Presciently, he also suggested that physical illsmay be related to emotional distress, and advised physicians to treat thepatient's "interior state" as well as body. Citing the Italian physicianGeorgi Baglivi, he recommended that physicians experiment with "theart of curing by consolation," using artful conversation to discover "whatmatter of anxiety, there may have been upon the mind of his patient"and then using "all the ways he can devise to take it off." Mather conclud-ed with a "CATALOGUE OF DESIRABLES" that specifies such large-scale

Franckean Goods to be performed as christianizing heathen places likeMalabar and building charity schools.

Among the several facets of its importance, Bonifacius is a revealingbiographical document. It records a period in Mather's life when he di-verted his attention from the supernatural to the civic, from New Englandto the world, from regeneration to progress. The traits and events that ledhim in these directions were many: disappointment in his ParticularFaiths, admiration for the Pietists, sympathy for the poor and ill, kinshipwith Enlightenment ideas, encroaching middle age—and isolation inBoston. For Mather in part took up Pietist ideas to outflank Joseph Dud-ley. Magnalia, written only a dozen years earlier, views the history of NewEngland as being embodied in and transmitted through three groups ofmen: governors, ministers, and presidents of Harvard. But now the gover-nor was a "wretch," the ministers sat feasting at his table, and the Harvardpresident was an Anglican lawyer. No longer appealing solely to them,Bonifacius enlists lesser social authorities and people of prestige—headsof household, men of wealth, minor officialdom—to whom Mather wouldin effect now entrust the continuance of New England history. For theadvance of the larger Reformation the book looks outside New Englandaltogether, reposing its hopes for the future of Protestantism not in aPuritan City on a Hill which might be its vanguard, nor even in an alli-ance of all English Protestants, but in a worldwide Pietistic evangelicalmovement.

In recognizing the need to enlist the voluntary support of others inphilanthropic enterprises, Mather also hit on a method destined long tocharacterize movements for social betterment in America. Many commen-tators have recognized in Bonifacius the nascent spirit of BenjaminFranklin, contributor to the Philadelphia hospital, promoter of subscrip-tion libraries, organizer of discussion groups for mechanics, founder ofthe Union Fire Company, devotee of civic improvement. Four years oldwhen Bonifacius appeared, Franklin himself later wrote that it produced"such a turn of thinking, as to have an influence on my conduct throughlife; for I have always set a greater value on the character of a doer ofgood, than on any other kind of reputation; and if I have been ... a usefulcitizen, the Public owes the advantage of it to that book."

Franklin's remark should not be read backward to mean that Matherhimself had drifted into secularism or felt content to be a "useful citi-zen." Both he and the Pietists maintained a delicate synthesis of engage-ment with the prevailing culture and mortification to life. He insisted atthe opening of Bonifacius that only the regenerate could Do Good, for

only those who had experienced grace could know what Good is, whichlargely meant advancing the Reformation. Franklin emulated Mather's in-genuity in contriving projects for Doing Good, but he lacked Mather'sfervor for private mystical conversion and worldwide evangelical reforma-tion, and he conceived goodness as making life more comfortable. WhenMather begins sounding like Franklin in Bonifacius, it is not because hehas abandoned inward piety but because he has moved away in thoughtfrom New England, as Franklin later did in person. Missing from Bonifa-cius is what the charter took away and Governor Dudley put beyondreach, the unhesitating cooperation of government in satisfying importantneeds and impulses of Congregational piety. The same absence helpedcreate the more variegated and permissive Boston that could nurture Ben-jamin Franklin, a figure hard to imagine under the government of JohnWinthrop.

Because Mather often used Doing Good to countermand his anger,the benevolent directives of Bonifacius are perversely but inevitably en-compassed by resentment. Quoting an unnamed writer, possibly himself,Mather remarks: "There is not any revenge more heroic, than that whichtorments envy by doing of good." The chapter-length Preface and Con-clusion that bracket the book similarly twist Arndt's "heroic meekness,"born in mystical identification with Christ, into Matherean "magnani-mous courage," born in anticipation of abuse. The Preface hammers atthe masochistic precept that "a man of good merit, is a kind of publicenemy," and sets forth the dismal rewards of Doing Good in paragraphssuccessively headlined "MISCONSTRUCTION," "DISCOURAGE-MENTS," "INGRATITUDE," "ENVY," and "DERISION." Mather's warn-ings echo not the incomparable Francke but the smutty serenaders steal-ing clubs from his woodpile, Joseph Dudley guffawing over KateMaccarty—"INDEED, FATHER, IF I SHOULD SAY I DID SEE HER, ISHOULD TELL A GREAT LIE"—and, behind them, jeers about his knock-ing off invisible chains, the humiliations of the stammerer, cuffs to thepious child who rebuked his playmates:

Essays to do good shall be derided, with all the «r/and wit, that [the devil]can inspire in his Janizaries. . . . Exquisite profaneness and buffooneryshall try their skill to laugh people out of them. The men who abound inthem shall be exposed on the stage; libels, and lampoons, and satires, themost poignant that ever were invented, shall be darted at them; and pam-phlets full of lying stories, be scattered, with a design to make them ridic-ulous.

Gloating for pages about the "hopes of disaffected men, to sec you cometo nothing," Mather fixed in Bonifacins the myth of himself that wouldrule much of his later life, an elaborated version of his earlier inability to"do enough": Do Good, Be Spurned, Do More Good.

Besides its value for Mather in managing his rage, Doing Good alsoreduced his guilt over his ambitiousness. The two, he had always understood, were most intimately related, his anger swelling whenever in hishunger for applause he was served with scorn. Although he publishedBonifacins anonymously, he confessed to unashamed pride in it: "'lis avanity in writers, to compliment the readers, with a, 'Sorry 'tis no better.'Instead of that, I freely tell my readers: I have written what is not unwor-thy of their perusal. If I did not think so, truly, I would not publish it."The statement makes a notable and surprising contrast to his many earlierstratagems for subtly denying-claiming authorship; similar statements ap-pear in several of his other works in this period, on whose title pages heboldly identified himself as "Cotton Mather, D.D." Clearly what changedhis view of his writing was the feeling that Doing Good provided a plausi-ble rationale for his ambition. "I will venture to say," he wrote in Bonifa-cius, "the book is full of reasonable and serviceable things; and it wouldbe well for us, if such things were hearkened to; and I have done well tooffer them."

Brazened by Doing Good, Mather also included in Bonifacius an ad-vertisement, more than four pages long, for "Biblia Americana." He de-fended the self-endorsement by invoking his newfound rationale: "Tobestow the censure of pride and vanity, on the proposing of such a workfor publication, would be therewith to reproach all attempts in such a wayto serve the public." Not only did he intend Doing Good, but also, headded frankly, he had labored on the book fifteen years, and "It is alawful and a modest thing, for a man to desire, that so much of a short life,as has been spent in such a preparation, should not be spent in vain"That the gigantic effort might be wasted, it should be added, had alreadyshown itself a grim possibility. During an illness four years earlier, in1706, he had put a climactic spurt of effort into the work, fearing hemight die before he could complete it. The intense application onlyworsened his health, but enabled him by May of that year to thank Godfor having "so happily finished my great Work"—which he had not. Inthe fall he sent to England an advertisement for the book entitled "AnAmerican Offer to serve the Great Interests of Learning and Religion inEurope." But this seems never to have been published, or at least not tohave won subscribers. He kept adding illustrations, and included the new

advertisement in Bonifacius in hopes of moving "some generous minds,to forward an undertaking so confessedly worthy to be prosecuted."

Mather's advertisement states that two folio volumes are now ready forpublication, designed for "all impartial Christians, of whatever denomi-nation or subdivision in Christianity." To such readers he promises astupendous feast. Among its themselves-gorging main courses, as de-scribed in the advertisement, are his arrangement of Scripture in the or-der of events, "which exhibition alone, will do the service of a valuablecommentary"; the amendment and refinement of existing translations;the rescue from misinterpretation of the laws of Israel, with a history ofthe city of Jerusalem from the days of Melchisedec to the present; thereconciling of apparent contradictions in Scripture; the linking of OldTestament types with their New Testament antitypes; and an "elaborateand entertaining" history of the Jewish people in every place from thebirth of Christ to the present.

Among his other choice offerings, Mather also promises to have ap-plied recent works of travelers to explaining biblical geography, includ-ing the location of Paradise and the peoples of the whole earth; recenthistorical knowledge to clarifying scriptural texts concerning ancientidolatry, agriculture, architecture, and warfare; talmudic and other Jewishwritings to demonstrating the truth of Christianity; the most recent scien-tific knowledge to understanding the Creation, the Flood, and the Confla-gration, as well as the plants, animals, diseases, astronomical events, andpowers of the invisible world mentioned in Scripture; and all of history toillustrating the fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Having also heavily sea-soned the work with characteristic and intriguing lore about Indians, an-gels, medicine, classical poetry, and much else, he promises the treats of"many thousands of curious notes, found scattered and shining, in thewritings both of the ancients and the moderns, laid here together in agrateful amassment."

After advertising "Biblia Americana" through Bonifacius, however,Mather continued collecting material. In the year 1711 alone he gatheredmore than a thousand illustrations, adding them to those which in thecompleted work range from a brief paragraph to thirty or forty double-columned large folio pages. Fattening apace, the omnivorous work wason its way to becoming one of the "Libri Elepbantini," as he calledbooks that require "twelve hundred and sixty oxhides for a covering."

Nammatchekodtantamooonganunnonash. Christianizing the Indians

of New England—in whose language this transliterated word, Matherscoffed, means "lusts"—was for him a major goal of the broader attemptto spread the Reformation, thus a major component of Doing Good. "TheGreatest Service that can be done to Mankind," he wrote, is to introducePure Christianity every where." His wish to forward this service amongthe Indians in his region took new energy from his admiration of Pietistmissions in far-off places like India, and from increased efforts of otherreligious groups which made those of Dissenters seem halfhearted: "TheMahometans out-do us; The Quakers out-do us; The Socinians out-do us;The Papists make us Ashamed. . . . They will bear the Loathsome and Irk-some Wigwams of the Indians in an howling Wilderness, if they may butWin over the Savages to their Superstitions."

But in fact some progress, from Mather's viewpoint, had been made inconverting local Indians to New England Protestantism. In a five-page"Appendix" to Bonifacius he described the current state of missionaryefforts in Massachusetts. War over the last fifty years had desolated at astroke "whole nations" of New England Indians, greatly reducing theirnumber. The Indians to the east were being deluded by the CatholicFrench, who taught them that Christ "was a Frenchman, and that theEnglish murdered Him." On the other hand, most of the Indians currentlyunder English influence had to some degree been christianized. By Math-er's count, Martha's Vineyard had ten Christian congregations, Nantucketat least three; the mainland had between twenty and thirty, with aboutthree thousand Indians under Christian instruction by ten Englishpreachers and twenty to thirty Indian teachers. Worship in the Indians'churches, moreover, clung more closely to the religion of the first settlersthan in some present Congregational churches—marked by pertinentprayers, orthodox sermons, and particularly pleasing psalmody, "with amelody outdoing many of the English." The present aims of the mission-ary work, Mather concluded, should be to preserve the Christianity al-ready developed among the Indians, progress in anglicizing them, andrid them of the drunkenness which threatened their christianization. Butin practice, he concluded, these aims are "encumbered with difficulties,beyond what can be by most men in the bare theory imagined."

In converting the Indians of New England, Mather and others hopednot only to spread the Reformation, but also to pacify a fierce and proudenemy. On this point—having passed his entire life close by recurrentand murderous Indian fighting, in which he lost a relative—he discardedhis role of peacemaker. While he embraced Christian Indians as brethrenin Christ he damned infidel Indians as "Ravenous howling Wolves," at

once brutal, infantile, and diabolic. He exhorted some troops in 1689 toliterally exterminate them: "Turn not back till they are consumed:Wound them that they shall not be able to Arise; Tho' they Cry; Let therebe none to Save them; But Beat them small as the Dust before the Wind,and Cast them out, as the Dirt in the Streets." He also ridiculed uncon-verted Indians as bestially ignorant: having never seen a ship until thearrival of Europeans, although they dwelt amidst superlative ship timber;using stone implements, in an iron-rich country; their habitations a fewpoles stuck in the earth, their medicine a heated cave for sweats. Mockingthe Indians' sesquipedalian-sounding language, he proposed calling thebloodiest of them by one of their own "Indian Long-winded words," anddevised the macaronic name "Bombardogladio-funhast-flammi-lo-quentes." Because he also considered Indians "lazy drones" and "impu-dent liars" lacking in all family government, he also feared their effect onwhite neighbors and captives, some of whom showed a propensity to joinIndian society.

More than that, unconverted Indians were to Mather, and to manyothers, children of the devil. Early travelers to America had observedagain and again that the Indians' religion consisted in worshiping thedevil as God. Mather often speaks of Indian powwows raising devils inthe shape of bears, or practicing "Diabolical Charms" to keep Englishdogs from attacking them, or fashioning arrowhead-shaped pieces ofleather to be taken up by some demon and conveyed into the bodies ofpersons to be afflicted. Many believed that as the devil was "God's ape"and as, in Joseph Mede's view, America was uniquely the land of thedevil, so the Indians were a satanic parody of the Puritans, the ChosenPeople of the devil as the Israelites, and then the Puritans, were theChosen People of God. The Rev. John Higginson speculated to Matherthat Indians who settled around Mexico were conducted there by thedevil "very strangely Emulating what the Blessed God gave to Israel inthe Wilderness." Mather even considered the possibility that the Salemoutbreak might in part have arisen from the black arts of Indian saga-mores, well known to be "horrid Sorcerers, and hellish Conjurers, andsuch as conversed with Daemons."

In hopes of redeeming and quelling the natives of New England Math-er threw himself into the missionary work, as into everything else, ener-getically. In 1698 he had been appointed a commissioner of the oldestProtestant missionary organization, the New England Company, foundedby act of Parliament in 1649 to convert the New England Indians to Chris-tianity. The Company invested funds and from the interest sent money to

the commissioners, who included Increase Mather and Samuel Sew all.The commissioners then disbursed salaries to itinerant missionaries, andfunds to Indian preachers and to settlers who provided allied charitableand educational services. Mather attended the commissioners meetings,held at their homes or at the Town House, and became the New EnglandCompany's chief informant on the missionary work, sending them suchtokens of progress as a poem in Latin and Greek by a "pregnant Indianyouth" and long epistolary reports. These were greatly appreciated andcommended in London (in further contrast to his reception at home),where his chief correspondent was Sir William Ashurst (Sir Henry'syounger brother), a former Lord Mayor of London who was governor ofthe company from 1696 to 1720.

Mather's involvement in the Company intensified just as his own Boni-facius was published and just as a complex and much debated problemfor the Company also came to the fore again. This was whether to convertthe Indians in their own tongues or to anglicize them first and pursuetheir conversion in English. The question also bore on the huge projectof reprinting John Eliot's famous Indian Bible. Written in a transliteratedversion of the Natick dialect, and first published in 1663, two hundredleatherbound copies were immediately circulated for the Indians' use. In1708, the New England Company undertook to reissue Eliot's Bible, butits strange-looking words and its length made the presswork painfullyvexing, slow, and expensive. In July 1709, a fire in Samuel Sewall's bed-room also destroyed the printing paper. Mather seems to have doubtedthe usefulness of the project but hesitated to publicize his opinions, per-haps because of his respect for Eliot. Samuel Sewall was probably speak-ing for Mather when he relayed to Sir William Ashurst in 1710 the objec-tions of some commissioners: that Indian teachers complain of theabsence of Indian terms for Christian concepts; that different tribes havedifferent dialects; that many Indians find Eliot's written approximationsof their speech unintelligible. Moreover, Sewall said, if the Indians re-tained their language they would retain with it "a Tincture of other Sav-age Inclinations, which do but ill suit, either with the Honor, or with thedesign of Christianity," whereas the expense of reprinting Eliot's Biblemight go far toward teaching the Indians English. Writing to Ashurst him-self, Mather observed that most commissioners opposed the reprintingbut that to anglicize the Indians "is much more easy to be talked of thanto be accomplished." In any event he urged that the presswork could bedone more cheaply in London than in Boston, where he estimated itwould take more than seven years. But no London printers knew the

language, and in fact the reprint was doomed never to appear.

Mather also personally attended several communities of christianizedIndians. In July 1712, he and other commissioners visited the languishingsettlement at Natick, reduced, largely by long years of war, to scarce thirtyfamilies. The commissioners hoped to restore the population by inducingneighboring Indians to move in with them. Mather preached at the Indi-an meetinghouse (in a pulpit without Bible, cushion, or hourglass),talked with the Indians about their political affairs, heard an Indian min-ister perform religious exercises in an Indian language, and received"handsome Returns of Thanks." Desiring to bring the Indians into com-pact, English-style communities, he greatly approved the purchase by theCompany in 1713 of Martha's Vineyard, in an effort to consolidate localchristianized Indians. His manner with such Indians was paternalistic,but wholly without the hollering vengefulness he directed at pagan Indi-ans. He told some Indians who were being settled at Gay Head, for in-stance, that "tho' we would have you own your dependence on the goodand great protectors you have in London, who have bought this land foryour benefit, yet we shall use all the care of kind fathers to make yourcondition comfortable." While oblivious to the cost, in human agony, ofthe Indians' depletion and resettlement, Mather recognized that the firstPuritans had settled on Indian territory, and wished the Indians' rights totheir little remaining land be respected. Thus he urged that "the Reliqaesof the Aboriginal Natives here, upon whose Land we were Entered, mighthave an Everlasting and Unalienable Claim unto some Little Scraps of aVast Country, once entirely Possessed by their Ancestors."

Mather and the commissioners hoped not to christianize the Indiansof New England but, more accurately, to Puritanize them. They accord-ingly distrusted the Anglican missionary efforts of the rival Society for thePropagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. Chartered in 1701 and com-posed of prominent prelates and politicans, the SPG had been organizedby the Bishop of London to study the Church of England's status in thecolonies. Mutual abhorrence of the work of Jesuit missionaries to somedegree enforced cooperation between the SPG and the New EnglandCompany. Indeed, Ashurst laid before some bishops in the Society Math-er's Letter; About the Present State of Christianity among the Christian-ized Indians (1705), as proof that "our ministers (tho' not Episcopal) areCapable of Doing Good." The bishops were impressed by Mather's de-scription of the purity of Congregational worship in some Indianchurches, so much so that the Archbishop of Canterbury himself orderedthe pamphlet to be presented at a meeting of the SPG. The Society be-

came curious about the New England Company's methods, asked to inspect its charter, and requested from Ashurst an account of its fundingoperations, assuring him they had "no sinister Ends in this Inquiry."

Mather generally approved this ecumenical cooperation with the SPG.But still apprehensive about the possible establishment of an Americanepiscopate, he also deplored the presence of High Churchmen in theSociety, and suspected SPG missionaries of trying to convert not Indiansbut Congregationalists. A rather ambidexter letter by him in L706, seemingly intended for the SPG, was withheld from the Society because ofwhat his English correspondent called its "hard Expressions." He beganby praising the "worthy Persons, who compose the Society," but addedhis hope that they would shun High Churchmen—"highflyers," as hebarbedly called them, "who may be crept in." He also criticized the Society for sending missionaries to towns that had been well instructed inChristianity for generations, on the pretext of gospelizing a few scandal-ous families. The missionaries were trying, he suggested, to subvert "themost instructed Christians in the World," persons "not yet so illuminat-ed" as to demand Episcopal ordination and Church of England ceremo-nies. If they kept trying to undermine Congregationalist strongholds, hesaid, the "noble Society for the Propagation of Religion in America, willgreatly wound Religion, and their own Reputation also." His distrust ofthe SPG grew steadily, so that by 1716 he was referring to it as the "Soci-ety for the Molestation of the Gospel in foreign Parts."

Mather received no salary as a commissioner, but the Company in1709 awarded him £25 in consideration of his "great Services in promot-ing the work of Converting the Indians by his writings and other ways."Mather did increase his value to the Company by publishing virtually atitle a year relating to Indian affairs. These include An Epistle to the Chris-tian Indians (1700; Indian title, Wussukwhonk En Christianeue asuhpeantamwae Indianog), offering in Indian and English a compresseddescription of the whole of Congregational theology and church govern-ment; A Monitory, and Hortatory Letter, To those English, who debauchthe Indians (1700), denouncing the sale of strong drink to the Indians,which makes them unemployable, destructive, and sotted beyond chris-tianizing; Hatchets to Hew Down the Tree of Sin (1705), containing anEnglish-Indian digest of Massachusetts laws against buggery7, incest, andother crimes; and Another Tongue brought in (1707), providing a quadri-lingual catechism in Iroquois, Latin, English, and Dutch for use by tradersin beaver skins among the Iroquois, to counter Catholic missionary effortsamong them.

Writing from a nonmissionary viewpoint, Mather also published manyaccounts of Indian fighting and captivity. They include one of his mostvividly written works, Decennium Luctnosum (1699), recounting thedecade of Indian warfare between 1688 and 1698. As history the book isnotable for its many comments on historical theory and on the style andveracity of other historians, and for its indefatigably gathered and careful-ly sifted information. Yet Mather compared it to The Iliad, for in exultant-ly describing the destruction of the "Rapacious Wolves" he saw himselfas genuinely an epical writer, narrating the heroic origins of an emergentcivilization, occupying in early America something of Homer's position inancient Greece. Intent as always on holding as well as informing hisreaders, he managed by many formal inventions and witty transitions toaccommodate his digressive and fanciful imagination, so as to includeevery last bloody butchery or hair-raising escape, and many "charmingand useful Entertainments." To an unusual degree among his works thebook abounds in alliteration, foreshadowing, metaphor, and other purelyliterary devices, in a style at once erudite, pious, and racy. For instance, intelling how the celebrated Hannah Dustan of Haverhill rose in the deadof night and, with a nurse and a young boy, hatcheted her Indian captorsto death, skinning ten scalps, he effectively used syntax and sentencerhythm to convey staggering:

they struck such Home Blows, upon the Heads of their Sleeping Oppres-sors, that e're they could any of them Struggle into any Effectual Resis-tance, at the Feet of those poor Prisoners, they bowed, they fell, they laydown; at their feet they bowed, they fell; where they bowed, there they felldown Dead.

Mather also reproduced much amusing dialogue, most delectably a re-mark made to him by a Quaker, who rudely accused him of doing all thetalking: "Thou art a Monster, all Mouth, and no Ears."

A final, outstandingly personal and consequential plan for DoingGood Mather proposed in his diary in July 1711: "There is one goodInterest, which I have never yet served, and yet I am capable of doingsome small Service for it." Having always believed that Christ and Godwere glorified in the progress of human knowledge resulting from thestudy of nature, he now decided to make a "valuable Collection of manyCuriosities, which this Country has afforded; and present it unto the Roy-al Society." In thus promoting still another good cause, he sent to Lon-

don in batches of four to a dozen over the next twelve years, sonic eightytwo scientific dispatches.

Founded around 1660, the Royal Society took as one of its main purposes the accurate collection, classification, and interpretation of scientific data. It kept an enormous correspondence with virtuosi all over theworld (of whom only a small number were elected Fellows), carriedwithout charge by ships of the East India and other English trading coinpanies, and in packets of the Secretary of State. In relation to himself.Mather regarded the Society's work with mingled hope of joining a supe-rior world aloof from the mundane bickering and ignorance of commonhumanity, desire to Do Good, revenge toward his enemies in Boston, andadmiration for new learning:

how worthy it [the Society's undertaking] is to be pursued by gentlemenwho would show themselves men; how useful it has already been to man-kind, and capable of being yet more applied unto the best of purposes; atendency it has to refine and sweeten the minds of men, and reconcilethem unto just regards for true merits in one another; with an extirpationof that noxious clamor-wort, the party-spirit; and, finally, how generouslythe more polite literators of the world go on in it, with a decent contempton the banters of the brutish among the people. . . .

His communications to the Society, entitled "Curiosa Americana," ani-matedly project this Matherean mixture of snobbery, altruism, resent-ment, and inquisitiveness.

In addition to being scientific communications, the Curiosa are liter-ary letters, written, Mather said, with "my most exquisite Contrivance,"and containing some of his most polished and shapely prose. They radi-ate with greater liveliness than perhaps any of his other works the person-ality that many contemporaries found gracious and entertaining. On oneletter he sketched diagrams of the planetary motions, doodling into thethe sun half-moon eyes and a large smile. His delight in writing to theostensibly more receptive world outside Boston registers also in the play-ful tone of the letters, particularly their elaborately turned salutations andclosings, which pun on the subject of the dispatch. For instance, a laterletter on "Uncommon Dentition"—about a Harvard student whose gumspresented not teeth but a "White, Sharp, continued Edge"—ends withthe flourish: "nothing, that ever my Teeth ever had under the Masticationcan be so grateful to me, as the Instructive Things, which you can andwill give me to feed upon. I beseech you, Let there be therein a Contin-ual Feast allow'd unto, Sir. . . ." Aware of his self-delighted difficulty insettling down to the subject, he asked one correspondent at the Society to

abide his "little excursions" as "one of those natural weaknesses whichall men of breeding indulge in one another."

The weakness was as much cultural, however, as personal. Mather'sevident discomfort in addressing sophisticated, cosmopolitan men, mem-bers of the Commonwealth of Learning to which he aspired but felt inad-equate, arose from a sense of living, as he wrote, "in an infant countryentirely destitute of philosophers." For all his exuberance he freely andfrequently acknowledged how the New World lagged behind the Old inknowledge, and often seems to say that he is only telling the Englishvirtuosi what they already know: "These Things are so much betterknown to you," he writes in a letter on rainbows, "that I can make noApology for the Little Touch I now give upon them, Except it should bethis; I was willing to have you think, that your American Friends also arenot utterly unacquainted with them." The Curiosa exude the provincialstrangulation of the country fop, of someone self-consciously addressingthe learned world without being certain what it is.

In terms of the Society's own interests, Mather's justification for ad-dressing it at all was the hope of communicating "all New and Rare Oc-currences of Nature, in these parts of the World." The Curiosa, that is,contain an embryonic element of nationalism. Mather often reminds theSociety that his subjects are American curiosities: a black snake that fellfrom the sky, in Lynn; a tree limb found seventeen feet underground, inSpringfield; a huge balancing rock that teeters during storms, in Glouces-ter. Far more descriptive than explanatory, the letters make no largerclaim than to add to the Society's worldwide collection of natural historysome remarkable specimens from America, to be deciphered by virtuosiabroad and by them fitted into larger schemes of natural philosophy. Inchoosing the humble informant's role, Mather for a change realisticallyassessed his abilities and limitations, contributing useful data to majorEuropean scientific debates that lay beyond his competence and also hisaccess. Just the same, probably no other colonial American writer was asaware of physically inhabiting the New World as Mather, and as preoccu-pied with seeing how it differed from the Old World. Feeling both chal-lenged to report the uniqueness of his country and pained by the relativecrudeness of its intellectual life, he wrote invariably as "your AmericanFriend"—a condition of which he was at once proud and embarrassed.

Mather collected his scientific lore widely. Some came from his ownobservation, such as the egg grown inside another egg which he had heldin his own hand (an example of "monstrous impregnation"). Several ofhis own earlier writings supplied other curiosa, beginning with a collec-

tion of natural oddities he had made in Latin as a youth. He also tookmaterials from his father's Illustrious Providences, revealingly. For minusthe lightened style, Mather's Curiosa closely resemble the remarkableprovidences he and his father had always collected. Providences displaythe wonders of God in history, declaring His judgments and will; Curiosadisplay the wonders of God in nature, declaring His workmanship andthe operation of natural law. Mather also used his father's method ofsoliciting well-attested information about natural rarities from ministersand other credible persons throughout New England, for instance askingphysicians for accounts of unusual cures in their practices. Once he sentthe Boston physician John Perkins to investigate reports of a prodigiousintestinal worm; Perkins found, even after souvenir-mongers had takenpieces away, 118 feet remaining.

Mather's favorite source was probably John Winthrop of Connecticut(1681-1747), "a Friend, who is better to me than a Brother." His affectionfor this younger man sprang from his veneration toward the three previ-ous generations of prominent Winthrops, beginning with the John Win-throp who led the great migration of 1630 to New England. The next twogenerations combined public service and scientific curiosity to become,Mather wrote, "a Family sent into the world on purpose to help and healits Maladies." The library of the second John Winthrop (1606-1676)—thefirst governor of Connecticut—contained the poems of John Donne and ahuge collection of alchemical works; he was also the first colonial Fellowof the Royal Society, in fact a charter member of the Society itself. Thethird generation of Winthrops was represented by Wait-Still Winthrop(1642-1717), Chief Justice of Massachusetts and, Mather called him, a"Master of Medicines." These he gave free to multitudes of poor people,including a remedy composed of nitre and antimony, invented by hisfather, called Rubila. Mather's friend John Winthrop was Wait-Still's son.Together with their joint sense of prominent family descent and mutualscientific interest, they commiserated on a feeling of being more refinedand intelligent than their neighbors, and mistreated by them.

Mather frequently praised the younger Winthrop as a Christian philos-opher and gentleman, but felt that he failed to live up to his possibilitiesand heritage. Winthrop's correspondence does leave an impression ofself-pampering shallowness: one letter speaks of his distaste for shoppingin Boston—"Everything very ordinary .... slimsy gaudy things"—but offinding at one store an attractive camblet, "the genteelest thing I hadseen anywhere." Genteel camblet or no, Mather often asked Winthrop to

use his "philosophical Genius and Gentlemanly Leisure" to provide ma-terial for him to send to jhe Royal Society, such as a description of thecolor, horns, and other features of the moose, and an account of a remark-ably violent storm that buried sheep under sixteen-foot-high snowbanks.With Mather's request for material on the water-dove he had limited suc-cess; as he told Mather, he was going to send a water-dove itself but a catgot into his study and tore it to pieces.

Mather's letters to the Royal Society encompass virtually all the sci-ences of his time, including astronomy, botany, zoology, geology, andmeteorology. Given his intention in youth of becoming a physician, hisconfessed weakness in mathematics, and his delighted fascination withthe flocks of pigeons around Boston, it is not surprising that the largestnumber deal with medicine, the fewest with mathematical sciences, andperhaps the best-humored with ornithology. Occasionally he enclosedscientific specimens, in one instance six or seven dried plants which hehad been unable to find listed in any European herbal, and presumed toname. Another time he sent as a specimen of a fossil a thickly encrustedpiece-of-eight given him by Sir William Phips from his fabulous underwa-ter horde; it had hung in Mather's library nearly thirty years. To makeplain what these communications, written between 1712 and 1724, revealabout Mather's role in the development of American science, would re-quire a separate book-length study relating them to the state of Europeanscientific knowledge at the time. Instead, reserving a few general com-ments for later discussion of his last Curiosa, his first series of Curiosashall be summarized in tabular form below as representative of thewhole, followed by brief analysis of the lengthy manuscript he sent theSociety in 1715.

The first series of Curiosa, just over a hundred manuscript pages, con-sists of thirteen letters written over two weeks in November 1712, andaddressed to Dr. John Woodward and to Richard Waller. Woodward, theSociety's Provincial Secretary, was an eminent geologist whose still cele-brated Essay Toward a Natural History of the Earth (1695) called atten-tion to the existence of strata in the earth's crust; Waller, Secretary of theSociety for more than twenty-five years, was a businessman who wrote onphysiology, zoology, and linguistics. Each letter essentially treats a singlesubject, but with frequent asides. Mather also addressed a lengthy pleathrough Woodward to "Ingenious and opulent men" to publish his "Bib-lia Americana," from which he also drew the first of his Curiosa:

1. On Giants, discussing the remains of an alleged giant unearthed

near Albany, New York, in 1705, one of whose teeth and some of whosebones Mather says he had the satisfaction of handling, including a pre-sumed thigh bone seventeen feet long.

2. Local Flora, some used for cures, including an Indian cure torsyphillis.

3. Ornithology, with a finely accurate description of a hummingbird,and the speculation that some birds may migrate to small planetary bodiessurrounding the earth but too small to be observed by present telescopes

4. Strange Antipathies, and the Force of Imagination, with cases ol"Husbands who breed for their Wives" and of a New Englander who had astone at the root of his tongue yet urinated in intolerable pain as if it hadbeen in his bladder.

5. Monstrous Births, in Latin.

6. Cures Appearing in Dreams (including the warm-wool curedreamed by Mather's deceased wife Abigail), with the suggestion thatsuch dreams may be the work of good angels, although possibly of evilangels doing good for evil ends.

7. Tiny Wounds That Have Proved Mortal And Extremely GrievousWounds That Have Not, including the story of a dropsiacal New Englandwoman who vomited pieces of skin, and whose autopsy disclosed that shehad "no Bowels at all" and "not so much as a bit of a Bladder."

8. Indian Methods of Keeping Time.

9. Rainbows, with three diagrams, citations of Descartes, Halley, andNewton, and remarks on rainbows as prognostics.

10. Apparitions, including a case Mather reports several times else-where concerning a man named Joseph Beacon, to whom appeared thespecter of his recently murdered brother, revealing to him the murderer'sidentity.

11. Rattlesnakes.

12. Thunder and Earthquakes, with description of a large rock inTaunton containing allegedly prehistoric inscriptions in "unaccountableCharacters."

13. Demography (essentially), speculating on the population of theworld before the Flood and describing cases of extraordinary7 childbearingand longevity, including a woman who had thirty-nine children and aRhode Islander aged 110 who had been married to his wife—herself morethan 100—for more than eighty years, with the "further odd Circumstanceof their Friendship, that they constantly Eat upon one Trencher at theTable."

Even these capsule summaries may seem to confirm the standard chargeagainst Mather of credulity. But in what strikes a modern reader as fantas-tic in them, his Curiosa differ little from other contributions to the Royal

Society, which received his letters, we shall see, with enthusiasm. Be-sides, his Curiosa equally represent the observations and beliefs of hismany informants, and obviously were generally held. Boston newspapersoften printed reports about, for instance, a "Merman or Sea Monster"sighted at Brest, or a pond in Rhode Island from which at one time weretaken 700,000 bass, "by a moderate Computation." Indeed, several freakevents reported by Mather are rather simply explained and still occasionally occur. His communication to the Society on "A Woolen Snow," con-cerning the fall of quantities of wool from the sky, is no more unaccount-able than the hundred and fifty fish that dropped to earth from theheavens in Australia in 1974, presumably sucked up from the sea by awaterspout created by high oceanic winds.

After sending a second series of Curiosa, in ten letters, in 1714, Mathersent the following year the manuscript of a work entitled "The ChristianVirtuoso," asking that it be deposited in the Society's archives if it did notfind a publisher. The work appeared in over three hundred pages in 1721as The Christian Philosopher—the first general book on science to bewritten in America. It differs fundamentally from his "Curiosa Ameri-cana," aiming not to describe striking natural phenomena in America butto summarize significant findings of European scientists, including re-cent ideas about gravity and about the speed of light. With rapturousadmiration for new scientific learning—"Ideas, like the Sands on the Sea-shore, for the vast variety of them!"—Mather quotes the work of sucheminent figures as Flamsteed, Leeuwenhoek, Huygens, and, repeatedly,"The incomparable Sir Isaac Newton." He meant literally his statementthat The Christian Philosopher represents "A Collection of the Best Dis-coveries in Nature," for like "Biblia Americana" the book is an amass-ment of illustrations and quotations. The "very little" of his own in thework, he points out, amounts to a few curiosa and some pious "improve-ments" that draw from observations on comets or volcanos the properreligious significance. Indeed an important part of his purpose was toshow others the spirit in which he had pursued his own "Enquiries intothe Wonders of the Universe, so it is both an Instruction and a Pattern to aserious Mind." He tried to demonstrate, that is, how a Christian mightcome to terms with the new science itself.

Like most virtuosi in the Royal Society, Mather believed that the inves-tigation of nature could lead only to the good of man and the greaterglory of God. The two writers on whom he drew most frequently in TheChristian Philosopher were John Ray and William Derham, the authorsrespectively of The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Cre-

ation (London, 1691) and Pbysico-Tbeology, or a Demonstration of theBeing and Attributes of God from His Works of Creation (London. 1713).For Ray, Derham, and other so-called physico-theologians, recent scientitle disclosures of the vastness of the stars or the complexity of the human body but proved the existence of divine purpose in the cosmosFollowing them, Mather in The Christian Philosopher also delineated aminutely purposive universe, where lice exist to deter people from slov-enliness, and teething is deferred to protect the nipples of wetnurses:

How surprisingly is the Head and the Neck of the Swine adapted for hisrooting in the Earth! How the Neck, Nose, Eyes and Ears of the Mole,adapted in the nicest manner to its way of subterraneous living! Thestrong Snout of the Swine, such that he may sufficiently thrust it into theGround, where his Living lies, without hurting his Eyes; and of so saga-cious a Scent, that we employ them to hunt for us and even his wallowingin the Mire, is a wise Contrivance for the Suffocation of troublesome In-sects!

Imagining a Creator supercopious in benevolent ingenuity, Mathermoved almost effortlessly in his thinking between theological and scien-tific modes of explanation.

But the very piety evident in such thinking—widespread amongChristian scientists of the eighteenth century—obscured its dangerousimplications, and unwittingly led Mather close to irreligion. Although thephysico-theological disclosure of an intricately contrived universe wasmeant to provide a rational foundation for Christianity, it tended in prac-tice to displace Christianity. In trying to prove God's existence from natu-ral phenomena, and in using new standards of proof and debate, it quietlyrelegated essential Christian ideas to the background, especially losingsight of the Son. Mather shared unawares in some of this subversive shiftin emphasis. The Creator he depicts in The Christian Philosopher no lon-ger seems the wrathful Jehovah of the jeremiads, but rather the smilingDeity of liberal eighteenth-century Protestantism, ordering things so, that"whatever is natural is delightful, and has a tendency to Good." Onlyhalf-a-dozen pages from the end of the book, moreover, does Matherintroduce a section on the Savior, by saying "the CHRIST of God must notbe forgotten"—as He almost is. Indeed the clockwork universe describedin The Christian Philosopher seems an altogether improbable setting forthe great drama of Redemption:

The Great God has contrived a mighty Engine, of an Extent that cannot bemeasured, and there is in it a Contrivance of wondrous Motions that can-

not be numbered. He is infinitely gratified with the View of this Engine inall its Motions, infinitely grateful to Him so glorious a Spectacle!

Such a predictable universe seems inconsistent with inflows of supernat-ural grace, much less with ghosts who reveal murderers, evil angels whofoment earthquakes, and other unscheduled wonders of the invisibleworld.

Mather shrank, however, from fully accepting a mechanical universe.He did so at the expense of some raggedness in his thinking but in thename of his own experience. Having witnessed the invisible world him-self, he announced in The Christian Philosopher, his belief in it was un-shakable: "I do here in the first place most religiously affirm, that evenmy Senses have been convinced of such a World, by as clear, plain, fullProofs as ever any Man's have had of what is most obvious in the sensibleWorld." Nor was Mather prepared to give up arguing the existence of Godfrom the potency of witches, to argue it solely from the snouts of swine.After praising the power of the mind and the inventions of the age, heended his book by remarking that the enginelike wonders of the visiblecreation dwindle "compared to those that are out of sight, those that arefound among the Angels that excel in Powers." He made room for pneu-matological phenomena in a mechanical universe by emphasizing thelimitations of reason and uncertainties in the science of his time. Heviewed human reason, especially in humanity's fallen state, as a bluntedinstrument, incapable of penetrating all of "covered Nature"—"EveryThing puzzles us. Even the Nature, yea, the Extent of an Atom, does tothis Day, puzzle all the Philosophers in the World." Such puzzles leftaspects of the universe open to nonmechanical interpretation.

One measure of Mather's resistance to a wholly mechanistic view ofnature is his treatment of comets, one of several spectacular celestial andatmospheric phenomena viewed by his father, and many others, asomens. In earlier life he had had little difficulty conceiving such eventsas operating under natural law, but through the agency of angels or dev-ils. More recent scientific notions evidently made it less easy for him tothink so. In The Christian Philosopher he cited Newton's speculation thatvapors from comets may fall into the earth's atmosphere by gravity andnourish vegetation. "If this be so," Mather reasoned, "the Appearance ofComets is not so dreadful a thing, as the Cometomantia, generally pre-vailing, has represented it." The "If" is significant, for the element ofdoubt allowed him to cite opposing opinions that comets may be minis-ters of divine justice or habitations of animals in a state of punishment,

and to propose that some celestial spectacles might be prognostics, others not.

Mather also considered mechanical principles Inadequate to explainlarge areas of biology. In pondering vital phenomena involving the pursuit of goals he continued to entertain the ancient idea of a plastic spirit—a spiritual power or life force akin to the soul, working within matterto produce the configurations of various beings. He found such vitalistic,as opposed to mechanistic, thinking necessary to understand phenomenalike the regrowth of plants from parts of their stems. In a 1716 curiosaconcerning generation, for instance, he speculated on the possibility ofregrowing amputated limbs. In conceiving generation he accepted thecontemporary theory of "animalcules," suggested by microscopic studyof sperm cells: living things exist infolded as tiny seeds, invisible to theeye but containing "the whole Bodies of the Animals, even to all theirNerves and Fibres"; generation is the augmentation of the original tinyparts within the seed. He speculated that the plastic spirit which animatesand directs this augmentation might be able to renew an augmented partwhich had been lost or removed. As always, he recognized that the notionof plastic spirit was occult; but in this case he found mechanical hypothe-ses equally so: "I was trying for a more mechanical Account of this matter,without flying to the Plastic Vertue; which if I call unintelligible, I mustconfess my Mechanism to be so too." Although drawn to the mechanicalview of nature and in awe of the scientists who composed it, he thusnever surrendered his belief in Spirit. "The more progress we make inExperimental philosophy," he wrote later, "the oftener we shall find our-selves driven to something so much beyond mechanical principles."

In conceiving of matter as energy, modern physics to a degree vindi-cates Mather's clinging to a vitalistic universe. Doing so, however, pre-vented him from fully appreciating the science of his time. His communi-cations to the Royal Society also disclose two more of his seriouslimitations as a scientist. For one, he had little interest in the experimen-tal method—that is, in the active questioning of nature under conditionsdefined by the experimenter—as opposed to bare observation of the phe-nomena nature presents. Such experiment was of the essence of the newscience, distinguishing it from Aristotelianism and scholasticism. His lim-ited mathematical knowledge also barred him from any real understand-ing of the advance in the exact mathematical description of nature thatwas one of the great achievements of science in the period. To judgeMather by such standards may however be unfair. Science was never forhim an autonomous activity, but always a handmaid to religion. He fully

recognized his inferiority to the great virtuosi of Europe, and alwaysspoke of his scientific work, except in medicine, with modesty.

Leaving aside Mather's single greatest scientific accomplishment,which still lay ahead, he figures most importantly in the history of Ameri-can science as a disseminator and popularizer of new scientific knowl-edge. From his pulpit he promoted the Copernican view of a heliocentricsystem and, invisible chains to the contrary, he took a rationalistic delightin exploding such popular superstitions as the theory of spontaneousgeneration and the cure of scrofula by the touch of a seventh son. Somemore specific scientific contributions can be credited to him as well.Beginning in Bonifacius and continuing through "Curiosa Americana"and his later medical works, he gave pioneering attention, unappreciatedat the time, to psychogenic causes of illness. His Curiosa also containwhat seems to be the earliest known account of plant hybridization, con-firming the then newly announced doctrine that flowering plants repro-duce sexually—the basis for the Linnaean system of classifying plants. Healso noted for what seems to have been the first time, the fact of domi-nance, later important in Mendel's theory of heredity. His profound curi-osity about generation, we shall see, would lead him to major contribu-tions to the treatment of smallpox. Finally, the observations on naturalphenomena which he sent to London represented a wholly new level ofperformance by a colonial contributor to the Royal Society. Through thenetwork of the Society's correspondence and publication, he not onlygained a reputation in many parts of Europe for his own scientific work,but also advertised to the Old World the growing scientific community inthe New.

The Royal Society rewarded Mather's efforts to Do Good. SecretaryWaller reported to him in July 1713 that his first series of Curiosa "verywell pleased and Entertained" the members, and that his future commu-nications would be "extremely acceptable." Waller and Dr. Woodwardalso prepared some more detailed notes on their or the members' reac-tions, calling his account of the largeness of American wild turkeys andeagles "remarkable," and praising as seemingly new his description ofthe juice in the rattlesnake's gallbladder—withal indicating that the Curi-osa received respectful and thoughtful attention. In his need at this timefor encouragement, Mather had hinted that he would be pleased to seehis work acknowledged in the Society's published Transactions, begunin 1665 and regularly received by the Fellows. An eight-page extract fromthe first series was published in the April-June 1714 Transactions, appar-ently making Mather the first New Englander since Governor John Win-

throp of Connecticut to be published in that prestigious journal, whichcirculated throughout the world.

Seeking recognition even more blatantly, Mather upon sending hisfirst series decided also to send a "Modest Intimation that he wouldenjoy becoming a member of the Royal Society himself. The hint took theambidexter form of an inverted confession, to Waller, of his unworthi-ness: "I cannot presume so much upon my own merits as to dream ofbeing thought worthy to be admitted a member of that more than illustri-ous Society." He had in fact already been voted into the Society; in Octo-ber 1713, he received news that at the next election "I shall be made, AFELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY." Giddy with delight in the distinc-tion, he replied to Waller that he had resolved to send contributionsannually to the Society for the rest of his life. Hereafter he often printedthe designation "F.R.S." on the title pages of his works, together with his"D.D." from Glasgow. Although membership in the Society signified seri-ous interest in science rather than technical or professional competence,the honor was genuine, for he had become only the eighth colonial elect-ed to one of the most illustrious scientific bodies in the world.

In the "F.R.S." beside his name, Mather saw a signally surprising favorof heaven, "One that will much encourage me, and fortify me, in myEssays to do Good." It also gained him one advantage he sought fromthese essays. It heightened, he wrote, "the superior Circumstances,wherein my gracious Lord places me above the Contempt of enviousMen." It exalted him above the other trees of the field, especially abovethe Governor Dudleys, the rasping serenaders, the swarmers who wantedpews for their despicable families, putting him, so he supposed, beyondtheir reach.

Despite Mather's strenuous attempts at this time to guard his wrath, itoften slipped irresistibly by his watchfulness. Sometime it passed in theguise of a provocativeness which incensed his contemporaries more thanany other feature of his personality. For all his geniality, many who knewhim sensed in his behavior, as modern readers cannot but sense in manyof his writings, something awry, a disturbing discrepancy between act andintent. This unsynchronized quality in Mather—an aggravated version ofthe ambidexterity earlier noticed by Robert Calef—was of course theproduct of his enormous strain in returning benignity for abuse, of thefact that his goodwill and good cheer were often deliberately reversedexpressions of hurt pride, anger, and discouragement. This underside

often seeped through—as the buoyant essays to Do Good of Bonifaciuscome encased in scornful warnings against "INGRATITUDE" and "DERI-SION"—tainting his behavior and his writing with a pervasive and pro-vocative ambivalence.

The defining moods and gestures of Matherese—to give this ambiva-lence a name—are belligerent courtesy, self-flattering modesty, fretfulcalm, denigrating compliments, unacceptable offers. Mather came moreand more to use such gallingly provocative tactics on his contemporaries,helping to explain why they often acted toward him with what he consid-ered base ingratitude. A Scots minister named John Squire, for instance,visited New England around 1715, but refused to take communion withNew England churches, and in Mather's view acted with unbecominglevity and arrogance. Squire's disrespect riled Mather the more because ofhis pride in his D.D. from Glasgow, and his much publicized venerationfor the Church of Scotland. Although infuriated, he decided to Do someGood, and invited Squire to lodge with him, at no cost. As added induce-ments he promised Squire that the accommodations would be inferior tofew in Boston and the library superior to any. A brotherly offer, until hisfinal inducement, where his contempt broke through: "To which thiseasy Circumstance will be added; that all the while you stay, you shall nothear those Things, which we take to be your Weaknesses, uneasily insist-ed on." Squire was not disarmed by such palpable combinations of hospi-tality and condemnation: "your Civilities," he told Mather, "Savour theworse to me that they are cast so frequently in my teeth."

Squire was not alone in finding Mather's private language of self-con-trol jolting. Modern readers still react with puzzled annoyance to theobtuseness of Matherese, the spectacle it affords of a vengeful egotistnakedly transparent, and all unknowingly, through his contrarily ex-pressed forgiveness and charity. Benjamin Colman detected his practiceof simultaneously saying and unsaying, and admonished him for it. AfterMather apparently wrote to him expanding fulsomely on the subject ofcharity, Colman replied that he was glad for Mather's enthusiasm on thissubject but cautioned him that he would not be perfect in charity himselfuntil he displayed "as much Care not to provoke Wrath, as power after-ward to despise, or triumph over, it." Colman's acute remark suggests thatMatherese served more than simply Mather's anger. For Mather also feltintensely guilty about his anger: in "my Hatred and Malice towards otherMen," he wrote, "I have been a Degree of a Murderer." Thus in provok-ing others to condemn and revile him, he evidently also sought to thrashhis own hated murderousness. More than any other characteristic of

Mather's, it is this impossibly provocative fusion of the conciliator and thetroublemaker, of his goodwill and his rage, that has always made himseem at once splendid and contemptible.

When not surfacing through his benevolence, Mather's anger sometimes simply took a different route around his guardedness. He had al-ways exhorted and denounced the rising generation, but his many ser-mons to the young around 1710 seem to translate into dire warnings tothem the pent-up hurt he felt toward Dudley, Leverett, and others. To citeonly two brief instances, from sermons published in 1710 and 1712, ofthis redirected rage:

[The minister] is above the reach of Hurt from your Malignity. You do butadd unto his Crown, as often as you Express your Disaffection to him. Do,Go on to make him the Object of your Venom; Throw all the Dirt of aStreet upon him, if you please; Do, Go on still in your Trespasses. You willWound yout selves, and none but your selves Wretches. . . .

Silly Children, the Minister of God is above all your Silly Attempts.You can't hurt him. If the Wrath of God, had not left you bereft of yourWits, you would feel, that you hurt but your selves. Your Venomous Ar-rows are all Shot against a Rock. They'll prevail nothing against an IronPillar, and a Brasen Wall!

Astonishingly, on virtually the same days that Mather could subject thechildren in his congregation to these sniggering anathemas he couldcompose genteel Curiosa to the Royal Society, praising the works of hu-man reason. More astonishing and also distressing, he could in this peri-od at one moment praise Francke for his beneficence to poor children,and at another threaten children in his own flock, uncharacteristically,with punitive incineration:

There are Children, whose Doom will be to be Burnt to Death, in the Dayof the Lord that shall burn like an Oven. There are Children, whom Godwill send into Everlasting Fire with the Devil and his Angels. And whatChildren? Why, Wicked Children; The Children that make themselves theChildren of the Devil. ... Go into the Burying-Place, CHILDREN; youwill there see Graves as Short as your selves. Yea, you may be at Play oneHour; Dead, Dead the Next. Little do you dream, CHILDREN, How nearyou may be to an Evil Time; Any more than the Fish which you sometimesCatch, are aware of their Evil Time!

In discharging his stifled anger at powerless objects, Mather called atten-tion to the side of himself that was both chaotic and, in the popular mind,longest remembered.

Mather's tantrums and provocations are redeemed, if at all, by twoconsistent features of his personality. First, his concern for human misery,however at times enmeshed with baser feelings, was genuine, and issuedin innumerable acts of kindness. Also, since adolescence he had beenhimself anguishedly aware of his envy and rage. With countless self-con-demnings and resolves he struggled to subdue these traits in himself, ofwhich he sternly disapproved but which nearly always mastered him. Itwas his destiny, his tragedy, often to end up lamenting: "I can't Suffi-ciently preserve that Sedate, and Serene, and Comfortable Frame of Mindwhich belongs unto the Peace of God."

Mather's exasperating difficulty in composing himself had a furtherunfortunate result. He fought off his sense of rejection, we have seen, bymultiplying his efforts to please and by seeking recognition outside Bos-ton. Such comfort as he gained was bound to be imperfect and transient,for his feeling of insufficiency was ingrained, and his offerings to Londonor Glasgow brought with them the same personality that often antago-nized his neighbors. His attempts to attain elsewhere the acceptance de-nied him in Boston extended a vicious cycle—Do Good, Be Spurned, DoMore Good, Be More Spurned—and won him a heavy burden of furtherdisappointment.

Some of this result can be seen by looking a little beyond the periodof Mather's quarrel with Governor Dudley, to about 1715. His spat withthe Scots minister John Squire already suggests how the consolation hefelt in being welcomed by luminaries in the Church of Scotland throve onthe distance separating him from them. Facing another visiting Scotsmanin Boston, young [Patrick?] Erskine, he found himself again repulsed.Evidently hoping to demonstrate yet again his gratitude for the D.D., heinvited the youth to visit him as often as possible, made him "as hand-some a treat at my table as I could," and tried artfully to drop improvingadmonitions on him. These may have been no more artful than those heoffered Squire, for Erskine, he complained, proved "unaccountably shy"of visiting him. Worse, Erskine married without consulting him and, asMather put it, "the plot was carried on with such privacy" that he knewnothing of it for some time after it succeeded. Still worse, Erskine and hiswife had their marriage performed by Benjamin Colman and joined hisBrattle church.

Mather's stepped-up promotion of "Biblia Americana" abroad also be-got fresh resentment. His five-page notice in Bonifacius apparently hav-ing failed to attract subscribers, he advertised the work again in Englandin 1716, this time in a sixteen-page pamphlet entitled A New Offer To the

Lovers of Religion and Learning. By now the ever burgeoning work hadgrown, by Mather's reckoning, to more than three times the size ot Mag-nolia Cbristi Americana. The new advertisement contained a specificsubscription plan: interested persons would send in their names affixedto a promise to take off a two-volume set, at a price set by the booksellerwith the advice of three unexceptionable London ministers.

Yet English readers proved no hungrier for Mather's New Offer thanyoung Erskine for his invitations. Baffled and hurt by the rejection, andmore usually the silence, he wrote one letter after another, trying to ac-count for the neglect of him. The English, he bitterly told one Londoncorrespondent, count New Englanders "what we really are, of too littleuse or worth for them to converse withal." The London booksellers, hetold another correspondent, showed no interest because "In one word,they are booksellers." Particularly he blamed the London Dissenting min-isters, to whom he had often applied for help in publishing the work.They "do not seem to overvalue literature," he snipped, "Nor do theyseem to think that it is much for their interest or honor to have any oftheir number do things of much consideration in the commonwealth oflearning"—just what he expected, he told still another correspondent,"from men of their Narrow Spirits." Forsaken by those who should haveappreciated him most, he issued an extraordinary spiteful warning tosome Dissenting ministers in London that if they "cast it off," the workmight be published under the auspices of "eminent Persons" in theChurch of England.

The New Offer having failed in Scotland also, Mather tried to soothehimself by thinking that were the work not in English his admirers amongthe German Pietists would publish it. But from his London go-betweenwith the Pietists, Anthony William Boehm, he got only the discouragingadvice to copy out the whole of "Biblia Americana" (which might havetaken years) and to lodge the transcript with an eminent London divine,for viewing by persons who might consider subsidizing its publication.Boehm also brusquely criticized the New Offer, pointing out to Matherthat he had advised subscribers to send in their names—but had failed totell them where or to whom!

Mather was wholly unable to accept the explanation given him byliterally dozens of persons, that "Biblia Americana" was a valuable workbut prohibitively costly to publish. In his mind, those who failed to con-firm his worth were not simply shying from a project that could have costlittle less than the reprinting of Eliot's Indian Bible but were, as manyothers had done, affronting a great and unselfish man. Snubbed in Lon-

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don, he responded as he often did in Boston, by grandiose self-promotionoffered with accusative sarcasm: "I do not Expect," he told one Londonbookseller, "that my own having, near two hundred and forty times, en-tertain'd my Friends with publishing by the way of the press, Treatisesand composures on various Arguments, and in various (Living as well asdead) Languages, will obtain for me with some, the Favour of beingthought capable of any valuable performance." To elicit guilt and let offsteam he made this harumphing enumeration of his many works amidsthis many other employments a sort of set piece, the numbers of worksgrowing with each new cajoling letter he sent. Since the age of seven-teen, he told Sir William Ashurst, he had had

lying upon him, the ponderous Employments of the Evangelical Services,which the greatest Church in these Colonies has expected from him, and... he has in this while undergone the Humiliations of publishing morethan Two hundred and fifty Books, of several Dimensions, on variousArguments, in Diverse Languages; yet . . . there is performed in the BibliaAmericana, more than all that is promised in the Advertisement.

If only a few "persons of Quality" overseas favored the work, Mather feltcertain, "Vast Subscriptions would soon be sent in." But they did not; thesubscriptions never came. In October 1716, he wrote in his diary that thepublication of "Biblia Americana" was "to be despaired of."

Mather's service to the New England Company also proved oftenthankless. He complained to the directors in London about the inadequa-cy of their remittances, which forced the commissioners to pay from theirown pockets toward the salaries of ministers and schoolteachers em-ployed in the field. President Leverett of Harvard provided a further an-noyance: Dudley appointed him a magistrate to the Indians without thecommissioners' concurrence and demanded that he be paid from Compa-ny funds. Finding the other commissioners sluggish as well, Mather sev-eral times offered to resign, but was kept going by the Company's grati-tude for his work. When they awarded him £25 he wrote to London sayinghe considered himself repaid in the pleasure of serving them and wishedto decline the gift, but accepted it as affording him "opportunities forcontinual and considerable expense of Time and Thought; and purse too(tho' that an Article not worth mentioning)"—which, translated (paren-theses in Matherese often revealing-concealing the gist), means he dis-dained the money but needed it because.the Company was forcing him tospend his own funds on its behalf. In Matherese again he begged theCompany in 1712 to dismiss him because of his many other obligations,

managing in the course of confessing his ineptitude to reveal himself tobe invaluable:

The uttermost that I can pretend unto, is, To give my constant Attendanceat the Meetings; and a small Assistance to the Shaping of our Projections;and write Letters upon occasion to the Indian preachers and churches; orperhaps give Directions to the Instruments employ'd by your O mini issioners; and receive and pursue Addresses to the Commissioners fromsuch as please now and then, to make use of me in so befriending ofthem.

As always now, appreciation cooled him off and inspired higher flights (){Doing Good: "The Corporation in London, having refused to dismiss me,(as I desired,) ... I would more than ever set myself to serve them."

New frustrations came to Mather even from his election to the RoyalSociety. His first series of Curiosa, a hundred pages of manuscript, ap-peared in the Transactions as an eight-page summary. Whether theshrinkage disappointed him is unknown, but his Scots correspondentRobert Wodrow read the summary abroad and wrote him sympathetically,"It is my loss and that of many others, that we have not the full copies ofyour valuable letters, referred to in that short abstract." Nor do we know ifMather winced over the abstract writer's account in the Transactions of"Biblia Americana," which reported that Mather had described a largework in manuscript, "but does not name the Author." (Like his failure totell readers of the New Offer where to send their subscriptions, the slipsuggests self-sabotaging guilt over the towering ambition of the work.)Mather may not even have received a copy of the summary, for he com-plained to John Winthrop that "Our friends of the Royal Society dostrangely neglect us (or packets miscarry). I hear of many things of minepublished; but I never saw them."

Mather also discovered that his name was somehow omitted from thecatalogue of the Society's Fellows. Of course he did not howl over thislatest bit of ill-fated disregard, but rather made known his hurt to theSociety in a promise of greater service. He would annually treat it to somany communications, he wrote to London, "that if every member of thatillustrious body whose name stands in the catalogue (an honor not yetobtained for mine) will do but half as much, the stores in your collectionwill soon become considerable."

Of 15, Dead, 9

At the time of Governor Dudley's arrival, Mather had married ElizabethHubbard Clark, a young widow twelve years younger than himself. Herfather was the Boston physician Dr. John Clark, whose father had been aphysician also; on her mother's side she may have been related to anEnglish noble family, the Saltonstalls. She had been briefly married to aBoston mariner named Richard Hubbard, with whom she had a sonaround 1699. Later accounts describe her as a woman of "singular good-Humour and incomparable Sweetness of Temper," having a "very hand-some engaging Countenance"

Elizabeth may have grown up in the Anglican church, for her father isknown to have attended the first Church of England meeting held in NewEngland, in 1686, under the Rev. Robert Ratcliffe. At some time, however,she heard the Mathers preach, and it was their preaching, according toCotton, that turned her to Christ; three years after their marriage she wasadmitted to communion in the North Church. Indeed until her illnessand death in 1713 left him more painfully isolated than ever, he enteredin his diary little else about her than his efforts to assist her spiritualdevelopment and make her an asset to his ministry. He emphasized to herthree points on which ministers' wives had made their names precious toposterity: constancy and fervency in their devotions; ingenuity and laborin instructing their families in piety; and compassion toward the miser-able in their neighborhood. Thus he looked out for suitable books ofpiety for her, recommending that she attempt to draw from them matterfor her private devotions, and urged her to take notes after the preacherduring sermons, as he did, both for her own advantage and as an exampleto others. He resolved to say something instructive to her whenever she

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came to his study, or he to her in their room, or when she brought himhis "short Breakfast" and sat with him as he drank it. He also encouragedher to visit their neighbors frequently and contrive some act whereby shemight say when she left, "Some Good has been done, where she was,

Mather and Elizabeth lived in the house he had inhabited for most ofhis first marriage, a few streets from his father's house and from the NorthChurch. Apparently a substantial, three-story building on a plot 38' by120', it expressed his belief that God allowed humanity a middle estate—neither so much nor so little comfort as to make people unmindful oftheir souls. No very exact picture of the house can be reconstructed, but ithad a fence, a gate, a well, and a yard, and was sizable enough for Matherto hold large meetings in. The house also had a garden, which he triedfashioning into a "Sort of an earthly Paradise," using its trees and herbs assubjects of his devotions in the time he spent there. Among the knownappurtenances inside were a stove, a "Repeating Clock, and a very curi-ous One" and "agreeable mottos" which he resolved to post in everyroom. Aside from a parlor apparently reserved for receiving visitors, thecenter of the house for Mather was his large study, containing a "veryeasy Chair." Above the door in capital letters he posted, as a warning totedious visitors or interrupting friends, the motto "BE SHORT"—al-though, his son Samuel added, "let him be ever so busy when a Friendcame to see him, he threw all by."

The center of this center, something Mather had greatly desired andvalued since youth, was his cherished library. At the time he marriedElizabeth he owned between two and three thousand books. They stoodin "Boxes," presumably stacked against the walls of his study—not only apredictably large number of religious and theological works in severallanguages, but also many volumes of history, classical literature, and Neo-platonic philosophy, and important scientific works by Boyle, Descartes,Gassendi and others, a testimony to his prodigious learning and curiosity.The earliest surviving volume from his collection may be Conrad Lycos-thenes' Apophthegmata (Geneva, 1668), which he owned at the age often. From at least that time his library grew both gradually and throughsuch accessive leaps as his purchase at the age of nineteen of ninety-sixbooks from the Harvard library (offered for sale as duplicates), and hisacquisition in 1709 of a group of six hundred sermons. Many bookspassed down in the family, and many volumes bear inscriptions of severalgenerations of Mathers. He kept his collection current by often sendingto London for recent books and journals and by managing to inspect newarrivals in America: "Seldom any new Book of Consequence finds the way

from beyond-Sea, to these parts of America, but I bestow the Perusalupon it." Living near his father, who also read and acquired books vora-ciously, he had easy access to his father's library, so that Increase's collec-tion "which was not much Less than Mine, was also in a manner Mine."

How many books Mather accumulated in his lifetime is uncertain, butby the end of his life he probably owned the largest library in America. In1686, when Mather was twenty-three, the English bookseller John Dun-ton visited him and judged his collection even at that time one of thefinest private libraries he had ever seen: "as the Famous Bodleian Libraryat Oxford, is the Glory of that University, if not of all Europe," Duntonwrote, "so I may say, That Mr. Mather's Library is the Glory of New-En-gland, if not of all America. I am sure it was the best sight that I had inBoston." Mather's son Samuel is said to have put the total collection—probably including the library of Increase Mather—at seven or eightthousand volumes, plus a very large holding of manuscripts passed downin the family through five generations.

Entering middle age in these years, Mather found himself the head ofa large household. Both his parents were aging and ailing, Increase, wehave seen, suffering various ills and fearful of diminishing mental power.Cotton rarely mentions his mother, Maria Mather, although she too hadvarious serious ailments, being at one time so lamed by rheumatism thatshe could not stand for more than six weeks, and was growing infirm andfeeble. As she turned seventy, in 1711, he gave thought to helping pre-pare her for appearing before God, and resolved to discourse with her "asprudently and as takingly as I can, on that illustrious Point." He had alsobrought to his marriage with Elizabeth the four children surviving of thenine he had had with his first wife—Katharine, Abigail ("Nibby"), Han-nah ("Nancy"), and Increase, Jr. By 1711 he and Elizabeth had had fourchildren more: Elizabeth (b. 13 July 1704), Samuel (b. 30 October 1706),Nathanael (b. 16 May 1709), and Jerusha (b. April 1711). Nathanael, ap-parently named for Mather's dead brother, however survived only sixmonths. Elizabeth presumably also brought to the house her son by herfirst marriage, although Mather never mentions him. Nevertheless, as heneared fifty, Mather was perforce more a parent than ever before, thefather of five daughters and two sons ranging in age from Katharine, nowabout twenty-two, to the newborn Jerusha, the other children being sev-enteen, fourteen, twelve, seven, and five years old.

Mather's household also had numerous long- and short-term servantsand slaves—male and female, white, Indian, and black. He often publiclydenounced what seemed to him illegal and brutal aspects of the growing

264 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COTTON MATHER

colonial slave trade. In 1723, after several Boston blacks committed aseries of arsons and even threatened to burn down the town, he askedBostonians to consider whether blacks are "always treated according to

the Rules of Humanity? Are they treated as those, that are of one

Blood with us, and those that have Immortal Souls in them, and are notmere Beasts of Burden?" Unlike Samuel Sewall, however, Mather was Inno sense an abolitionist, and he generally thought blacks superstitiousand stupid. In his view, Christian law allowed slavery but "wonderfullyDulcifies, and Mollifies, and Moderates the Circumstances of it." He ap-pealed rather for humane treatment of slaves, and especially for theirchristianizing, in the face of prevailing views that conversion would makeslaves discontented or might even entitle them to liberty, Christians intheory being forbidden to keep other Christians as slaves. Mather at-tacked these views in The Negro Christianized (1706), where he remind-ed slaveowners that "They are Men, and not Beasts, that you havebought," and urged that far from becoming restive, christianized slaveswould serve their masters more patiently and faithfully. Mather did muchelse toward christianizing black slaves: trying to promote the work by actof Parliament in England; publishing for householders a streamlined,three-question catechism to instruct their "poor Stupid Abject Negro's"-,paying from his own pocket the weekly wages of a schoolmistress toteach blacks to read; and resolving to entertain the religious society ofblacks of the North Church piously at his house.

In 1706 some members of his congregation spent forty or fifty poundsto buy him a young black man "of a promising Aspect and Temper."Seeing the acquisition as a "mighty Smile of Heaven upon my Family," henamed the slave Onesimus, after the runaway slave in the New Testamentwho was converted and became virtually a son to Paul. Since for Matherand other Puritans, servants were to be treated as family members—aspersons, that is, for whose salvation the householder was obliged to bedeeply concerned—he labored with a combination of piety and contemptfor Onesimus' conversion. Consistent with his belief that blacks did notdiffer from the rest of humanity in their capacity for salvation, he foundOnesimus governed best by "the Principles of Reason, agreeably offeredunto him," encouraged him to read and write every day, and allowed himto marry. (Whether Onesimus' wife joined the Mather household is un-clear; the couple had a son, who died, however, in 1714.) He also permit-ted Onesimus to work outside the house and gain an independent in-come, charging him to keep the rules of honesty and to devote part of hisincome to pious purposes. For all that, Mather did not differ from most

other Puritans in regarding blacks as alien and untrustworthy. He kept a"strict Eye" on Onesimus' company and activities, including "some Ac-tions of a thievish Aspect."

Amidst his multitudinous duties and services, and despite his manyupsets, Mather enacted his domestic role with great thoughtfulness andaffection. He viewed parental love and responsibility as, next to devotionto God, the supreme human fact: ''Nature knows not a greater Passion. . . .To all men Living, their Children are as dear as their very Lives." Heconceived child nurture as a joint venture among parents, ministers, andschoolmasters, aimed at making children gentlemanly and ladylike Chris-tians—pious, literate, and well-mannered. In his many published workson the subject he advised that Scripture learning should begin as soon aschildren come out of swaddling clothes and can learn anything; later theyshould be made to read Scripture every day, form prayers out of what theyread, and repeat sermons. When children reach a suitable age, parentsshould pray and weep with them, making them " Witnesses of the Agonies,with which you Address the Throne of Grace on their Behalf. They'llnever forget it!" Mather also wished children to attain secular learningand to come to think that "to learn all the brave Things in the world, isthe bravest Thing in the world." To this end he urged that they be taughtto spell and read well and to keep neat writing books, entering into themprofitable thoughts. To inculcate benignity in them, parents should setthem doing kind services for other children and caution them to returngood for evil.

To induce children to act upon such principles of reason and honor,Mather believed, parents must beget in them a high opinion of the par-ents' love for them. And to earn such affectionate respect from their chil-dren, parents must avoid harshness. Although Mather discounted thechild's own will and counted a parent's word absolute law, he deploredall severity in child rearing: "The slavish way of Education, carried onwith raving and kicking and scourging (in Schools as well as Families,) tisabominable; and a dreadful Judgment of God upon the World." He al-lowed for blows only in cases of very extreme misbehavior, and then notin fury or passion. As a general principle of discipline, he recommendedthat parents so combine pleasure and instruction that being deprived ofinstruction is punishment enough.

Mather conscientiously applied these principles to raising his ownchildren, on whom he lavished attention. Except for his preaching andpastoral visits, he spent his day at home, shuttling between his family andhis study, into which he often called the children to converse or to pray.

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THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COTTON MATHER

Each morning at nine (and again each evening) the family gathered forcatechizing, praying, Scripture reading, and psalm singing, the childrenwho were at school in the neighborhood coming home to take part in thedevotions. He seems also to have required the children to write daily intheir blank books, at a stated hour during which he gave them materials"both devotionary and scientifical." He outfitted each child with a oneshelf library taken from his own collection, adding some book to theirstock each week, especially works by himself and his father. Privately heprayed constantly for their conversion and physical well-being, and triedeach night to take an account of how they had spent their time during theday.

True to his own views on discipline, Mather sought to grace his in-struction of his children with the same ingenuity and facetiousness forwhich contemporaries valued his conversation. He tried in his table talkto "Entertain" their minds and polish their manners by discoursing onnovel and useful subjects. Before rising he would every day relate a storythat might be helpful to "the Olive Plants about the Table." Whenevercoming upon one of them by-the-way he let fall some memorable andinstructive sentence, a practice requiring, he found, "some Study, andLabour, and Contrivance. But who can tell, what may be the Effect of acontinual Dropping?" Combining teaching and amusement, he similarlyfilled time with them on the road in his "Chariot," offered inventivelypious reminders when they were at sports or games, "which the Circum-stances of their play may lead them to think upon," and improved suchother family activities as baking, gardening, or laying in provisions("Lord," he exclaimed when brewing, "let us find in a glorious Christ, aprovision for our thirsty Souls"). When he gave the children money orsome other gift he tendered as well some maxim which if they practiced,he told them, would be worth more to them than "the Little Thing whichI now bestow."

As Mather proposed, the agreeableness of his instruction also proveduseful in discipline. He tried to make his children feel privileged inbeing taught by him, so that the sorest punishment they could feel was"To be chased for a while out of my Presence"—a somewhat manipula-tive use of his children's dependence on his approval, reminiscent of hisown childhood relation to his own withdrawn father, who spent sixteenhours a day in his study. Mather's many aggravations at this time seem tohave made some difficulty for him in preventing angry outbursts againsthis children, and he occasionally reminded himself that upon any occa-sion of discipline he must "with all possible Decency govern my Passion.

My Anger shall not break out, into any froward, peevish, indecent Expres-sions. I will only let them see, that I don't like what I take notice of." Butgenerally Mather was a notably mild and amiable parent. His success inreproducing his own affectionate domestic values in his children is illus-trated by an episode in 1711 in which little Samuel mistreated his sisterElizabeth. Mather gave Lizzy a piece of fruit, but gave none to Sammy topunish him for "being so cross to her." The father no sooner turned hisback, he discovered, "but the good-condition'd Creature fell into Tears,at this Punishment of her little Brother, and gave to him a Part of what Ihad bestowed upon her."

In attending to his children's material needs Mather was less success-ful. His wish to provide for them in case he died was quickened by uncer-tain health—a lingering morning cough and recurrent head and jaw painsthat sometimes restricted his ministerial work, the headaches forcing himone morning to "lie down like a Stag in a Net." He treated these withvarious remedies and by riding horseback a few miles out of town—apractice he constantly recommended to others. Yet he realized he couldleave little behind for his children's upkeep. His salary furnished nomore than their subsistence and education and, unlike his father, hegrumbled little over insufficient pay and cared little about financial mat-ters. He could only hope that God would reward his service by providingfor his children if he died. But the largeness of his family, and probablyalso the wider economic straits of Dudley's administration, sometimesleft him and his children pressed. He noted in 1709 that having falleninto some wants, "I had not Clothes fit to be worn. . . . And one or two ofmy Children are no better accommodated." It was only in answer to pray-ers that in 1711 Increase, Jr., came by clothing for the winter. Nor werethe hard times eased by Mather's insistence, whatever his own circum-stances, on Doing Good: "Tho' I can get no better Clothes than Rags formyself," he wrote, "yet the Lord honours me, by making me the happyInstrument of clothing other people. The Poor have numberless Reliefs,out of my Purse, and by my Means from others, and the Naked areclothed."

In preparing his children for adult social life, Mather trained hisdaughters to be gentlewomen, his sons to be ministers. He resolved tohave the girls cook at least one new thing a week, but he also had themwrite daily and read in one of the sciences, and he taught them shorthandand Hebrew. His pious but affable eldest daughter, Katharine ("Katy"), a"Lamb inexpressibly dear ... a Constellation of every thing that couldEndear a Daughter," became not only able with the needle and knowl-

edgeable about the table, but also dextrous with her pen and in waxsculpturing, highly accomplished in Hebrew, and skillful in both instru-mental and vocal music. To enable her to Do Good, Mather also determined on having her obtain knowledge of medicine. Proud that he hadprovided for her "so polite an education," he prayed to God to see herwell married.

Mather's two sons, however, were turning out to have sharply differingpersonalities. His and Elizabeth's son Samuel early showed a bent for theMather family's several generations of learning. By the age of six, in 1712,Sammy could read so well that Mather decided to supply him continuallywith Latin and English distichs to be learned by heart, with rewards forlearning them. His son by his first marriage, Increase, Jr., also gave earlysigns of realizing the advice Mather had received from heaven that theboy would be "a Servant of my Lord Jesus Christ throughout eternalAges." In addition to Creasy's formal schooling, Mather wrote out versesfor him to memorize, hoping to improve him at once in goodness andreading, and sent him as well each day for instruction to the older In-crease, the boy's grandfather. By about 1712, when he was thirteen,Creasy had grown so proficient in classical languages that Mather consid-ered holding their "daily discourse" entirely in Latin, and planned tohave Creasy turn the Greek of Posselius into Latin verse. To fosterCreasy's conversion, Mather wrote down for him "certain Questions ofthe last Importance," and obliged him to write answers. He also rewardedthe boy with money for transcribing works that might inform his mindand manners, and tried to have school themes assigned him that wouldpromote goodness and virtue. Often he called Creasy into his study to sitwith him as he read aloud various "Documents of Piety, and of Discre-tion," including parts of "Paterna," the autobiography he had begun writ-ing for Creasy at his birth.

But Creasy somehow failed to feel the allure of the Mather past and ofthe Lord's service. Mather suspected that the boy ignored secret prayerand, calling him into his study, made him promise to desist from a prayer-less life. Worried also that bad company wras corrupting Creasy, hewarned him to shun "vicious and wicked Lads" and urged him to spendSabbath evenings with serious youths, reading pious works. As his ownson began exhibiting the evils of the rising generation which he hadoften denounced from his pulpit, he prayed repeatedly to God to grantCreasy His converting influences, and often moaned into his diary: "I amfull, full of Distress, concerning my little Son Increase My poor

Son Increase!Oh! the Distress of Mind, with which I must let fall my dailyAdmonitions upon him."

When Creasy reached thirteen, the time for his admission to Harvard,he failed to follow his father, grandfather, and five uncles into the school.Instead, after long deliberation, Mather decided to steer him toward thebusiness world, and redirected Creasy's education toward secular life.Like his father, the boy had an elegant handwriting that might have suitedhim to work as an accountant or scribe, and he now concentrated onperfecting his writing and ciphering. Believing that Creasy had an apti-tude for mathematical studies, Mather encouraged him to master geome-try, trigonometry, and navigation. And to give the boy a polish that mightserve him in business life, he also had Creasy trained in fencing andmusic. Just the same, he keenly wished him to appreciate the life of themind, and tried to "ply him with all possible Methods for a most liberalEducation in other Points [than business]; that he may be a man veryuseful in the World." When Creasy was fourteen, in mid-1713, Matherbegan seeking a businessman to whom he could be apprenticed, and bythe fall seems to have located a religious merchant family to take him in.

The winter of 1713 brought the worst epidemic of measles in colonialAmerican history. The disease first appeared near Newport, Rhode Island,in the summer, broke out at Harvard College in September, and by Octo-ber arrived in Boston, where, Mather estimated later, it infected thou-sands of people and killed 160 in two months. To gird his neighbors forwhat might be coming, he decided to devote his public sermons andprayers to the subject of affliction. Fearing as well that his own householdmight share deeply in the common calamity, he undertook to make morenumerous expressions of piety at home, to prepare his children for death,and to send up many supplicatory prayers himself, "that so the Wrath ofHeaven may inflict no sad Thing on my Family."

In about two weeks Mather's entire family had been smitten, begin-ning with Creasy. Having survived choking on a pin during infancy andsmallpox contracted during the epidemic of 1702, the boy fortunatelyrecovered quickly, and Mather obliged him to write up special resolu-tions for his future conduct. But Creasy was no sooner well than Nibby,who had gotten smallpox in the same epidemic, lay "very sick" of mea-sles, followed by "dear Katy" (although in "somewhat more favorableCircumstances"), and then by Mather's wife, Elizabeth, who had very

recently given birth. Within only a few days his daughters Nancy, Lizzy,

and Jerusha—aged seven, nine, and two—also took the disease, and Sammy, aged seven, as well as the Mathers' maidservant. "Help Lord," Matherwrote, "and look mercifully on my poor, sad, sinful Family, tor the Sake ofthe Great Sacrifice!"

As such threats to the public welfare always did, the epidemic quickened Mather's desire to Do Good, and he proposed fighting it not only byprayer but also by his considerable medical knowledge. Certain thatproper care might save many lives that would likely be lost through mis-management, he considered printing a pamphlet of advice and lodging itamong sick families, and inserting brief directions for treating measles inthe newspaper. He clearly hoped, however, to avoid antagonizing localphysicians by presuming on their expertise, and consulted beforehandwith some doctors, who seem to have declined joining him in publishingthe pamphlet but approved of his doing so himself. Even so, when thetwo-page work appeared later in the year, as the measles spread into thecountryside, he specified that he intended his instructions for peopleunable to afford physicians, or beyond their reach. But at whatever risk ofcriticism from the medical profession, he hoped to distribute it widely tosave lives: 'Tho' doubtless my Action may expose me to some Invectives,yet my Conformity to my dear Saviour, in what He did for the sick, will bemy inexpressible Consolation."

One historian of medicine has called Mather's Letter About a GoodManagement under the Distemper of the Measles (1713) "particularlybecause of its originality, one of the very few classics of early Americanmedicine." Abandoning his habitual attempt to charm, Mather wrote hisinstructions "in the plainest manner that is possible," so that any nursecould administer them. After observing that in Europe measles usuallyproved a light malady, but in these parts of America "Grievous to most,Mortal to many," he described the symptoms of each stage of the disease,beginning with headache, eye pains, and dry cough, and reaching a turn-ing point about three days after the eruption of red specks, often withsuch frightening but usually transient symptoms as vomiting and fainting.In mild cases he recommended allowing patients to maintain their rou-tine until the specks appear, then to stay warm and at home, feedingsparingly on bland food. In more serious cases patients should lie warmin bed, consulting a physician if high fever persists. Aside from suggest-ing such remedies as teas or hot honey, the brunt of Mather's letter is itsreiterated caution against overtreatment, which may only worsen the dis-ease: "Don't kill 'em! That is to say, With mischievous Kindness. Indeed,

if we stopt here, and said no more, this were enough to save more Lives,than our W&rs have destroyed." Mather's main, and important, advice wasin effect to let nature take its course.

Elizabeth was the first in his family to die. Since first learning of theoutbreak of the disease in Rhode Island, he had felt a "strong Distress onmy Mind" that it would be calamitous to his family, and had related hispremonition to friends "often, often." He was particularly apprehensivefor Elizabeth because of her advanced pregnancy, as the disease oftenproved fatal to women who were with child. She gave birth on October30, very easily, but somewhat prematurely—the result, Mather concluded,of her "too diligent an Attendance on her sick Family." Mather baptizedthe twins on November 1, naming the girl Martha, after Elizabeth's moth-er, and the boy Eleazer, after the biblical Martha's brother, a "priestlyName" identical with Lazarus.

Three days after the baptism Mather saw that symptoms of measles hadbegun appearing on Elizabeth. A few days after that she was in a "danger-ous Condition," unable to rest, raising fears that she might die or becomedistracted. He apparently did not pray for Particular Faiths, as he hadduring his first wife's long illness a decade earlier. Several times in theinterval he had been strongly tempted to regard powerful mental impres-sions as Particular Faiths from heaven, but "having been once buffeted inthat Experience, I durst hardly any more countenance it." Despite Eliza-beth's long sleeplessness, her mind had remained lucid, and he prayedwith her many times, tried to offer consoling discourses, and readied herfor death. It comforted her, he thought, to see that his children by his firstmarriage were as fond of her as her own.

On November 8, with his children lying ill and much sickness in theneighborhood, Mather preached at the North Church on the text John18:11, The Cup which my Father has given me, shall not I drink it? Notwithout overtones of older, displaced bitterness he depicted Christ's sub-mission to suffering: a man exposed to contempt for his ministry, jeeredat, defiled by spit, yet patient under affliction, a pattern for all afflictedbelievers, "When the Cup appointed for you, is imposed on you, Nowtake it," he admonished his congregation. "Perhaps, 'tis the Cup of aFuneral. That which was the Desire of thine Eyes, and the Delight, andthe Darling of thy Family, must have its Funeral. . . . Take it." The sameday he observed, at home, "surprising Symptoms of Death" on Elizabeth,who had lain sleepless whole days and nights.

Whatever Mather's own council of patient submission, the prospect ofElizabeth's death was not easy. The marriage, despite his initial uncer-

tainties about it, had worked out well, and he had found Elizabeth awoman of conspicuous piety, virtuous deportment, and benign temper,beloved by many. "To part with so desirable, so agreeable a Companion, aDove from such a Nest of young ones too! Oh! the sad Cup, which myFather has appointed me!" He had prayed and cried to God often thai thisparticular cup would pass from him, but somehow without being able toproduce in himself the appropriate spiritual state. Now he saw the mean-ing of his deadness of heart: "My Supplications have all along had, a mostunaccountable Death and Damp upon them!" Elizabeth died on the after-noon of November 9, ten days after giving birth. In the room with herbody Mather again tried to persuade himself into a state of resignation inwhich to suffer without complaint the will of God in taking "my dear,dear, dear Friend."

The next to die, on November 14, was Mather's maidservant, as helearned on arising that morning. She had been stricken about two weeksearlier, together with his children, but her measles passed into a "malig-nant Fever." He found some compensation for her death in the fact thatshe had come to his family a "wild, vain, airy Girl" but had grown disposed to serious religion, awakened to fervent secret prayer, and at lastbrought into covenant and baptized, "and my poor Instructions, were themeans that God blessed for such happy Purposes." With her death heresolved to intensify his own repentance for any miscarriages in his be-havior toward his servants.

The twins Eleazer and Martha died next. Elizabeth's easy delivery hadencouraged Mather to hope that he had been mistaken in his earlierpremonition of family disaster. But only two weeks after the twins' birth,and a day after the passing of his maidservant, he found both newborns"languishing in the Arms of Death." Eleazer died first, at about midnightthree days later, Martha two days after that.

The need to anticipate and bear up under the death of children hadbeen a prominent theme of Mather's ministry. He had often reminded hiscongregation that at least half the children of men die before the age oftwenty, and that "In the Deaths of your Children, Endured with a dueSubmission, to the Father of Spirits, you offer up some of your FattestSacrifices." His own power of quietly sacrificing his most choice wascalled upon, for although most of his other children seem to have recov-ered by the time of the twins' death, his daughter Jerusha, about two anda half years old, still lay dangerously ill with a high fever. She had beennamed for his youngest sister, who had died in childbed of her first childat the age of twenty-six—a woman of promising intellectual ability and a"considerable Mistress" of her pen, of whom he had been greatly fond.

With the loss of Elizabeth and the twins, not to mention the deaths of fiveother young children during his first marriage, the "dying Circum-stances" of "dear pretty Jerusha" were to Mather nearly insupportable: "Ibegg'd, I begg'd, that such a bitter Cup, as the Death of that lovely child,might pass from me." On the night of November 21, Jerusha asked him topray with her, as he did with distress but without protest to God, havingearlier in the day attended the funeral of his twins. She lay speechlessmany hours, he recorded, but finally her speech returned a little to herand she said the minute that she died "That she would go to Jesus Christ."

Next day, with Jerusha lying dead in the house, Mather preached tohis congregation as one who had seen five deaths in his family in lessthan two weeks and was tomorrow, he said, "to attend the Funeral of aChild which was Two years and seven months old." His calamities hadbecome a matter of town talk, and he was aware that the "Eyes of thePeople are much upon me." Eager to have at least "the Happiness to dothe more Good for every Evil that befalls me," he had something to offerhis listeners: although he had fervently hoped for Jerusha's recovery, hehad once again found—"Nevertheless!"—that the God who created andloved him had strengthened him to acknowledge that love by submissiveacquiescence. Thus he stood in his pulpit as a model of "ONE who Livesin the midst of Deaths" and took as his doctrine "Dying Daily," whoseseveral meanings he elucidated. To die daily means to keep a lively sensethat we daily progress toward death, that every day may be our dying day;means to die to the world, mortifying ourselves so as to regard the worldas a "Despicable Thing." In dying daily we draw out the bitterness fromdeath itself. Determined to make his cross bear still more fruit, "tho' thecross be but a dry sort of a tree," he preached another sermon three daysafter Jerusha's funeral, on the doctrine that A Good Man is a Strong Man.But this day, a day, he said, "which truly may be called, a Night, ratherthan a Day," he confessed with some weariness to his own need forstrength. "The Poor Man, who Preaches these Things," he told his con-gregation, "is far from asserting his own Claim to all this Character; andhis Want of it, is the bitterest Cup in his Adversity. All that he can say, is,That when you, O dear People of God, are Pressing after this Character,he hopes, you will Pray for him, that he may share with you, in so great aConsolation."

In December, with his household recovered, Mather began dedicatinghimself to new or more active exercises of devotion. He felt that theevents of the last month—"a Month which devoured my Family"—obliged him to renew his practice of setting apart whole days of prayerand fasting. The unfamiliar quiet in the house owing to the removal of

274 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COTTON MATHER

small children from it also allowed new exertions for his surviving chil-dren, none now under seven years old. He would labor for Creasy*s conversion, and furnish each living child with a "Closet of Remedies" bywhich they might relieve the miserable. For himself, he prayed for divineaid in behaving with discretion and purity in his single state, souk- "sillyPeople" had already brought him " a foolish Message from a Gentlewoman," but he felt he must spend the rest of his life in widowerhood.

As Mather digested and began to ruminate on his loss, he doted panicularly on the meaning of Sacrifice. Since God had lately so much calledhim to such a work, he desired to develop a special skill and will for it.He proposed an exercise to himself: he would look on all his enjoyments,very often look on the dearest and most valuable of them, and in lookingconceive to himself a sacrificing thought. "O my dear Saviour," hewould think, "If thou shalt be most glorified, by my having this taken fromme, I resign it, I forego it, I am content and willing to be without it."Accustoming himself to Sacrifice would earn him a true share in the royalPriesthood. By accustoming himself to sacrifice, too, he would be "pre-pared for all Events." At some moment he wrote out on the back cover ofone of his notebooks the names of all the children he had fathered, draw-ing a line to separate the offspring he had had by his first and secondwives, both now dead.

Abigail

Katharin[e]

Mary

Increase

Abigail

Mehetabel

Hannah

Increase

Samuel

Elizabeth

Samuel

Nathanael

Jerusha

Eleazer

Martha

Beside the list he wrote down the dreadful tally:

Of 15,Dead, 9Living, 6

OF 15, DEAD, 9 275

As was his custom, Mather closed his diary for the year 1713 on February11, 1714, the day before his birthday, noting that "The fifty first Year ofmy Age is terminated."

Mather's fifty-second year began badly. On April 4, his mother, MariaMather, died at the age of seventy-two. He and his father preached andpublished complementary sermons on her death. Increase dedicated hissermon to his children, telling them they had lost a "Tender Mother" andcompulsorily reminding them they "will very shortly be Fatherless as wellas Motherless," yet composing a loving tribute to his companion of fifty-two years, a woman, he said, who "did me good and not evil all the daysof her life." Cotton, in his sermon, drew for his congregation the charac-ter of an ideal mother, one with a strong natural inclination to comforther children, pray for them in distress, teach them their catechism, groanto heaven over their spiritual estate. When such a mother sees a son nowa man, and a worthy and useful and noted man, then her affection to sucha son will be "very Passionate, very Rapturous, very Marvellous, nothingwill be equal to the Transport of it." Then he explained that in makinghis ideal portrait of a mother he had had, of course, "somebody sittingbefore me for it."

Of course, too, Mather cautioned his flock that while sorrow for amother's death is allowable, God has better comforts for His childrenthan has the most affectionate mother in the world, God extends to Hischildren more than maternal consolation, takes mothers away to bringHis children to more entire dependence on Him alone, teaches His chil-dren not to expect comfort from the children of men, in whom there canbe no comfort.

SILENCE DOGOOD

(1714-1724)

"Mather. What a force. . . ."

—valery larbaud, quoted in William CarlosWilliams, In the American Grain (1925)

The diary of Cotton Mather is a treasure-trove to the abnormal psychologist. Thething would be inconceivable if the record were not in print. What a crooked anddiseased mind lay back of those eyes that were forever spying out occasions tomagnify self! He grovels in proud self-abasement. He distorts the most obviousreality. His mind is clogged with the strangest miscellany of truth and marvel. Helabors to acquire the possessions of a scholar, but he listens to old wives' tales withgreedy avidity. In all his mental processes the solidest fact falls into fantastic per-spective.

—vernon louis parrington, The Colonial Mind1620-1800(1927)

His character was now definitely formed, his mind at fourteen had reached the limitof its growth: all else afterward was mere expansion in the sense of things observedand memorized, a collected mass of information, but the actual capacity of his mindwas measured finally at adolescence. He was a typical wonder-child.

— KATHERINE ANNE PORTER, "Affectation of

Praehiminincies (a.d. 1663-1675)" (1934)

... a witches' chowder(All my eye and Cotton Mather!)

—robert frost, "Clear and Colder" (1936)

Read (if you can) the writings of the great doctors of seventeenth-century Calvin-ism, the heirs of Calvin and Beza, Buchanan and Knox. Their masters may have beengrim, but there is a certain heroic quality about their grimness, a literary powerabout their writing, an intellectual force in their minds. The successors are alsogrim, but they are grim and mean. Perkins and 'Smectymnuus' in England, Rivetusand Voetius in Holland, Baillie and Rutherford in Scotland, Desmarets and Jurieu inFrance, Francis Turrettini in Switzerland, Cotton Mather in America—what a gallery

of intolerant bigots, narrow-minded martinets, timid conservative defenders of re-pellent dogmas, instant assailants of every new or liberal idea, inquisitors and witch

burners!

—H. R. TREVOR ROPER, The European Witih-Craze. . . and Other Essays ( 1969)

. . . twisted with subtlety, like the dark, learned, well connected Cotton Mather. Thesupreme bookman: Mather wrote 450 books, all printed. It seems a slander that hecould have done so much harm when all his nights and days were spent writing andlooking up brilliant quotations.

Mather, the Salem witch-hanger, was a professional man of letters employed tomoralize and subdue. His truer self was a power-crazed mind bent on destroyingdarkness with darkness, applying his cruel, high minded obsessed intellect to theextermination of witch and neurotic. His soft bookish hands are indelibly stainedwith blood—a black image to set against our white busts of Washington and Lincoin. Perhaps in his cross-examinations of the harmless and foolish, Cotton Matheroddly exposed a deep, symbolic, incongruous intelligence that nearly made himimmortal.

—robert lowell, "New England—and Further"(1977)

Lydia Lee George

At the time of Cotton Mather's birth, his family home on Cotton's Hilloverlooked an islanded peninsula on the edge of a wilderness, inhabitedby about three thousand Puritans. But now, some fifty years later, Bostonhad about twelve thousand diverse inhabitants, and its handsome houses,public amusements, and tempting shops made it in many minds a city.

To be sure, Boston remained in ways a vulnerable place—occasionallyrattled by earthquakes (one tremor shifted wall stones at Cambridge in1705), swept by epidemic diseases, imperiled by fire. In October 1711, adrunken oakum picker accidentally ignited rubbish in the backyard of anold South End tenement, touching off the most destructive fire in thehistory of the colonies. Unextinguished for seven hours and visible twen-ty leagues at sea, the conflagration consumed whole streets of houses—including the treasured First Church and the Town House—and lay thecentral district of Boston in ashes. A growing and heterogeneous popu-lace met such disasters with thoughts less of invasion, however, than ofexpansion. Members of the First Church erected a new and much finermeetinghouse—in brick, seventy-two feet long, its three stories sur-mounted by a bell tower that dominated the center of Boston. A newTown House went up, enclosing the courts and the government meetingrooms; also made of brick and more imposing than the old Town House,it quickly became Boston's showplace.

Indeed a half century after Cotton Mather's birth, Boston everywheremanifested physical growth and urbanization. Of the town's three thou-sand houses, about a third were now brick or stone, often distinguishedby fine masonry, in part to resist fire, a hazard also reduced by a firedepartment of twenty men and six engines. Streets had been widened,

279

extended, and given official names, and until it proved too expensivewere effectively cleaned by carts and horses hauling off dirt and refuse attown expense. By 1720 the town had the finest highway system In the

colonies, superior to that of most English cities, and a sewer system thatprovided the best drainage of any town in America or England.

Despite the restraining effects of war, too, Boston had become themain entrepot in the colonies for European goods. Through it, NewHampshire lumber, Connecticut grain, and New York furs passed to Ellrope, England, and the West Indies, to be exchanged for wines, salt, andother foreign commodities. Boston also led all other towns in shipbuild-ing. Ship masts in the harbor, said one observer in 1719, "make a kind ofWood of Trees like that which we see upon the River of Thames." In 1716a lighthouse was completed at the entrance in the harbor to facilitatenavigation. A new fortification, Fort William, was built in the harbor,mounted with about a hundred pieces of ordnance. The crowded shore-line, dense with wharves, gained a spectacular addition in 1714, togetherwith the rebuilding of the South End, by the completion of the extraordi-nary Long Wharf. Built the width of King Street, the wharf extended thismain street of Boston into the bay for nearly a third of a mile, providing apier at which even very large ships could unload without the help oflighters. Debarked at the Long Wharf, a visitor could proceed directly upKing Street about eight hundred feet to the new Town House, at the heartof Boston.

To walk that gently arching path was to have an alluring, Fifth Avenueview of the town's vigorous commercial life. A stroller might begin byinspecting the cornucopia of goods sold from warehouses built on theLong Wharf itself—rigging and casks of nails, cider and wine, women'smuffs and necklaces, gunpowder and indigo, "choice Pictures, fit for anyGentleman's Dining Room or Stair-case"—then proceed up King Street, abusy commercial thoroughfare, past the shops of the London jewelerJames Boyer, or of Andrew Faneuil offering silks and French salt, or Phil-ip Hedman vending fine black cloth and "Newfashion Looking-Glasses"stopping perhaps at Selby's or Hall's Coffee House along the way, ordetouring to the signs of the Bunch of Grapes, the Baker's Arms, or the"Black Boy a Grinding," until arriving at the central Town House, sur-rounded by a thriving merchant exchange and the Exchange Tavern,there to browse at still other retail shops selling cloth or books or printsor toys.

Social life kept pace with commercial. In their houses, furniture, ta-bles, and dress, it was said, Bostonians lived as splendidly and showily as

the most considerable tradespeople in London. Between 1700 and 1711sixteen new booksellers opened; by 1720 the town had five busy printingpresses and three newspapers. New elementary schools had been estab-lished, and under President Leverett once tottering Harvard had revived.The fifteen or twenty undergraduates of fifty years ago had multiplied by1719 to one hundred and twenty; by the next year many of them werehoused in Massachusetts Hall, a brick building a hundred feet long andforty wide. Around town at various times, one might take lessons in danc-ing, treble violin, and spinet from George Brownell; see "Moving Pic-tures" featuring animated mills and ships; attend a horse race run inCambridge for a £20 purse; or on the Bowling Green watch a man namedJohn Coleson baiting a bear.

Urban pleasures also brought urban problems. With its several bawdyhouses, rampant public drunkenness, and increasing numbers of poor,Boston experienced much petty crime, and with that an uncustomarylocking of doors and a growing constabulary. In 1711 an act was passedfor suppressing robberies and assaults, punishing muggers by branding inthe forehead and six months' imprisonment, with death for a second con-viction. Civic violence was aggravated by Boston's ever larger number ofslaves, who were sold all over town, including near the churches. Scarce ahouse in Boston except the very poor, it was reported, lacked black ser-vants, and every issue of the News-Letter carried ads for "A Negro ManAged about 16 years, to be Sold," "A Negro Child to be given for theRearing," "A Negro Girl aged about Eight years, to be Sold." The slavepopulation was not only large but also resentful, prone to theft, rape,murder, and arson. In the summer of 1723, after a few blacks had beenpublicly whipped for setting fires, it was rumored that blacks planned toburn down Boston itself.

Here a John Eliot in his apostolic leather girdle could only haveseemed, for better or worse, preposterous, while, as one English visitorwrote in 1719, "A Gentleman from London would almost think himself athome in Boston." This Boston of wharves laden with muffs and prints, ofpilastered brick houses—and of exhibitions of bearbaiting—made a fitsetting for Cotton Mather's marriage to Lydia Lee George.

In some ways, Lydia seemed to Mather such a woman as he had notdared marry when, a dozen years earlier, he resigned young Kate Mac-carty. Among many appealing elements of her past and personality, shewas the daughter of the Rev. Samuel Lee, no longer a well-known figure,

but one of the most intelligent and forceful men in the history of earlyNew England: "hardly ever a more Universally Learned Person,*' Mather

remarked, "trod the American Strand." Educated at Oxford and appointed by Cromwell to the ministry of an Independent church near London.he emigrated in 1686 to New England, settling as a minister in Bristol.Rhode Island, where his inheritance from his very wealthy father enabledhim to erect a fine house.

Although Lee returned to England after the Glorious Revolution of1689, his few years' stay in New England impressed. From America hesent home naturalistic accounts of the Indians, of rattlesnakes, and ofAmerican diseases and epidemics. Several of his sermons were publishedin Boston and rank among the very best American Puritan sermons bytheir originality, verbal artistry, and deep acquaintance with natural sci-ence. The sale of his library in Boston in 1693 occasioned the first printedsale catalogue of books in New England: about one thousand titles insixteen double-columned pages, including "Newtons Astronomy." ToLydia and his three other daughters he left a rich estate of £1300 each,plus his many manuscripts on chemistry, medicine, and other subjects.Inevitably Lee's interests and accomplishments brought him in touchwith the Mathers. His daughter Anne was a member of their church, andin one letter he speaks of Increase as his "highly honoured friend" andmentions sending two books to "your good son." Cotton took extensivenotes on nine sermons preached by Lee, and wrote a Preface to Lee'sGreat Day of Judgment (1692). He also extracted much material fromLee's published and manuscript writings for "Biblia Americana," withadmiring acknowledgments of their authorship.

This heritage of intellectual distinction and family wealth already rec-ommended Lydia to Mather. But her previous marriage added the extraattraction of civic prominence and probably even greater wealth. Her de-ceased husband, the merchant John George, had been a leader in thegrowth of Boston. A town selectman in 1701 and 1713, George was placedon a committee of thirty-one chosen in 1708 to formulate a scheme forthe better government of Boston; five years later he and some associatesproposed to the General Court the erection of the lighthouse at the en-trance to the harbor. He was also one of the original proprietors of theLong Wharf, perhaps the greatest civic project undertaken in colonialBoston. Earlier he had owned a warehouse on the Boston dock, where hesold among other wares gunpowder, grindstones, and anchors, in partner-ship with a man named Nathan Howell, who was also his son-in-law andco- or part-owner with him of at least three sloops. With the building of

the Long Wharf, George moved his warehouse there, dispensing maritimesupplies from the great wharf itself. His sizable business dealings in-volved him in sizable litigation: the court cases involving him occupynearly a page and a half in the index to the Judicial Court files.

Well-to-do and socially visible, the Georges were liberal in their reli-gion. John George was one of the original subscribers toward building aChurch of England chapel in Boston in 1689, and later one of the originalundertakers of Colman's Brattle church, to which he and his wife, andtheir son-in-law Nathan Howell, belonged. Colman's close advisory rela-tion with Lydia is revealing of her worldliness. Not long after the found-ing of the church, as noted earlier, Lydia asked his advice about hermanner of dress, confessing she spent too much thought on it and in-dulged the "vanity of Vying with others." Colman however reassured herthat her dress was suitable to her plentiful estate, high birth, and promi-nent station: "You have been educated in the wearing rich apparel; Mr.George chooses you should continue it, it is not offensive nor grievous tosober Christians." This education cannot have been slowed by George'sdeath in November, 1714, at the age of forty-nine. Making Lydia soleexecutrix of his will, he left her a great estate that included their pew inthe Brattle church, a black servant and an Indian woman, and two-thirdsthe value of his household goods, of his part of the Long Wharf, of hiswarehouse, and of the stocks and profits of his partnership with NathanHowell.

Mather waited scarcely a month after George's death before visitingthis rich and distinguished widow, accompanied by his children. As Lyd-ia's pastor, Benjamin Colman told Increase Mather that some peopleplaced "inconvenient constructions" on the visit, presumably because ofthe recency of George's death. Cotton, who had grown if not warm towardColman at least affably correct, explained that he had intended writing toLydia instead, and was aware at the very time of the visit that "I didimprudently." His misgivings arose not only from the timing, but also, ashe told Colman, from his "unrecommendable circumstances." For onething, his financial situation was the reverse of Lydia's. During his quarrelwith Dudley over the allegedly illicit trade with the French, he had beencompelled to rebuke one of the traders, John Phillips, the brother of hisdeceased wife Abigail. In doing so he enraged his father-in-law, who, itwas hinted to him, had cut him and his children from his will.

Even more than he felt unpresentable, Mather felt weary. His years ofpublic quarreling and of isolation in Boston, the harrowing deaths in hisfamily only a year ago, had left him worthy to be called, he said, "Medio-

morto, that is, Half-dead." He told Colman that although people keptsuggesting that he marry, and although he was sometimes foolishly

tempted, he had grown used to a mortified life and at last always came tohis senses:

It is, I confess, too natural for us foolish old men, when we have a whimsyfrom every quarter buzzed into our ears, to think a little, what there maybe in it. I have, no doubt, foolishly enough been ready to fall into thisweakness. But as yet my old age has not got so far but that I presentlyrecollect, I presently am sensible of the delusion, presently bring all torights, as a dying man ought to do.

Despite the sensible tone, Mather's assurances to Colman that he was tooimpoverished and worn out to consider marriage seem to have been inpart motivated by a different concern: that Colman would resent his suitas an effort to lure Lydia from his ministry, conceivably from his affec-tions. For Mather added in a postscript that he had told Lydia in personand in writing that Colman's "conversation would be so profitable and socomfortable there would never be the least need of any other." And hehoped, he said, "I need not ask you to continue in affording as much of itas is possible to one so very worthy of it." This curious hope sounds likejealousy expressed in Matherese. However that may be, Mather assuredColman that he had resolved to visit Lydia no more, affording neighborsno reason to suspect him "of any designs not proper for me."

But actually Mather was smitten by Lydia George, and felt not "Medio-morto" but rejuvenated. For a while he continued his suit eagerly butfrom a distance. In February or March 1715, he sought help from Mrs.Gurdon Saltonstall, the wife of the governor of Connecticut. Buoyant, hetold her he had "struck for a very valuable fish" but must dangle anunknown number of months, like the whaler who knows to "let the fishrun for a considerable and convenient while." While he sat it out heasked Mrs. Saltonstall to write in his favor to Lydia, promising that thebest people in the country approved her entertaining his suit.

In the same confidently ebullient mood Mather sent Lydia herself along letter of courtship. Mixing affection, formality, and banter, it wasnicely composed to disclose the depth of his feeling without making herfeel rushed. He addressed her as "Madam," as in recognition of her socialrank and accomplishments she seems generally to have been called. Re-spectful also of her intelligence, clearly an important ingredient in herappeal to him, he began by offering, earnestly but good-humoredly, a sortof syllogism from whose premises her "good skill at making inferences"

might draw the correct conclusions about him. If, he said, he were aperson who spent his life doing good to people of all sorts, who loved hisneighbors, and who prayed for those who abused him, then it could be"reasonably inferred" that someone who might come in the nearest possi-ble relation to him would be "loved by him as much as can be wished byher." Admiring Lydia's "wisdom," he said, and feeling honored to besometime admitted to her tea table, he wished to take no step of whichshe would disapprove, nor press for any public appearance she mightjudge unseasonable. But in the privacy of his letter he wished her toknow that his regard for her qualities, and his desire to devote himself toher, were enormous:

... he begs your leave that it may not be thought too soon for him to tellyou, that your bright accomplishments, your shining piety, your politeeducation, your superiour capacity, and the most refined sense, and in-comparable sweetness of temper, together with a constellation of all theperfections that he can desire to see related unto him, have made a vastimpression upon him.

Ready to strike now, he also made it plain that he considered Lydia arecord catch:

If ever he should be so inexpressibly happy as to enjoy you, he could notbut receive you as a wondrous gift of God unto him; a token that theunworthiest of men had yet obtained favor of the Lord. Such an idea hehas conceived of you, that everything you shall be or say or do, will forev-er please him; and the pleasing of you will be his continual study andrapture.

In his desire to marry Lydia, he added, he had the general approbation ofthe public, especially the "more praying people," and he concluded byasking permission to say to her personally the same things he had writtento her.

Lydia did grant Mather at least one interview alone with her, aroundMarch 21, 1715—in order, she said, that he might fully know her mind.This she did not bother to disclose in syllogisms. Regarding his suit, shesaid she desired to "hear no more of it," and that he would "speak andthink no more of it." During their several hours of conversation she toldhim nothing else he wanted to hear, either. She suggested that otheravailable persons would be more "agreeable" than herself, in whom peo-ple's prayers for him were more likely to be answered. Had he mentionednothing of marriage, his visits, as a minister, would have been a consola-tion and satisfaction. But she forbid him to write her any more letters, and

insisted on his making it known that, as to their rumored courtship,"there is nothing in it."

While hearing out this flat rejection, Mather tried to be, he said, ascalm, and as pertinent, and as obliging, as my dull Wits" allowed. Heproposed that instead of saying "there is nothing in it," he would tellpeople that his suit was a matter which "Madam is not at present disposedto hear of." Lydia made the obvious but discouraging reply: people wouldsay, "why does she entertain him? if she have no purpose hereafter toallow of his Intentions?" No, she was firm on it, she wanted him to dis-continue. He said at last that, as a testimony of his esteem for her, hewould entirely sacrifice his satisfaction to hers. She answered, "Say, andHold."

Rejection always unstabilized Mather, but Lydia's made him writhe.He blamed himself for having blunderingly antagonized her: "I havehitherto done just nothing that is Right. And it is a killing thing to me, tothink, that I have been led into Steps, that have been so very offensive,and have occasion'd so much Trouble, to a person for whom I must al-ways have so great a veneration." A relative of Lydia's suggested that hetry to see her one more time, but he feared reviving the gossip which hadhelped alienate Lydia from him. The prospect of receiving further"wounds from an Hand, I so much admire" also worried him: "My tenderSpirit and Health will suffer so much, and I shall be so unhinged for myEmployments." And would persistence help? Lydia had made known un-ambiguously, bluntly, dismally, what she wanted: "that I would come nomore." Brooding on her charge to him—"Say, and Hold"—he reaffirmedhis decision to respect her wishes, and to stay away, "tho, the Earth couldnot afford me a greater pleasure, than her most agreeable Conversation."

But only for a while. For by this time Mather was deeply, romanticallyin love with Lydia. Although his first two wives, Abigail Phillips and Eliza-beth Clark, make phantom figures in his diaries, little mentioned untiltheir deaths, it is clear that in marrying them he sought irreproachablypious women whom he might bring to Christ and who would honor theministry. But Lydia appealed to his restrained or disguised sensuality,worldliness, and ambition. His diaries speak little of wishing to aid hersalvation and much of her endearments and station, little of his prayersbut much of his fondness. Unable now to stay away, he decided to inter-pret Lydia's prohibitions against his visits as temporary, and reached outto her through her relative Thomas Craighead, an Irish minister and phy-sician recently arrived in New England. He asked Craighead to assureLydia that he would honor his resolutions to "keep out of sight" until

Colman directed him to appear, although formed merely "to gratify her;whom I can undergo anything to oblige, even while I have never yetreceived one favorable word or Look from her." Delay he would, but hecould not desist. He also asked Craighead to tell Lydia that despite herprotests, "I can by no means lay aside those vast Respects but must renewmy Endeavors one Day, to make her yet more sensible of them."

In the spring Mather managed to penetrate Lydia's fear of gossip and,perhaps, her reservations about him. His courtship may have beenspurred by the remarriage in May of his seventy-six-year-old father—"Themarvellous old man," he noted two years earlier, "continues to do nota-ble things"—who married Ann Lake Cotton, the fifty-two-year-old widowof his nephew. By what means Cotton Mather forwarded his own suit isunknown; the surviving evidence consists of several undated drafts ofletters and notes, apparently written in April and May, indicating bothprogress and delight. One scrap reads: "I was never got so far in it, as Inow with unspeakable Joy find myself. And now, my Lovely Creature, Doyou go study my Lesson; and get beyond me." The draft of another letter,playfully addressed to "my Mabel," again hints at Lydia's attachment toColman, and Mather's view of him as a rival for her attention; it reassuresher that "The only Damage you are Like to suffer by me, is, that I am Liketo take you from the ministry of so true a Chrysostom" and promises torepair the damage by procuring "your Enjoyment of as much of him, as Ican help you to." Although the scraps also contain routine admonitionsthat Lydia not set her love for him above love for God, they generally readless like communications from the minister of the North Church than likebillets-doux: "My—(Inexpressible!) I am afraid you been't well, becausemy head has ached pretty much this afternoon. The pain of my heart willbe much greater than that of my head if it be really so"—signed, "onewho loves you inexpressibly."

On June 24, Lydia Lee George and Cotton Mather put their signaturesto a prenuptial contract. Many colonies permitted such agreements, bywhich women might preserve their property rights after marriage; In-crease Mather and his new wife had legally bound themselves to have nosay in each other's estates. The contract between the wealthy Lydia andthe penurious Cotton, however, protected Lydia alone. Her desire forsuch an agreement can be variously interpreted: fear of being exploitedas a rich widow; distrust of Mather's financial sense; the desire to be incontrol. Whatever its impetus, the contract stipulated that because Lydiawas "vested in her own right with some Considerable Estate," it was notunreasonable that she retain power to manage it "according to her own

mind and Will." Mather agreed to give her sole and complete management of the property she owned and its income, to:

Impower and employ as she shall think fit All the Lands Tenements money goods Chatells or other Estate whatsoever which of right is belongingappertaining or payable unto her, and to take Receive and dispose ol herown use all the Issues profits benefits and Incomes thence to be made. . . .

More specifically, Lydia's control over her estate was understood to exist"without any Let hindrance or denial of the sd Cotton Mather." Matherbound himself to the agreement under a huge penalty of two thousandpounds.

Ten days later, on July 5, Mather and Lydia were married, by IncreaseMather. Cotton spent the following night in private devotions, making"New Espousals to HIM," thanking God for affording him such a consort.On the Sabbath he preached at the Brattle church—once the site of hissorest anger, now of his greatest joy—"which I am robbing of an invalu-able treasure and beauty." He chose a text from I Sam., concerning "thedark Hours of a sorrowful Spirit" who poured out petitions to God in hisdarkness and was answered.

It seemed that way. "Perhaps the married State," Mather wrote amonth after the wedding, "never Exhibited an Example of a Greater Har-mony, than what is between me, and the admirable Companion, whichHeaven has bestowed upon me." His pleasure with Lydia ended the longperiod of cheerless mortification and angry gloom brought on by hisquarrels with Governor Dudley, his fears of an Anglican Harvard, satiricverses on his "Diploma," the losses of his children and of Elizabeth, asix-year rut of endless misconstructions transformed into Goods Devised,endless celebrations of the "Heavenly Skill of Sacrificing." Now reapinginstead, his life renewed, he filled his letters and diaries for the nexteighteen months with superlative praises for the "best of women in theAmerican World," the "greatest of all my Temporal Blessings," the "Col-lection of a Thousand Lovelinesses!"

No portrait of Lydia has come down, but Mather found her, among herother attractions, beautiful. Doting on her charming physical presence,he again and again was forced to remind himself that her "Beauty lies inher having so much of His Image upon her," to caution himself that "inthe midst of the Admirations wherewith I Look upon her, I must presentlythink, She is nothing but what God makes her to be." Argue himself as hewould, delight in Lydia's creatureliness tinged even their mutual devo-tions with carnality. When they often prayed together in his study with

tears and moans, he found himself inspired: "The Company of my Excel-lent Consort with me, had its Influence, to make the Services of the Daygo on with the more Soaring Devotions. I took her with me into myLibraryr; where we together poured out our Souls, and our prayers, andour Tears before the Lord; and also blessed Him for one another."

Whatever subtle sensuality lay in such soaring devotions together,Mather of course took seriously the challenge of refining Lydia's religiouslife. He wished, he said, to help her toward "those Attainments in theroyal Priesthood, wherein the Life of my own Spirit lies." To this end heresolved to convey to her the main thoughts in his reading of the PietistJohn Arndt, and to encourage her visits to the poor in the neighborhood.His success is uncertain, for no record exists of her being admitted to theNorth Church, and she evidently missed Colman's ministry; an unad-dressed letter by Mather, quite certainly to Colman, remarks that Lydia"Laments it as the principal Calamity of our End of the Town, that shesees you so seldom." Just the same, Mather found to his delight that herrefinements of education, birth, and station were matched by superiorspiritual capacities: "oh! how happy am I," he wrote, "in the Conversionof so fine a Soul, and one so capable of rising and soaring to the higherFlights of Piety!" Lydia could do nothing wrong.

Mather's removal to a handsome new house sharpened his feeling ofunaccustomed pleasure and good fortune. The house had been rented forhim by his congregation before his marriage, late in January 1715; heprobably proposed their doing so, perhaps to make his prospects seemmore appealing to Lydia. Although the congregation rented the houseonly "until some further provision be made for him," he apparently livedthere the rest of his life, the church supplying his rent and repairs. Confu-sions in the surviving records make it difficult to locate the house certain-ly, but it seems to have stood on Ship Street in the North End, closebeside the wharves and harbor.

Mather now lived in what seems to have been an unusually fine wood-en building, much more ample and comfortable than his first two homes,befitting Lydia's rank. Three and perhaps four stories high, it containedboth a little and great parlor, a great chamber, and several garrets andcellars, with adjoining yards, gardens, and pastureland. The size may beestimated from Mather's having convened a church council in his "spa-cious Hall," and gathered a local "Society of Pious Children" in his "ca-pacious Library, which is three Stories above my Study." In the garden hestrolled and meditated, enjoying the springtime arrival of the "glories ofNature." He walked too among the vessels wharved just below the house,

talking to the seafaring people and giving them books of piety Whetherto manage this large house Lydia brought with her the servants willed herby her deceased husband is unknown; Mather took along his servantOnesimus, but Onesimus began to prove "wicked, and grows useless,Froward, Immorigerous [rebellious]." Around 1716 Mather allowed himto purchase his release, by putting up money toward buying a black youthto serve in his stead—probably the "little Boy" Mather acquired in No-vember 1716, whom he named Obadiah. Onesimus continued to helparound the house, however, and in addition to Obadiah and very likelyother servants, domestic chores were shared for a while by a SpanishIndian girl.

Altogether, in his new habitation Mather felt as happy as he believedthe world could make him, and he often exclaimed cheerfully over thewelcome, surprising reversal of his fortunes: "A most wonderful Prosperi-ty! A valuable Consort! A Comfortable Dwelling! A kind Neighbourhood!. . . Blessings without Number."

To Mather's ^reat content and gratification, Lydia quickly formed anaffectionate relationship with his six surviving children. He found themwilling to obey her directions and follow her example, taking "unspeak-able Delight, in the Incomparable Mother, which God had bestow'dupon them." Once when Lydia left on a trip, Mather described for her in aletter the lamentations "among all your Children, when that word Mothernot come home, was heard among us .... We are not sensible that thesun shines into any Room in the House, nor that our Chocolate has anySugar in it." (As a chirpy token of his own lovelorn condition "while thebest Creature I ever saw is out of my sight," he began growing a beard.)His daughter Abigail may not have moved with him into the new house,for a month after her father's marriage she herself married an attorneynamed Daniel Willard. (A year later the couple presented Mather his firstgrandchild, a girl.) Lydia also had a daughter, Katharin, who had beenmarried to John George's partner Nathan Howell. After his death shemarried the young merchant Samuel Sewall, the judge's nephew; the cou-ple may have lived a while with the Mathers.

Samuel, about eight and a half years old at the time of Mather's remar-riage, showed a dismaying appetite for diversion. Mather often ponderedwhat to do to raise his mind "above the debasing Meannesses of Play,"and among other things composed and had him turn into Latin somesentences about the right uses of play. To nourish the boy's conversion he

also considered having him keep sermon notebooks, as he had done, andoffered Sammy his library for holding religious exercises with a "Societyof sober and pious Lads." Like his father too, Sammy retained in his per-sonality something sportive, but by the age of twelve or thirteen hadbegun exhibiting his father's learning, literary tastes, and piety as well.Able by then to converse with Mather in Latin, he kept a commonplacebook of "Quotidiana," the entries indicating a bent at once scientific,literary, and filiopietistic—material from Grew's Cosmologia Sacra(1701) and from Bayle on comets, but also excerpts from Boileau onstyle, verse quotations from Dryden and Pope, and illustrations from"Biblia Americana." By the summer of 1719 the "very promising littleSpark," as Mather delightedly thought him, was ready for entrance toHarvard.

Sammy's admission forced Mather to palliate his bitter relation to JohnLeverett, still the college president. He wrote to Leverett in July 1719,recommending Sammy's qualities and asking Leverett's care for him aspresident, tutor, and surrogate father. Sammy, he said, was of a "capacitygood enough ... is of a temper singularly sweet and sociable, is of un-spotted morals, not without a tincture and a tendency of the more vitalpiety, has the manly prudence and reserve in which his years are some-what anticipated." With that he left Sammy to Leverett's "wise, and kind,and paternal tuition"—as he brought himself to describe the man he stillconsidered unworthy of the presidency, and privately detested. With hishabitually elaborate paternal care, he also wrote out for Sammy an essay-length set of "Directions for a SON going to the College," advising himto read Scripture daily, peruse books of piety (including Magnalia ChristiAmericana, especially for the "lives of the excellent persons in it"), andfix his mind on the fact that the chief end of his life was to serve God. ForSammy's success in his studies, Mather advised above all that he shun"profane and vicious persons, as you would the pestilence."

One dark intrusion on Mather's new happiness came from his daugh-ter Katharine. Not only had he always owned a special fondness fordaughters: "The Tenderness of one for the dearest Lamb in the World,"he wrote, "could not be represented in a more lively Expression of it thanthis; It was unto him as a Daughter" But he had also given special careto politely educating and cultivating this "Lamb inexpressibly dear tohim," so that Katy could make waxworks, play musical instruments andsing, compose pious verses, and read Latin and Hebrew fluently. A re-markable example of youthful piety also, and very much a child of CottonMather, without being crabbed or morose she delighted in religious re-

tirements, experienced conversion, and wrote on one occasion, "I take anunspeakable pleasure in all manner of Beneficence, it l can sec Opportu-nities to Do Good, I need no Arguments to move me to it." Seemingly asweet and brave girl she apparently got along well with her new stepmother, whom she would not call "mother-in-law' because Lydia actedtoward her like a real mother.

But about a year and a half after Mather's marriage, Katharine becamethe tenth of his fifteen children to die. Like her siblings she had beeninfected during the 1713 measles epidemic; she survived, but to a residueof the infection was attributed her falling ill in April 1716, the beginningof an eight-month decline that ended with her death in December, ofwhat was described as consumption. As Mather again set before himselfthe sacrifice he must be prepared to make, he traced her deterioration inhis diary, punctuating the otherwise blissful account of his new marriagewith cries of "Ah! My dying Daughter! My dear dying Daughter!" As Katylingered, wasted by consumption and given up by the physicians, he triedto treat her by a root grown in Lebanon, Connecticut, and sent him by hisfriend John Winthrop; known as Culvers Root, it was to be dried, pulver-ized, and mixed with honey into hazelnut-sized pills. But by NovemberKatharine could not attend family prayers, and Mather prayed with herdaily in her room. In December she expressed doubts about her accept-ability to Christ; he told her that her trial of faith was from Satan, whoknew she was to go where he could not, and that "she should see herselfcalled into a Marvellous Light." He spent much time near the end sittingwith her, trying "to strengthen her in her Agonies." She died on a Sab-bath at three in the morning and was mourned, despite the snow andcold, at a large funeral. That she might outlive her death by doing goodafter it, Mather published Victorina (1717), a sermon on the pleasures oftrue piety, containing an account of her life.

Katharine's death did not diminish Mather's satisfaction in his mar-riage. He was pleased, too, by signs of maturity in his often errant son,Increase, Jr. Alone of Mather's children, sixteen-year-old Creasy was notat home for his father's wedding, being then in England. Mather hadagreed to pay the boy's passage aboard a ship commanded by the son ofthe merchant John Frizzell, there to travel as a passenger but to performand learn the duties of a sailor. Although resigned to Creasy's havingchosen a life of action rather than of study, he seems to have had reserva-tions about Creasy's entering the maritime trades, but thought it harmfulto disregard the boy's actual abilities: "I have been perhaps too willing toindulge and follow the genius of a child in the choice of a business for

him," he confided to Sir William Ashurst, "as knowing that if that be notvery much consulted, a child will never prove considerable." As he some-times did in other circumstances, he wrote out a letter to Frizzell, forCreasy to send and sign as if by himself. "Tis too well known," he hadCreasy explain, "that my inclination is more for business than for learn-ing. And being inclined unto the business of the sea, my friends have aprospect of my arriving sooner to some figure on that element than on thelong wharf or the dock." In the letter he had Creasy tell Frizzell thathaving perfected himself in the theory of navigation, he must take to seato learn the practice. Though a novice, he hoped he would not have to"enter at the cook-room-door." Yet he promised to obey orders and applyhimself to every shipboard duty of which his superiors judged him capa-ble. He also requested a fortnight's leave, upon arriving in London, tovisit his uncle Samuel in Witney.

The visit turned into a stay of several months. Samuel, about ten yearsyounger than Cotton, was the minister of a Congregational church inWitney, near Oxford. He invited Creasy to remain with him in the beliefthat Increase Mather—so long and so often planning or foreseeing a re-turn to England—was at last actually about to return, to deliver an addressfrom the Massachusetts ministers to the new king. (The North Churchvoted unanimously against Increase's mission, however: "I am now liketo die in New England," Increase lamented, "whereas two months ago Iwas like to die in England.") Samuel found Creasy troublesome. The boyarrived in Witney with debts he had somehow incurred, only ten shillingsin his pocket, and but one shirt, "so bare in every respect," Samuel said,"that I was perfectly ashamed." Samuel had credit extended to Creasy at alocal store so he could buy clothing, and wrote to Cotton asking him tosend a remittance for his son, to be managed by someone else. "I per-ceive," he told his brother, "he is infected with the disease which is theblemish of the Family viz. to spend inconsiderately and take no thoughtabout providing against future unavoidable occasions. If I can I will curehim."

But curing Creasy was not simple. His mother—Mather's first wife,Abigail—had died when he was only three, and his father's remarriagerapidly produced several other children by a stepmother. Something inCreasy had stayed restless and turbulent. Samuel found that when he tookthe boy on a visit to tempting London, he had to "keep a pretty strict eyeover him"; he decided to keep him at Witney, lest he return to his father"with a worse Character than he had when he came." Mather wrote toCreasy sometime in the fall to reinforce his brother's admonitions, in-

strutting him to heed Samuel's lessons and urging him to make "all theVices of Dishonesty, Debauchery, and False-speaking . . . abominable to

you."

Mather's disappointment in Creasy's erratic behavior was tempered,however, by recognition and respectful love of his spiritedness and lackof malice. Thus he was wracked to learn in April that Creasy had beenstricken with rheumatism and had lost the use of his limbs: "Oh! TheAnguish with which I am to cry unto God, that He would yet be graciousto this poor Child, and make him a new Creature, and an useful Man, andreturn him to me! Oh! the Resignation to which I am called on this Occa-sion!"

For once, Mather was spared very protracted anguish about his chil-dren. The letter from Samuel informing him of Creasy's illness was appar-ently long delayed, for only a month after he received it, Creasy himselfreturned from abroad. He returned not only, it seems, hale, but to Math-er's relief also greatly changed, "much polished, much improved, betterthan ever disposed. ... I am astonished at the Favors of the prayer-hearing Lord. O my Father, my Father, how good a thing it is to trust inthy fatherly Care!" To Mather's further delight, Creasy stepped immedi-ately on his return into a "lucriferous, agreeable, and honorable" busi-ness. Its exact nature is unknown, but Mather speaks of Creasy's beingfixed in "the Business of the Store-house," with an expectation of beingtaken into a partnership.

By the time Mather courted Lydia George, his violent exchange ofdenunciatory letters and pamphlets with Joseph Dudley lay some sevenyears behind, and his relation to the governor had regained something ofits initial tone of barbed courtesy based on recognition of mutual useful-ness. Many different considerations probably drew Mather back into Dud-ley's orbit. For one, Dudley had proved his staying power. Although SirHenry Ashurst had continued in London his crusade to have Dudley re-moved, he found the governor a person "of such insinuation . . . that onlySatan himself hath greater," and he accomplished nothing. Mather seemsto have resigned himself to cooperating with Dudley to salvage whatvestige of political influence remained to him. Although his relation toJohn Leverett's Harvard was also a "very Imperfect Sort of Thing," heserved with Dudley in 1712 as part of a commission to manage a largebequest to the college. Mather cannot have found such cooperationagreeable, but it was practical. The bequest had become a matter of legal

contention in England, and without the authority of Dudley and theMathers to administer it might conceivably have been lost. Comparedwith Dudley's stormy first half-dozen years as governor, too, the later half-dozen were quiet; the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 for a while ended Eng-land's warfare against France, and brought the English North Americancolonies an extended period of peace for the first time since 1688.

Dudley also gave Mather less reason to fear his support for the Churchof England, which demonstrated itself to be nominal. Although the gov-ernor signed a petition in 1713 from the Boston Anglican chapel, endors-ing a scheme to establish bishops in America, the minister of the chapelcomplained that Dudley in fact belonged to a Congregational church inRoxbury, where he lived, and had not taken communion at the chapel foryears. Mather was conscious, in addition, of Dudley's advancing age: laidup with gout in 1715, the governor had to be carried to the Town Housein a sedan chair, and borne in it up most of the stairs. Finally, amidst thenew generation that had grown up since the abrogation of the old charter,Dudley cut a less anomalous and threatening figure. Time had made itless inconceivable that the government should rest in one who saw NewEngland not as Christian Israel but as crown territory.

Nothing so nearly reconciled Mather to Dudley, however, as the deathof Queen Anne in August 1714, which brought new attempts to removethe governor. The event triggered the same reaction that had first wonDudley the governorship, namely fears that if he were not appointedsomeone worse might be. About two months after the queen's death,Mather wrote to William Ashurst in London, saying that "of late Months"he had lived in "Good Correspondence" with Dudley, and shared thegeneral opinion that Massachusetts would be happier in him than insome who might be "Strangers to us; or not of our Nation." The reason-ing was well founded, for early in 1715 the new king, George I, appointedas governor Col. Elizeus Burgess, a man who had been tried for the mur-ders of two men, one of whom he killed in a duel, the other, an actor, at atavern. Yet Mather's reasoning also proved unnecessary, for Burgess re-signed his office and never crossed the Atlantic. For a while, Lt. Gov.William Tailer acted as governor, until the arrival, in October 1716, ofSamuel Shute.

Mather was glad for the political changes initiated by the new king,coinciding with the happy first years of his marriage. He rated George'saccession a "great thing," replacing the High Church climate of Anne'sreign by a monarch "so little in the French interests." The new governorpleased him even more, for Samuel Shute had a distinguished military

record in fighting the French and, more important to Mather, belonged toa prominent family of English Dissenters. His grandfather was the famousPresbyterian minister Joseph Caryl, author of a twelve-volume commen-tary on the Book of Job; his brother, Lord Barrington, led the Dissentinginterest in Parliament. In Mather's mind, Shute augured a government itnot on the model of John Winthrop exactly, then of William Phips, onethat while serving the crown would also hearken to Boston's Congregationalist ministers. After more than fifteen years of political impotence,he saw hope of regaining his place at the governor's table.

Shute no sooner arrived in Boston than Mather decided to "improvemy Acquaintance, which I am like to have with him, for all the goodPurposes imaginable." He preached before the new governor on October11, and not long after sent him a rather obsequious letter complimentinghis "wisdom and goodness," his "generous concern" for the public, andthe "charms of Your Excellency's Speech." While everyone would bezealous to serve Shute, he said, the governor would "never have a morehearty Servant" than himself. Faithful to his promise, he lent Shute all hissupport, sometimes at the cost of personal compromise. Like Dudley,Shute seems to have been wary of offending any large religious group inBoston. Thus although he apparently joined a Congregational church in1717, the following year he headed subscriptions for a new gallery atKing's Chapel, where he attended Sabbath worship. Far from damningShute, Mather praised him for showing no "Partiality for Little Parties inReligion." He also urged that the governor's salary of £1000 be increased.

For his efforts, Mather at first enjoyed with Shute the most cordialrelationship he had had with any governor since Phips. Indeed he be-came virtually Shute's friend, often writing to him flatteringly, advisinghim on public appointments, sending publications, and receiving fromhim "singular Testimonies of Regard." At least once Shute invited him tosend a servant to his cellar to take away a gift of wine, which Matherpromised to do, adding unctuously: "Your Wine is good; but the KindAspect of your Excellency with it, upon him to whom you send it, sub-limes it into Nectar." Inclined to evaluate others in extremes of best andworst, Mather believed that even had the people of Massachusetts re-tained their right to elect their own governor, they would have chosenShute: "under the Best of Governours," he wrote in 1718, "our Peopleenjoy all the Tranquillity which can in this present Evil World be lookedfor."

The change of administrations also brought to prominence a protegeof Mather's, the highly capable, and satirical, Jeremiah Dummer. Born

into the affluent Boston merchant class in 1681, he took a B.A. and M.A. atHarvard, then visited Europe and did graduate work in Holland, where hepublished several works. He returned to New England to preach, butdecided to leave the ministry and also declined a professorship of philol-ogy at Harvard. Instead he went into business and returned to London,where he played cards and watched "the great female beauties" at theHouse of Lords ("I tho't I could have gaz'd at them for ever"). As thegrowing regularization of New England's ties with the mother countrybrought awareness of the need for constant representation at Whitehall,he was appointed agent for Massachusetts, a role he considered "a verygreat honour." Later he was appointed agent for Connecticut and NewHampshire as well. His access in London to such persons as Addison,Steele, and Newton gave him a voice in the appointment of colonial offi-cials, and in delaying measures in Parliament directed against the colo-nies. Resourceful and effective, Dummer could have become, it was laterremarked in New England, prime minister.

Dummer greatly admired Mather and felt "bless'd," he said, to havesuch a "Dear and Worthy Friend." He looked up to Mather as the patternof a "useful conversation" in life, although a lofty one: "I follow haltingafter his footsteps tho' far behind and at a great distance." Mather's com-pany and person not only inspired Dummer but also amused him. Heenjoyed their trips to Salem—Mather, he noted, "thinks wherever hecomes, that he's up to the knees in Pigs"—and shared Mather's quartersthere, later sending from London some verses by Waller to be hung in aframe in their bedchamber. Mather on his side recognized Dummer'sdiplomatic skill and influence, dedicated to him an important but nowlost work called "Religio Generosi," and used him as a go-between withLondon publishers. He also found Dummer exasperating, a potentialCreasy who however overcame his worst propensities. He attacked inprint, and urged Dummer to retract, his unorthodox views on the Sab-bath. Orthodox or not, Dummer may have been the one person whocould criticize Mather's writing without enraging him. Their correspon-dence is enlivened by much tongue-in-cheek byplay about the number ofMather's publications, which Dummer several times told him frankly wasdamaging to him. This Mather took with half-amused indulgence lacedwith subtle hurt, in one instance sending Dummer a recent work with theapology that he did not ordinarily "nauseate you, with any of my pub-lished Composures." Somewhat acid, but lively and admiring, Dummerwas the sort of man Mather could not resist.

Dummer's value to Mather, and to New England, became particularly

evident in the founding of Yale College. Mathers own part in creatingYale has often been interpreted as an expression of his scorn tor JohnLeverett, and toward Harvard under his presidency. But nothing in Mather's work for Yale suggests a motive beyond desiring to sec a Congrega-tional college in Connecticut, where he had such good friends as Gover-nor Saltonstall and John Winthrop, and had long been concerned for thechristianizing of the Mohegan Indians. It is true that Mather s name wasmentioned for the rectorship of the new college, although it so appearsonly in private correspondence, and he may not have known of it. It isalso true that at the time of his involvement with Yale, he complains inhis diaries of the "Venom and Malice which the disaffected Rulers of ourCollege, treat me withal!" But for all his disgruntlement he never cuthimself off from Harvard affairs entirely (in 1714 he served once again asan Overseer), and it seems unlikely that he would have risked antagoniz-ing Leverett at a time when Sammy was just entering Harvard under histutelage. Besides, Colman and others also worked to promote Yale with-out feeling disenchanted about Harvard, and in their recruitment the twoschools were too distant from each other to be competitors.

Yale College began taking shape in 1716, when the trustees of a smallcollegiate school at Saybrook voted to move to New Haven. The costs ofraising and furnishing new buildings were great, but a benefactor wasavailable in the person of Elihu Yale, a London diamond merchant whohad been born in Boston of New Haven stock. As a young man Yale hademigrated to Madras, India, where he made a fortune. Becoming presi-dent of the East India Company, he had lived protected by several hun-dred guards, carried on an ostrich-fan-shaded palanquin. Yale intendedbestowing a charity on some college at Oxford; but Jeremiah Dummerpointed out to the Saybrook Collegiate School that Yale was, after all, aConnecticut man by birth, and his bounty would be more suitably be-stowed at home. Dummer himself solicited a gift of books for the schoolfrom Yale, part of a library of perhaps a thousand volumes which hebegged or otherwise obtained from people in London: Steele sent com-plete sets of the Tatler and Spectator, Newton took down from his ownshelves copies of his Opticks and his Principia.

Mather wrote to Yale soliciting his aid for the new school. As a mem-ber of the Church of England, Yale had doubts about supporting an"Academy of Dissenters," as he called it, the school being clearly in-tended to serve Congregational interests. Tactfully Mather appealed tohim as a New Englander, and depicted the religious life of New Englandas based on "Catholic and generous principles of Christianity, and . . .

beyond the Narrow Spirit of a party." He stressed to Yale that the Godwho gives power to get wealth makes the wealthy no more than trusteesof it, and mentioned a particular method of Doing Good:

The Colony of Connecticut, having for some years had a College at Say-brook, without a collegiate way of living for it, have lately begun to erect alarge Edifice for it in the Town of New-Haven. The charge of that expen-sive Building is not yet all paid; Nor are there yet any Funds, of Revenues,for Salaries to the Professors and Instructors of the Society.

Then he proposed to Yale that for his beneficence he might have a monu-ment that would be "much better than an Egyptian pyramid" -. the schoolforming at New Haven, he suggested, "might wear the Name of, yale-college." About five months later there arrived in Boston Yale's gift ofthree bales of goods to be sold for the school's benefit, plus a large box ofbooks and a full-length portrait of the king by Kneller—the largest giftthe school had ever received from a private person, worth about £800.

Mather was greatly pleased that he had been able to help the newcollege, but somewhat uneasy over having in effect christened it. Heapologized to Governor Saltonstall for his "inexcusable presumption" inmaking himself "so far the God-father of the Beloved Infant, as to pro-pose a Name for it." He did so, he explained, because he had been toldthat Yale might exceed his previous generosity if the school were namedafter him, and he asked Saltonstall to comply with his proposal. At thecommencement of September 10, 1718, the trustees met in their newbuilding in New Haven and formally gave the college Yale's name. Theyalso wrote to Mather, effusively thanking him for his "noble and charita-ble regard to our infant Nursery"—regard, we shall see, that would turnto shocked regret.

A simultaneous and far-reaching development in Mather's religiouslife shared in the harmony of his new marriage and his contentment withthe new government. For twenty-five years, since the attempted unionbetween English Presbyterians and Congregationalists, he had enter-tained the hope of unifying the Protestant churches. The failure of theUnited Brethren did not end his ecumenical enthusiasm, which now re-vived as an articulated vision of a pan-Christian union that would disre-gard variations of polity and worship and rest on a few distilled Gospelprinciples of vital piety. His efforts place him in the mainstream of reli-gious revivalism reaching through the Great Awakening of the eighteenth

century to such modern expressions of ecumenism as the World Councilof Churches.

Around 1715 Mather exuberantly began detailing and publicizingwhat he called a "RELIGION OF THE EVERLASTING MAXIMS." Its firstexpression was The Stone Cut out of the Mountain (Latin title, Lapis eMonte Excisus; 1716), a "little Thing," he called it, "which is of greaterExpectation with me, than anything that I have ever yet been concernedin." How much he expected of the work appears in his trying to have ittranslated into several languages, and in his hope of sending copies of itto eminent members of Parliament and to Hindus in Malabar, as well as toEngland, Scotland, Holland, Switzerland, France, Germany, and India.Although the diminutive work is but an octavo pamphlet of thirteenpages in English, with thirteen pages of facing Latin translation, itsbrevity was an achievement, the result, Mather said, "of more than a Littlecontemplation. St. Barnaby's Day would not be long enough to recite allthe views which the author had in the composing of it." As he also ob-served, Luther's essays demonstrated that, if distributed far and at theright time, "Little Engines of Piety" might accomplish wonders.

In Lapis, Mather reduced religion to fourteen unshakable maxims onwhich Christians throughout the world of whatever sect, except Catho-lics, would agree. He made it unnecessary to list them here, for over thenext year or so, as he continued vigorously to preach and promote this"Universal Religion," he reduced the number of maxims to three. Thesehe summarized in Malachi (1717): belief in the Trinity, utter reliance onChrist for salvation, and love of neighbor out of respect for Christ. "Realand Vital PIETY"—the basis of Christian union—thus consists simply of"Fearing of God, and in Prizing of His CHRIST, and in Doing of Goodunto Men." Mather conspicuously omitted matters of church organizationor discipline, which he devalued to "Lower and Lesser points of Reli-gion," subject to great diversity. No longer writing as someone committedto the Congregational ideal of church government, that is, he trumpeted areligion that could have existed had the Cambridge Platform never beendrafted:

Sirs; They are not External Rites and Forms, that will distinguish, ThePeople of GOD. The Kingdom of GOD comes not with the Observation ofsuch things as those. No; Tis a People found with various Rites, and invarious Forms. Hear this, All ye People; Give Ear, all ye Inhabitants of theWorld. The PEOPLE of GOD, are All that cordially embrace our Everlast-ing MAXIMS of PIETY, and Live unto GOD upon them, in whatever Subdi-vision of Christianity, they are to be met withal.

This was a religion not for the Christian Israel of the Fathers but, asMather said, for "millions of people in the world."

Mather's Universal Religion brought him equally far from the pneu-matological realm of energumens and ringleted angels. He consideredhis Maxims of Piety a "Reasonable Religion," suitable for rationalistic,cosmopolitan persons who valued such social by-products of vital piety asfair dealing, the suppression of ill will, and helping others. QuotingFrancke, he emphasized that these benevolent effects are superior to su-pernatural exhilaration and prophetic ability:

To have such a Discerning of our selves and our Interests, as these MAX-IMS would help us to, is a more Glorious Thing, than to have a sight sorefin'd, as to Discern Spirits. To have our Evil Tempers mended and curedby these MAXIMS, is a more Glorious Thing than to cast out Evil Spirits.To behave our selves Wisely as these MAXIMS teach us, from a Foresight ofour Eternal Judgment, is a more Glorious Thing than to Foresee and Fore-tel Futurities.

In all but renouncing a thirst for the invisible world, Mather also cameclose to reducing the supernatural experience of grace itself to rationalunderstanding. Noting that the many discourses concerning tests forgrace sometimes leave the candidate for conversion in "as much obscur-ity and perplexity as before," he proposed assent to his three everlastingmaxims as a "Short and a Sure" test for grace. Assent to them means that"Thou art most certainly passed from Death to Life. And the Experience ofsuch Things as these, is preferable to all the Joys of Impulse, whereofsome Enjoy the Raptures; tho' those also may be Better than Life." Mini-mizing the two essential features of Congregationalism, its view of thechurch and its mystical piety, Mather's Universal Religion aimed rather atquenching the fires of religious controversy, creating harmony in society,allowing scope to reason, and doing good to others out of fear of God andlove to Christ.

Mather's ecumenism increasingly convinced him, also, of the need toindulge religious differences. His many calls for toleration make himseem more a figure of the Enlightenment than of the seventeenth-century, closer to Thomas Jefferson than to John Cotton: "PERSECU-TION, That Prince of Devils which fills the World with Desolations. . . .'Tis an Hellish Monster which all Mankind ought with an United Cry tochase from off the Face of the Earth!" Mather went far himself in practic-ing this toleration. In a published letter to Francis De la Pillonniere, aprofessed Arminian who had converted to Protestantism from Catholi-

cism, he admitted that as a Calvinist he must differ with him, yet proposed that in being animated by the same "Maxims of Piety," Arminiansand Calvinists could together help create a second, reformed Reformation," a "NEW PEOPLE of the good Men in the scrcral Parties," In aneven bolder display of the Universal Religion Mather preached in 1718 atthe ordination of Elisha Callender, a Baptist minister. He apologized toCalender's congregation if, as Baptists, they had received unbrotherlytreatment in the past from fellow Bostonians, and he proclaimed: "Libertyof Conscience is the Native Right of Mankind."

Many different features of his life and time drew Mather, popularlyimagined as the quintessential Puritan bigot, into the vanguard of reli-gious toleration. An ecumenical movement, to recall, had existed withinat least a sector of English Puritanism since the Elizabethan period, andwas particularly marked in Richard Baxter. It intertwined with the ecume-nism of the German Pietists, who praised Mather's Lapis for emphasizing"Substantials" rather than "Circumstantials." Although Francke producedthe greatest ecumenical and missionary network since the Reformation(joining Germany, Holland, England, America, France, Italy, Switzerland,Poland, Russia, South Africa, India, and the Scandinavian countries), theimmediate German Pietist influence on Mather's own ecumenism waslikely Philipp Jakob Spener, who reduced the whole of Christianity sim-ply to a confession of sin and a profession of faith in Christ.

Mather's career in Boston under Andros, Dudley, and now Shute en-forced his ecumenical notions by making it impossible for him to con-ceive New England any longer as the redeemer of the English nation. Toput the case a different way, his ecumenism celebrated the world createdby the new charter. Where he once railed at the innovative Brattle churchas a satanic invasion, he now proclaimed the growing cosmopolitanism ofBoston as a model for a second Reformation. In fact the variety of worshipin the town was increasing in proportion to the increase in the number ofchurches; as Mather noted in 1717, the place had become something of asectarian melting pot, containing ten places of worship, of which sevenwere "Churches of the UNITED BRETHREN" divided only by differencesin circumstantials. The feuding in Boston which had accompanied thistransformation also fed Mather's ecumenism for, consciously at least, hecame to abominate public quarrels. His ecumenism was a large-scale ex-pression of his deep-rooted and complex desire for reconciliations of allkinds.

At various times, it needs special emphasis, Mather's religious liberal-ism expanded or contracted, for his disposition to embrace other sects

changed with changing political, social, and personal events. Around1715 it was also quickened by again-aroused millennial expectations,such as he had felt before in the 1690s. Eschatology and ecumenism wereintimately related, for the millennium would not arrive before theachievement of Christian unity. The Universal Religion of Lapis and Mai-achi was both Mather's response to signs of evolving unity which heperceived and his attempt to foster them. Virtually all commentators onprophecy insisted that the exact date of the Second Coming could not beknown; but 1716, the year in which Mather published Lapis, had becomesomething of an exception. It was the year chosen by the most learnedscholar of prophecy in the English church, Joseph Mede, as the time forChrist's return. Newton's associate, William Whiston, had also made verydetailed computations and had announced in his Essay on the Revelationof Saint John (1706) that 1716 would see the fall of Catholicism—that is,of Antichrist. Mather respected these predictions, and had declared asearly as Bonifacins (1710) that "M.DCC.XVI is a-coming." Again hewatched for such other harbingers of the millennium as the fall of theTurkish empire, the conversion of the Jews, and great earthquakes orsimilar remarkable providences. He interpreted the death in 1715 of the"French Moloch" Louis XIV—"the Greatest Adversary of . . . Christianity,that ever was in the World!"—as a certain preliminary to the Second Com-ing, a shaking of the ground toward that "Stupendous Earthquake" thatwould "issue in wondrous Glory to the God of Heaven" Taking the adop-tion of the Universal Religion as itself the "greatest Sign that some of uscan see of the Kingdom of God approaching," he closed his Lapis bymaking it known that "The Great Trumpet is now to be Blown."

One other ambitious religious undertaking by Mather at nearly thistime deserves mention here, although its consequences emerged onlyafter the early years of his marriage. His lifelong enthusiasm for psalmsinging earned him a place in the history of American music. He valuedpsalmody because, like most Puritans, he considered it a form of prayer,but his special delight in it perhaps stemmed from his early speech prob-lems, as many stutterers can sing without difficulty. He collected manyillustrations on ancient Hebrew music into "Biblia Americana," urgedsinging as a daily act of devotion, and regularly sang with his family athousehold prayers, and by himself, especially during his many fasts, vig-ils, and illnesses. He also composed "Vast Numbers" of hymns, a few ofwhich he transcribed in his diary or included in other works. Apparentlyhe wrote and published an entire book of hymns, Songs of the Redeemed(1697), although no copy is known to have survived.

In 1718 Mather published an ingenious 464 page psalter, with commentary, entitled Psalterium Americanum. His innovative, fourfold aim

he explained in a seven-page set of proposals for printing the elaboratework by subscription. He considered no current version of Psalms satisfactory because all of them sacrificed exactness to "the Clink of theRhime" To preserve the meaning he decided to follow some "famouspieces of Poetry, which this Refining Age has been treated withal/' and toproduce a translation in what he called, with his habitual insensitivity topoetry, blank verse. He apparently understood by blank verse simply unrimed verse, for the translations are in unrimed iambic tetrameter andtrimeter. In striving for a highly literal version, Mather had two furtherpurposes in mind. Following a long line of Reformed thought he viewedPsalms as "the most Prophetical Book in the World," a forecast in OldTestament types of the religion of the New Testament. To render theHebrew exactly was to delineate darkly the coming of Christ, and heincluded in Psalterium a very large number of glosses (mostly taken from"Biblia Americana"), interpreting the Old Testament texts as propheciesof the Redeemer. By translating literally he also hoped to undermine arecent and increasingly popular fashion in psalmody, the deliberate de-partures from Hebrew being made by his correspondent and "very dearFriend" Isaac Watts, whose Psalms of David Imitated in the Language ofthe New Testament (1719) later dominated colonial Protestantism. As thetitle suggests, Watts attempted not to translate the Psalms but to rewrite orimitate them in Christian terms, ending the divorce in Protestant worshipbetween preaching and singing, by which churchgoers heard aboutChrist but sang about David. Although Mather delighted in Watts's "ex-cellent composures" and reprinted many of them, he frowned on havinga psalter "without any Air of the Old Testament in it," its typologicalreferences to Christ being shed along with the ilfewish Dress." By contrastwith Watts's christianized psalms, Mather's Psalterium transforms the OldTestament songs into a millennial saga of the coming of Christ and theconversion of the Jews, providing " The Gospel according to DAVID."

Mather had a musical reform in mind as well. By making his transla-tions in "blank verse" he proposed simplifying Congregational psalmodyby reducing the number of metrical patterns to be sung. (Probably tomake a larger repertoire of tunes possible if desired, however, he madeuse of a clever typographical device, employed earlier by Richard Baxter,by which singers might elect to pronounce or omit extra bracketed sylla-bles.) Some such reform was needed for, like many other Protestant lead-ers in England and America, Mather believed that over the last few gener-

LYDIA LEE GEORGE 305

ations psalmody had steadily deteriorated. In 1717 he found somemembers of his own family "so indifferent at Singing" that he often hadto omit it from evening family worship. By 1720 many other New Englandministers were complaining about the carelessness in singing and thelack of a musical standard.

To improve public singing, several churches attempted to teach theircongregants to read music, sparking the angriest and longest-arguedaesthetic debate in early America. In the "more polite city of Boston,"Mather wrote later, note reading met with general acceptance; but "in thecountry, where they have more of the rustic, some numbers of older andangry people bore zealous testimonies against these wicked innovations,and this bringing in of popery." Some members of a congregation nearBoston were so "set upon their old howling" that they declared for theChurch of England. Contention grew so intense as to require the callingof several church councils to compose differences. What made the issuedivisive was in part that the skill of reading notes could be used in sing-ing not only the sacred but also the profane; one handwritten singingbook from Westboro, Massachusetts, in 1721 contains not only devotionaltunes but also "Love Triumphant" and "The Beaux Delight." The intro-duction of musical literacy and skill also very often pitted young againstold, gifted against bumbling, town against country. Those who defendedregular singing, as note reading was called, made their case in about adozen sermons, instructional works, and pamphlets published in NewEngland from 1720 to 1727, arguing on scriptural and other grounds fortrained performance.

Often sympathetic to the young and to new ideas, especially in thisperiod, Mather actively allied himself with the proponents of regularsinging. He preached in March 1721 to a society of persons learning tosing, before a full house, where the singing, Samuel Sewall found, was"extraordinarily Excellent, such as has hardly been heard before in Bos-ton." He also contributed to the debate a pamphlet entitled The Accom-plished Singer (1721), in essence a lengthened reworking of the Intro-duction to his Psalterium. Here he deplored the degeneration ofpsalmody into "Odd Noise" and urged the young especially to learn toread music. Christians, he said, should "Serve our GOD with our Best,and Regular Singing must needs be Better than the confused Noise of aWilderness."

In arguing for the development of musical literacy in New England,Mather sided with the future health of the arts in America. In 1721 hisnephew and disciple, Thomas Walter, published in Boston The Grounds

306 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COTTON MATHER

and Rules of Musick Explained, one of the first two American books ofmusic instruction. Within the next half century the fateful controversyover regular singing led to the creation in New England of singingschools, then of singing masters to conduct them, and at last of nativetunesmiths to compose music for them. Ultimately one recipient of Mather's multifarious energies was the Boston singing master and tunesmithWilliam Billings, whose 1770 collection, The New-England Psalm Singer,was the first volume of American-composed music.

Tria Carcinomata

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Mather's newfound happiness was brief. By the spring of 1717, a yearafter Creasy's return from England, he was once again sputtering over theboy's unruliness, devoting whole days of supplication to ask an end ofCreasy's "Course of Impiety." He had little belief in the proverbial minis-ter's son, indeed considered it a "Popish and Cursed LIE, that the Chil-dren of Ministers do usually miscarry more than Others." Yet he was be-ginning to admit the possibility that Creasy would in fact miscarry, thatfrom his miraculous rescue in England he would drown again past saving.

"Suppose," Mather asked himself, "that a Child of my singular Loveand Hope, should fall into Sin, and be after wondrous Means of Recovery,yet so abandoned of God, and so ensnared in Vice, that there may [be]terrible Cause to fear lest he prove a Cast-away." How in such circum-stances, Mather wondered, should he act? He must be sure not to confusehis grief with his shame. He must separate his pain over Creasy's aban-donment to sin, from his vexation at "missing the Reputation and Satisfac-tion which a Child of more honourable Behaviour might bring unto me."Preparing himself, distressed, he took the boy into his library, prayedwith him, pleaded with him. By making Creasy "see and feel my Agoniesfor him," he did induce him to express repentance. "Methinks," he wrotecautiously, "I hear the glorious One saying to me, Concerning thy Son Ihave heard theel "

But by November Mather heard, or felt, something else as well, a"strong Impression on my Mind, that some very trying and grievous Thingis near unto me." Such impressions had often misled him, of course, butnot this one. Two days later a "thing" came to pass, not just trying andgrievous, but shocking. Mather was informed or, rather, "astonished with

307

an Information," that a prostitute had named Creasy as the man who gother pregnant. A "Harlot big with a Bastard," as lie put it, "accuses mypoor Son Creasy, and lays her Belly to him." People whose judgment hetrusted believed Creasy innocent, but Mather felt no less bewildered andhumiliated: "Oh! Dreadful Case! Oh, Sorrow beyond any that I have metwithal! what shall I do now for the foolish Youth! what for my afflictedand abased Family?"

However shaken, Mather acted with uncustomary aplomb. Illegitimacy was a common problem in early New England, and hardly a sessionof the Boston court failed to hear a bastardy case, usually assigning theonus and responsibility to the woman. Only two months after the chargeagainst Creasy, for instance, a Boston court ordered a "Putative Father" topay three shillings a week for as long as the court declared, while itimposed a fine of £3 and ten stripes at the public whipping post on hislover, a woman wonderfully named "Elinor Redhead." Mather seems tohave managed to prevent Creasy's case from coming to court by keepingCreasy "confined and retired with me, until the Storm shall be blownover." With Creasy sequestered in his house, Mather plied him with di-rections for spending his time, assigned him sermons to read, prayed withhim and Lydia in the study, meanwhile warning himself to stay calm un-der his provocations.

But despite Mather's concern and continuous prayers for him, Creasy,"My poor Son," was intractable. Only two weeks after the disclosure, theboy "made a worse Exhibition of himself unto me . . . than I ever yet metwithal." Mather's failure to produce some lasting reform in Creasy madehim feel more helpless than ever: "O my God, what shall I do? what shallI do?" Although his affection for Creasy was great, so now was his disap-pointment. Probably at around this time, in late 1717, he started writing acontinuation of "Paterna," the exemplary autobiography he had begunwriting for Creasy at the time of his birth. He addressed this second part,however, to Sammy. He also revised the first part to make it seem that ittoo had been written not for Creasy but for his more promising youngerson, who might more usefully see in his father's life a model of constantdevotion and unceasing heaven-mindedness.

Powerless to reclaim Creasy, Mather now also looked on helplessly ashis blissful marriage turned riotous. Nothing of the turmoil appears in hisdiary for 1718, which scarcely mentions Lydia. Instead, Mather recordedthe domestic events of 1718 in a separate notebook, where he explainedwhy he omitted them from his diaries. There he wrote: "The Consort, inwhom I flattered myself with the View and Hopes of an uncommon En-

joyment, has dismally confirmed it unto me, that our Idols must prove ourSorrows."

Whatever her other attractions, Lydia hardly matched Mather's pictureof an ideal Puritan wife. This person, as he depicted her in his popularconduct book, Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion (Cambridge, 1692),regarded her husband as a divinely appointed guide, whom she alwaysaddressed with respect, whose moments of rage she always strove to mol-lify with meekness, whose will she so obligingly obeyed that "If herAbraham give order, Make Ready quickly three Measures of Meal or thelike, 'tis as quickly done." The wellborn, wealthy, and worldly Lydia,however, was no one to measure Mather's meal quickly. She was insteadhighly independent-minded, as well as vain, jealous, manipulative, andperhaps psychopathic. Her father, the brilliant Rev. Samuel Lee, had ex-pected his daughters to marry into the best and most honorable families.But one of them conducted a very public quarrel with her husband; an-other married a Rhode Islander "supposed to be rich but deceived her";another clandestinely married Lee's own servant, Harry. And Lydia mar-ried Cotton Mather. And Cotton Mather had heard Lee observe in one ofhis sermons that the Emperor Augustus called his three daughters TriaCarcinomata—three cancers.

Early in their marriage, Lydia had sometime exposed her "proud Pas-sions" to Mather, but he had overcome them, he said, with mildness andpatience. In 1718, however, she exploded in "prodigious Paroxysms."Scarcely able to deal with her, he found it "a Year of such Distresses withme, as I have never seen in my Life before." It was not merely that Lydiareviled him. It was that her revilings came and went. When her paroxysmsexhausted themselves she once more treated him lovingly, indeed with a"Fondness, that it may be, few Wives in the World have arriv'd unto." Yetthe paroxysms always returned, and as they returned they grew more fre-quent. At last she so outrageously insulted him that Mather believed shemight be mad, "which may be somewhat Hereditary," or even possessed.Whether genetic or diabolical in origin, Lydia's outbursts revived one ofhis worst fears. Throughout 1718 he lived in "a continual Anguish ofExpectation, that my poor Wife, by exposing her Madness, would bring aRuin on my Ministry."

Among the objects of Lydia's "Venom" were Mather's diaries, whichshe seems to have inspected. Fear of her paroxysms led him to record"not one disrespectful Word of this proud Woman." To allay her suspi-cions about what his diaries contained he prepared a "true Account,given at the Desire of my Consort, under my hand." This weirdly pathetic

document consists of seven pages of extracts from his diaries since thetime of their marriage, all related to Lydia and all demonstrating that hisprivate ruminations about her were approving and affectionate an anthology of diary references to Lydia as his "Lovely Consort," his "DiscreetConsort," his "Excellent, Religious, and Ingenious Consort," his "dear.amiable, valuable Consort." He concluded the extracts with a signedstatement avowing that if his diaries for 1718 mentioned any uncommonDistresses" these were to be understood as referring to some of the children, "and nothing to be misapplied unto her."

Fear of what Lydia might be capable of doing also led Mather to hidehis diaries. But in her "indecent Romaging" Lydia found them, and keptthem. He would, she said, "never see them any more." In the hope ofgetting her to give the diaries back he offered to blot out whatever shedisliked. She refused. Seemingly bent on tormenting him, she offeredinstead the hope that she might return his diaries for the last four or fiveyears "some time or other."

Lydia turned her wrath at Mather against his children as well. Early intheir marriage he had thanked God in his diary for bestowing "an excel-lent Mother" on them; now he went back to this passage and added, inthe margin, "Ahlquam deceptus!" Although pained by the "dreadful Dis-tresses which a furious and froward Stepmother brings upon my Family,"he felt obliged to encourage the "several abused Children" to obey Lydia.He called them into his study and pressed them to regard "the sad Thingsthat are come upon them" as, like all affliction, a loud argument forturning to God. The children's problems were compounded by an eco-nomic crisis in 1719, so severe that Mather saw the possibility7 of a revolu-tion. Lydia apparently refused to help out from her own estate, for thescarcities and soaring prices forced Mather to cut back on householdexpenses, including those of the children. Sammy was perhaps affectedmost, for Mather was unable to continue paying for his college education,raising the possibility that this "son of uncommon Hopes" might have todiscontinue his preparation for the ministry. As if providentially, therearrived at Harvard a bequest from an English Baptist named Thomas Hol-lis, from the interest of which, at the suggestion of Increase Mather, ascholarship was provided for Sammy. Hollis consented, expressing regretthat the grandson of Increase Mather should come under the character ofthe "poor in this World."

Increase himself added to his son's trials when, around the spring of1719, his health took a sudden bad turn. Now eighty-one years old, In-crease had been in uncertain health the past two years anyway, suffering

gout, losses of memory, and stomach trouble. To these were added re-newed nightmares that became so severe he feared his breath might stop.The brethren of the North Church kept a day of prayer for a successor tohim. Feeling "Broken with Age," he filled his diary with crotchety pro-tests of "Time lost by Impertinent visitors," complaints that his sermons"stick in the birth." In June 1719, fearful that when dying he would beunable to speak—as his father, Richard Mather, had been—he drew uphis will. Cotton seems to have spent much time with him despite his owndifficulties, wanting his father to be "wholly out of the Pain; which myAbsence always gives him."

Mather dealt with his accumulating burdens in ways both old andnew. His love for Lydia, or at least the experience of having loved her,lingered and craved some object. In March 1718, he made a virtuallyunique entry in his diary in Greek, presumably so Lydia could not read it.It speaks of his need to mourn bitterly his "former pollutions" and of hisbelief that God does not require him "utterly to lay aside my fondness formy lovely Consort," suggesting that he resorted to masturbation or thatdespite their wrangling he maintained sexual relations with her. Appar-ently, however, his thoughts wandered to other women, for he also wrote,in Greek, "I must abhor the least tho't of regard unto any other Personbut this dearly beloved of my soul." More familiar, his troubles broughtrenewed demands for self-mortification and for governing his tongue,such as he had enforced on himself at the height of his estrangementfrom Governor Dudley. After barely three years of satisfaction and plea-sure, he again saw himself as a Christ-like victim, and found secret plea-sure in thinking of "the Gratification which is done unto Him, in the sadThings which tear me to Pieces before him." Again he mightily inculcat-ed on himself the need to "suppress all Ebullitions of sinful Wrath andRage; all wrathful and raging Expressions, and unadvised Speeches."Again dead to the world, he decided not to have his portrait painted,although he had sat for some drafts of it, and felt tempted to destroy hisdiaries himself and to keep them no more.

Mather's distress also awakened an older form of coping. For the firsttime in twenty-five years, it seems, he began communing with angels. "Iam tried unto the uttermost, in my domestic Circumstances," he wrote atthe end of January 1719, "But my dear SAVIOUR . . . admits me to suchCommunion with Himself as makes me a glorious Compensation." Hisdiaries leave it uncertain whether angels appeared to him as palpably asthey did in 1693; the descriptions consist mostly of rapt exclamations andstatements of the incommunicability of the experiences: "unutterable!

unutterable! unutterable! wonderful! wonderful! Astonishing!" In

March 1718, he devoted a day of fasting and prayer to angels that dazzledhim by its glory: "the Flights, which I thus took among the holy ANGELS.I find my Pen unable to write the Things, and the Terms, to which mySoul mounted up as with the Wings of an Eagle/' He interpreted hisseveral amazing enjoyments during the year as God's requital for hiswoes, "a rich Compensation, for all the Sorrows, which are appointed forme."

On March 9, 1719, Mather began needing richer compensation thanever before. That day a deputy sheriff came to his house and, with Matheraway, read a summons to Lydia. It directed them to appear in court toanswer a claim of £157 made by Mary Mico, the widow of a Boston mer-chant, for supplies she had sold to Lydia's deceased former husband,John George, and his also deceased business partner and son-in-law Na-than Howell.

This ominous summons was the outcome of a seemingly benignevent. In June 1716, one year after his marriage, Mather had agreed toadminister the goods, rights, and credits of the estate of Nathan Howell,who had been married to Lydia's daughter. The exact value of the estate isunknown, but may be gauged from an inventory taken after perhaps£4000 in debts had been cleared. It shows a very large estate worth over£7609, consisting of warehoused goods, buildings, land, and ships, and ofnearly £5000 in uncollected debts. The inventory also shows debts owingfrom the estate in the amount of £4157.

In taking on the administration of this estate, Mather had perforce alsotaken on some of the unsettled affairs of the defunct Howell-George part-nership, and of the deceased John George himself, for whom Howell hadbeen acting as an administrator. And in addition to discharging the com-plex accounts of what had been a large mercantile firm, he to some extenthad also assumed responsibility for looking after Howell's two youngchildren, George and Nathan, who in 1716 were about three and a halfand two years old. Their father, also, had not left the world tidily. Howell,as Mather remembered him, had been a "sorry, sordid, froward and ex-ceedingly wicked Fellow," and a spendthrift as well: "Had he lived, hehad soon brought a Noble to Nine-pence."

Mather undertook this large load out of love for Lydia. He was "con-quered," he explained, "by the Importunity of those unto whom it wasimpossible for him to deny any thing," and he hoped that what money

remained after settling the estate might enable Lydia to do some "specialService for God and His Kingdom." He also felt that the payment of debtsdue a great number of creditors would be a justice pleasing to heaven,and he wished to do a kindness to the widow and the two young orphans,unfortunate sons of a "wretched Father." For all that, he accepted theadministration knowing, as he often freely confessed, that he had no tal-ent for business, and had made keeping out of debt "a great Point ofReligion with me." Having often preached on the dangers of debt, onlysix months before assuming the administration he had cautioned his con-gregation against the risks of suretyship. Quoting Solomon's saying that"He that is Surety for a Stranger shall be sore Broken for if" (Prov.11:15), he had warned that although it is a breach of charity never tostand surety, doing so demands exquisite caution: "Think over and overagain; Am I Safe? Does God call me into any Sponsorial Hazard? Do notthe Circumstances of my Family forbid my coming into them? Shall I notby'nd by Repent most bitterly, and even tear my Hair for the Vexation ofmy coming under these Encumbrances?" In speaking of hair-tearing vex-ations, Mather was more than usually prophetic.

Mather explained later that he had always protested against meddlingin the administration himself, but instead, with the consent and advice ofthe relatives concerned, had turned it over to attorneys. At first he hiredPelatiah Whittemore and Daniel Willard, the husband of his daughterAbigail. Notices were placed in the News-Letter beginning in January1717, calling on those who owed money to the estates of George andHowell to pay their debts through Willard and Whittemore, "that so theTrouble which will otherwise necessarily follow, may be prevented." Thetrouble, however, was not prevented, and what followed was unlikely tomake Mather or his ministry popular.

Forever bent on Doing Good, and having pleaded often from his pul-pit for creditors not to beleaguer debtors, Mather found himself now alarge creditor, again and again hauling debtors into court. His first taste ofbeing a financial shark seems to have come on December 14, 1716, whenon his behalf as administrator of the Howell estate, a writ of attachmentwas issued against a Plymouth mariner named Michael Packanet, whoowed the estate £9 15s. The judicial procedure began with the issuanceof this writ against the defendant, who was summoned to appear later fora hearing of the case at the Court of Common Pleas. Packanet had nogoods to attach so he was put into the Plymouth jail. In January, Mathertook to court Nathaniel Oliver, a merchant, and Timothy Thornton, ashipwright, who owed the estate some £6000. They also were ordered to

jail unless they paid the debt, part of which they managed to return as thecase continued into the spring.

For Mather this was merely an initiation into years of lawsuits. In 1717alone he pressed no fewer than twelve suits on behalf of the estatemostly involving small sums owed by people of even smaller means Pofinstance, on March 3, a writ was issued against Nicholas Davison, a New-bury mariner who owed the Howell estate nearly £7. A sheriff went to hishouse and, unable to find him, attached two chairs and left a summons.The same day a writ went out against a Plymouth yeoman named EliezerDunham, who owed £4 2s Id; the sheriff handed him a summons andattached a trunk. On March 18 a writ was issued for Benjamin James, aMarblehead fisherman who owed £5 18s for shrouds and twine. When thelast two cases were heard at the Court of Common Pleas on April 2,Mather reached some unspecified agreement with Dunham, but the writagainst James was dismissed as not having been served. The court heardthe case against Davison on July 2, and ordered payment to Mather, plusdamages and court costs.

These cases can stand as representative of the many others in which atMather's instigation the sheriff confronted some fisherman or shipwrightor blacksmith, attaching his tables or trunks or chairs for the sums heowed for cordage, cod line, or dock nails. Some cases were more compli-cated. At least two involved residents of Maine, one of whom both owedmoney to John George and had sold land to Nathan Howell and thencommitted acts of trespass upon it. At least one case, for £9 15s 3d, re-sulted in a jury trial, which found against Mather and charged him forcourt costs as administrator of the estate.

Other of Mather's suits did not succeed either, usually, it seems, be-cause the debtors were impoverished mariners unable to pay. And by theend of 1717, although he had acted as administrator for eighteen months,many more debts remained outstanding. Feeling he must "hasten theSettlement of Affairs," he transferred the attorneyship from Whittemoreand Willard to Samuel Sewall, the judge's nephew. Sewrall ran a notice inthe News-Letter calling on debtors to pay, so the estate could satisfy itscreditors. For Nathan Howell had left creditors as wTell, plenty of them. Byabout 1719 Mather's attorneys had with "vast Fatigue, and much projec-tion and contrivance" paid out nearly £4000, much of it in small sums,owed by the estate.

The sheriff who appeared with a summons at Mather's house on March9, 1719, seems to have come with the first suit not by the estate, butagainst it. Mary Mico, the widow of a Boston merchant, charged John

George and Nathan Howell with owing some £157 for canvas, oakum,cable, and other supplies. She sued for the money, naming Lydia as exec-utor of the estate of John George, and Mather as administrator of theestate of Nathan Howell. Unfortunately, because Mather's diaries for 1719and 1720 have not survived, his reaction to receiving the summons isunknown. It may be estimated, however, from the sermon he deliveredtwo days later, on Acts 19:36.: Ye ought to do nothing Rashly.

The manuscript probably contains more crossouts and blots than thatof any other sermon Mather wrote, implying that he composed it in thevery state the sermon condemns. Apoplectically he warned his congrega-tion to beware of every form of rashness, many of which he had commit-ted himself, especially including the undertaking of sureties:

O Citizen of Zion, Engage nothing but wh[at] thou mayst Engage, andwhat thou should[st] perform, nothing but what is within thy Compass, andwill not be against thy Comfort. . . . And there is one sort of Rash Engage-ments, which you must shun above the rest, if you would keep out of SoreEntanglements. You shall be informed what they are; prov XI. 15. He thatis Surety for a Stranger shall [smart] for it. . . .

As if regarding the summons from the perspective of his betrayed passionfor Lydia and his frustrated concern for Creasy, disappointments thatshould have schooled him in distrust, he also condemned rash marriagesand rash hopes for children:

Be sure we admit and Cherish Rash Expectations, when we hope to findthat in Creatures, which they will not afford unto us. . . . Alas, how proneare we to Look for more from Creatures, than they will yield unto us. . . .Tis often so, that we Likewise Expect this and that great Consolation fromsuch or such a particular Creature. We have a Child perhaps whereof wesay, This Same shall comfort us! Anon we find so much Vanity, and somuch Vexation, attending the Creature, that we see, Twas Rashly done tolook for Grapes from Thorns. . . .

Badly rasped by reaching for such grapes himself, Mather concluded thathuman comfort is concerned in not acting from passion.

Aside from venting his angry self-reproach in public, Mather seems tohave drawn up for the court hearing, in July, a document entitled "TheAnswer of the Administrator upon the Estate of Nathan Howel [sic] de-ceased, unto the Citation served upon him." In it he explained that muchhad been paid to creditors from the estate already, including a consider-able part of the debt to Mico. In the process, one of the attorneys (possi-bly Whittemore) was "suspected of some disallowable proceedings,"

both attorneys had been let go, and a new, single attorney chosen. Hepetitioned for a postponement of the hearing until the next court session,"Long before which Time, he hopes, Everything will be done unto thejust Satisfaction, not only of Mrs. Mico but also of the other creditorsWhether he ever presented this document is unknown, but in July thecourt ordered payment to the widow Mico, plus damages and court costsAfter the judgment was rendered, Cotton and Lydia both appeared incourt and entered into recognizance with sureties to appeal their case atthe next Superior Court.

Mather began trying desperately to disentangle himself from the ad-ministration. At the end of the year he wrote to Samuel Sewall, presum-ably believing that as the probate judge who had granted him the admin-istration, Sewall could release him from it. The situation was awkward forSewall, and complicated. On the one hand, Mather was his lifelong closefriend. But Sewall's nephew (confusingly also named Samuel Sewall) hadmarried Lydia's daughter, the former wife of the deceased Nathan Howell,and the couple were now at odds with Mather over the administration.The younger Sewall had at first agreed to act as an attorney in the busi-ness himself, but had then withdrawn; or rather his wife Katharin hadforbidden him to act—harboring, Mather believed, "ill intentions toplague" him, although he had married the couple himself. The youngerSewall, as the stepfather of the two Howell children, was also pressuringMather to hasten settlement of the estate.

Judge Sewall did not reply to Mather for two months, when he apolo-gized for his long delay and sympathized with Mather's wish to "obtainfreedom from this perplexing Administration." He suggested that Matherprepare an inventory of what had been received by and paid from theestate, and of the money owing the attorneys—quickly, Sewall said, "foryour sake, and for the Orphans, and my own." Although the inventory wasprepared it did nothing toward releasing Mather from his administration.Sewall, either because he lacked authority to help Mather, or because ofthe involvement of his nephew, failed to act.

With his passion for respectability, his sense of himself as a model tohis children and the community, his solemn pride in his ministry, forMather to find himself on the wrong side of the law proved fearsomelyunnerving. His liability for huge unpaid debts; the writs, the sheriffs, thecourts and their threats of force; the possible, and freezingly ignomini-ous, shadow of debtors' prison—all aroused in him a near-shattering anxi-ety. On the night of April 13, sometime after nine o'clock, Judge Sewall

received an anonymous letter, purporting to be from a friend of Mather's,with a request to burn the letter after reading.

The author—who may well have been Mather himself, although theletter is not in his hand—drew an alarming picture of Mather's condition.Overwhelmed by the administration of the estate, he was sinking undersuch "heavy and many troubles" that unless help came speedily "we shallquickly lose him." So dispirited he could speak to no one and talk ofnothing, he lived in a state of dread: "every one that knocks at his doorsurprizes him, that his heart dies within him, as he sayes, fearing there isan Arrest to be serv'd on him, or some body to dun him for a Debt."Worse, the younger Sewall has led him to think that he contemplatesprosecuting him for maladministration. The writer implored Sewall not tobe swayed by his nephew or his nephew's wife, but despite their interfer-ence to help rid Mather of the administration. Otherwise, he said, theresult would be "the Death, or . . . some thing worse than that soon com-ing on that distressed tho' worthy Gentleman."

This letter also contains the one surviving clue to Lydia's apparentfailure to relieve Mather by covering the debts herself. Their marriagecontract, of course, forbad him any access to her wealth, under a penaltyof £2000, and she may simply have wished to torment him. Or she mayhave run out of funds herself, although since the contract mentions thatshe had come into a "Considerable Estate" this seems unlikely. Sewall'sanonymous correspondent, however, noted that Mather's "Terrible wife"would "have a great Estate whether there be one or no," suggesting thatLydia did not credit the inventory Mather had prepared, but believed thather deceased former husband had left funds sufficient to satisfy creditors.For whatever reason, Mather was forced to pay off the debts of the estatehimself.

The seriousness of Mather's situation was deepened by the simulta-neous economic crisis in Boston which had forced him to find scholar-ship money for Sammy. People were unable to get work, the value of billsof credit had fallen and, by one account, a "great Part of the Town canhardly get Bread to satisfie Nature." The lack of a medium of exchangeforced many to labor for goods, then faced them with selling off long-held homes at half-value as creditors called in debts and demandedmoney. A vast number of lawsuits resulted, allowing lawyers and othercourt officers, it was claimed, to "grow Rich on the Ruins of their Neigh-bours." The April 1720 court session in one county alone issued morethan a thousand writs.

Mather depicted his superlative share in this general plight in an un-dated "Statement" which he characterized as "One Small Instance of theHardships, which the Dealings of the people in the Country run into.'After describing how he had indiscreetly allowed his name to stand as theadministrator of an estate, he told of his many problems in discharging adebt of £50 owing, with interest, to someone in Hartford. The debt hadbeen paid, but the man's attorney now demanded an additional £20 tocover the debt and interest "at the Extravagant price whereto silver isrisen at this day." Mather asked the Hartford creditor to forgo this sur-charge, considering the financial difficulty which the depreciation ofbills of credit had brought upon everyone. He explained that he hadprofited nothing from handling the estate, but on the contrary had put up"between Three and Four hundred" pounds of his own to answer credi-tors, leaving him an "Empty Pocket" and nothing else in the world "but aFew Books, and a little Houshold stuff and plate, that I could call myown." Despite Mather's entreaties and the intercession of prominent peo-ple in Hartford, the creditor insisted. Indeed through his lawyer—"counting me too mean a person to receive a line from him"—he threat-ened Mather with either paying the twenty pounds or going to jail.Mather did pay, and from his own funds. Overcoming evil with good herefused to name the person who had thus "extorted from a poor Minis-ter," but instead concluded with his hope "to meet with him in Paradise,who would have laid me in Prison."

Certain that Sewall's nephew and Lydia's daughter, his own stepchild,wished to harm him, Mather was by the fall fixed in believing that hisdeliverance lay only in getting Judge Sewall to release him from the ad-ministration. In October he wrote to Paul Dudley, the son of his formerfoe, Joseph Dudley. "No words can express the anguish," he said, "withwhich this petition comes to you." Sewall, he said, had often promised tofree him from the administration, and he asked Dudley to visit the judgeand be resolute in making him act: "see him do what he must for myrelief, even . . . before you stir out of the room." Whether Dudley went tosee Sewall is unknown, but Mather's demanding request again failed.Sewall refused to act.

Apparently despairing of Sewall's help, Mather in early November pe-titioned a higher authority, the governor's Council. In his defense hedrew up a set of "Reasons why the Administrator on the Estate of NathanHowel [sic] deceased should be Released from the Bonds of Administra-tion Humbly Offered." First, he told the Council, in letting himself be"unhappily drawn into" the business he had acted indiscreetly, harmed

his ministry, and received from those who benefited from his work only"unaccountable Ingratitude." Second, he had shown himself, he admit-ted, to be altogether unqualified: "Were he, Non compos mentis, Thiswould be thought enough to Release him; Now if there has not beenenough either to Declare him so, or to Render him so; yet there isenough to represent him as Incompetent." Third, the administration hav-ing been carried on with entire fidelity, thousands of pounds in debts hadbeen paid, large sums had been collected, and the "Trouble which re-mains, is very little in comparison of that which has been already wadedthrough." Mostly, however, Mather pleaded the misery to which his rashact of compassion had reduced him: "the Sufferings of the present Ad-ministrator are so Insupportable, and he is in such peculiar circum-stances, that he cannot but press for a Release from his Bonds, with anImportunity, which he hopes will move the Compassion of them who candeliver him."

Auspiciously, this time Mather had the support of the younger Sewalland his wife Katharin, who also petitioned the Council to dischargeMather and reimburse him for his expenses. Their motives were not en-tirely selfless, for at the same time Sewall's wife petitioned for an adjust-ment of a personal debt connected with the estate. Nevertheless, theCouncil allowed Mather £200 out of the estate for his trouble and ex-pense in the administration, and agreed to dismiss him—"in case anyproper person will undertake the same."

But no proper person did so. The new year found Mather still incharge of the estate, with large new demands being made against it. Thebeating in his private life apparently lamed his ministry, for when preach-ing on his birthday, February 12, he found that "my locks are cut. I per-formed so pitifully." What impaired his performance may have been areturn of his stutter, for he added, without further explanation, "This lastbout has been the most shocking that I have had this twenty years." Hehad been invited to preach the lecture the same week, "But I can't—Ican't," and he asked another minister to substitute for him. He also wroteabroad in April to the New England Company, "so discouraged by someoccurrences," he said, as to ask again to be dismissed from his work as anIndian commissioner.

Mather needed no more discouragement, but Creasy provided some."My Miserable, miserable, miserable Son Increase!,' he moaned on April4. "The Wretch has brought himself under public Trouble and Infamy bybearing a Part in a Night-Riot, with some detestable Rakes in the Town.Oh! What shall I do?" While struggling to extricate himself from the

administration he fumed anew over Creasy, determined that until his sonshowed signs of repentance he would, this time, "chase him out of mySight; forbid him to see me." He seems to have sent Creasy for a while toIncrease Mather, who also denounced the boy for having acted to "thedishonor of God and of his friends and Relations." With Creasy out ofsight, Mather decided to write him a "tremendous Letter," setting hiscrime before his eyes and, after so much coddling, threatening that untilthe boy genuinely repented he would "never own him or do for him, orlook on him."

As always, Mather's storming left unmoved his fixed love for Creasy.Much in his son's personality mirrored his own more amiable self, and hecherished Creasy's many virtues—"a singular sweetness of temper(which, alas, has been a snare unto him), a ripe wit, a sharp sense, theornaments of a gentlemanly education." While offering prayers at a bap-tism on April 23, he found himself thinking of Creasy and, in tears, heasked God why He called the children of men: "Was it, that they might begiven up to Blindness and Hardness, and Madness? Was it that they mighthave the Distempers of their Souls lie uncured, when one gracious Wordof thine can cure them?" The answer was of course no; he would yetbelieve, yet see God perform wonders for his children. "Ah, poor In-crease," he wrote. "Tho' I spake against him, yet I earnestly rememberhim, and my Bowels are troubled for him."

Seeking some help in reforming Creasy, Mather introduced the boy tothe young minister Thomas Foxcroft. That Creasy himself desired Fox-croft's acquaintance he saw as a hopeful sign that his son might yet learnserious piety, adherence to business, and horror of evil company. Hewrote to Foxcroft hoping he would allow Creasy some improving visits,promising that "when you see him, you will certainly love him."

Weighed down by Lydia's paroxysms, Creasy's escapades, and hiscreditors' demands, Mather simultaneously began paying for his friendlysupport of Governor Shute. The new administration created discord, andall of the governor's enemies became his.

Opposition to Shute solidified over the economic crisis in Massachu-setts, although it first gathered around a related issue, the founding of apublic bank. As Mather explained the issue, which originated in Dudley'sadministration, for several years much of the business of Massachusettshad been conducted in government bills of credit. As the province byraising taxes managed to pay off its large debt, incurred during long years

of war, these bills were being retired to the public treasury and destroyed,depleting the circulating medium. Businessmen complained that thenumber of bills in circulation was "no more than a sprat in a whale'sbelly" and far too few for the country's commerce. To provide a mediumof trade, a group of men proposed forming a private bank which wouldissue its own bills. This plan met with violent opposition, however, and asan alternative the Dudley government proposed issuing and lending outmore bills of credit like the earlier ones. Mather had supported the pri-vate bank scheme, perhaps because its sponsors were political antago-nists of Dudley. He did so without conviction, however, acknowledgingboth his own naivete in finance and the sincerity of those who claimedthat the government's scheme would better serve the public interest.

The change of administrations put Mather on the wrong side of thebank issue. Those who favored the private bank, once political antago-nists of Dudley, now became political antagonists of Shute, who opposedthe issuance of more paper bills altogether. Never more than lukewarm inhis support for the private bank, Mather came around to Shute's positionand was accused of having changed his views, although he insisted that"cujus contrarium. I have never done so, to any one man in the world."He might have escaped serious public attack except that the private bankbecame the nexus of wider political arguments, and those who favored italigned themselves against Shute over many other issues as well. Preemi-nent in this opposition, and both supporters of the private bank, wereOliver Noyes, a wealthy real estate speculator and founder of the Brattlechurch; and Elisha Cooke, Jr., son of the Elisha Cooke who for years hadunforgivingly denounced Increase Mather's acceptance of the new char-ter. The elder Cooke had died in 1715, leaving the son probably thewealthiest man in the colony. The younger Cooke also inherited his fa-ther's political following, and assembled something like a political ma-chine in Boston, which elected to the House representatives hostile toShute. By 1719 they found much to be hostile about. For in the economiccrisis that developed, not only did money disappear from circulation, butalso the value of bills of credit depreciated, trade in general declined,and inflation became severe. The crisis, we have seen, worsened Mather'sown difficulties in discharging the debts of the estate, and also producedmany pamphlets, much talk of reviving the private bank scheme, andbitter divisions in towns, churches, and even families.

Amid this plethora of other trials, Mather exerted himself to supportShute, on whom much of the blame was laid. On March 12, 1719, onlythree days after a sheriff first appeared at his door summoning him to

court, he preached a sermon before the General Assembly, recommending Shute's policies. As the grand expedient for relieving the economiccrisis he urged not the issuance of more paper bills, which Shute op-posed, but public frugality—an argument that had long been used againstthe private bank, and which in effect blamed the people, not the government, for the crisis. He also urged total loyalty to Shute as expressive ofloyalty to the crown. For in opposition to Shute he foresaw the possibilityin Boston of ''Raging Waves of the Sea . . . Mutinous, and Seditious, andRebellious Actions." To oppose Shute, he implied, was to reawaken sus-picions in London about the loyalty of New Englanders, and perhaps torisk loss of the present charter. Shute and his allies pressed to have thesermon printed at government expense, although Mather's vision of so-cial convulsion made Samuel Sewall fear that the printing might itselfinvite Parliament to revoke the charter. Shute tried to have the mattervoted on, but met stiff resistance and broke off the debate; the sermonapparently was printed at government expense.

Mather had been warned from London by Jeremiah Dummer thatmoves might be made there to remove Shute. In a further show of sup-port, Mather wrote abroad to Shute's brother, Lord Barrington, praisingthe governor as "generally and passionately beloved." He intended thislong, highly laudatory letter privately, no doubt to enlist Barrington'shelp; but it somehow made its way into an English newspaper in May1719 and was reprinted in Boston, bringing down on him the "fury andoutrage" of Noyes, Cooke, and their party of "venomous malcontents."Aggravatingly, Shute seemed to take no notice of the assault; in factMather was told that people in the government derided him behind hisback—a thing, he said, "I must believe with discretion." Discretion neverhaving been one of his strengths, least of all when he was besieged, hespread a report that Cooke, alleged to be a heavy drinker, had been drunkfor several days. The story was challenged, forcing him to draw up awritten retraction for Cooke to use in absolving himself. But having re-tracted he continued referring to Shute's enemies in his correspondenceas a "party of Tipplers."

Opposition to Shute and contention in Boston came to a head in thespring of 1720. By then many people in financial distress saw Cooke astheir spokesman against the government, while Cooke had become notonly Shute's political adversary but also personally repugnant to him,among other reasons because of a report that in company, and too punch-drunk to stand or walk, he had implicitly called Shute a "Blockhead." InMay, the House chose Cooke for its Speaker. Shute negatived the choice

on the ground that Cooke had ill-treated the king's governor, and direct-ed the House to choose a different speaker. Shute also negatived thechoice of two councillors, Nathaniel Byfield and John Clark, who hadbeen staunch supporters of Cooke. The governor's negative enraged theHouse and begot a heated debate on questions of privilege, and ofwhether a governor had power to overturn a House decision. Shute re-minded the representatives that Governor Dudley had also disallowed aSpeaker, and had been confirmed in his right to do so in London (asShute was later). He advised the members to choose another Speaker,and to reserve their asserted right until the matter could be laid beforethe king. The House refused, in reply to which Shute dissolved the ses-sion.

Apprehensive that such political chaos might endanger the charter,Mather seems to have doubted the wisdom of Shute's negative on Cooke.But he just as strongly considered Shute well disposed to New England, amild man pricked to act intemperately by Cooke's truculence. IndeedShute's behavior bears out the impression of him given later by ThomasHutchinson, that he was a man of integrity but a lover of ease and lackingartfulness, anxious to avoid controversy but without skill in doing so. Todefend Shute, but also in the larger hope of quieting the building uproar,Mather, it seems quite certain, produced an anonymously published pam-phlet entitled News from Robinson Cruso's Island ([1720]). Even grantinghis ingrained ability to continue working amidst defeat and disappoint-ment, his ability to do so now seems remarkable, for the tumult overCooke occurred little more than a month after the anonymous letter toSewall depicting his state of dread as he awaited arrest. In whatever state,he told of Robinson Crusoe coming to Boston, here called the island of"Insania" just when some "rash Men willing to see the Country all inConfusion" insisted on having Cooke, the ideal choice for Speaker hadthe intent been to spite the governor. Crusoe delivers a speech chastisingCooke's supporters for bringing chaos on the country and forcing thegood-tempered Shute to act dictatorially, simply for the pleasure of ill-treating him. He warns that they are again risking the charter, betrayingthe country under "the Hypocritical disguise of contending for your Privi-leges."

Although the House called on Shute to punish the "authors" of thepamphlet for libeling some of its members, suspicions that Mather wasthe single author were apparently rife. In July appeared a rebuttal, Reflec-tions upon Reflections: Or, More News from Robinson Cruso 's Island(1720). Obviously with Mather in mind, the author attributed the earlier

pamphlet to "one, whose Scribendi Cacoethes [itch for scribbling] hasmade him famous on both sides the Atlantick" and whose brain is overcharged with so great a variety of News, that the Country feels themselveson many accounts the worse for him." He dismissed Mather's suggestionthat in choosing Cooke the House had led a "good Spirited" governor toact harshly, insisting that the choice of a Speaker was one of Massachu-setts' valued political rights. Mather's "Learned Jargon,'' he said, wasaimed at frightening New England out of its privileges and rendering"our selves obnoxious to the Curse of succeeding Generations."

Mather, probably hoping to disconnect his name from the Crusoepamphlet, drew up a three-page tract entitled "A Few Remarks ... on theChoice of A Speaker" where he announced:

To prevent such mistakes as people have run away withal, about the Au-thors of the Late Account of Cruso's Island, (and some other things,) itmust be known that the publisher of that and of these Remarks, is nonative of Boston.

This Matherese avowal of course leaves open the possibility that eventhough Mather was not the "publisher" of the pamphlet, he was the au-thor. He did not publish "A Few Remarks," perhaps because it qualifieshis support for Shute, representing more candidly his view that the gover-nor had acted unwisely. This time he disguised himself not as Crusoe but,cleverly, as an anonymous member of the House who is opposed to neg-ativing Cooke and desires to preserve the House's privileges. But thismember distinguishes between the House at large and the "Shortsightedand Hot-headed Party" within it who champion Cooke fanatically, a partywho "being disappointed of a private Bank, and of a Governor, whomthey Expected, have all along maltreated our present Governor, hopingto tire out his gracious patience and goodness with Bad Usages." SinceShute had laid the matter before the king, he urged the representatives towaive the controversy and go on with public affairs, warning that ifCooke's party were allowed to further embroil things, the crown wouldtake notice of the "ungovernable Spirit' in Massachusetts and reconsiderthe charter.

Mather was also accused of persuading Shute to negative Dr. JohnClark, one of the newly elected councillors. The charge discomfortedMather the more because Clark was the brother of his deceased wifeElizabeth and, as a physician, had attended her during her final illness.The Clarks, also, were now caring for Mather's daughter Liza, his deadwife's namesake and their niece. She may have been driven from Mather's

house by Lydia's turn against his children, but in any case she seemed tohim the "lively image" of Elizabeth, a living reminder of a happier pastand of a "never-to-be-forgotten mother." Clark, believing his formerbrother-in-law had advised Shute against him, had publicly expressedaversion toward Mather, so Mather instead wrote to Clark's wife. He swore"as before the Glorious Lord" that he had been in no way "directly orindirectly accessory or instrumental to this negative," but on the contraryhad advised Shute against it. All he had ever done, he said, had been toexpress his unhappiness over the misunderstanding between Shute andClark; those who gave these innocent remarks a defamatory appearancedid so to sow discord. Thanking the Clarks for their goodness to Liza, helamented that his character lay "much at the mercy of lying and loath-some talebearers."

A new session of the House was scheduled for July. Seemingly on thechance that it might stubbornly again choose Cooke for Speaker, Matherprepared, apparently for Shute's use, a memorandum entitled "In case,the Representatives make Choice of E.C. for their Speaker." Here he dis-closed to the governor his real view and suggested that, if pressed by theHouse, Shute should accept Cooke's nomination. He also offered Shute aface-saving but plausible rationale. Shute could claim that although therecalcitrance of the House might well be answered by prorogation, every-one knew that his chief desire "forever is, the prosperity and Tranquillityof the people." Aware of the need to resolve urgent public problems, hewould therefore "suspend those Expressions which he might justly give. . . until His Majesty's pleasure be further known." Mather's coachingwas unnecessary, for in its new session the House, after three votes inwhich Cooke led the field, chose as Speaker a representative from Salem.They also reduced Shute's salary, however, and told him plainly that"whoever was of advice to his excellency" had not consulted the king'sinterest or the public good.

At this point Mather might reasonably have ended his covert campaignagainst Shute's foes. Instead, some unnamed scurrilities against himgoaded him to act with, he confessed, "perhaps too quick and Keen"resentment. Writing to several correspondents around August, he mockedCooke and his allies as "idiots and fuddlecaps and men that love andmake a lie" and called them "American (worse than African) mon-sters." His letter or letters somehow got to Cooke, who with two or threerepresentatives, Mather said, made him "sufficiently sensible of the Re-sentments which they have upon it; and they want not for will or skill, todo it further unto the last Extremity." He seems upon Shute's request to

have apologized for the epithets, but he continued to tell others that theywere deserved. In December someone in Cooke's party published stillanother pamphlet, New News from Robinson Cruso's Island (1720), at-tacking Mather for slandering people privately, for caricaturing New Englanders as "worse than the Savage Monsters of Africa" and for stirring upold fears about the charter. The writer advised him not to meddle in stateaffairs, of which he knew nothing, and offered a caricature himself:Mather as Pope, "the great DON-DAGO, the Primate wou'd be of ourIsland." As Mather admitted to his friend John Winthrop, "I own myselfnot a match for them."

In this Mather was several ways correct. Not only was he ignorant offinance and engulfed in domestic problems, but the private bank issueand the negative on Cooke brought with them a dramatic change in polit-ical perspective. The pamphleteers spoke for a new, increasingly power-ful segment of society that could consider social issues without referenceto the original Puritan vision of a covenanted people, to whom the resolu-tion of New England's problems was not moral but financial and political.They became, as Perry Miller remarked, "the first authors in New Englandto argue a case with hardly so much as a genuflection in the direction ofreligion." The language of their politics was not that of provoking evilsand public fasts, but that of privilege, depreciation, and the balance oftrade.

Neither upbringing nor inclination qualified Mather to discourse inthis language, much less to handle its accompanying infighting and chi-canery. Yet as he undertook to defend Shute he was himself drawn intothe game. The charges that he self-servingly changed his views on thebank or betrayed his brother-in-law or gossiped about Cooke's tipplingare only instances of repeated accusations of underhandedness and smeartactics. In 1717, a middle-aged Harvard graduate named Joseph Parsonscharged him with communicating to the New South Church, to whichParsons had been proposed for the ministry, a private letter that, he said,"utterly ruined' him there. Mather dismissed the charge as false, but thefollowing year he was similarly accused of having communicated to aman named Rogers a letter addressed to him from a man named Emerson,in which Emerson had used "Invectives" against Rogers. Mather flatlydenied that Emerson had sent him such a letter, much less had he con-fided it to Rogers. Whether Mather acted treacherously in these cases isunknown, but in similar cases much condemning evidence has survived.To give only two examples, around 1720 he wrote to the merchant JohnFrizzell. to whom he had written before in Creasy's name. Now he fabri-

cated an anonymous letter (like the one Samuel Sewall received describ-ing Mather's dread), asking Frizzell to help subsidize publication of oneof his works. Frizzell had been a member of his congregation, and Matherknew him well. Yet in the letter Mather introduced himself as "one thatnever spoke to my remembrance one word to you in all my Life." Toappreciate the letter's utter deceitfulness, it must be stressed that thedocument is entirely in Mather's hand and that he wrote it himself:

I have the honour of some acquaintance with Dr. Mather, the younger, aperson whom you as well as I have a high value for. Among his otherfavors, he communicated unto me a composure of his entitled The Workof the Day. . . . The composure, if I have any judgment, is a most illustri-ous and uncommon performance: 'tis filled with rich and rare thoughts,and among the entertainments which eminent men have given us, I havenot seen the thing that equals it. Let me peruse it never so often, everyparagraph still appeared new to me, and I still discovered new treasuresand beauties in it.

Mather went on to urge the wealthy Frizzell to help bring "this noblework of the Doctor's into the world," signing himself "Your unknownfriend and servant."

The other case exposes Mather offering one opinion to a person's faceand another behind his back. In the summer of 1720, the Harvard Over-seers considered granting an honorary M.A. degree to Daniel Neal, a Lon-don Congregational minister who had written a two-volume History ofNew-England (London, 1720). Neal sent a copy to Mather, who returneda buttery reply. New Englanders, he said, should be grateful "that anymen of worth should count such a poor, despised, maligned country asours worthy of their cognizance." But he added that New England wasnever famous for gratitude to its benefactors, and warned Neal not to besurprised if his "well-penned History" failed to receive "just consider-ation of your merits." In actuality, Mather was enraged. Neal had given anunflattering picture of the New England ministry, and had commented ofthe Magnalia that had the author "put his Materials a little closer to-gether, and disposed them in another Method, his Work would have beenmore acceptable to this Part of the World." Although Mather told Nealthat "some of our best men are considering of the most proper way totestify their . . . thankful reception of what you have done for us," thesewere not remarks for which he would gladly see Harvard award an honor-ary M.A.

The day before a college committee concerned with awarding the

degree was to meet, Mather wrote to two unnamed persons, asking themto convey his views to "your honorable President.'' The phrase itself wastwo-faced, for when writing "under the darkest concealment to Shute,he referred to Leverett rather as "the (pretended) President.'' He admit-ted that in public he spoke "with all due tenderness of Mr. Neil's [sic]performance," and in fact believed he deserved some acknowledgment;but he would reveal to them thoughts which the "law of goodness willrelease me from uttering unto others." Concerning criticism against hisMagnalia he was, naturally, indifferent—both to "the invectives whichthat poor work has undergone, and," certainly, to "the compliments (veryexcessive ones) which I have received from eminent persons in morethan three nations upon it." But in fact Neal's history, he said, was onlyhis own Magnalia annalized and denuded into a "dry political story."Neal treated Harvard as if no one educated there could write modernEnglish; Neal took his story of the Salem witchcraft trials from "such asenseless, lying, malicious wretch as Calef"; and Neal, to "pass by a thou-sand other things," was simply a "very weak and shallow man." (Theletter did not prevent the Overseers from awarding Neal the degree.)

In the past, Mather's resentments had found subtler outlets than overtlying, talebearing, and duplicity. This moral deterioration in Matherseems the result both of his exhausting personal problems and of hiscompliance with changed standards of political life in Massachusetts,whose earlier tribal solidarity was becoming fragmented by party inter-ests, and whose members, as Mather wrote, were becoming "all generallyAlienated from one another, broken into Factions, and Sacrificing all toCursed Animosities." Politically and emotionally out of his depth, Matherwas now simply unable to manage his rage becomingly. When his foeOliver Noyes, a popular leader in the House, died in March 1721, ofapoplexy, he exulted. "Methinks," wrote the minister of the NorthChurch, "I see a wonderful Token for good in this Matter; And I go onwith humble Supplications to the Lord."

Mather's ministry dealt him two final aggravations. The first was therevival of the Arian heresy in England, climaxed by the divisive Salters'Hall controversy of 1719. Arianism arose during the earliest period ofChristianity from the attempt to reconcile the unity of the godhead withthe distinction of personality in the Trinity. Arius, writing in the fourthcentury, distinguished the Father from the Son, endowing Christ withfree will and a capacity for change, implicitly making Him neither divine

nor eternal. As an institution Arianism formed the religion of the easternhalf of the Roman Empire until late in the fourth century; as a doctrine, itfigured in later Christian disputes as well. It had a revival among rational-istic theologians in eighteenth-century England, and was linked to New-tonianism, as Newton's passionate belief in One Creator similarly rele-gated Christ to an inferior role. Mather had preached and written againstArianism sporadically. In 1702, for instance, he argued that the doctrineof the Trinity was known only through revelation and could not be com-prehended by reason, and treated rationalistic Arians as "Fools, that willbelieve nothing, except they can put their Hands into the Sides of it."

That Arianism might become genuinely troublesome began to strikeMather in 1711, as the doctrine began winning adherents through thewritings of the rationalist William Whiston. Trained for the ministry andordained, Whiston yet pioneered the offering of public lectures on sci-ence, and in 1703 had succeeded Newton as professor of mathematics atCambridge. He had also come to find the doctrine of the Trinity unac-ceptable, announced his view in 1708, and was eventually deprived of hisprofessorship. Mather admired Whiston as both a talented mathematicianand a prolific writer on theology, had a correspondence with him (whichhas not survived), and often cited his scientific writings in "Biblia Ameri-cana." But Whiston's attempts to promote the Arian diminishment ofChrist alarmed him. "My learned Friend Whiston" he wrote in 1711, "islikely to raise a prodigious Dust in the world, by reviving the Arian Opin-ions." He feared the dust raised not only in the world but also in himself,for his own strong rationalistic bent had long made him susceptible toweakenings of belief. "I am likely," he added, " to have my own Mindshock'd with more than ordinary Temptations on this Occasion." Indeedthe next year he began reeling from doubts about the Trinity, his mind"hideously assaulted and harassed" by temptations to Arianism. By im-portuning God, however, he managed to receive a "Sweet Satisfaction . . .in His Truth, concerning Three Eternal Persons in His infinite Godhead."

Mather wrote several anti-Arian tracts over the next few years. Butalthough thankful that Arianism had not crossed the water and contami-nated New England, he looked perturbedly on its steady advance abroad,helped along by the other outstanding English Arian, Dr. Samuel Clarke,an English divine and disciple of Newton, whose Scripture Doctrine ofthe Trinity (1712) declared the Father alone supreme. By 1717 it hadbecome evident to Mather that Arianism had slowly made its way not onlyinto the Church of England but among the young Dissenting ministersalso. A sharp turning point came in February and March 1719, when a

group of English Nonconformists—Presbyterians, Baptists, and Congrega-tionalism—met in Salters' Hall in London. They were called to advise onhow to treat three Dissenting ministers in the west of England who weresuspected of Arianism. In the course of deciding, a suggestion was madethat the Assembly should itself declare adherence to orthodox Trinitarianviews, as laid down in the first of the Thirty-nine Articles and in the fifthand sixth questions of the the Westminster Catechism. Failure to subscribe to such a declaration could easily be interpreted as a sign of hold-ing Arian views. Yet the proposal split the assembly: sixty-three ministersagreed to subscribe, fifty-three refused, on the ground that they wouldnot make human (that is, nonscriptural) creeds a test of soundness offaith. Sixty ministers who wished to subscribe set up an assembly of theirown.

Mather learned of the Salters' Hall dispute just as he began litigatingthe first suits against the Howell estate. However preoccupied, he wasthunderstruck. News of apparently broad inroads of Arianism, and of aserious split among the English Dissenters, seemed to him "the mostgrievous tidings that ever came over the Atlantic unto us." Blaming Whis-ton and Clarke as "the two grand satanic tools of this mischief," he dis-patched a rush of letters pouring out dismay over the great "Schism arisenamong our United Brethren" and over the ministers who refused to sub-scribe. Isaac Watts assured him that the subscribing ministers themselvesbelieved that only a very few London Dissenters had become Arians, andthat the nonsubscribing ministers refused not because they were Ariansbut because the subscription was "begun in a disorderly manner breakingin upon other business and with much anger," and because they fearedsuch a subscription might be used as a religious test to exclude personsfrom the ministry or from communion. Mather was apparently uncon-vinced, perhaps because he always suspected Watts's own religious lean-ings. Indeed Watts, a liberal and at times perplexed Calvinist who latermoved towards Unitarianism, admitted to Mather that he believed peoplecould be saved by conceiving Christ as omnipotent, omniscient, and al-sufficient "and yet not equal with God the Father."

Mather regarded the nonsubscribers' refusal to endorse a nonscrip-tural statement of creed as an effort to use the ideal of Christian union topromulgate Arianism. The Salters' Hall controversy thus exposed the ecu-menical Universal Religion he had been fostering as another of his con-flictedly conciliatory attempts to resolve the irreconcilable. His vision ofreasonable men of different sects united by a few maxims of vital pietyhad of course been an imperfect thing. It excluded Catholics because of

their doomed role in Protestant eschatology, and Mather never meant it toencourage Congregationalists to give up their sectarian identity. His tol-eration, as Richard Lovelace remarks, was "most successful when it wasdirected toward those who did not have the drawback of being his neigh-bors." Mather wished to continue forwarding his "Syncretism of Piety"and to oppose religious persecution, yet to bar Arians from the Christianunion for denying Eternal power and godhead to Christ, transforming theSavior into a mortal idol. He sent a barrage of letters to Dissenters abroadtrying to make clear the difference between toleration and acceptance ofheresy, indulgence and communion, forbearance and fellowship.

Mather also set forth his views publicly in Some American Sentimentson the Great Controversy of the Time, a formal epistle addressed to fourLondon ministers and dated July 1, 1720, the same time as his defense ofShute over the negativing of Cooke. That sensitive episode, together withthe recent attack on his style by Daniel Neal and the continued "unac-countable contempt" of London Dissenters toward publishing "BibliaAmericana," may explain his beginning, in Matherese, with a defiant meaculpa:

We should not be insensible, (having been very publicly inform'd of it)That the Style and Manner of the New-England Writers does not equalthat of the Europeans: Nor should he who now writes, and who amongthem is the least of the Ministers, and the lowest in Merit, be without avery humble Sense of his Inability in point of Sense, as well as of Style, tooffer any thing worthy of Consideration among the Europeans.

Having thus, as often before, defended himself against abuse in advanceof receiving it, Mather attempted to square the ideal of Christian unionwith the exclusion of Arians from it. At the moment, he said, two truthsdemand realization: first, that no one is to be forced by civil penalties to areligious belief contrary to conscience; second, that all who truly live toGod are united by certain maxims of piety entitling them to communionwith each other. But these truths must be served cautiously, or Christian-ity be subverted. Concerning "the plausible Cry now so much in vogue, ofNothing to be subscribed but the Express Words of Scripture," he ob-served that every heretic, even a papist, would so subscribe, and gainlicense to perpetrate damnable heresies under cover of orthodoxy. Ameaningful union of Christian sects must include an express belief in theTrinity as a basis for communion and salvation, requiring not merely pro-fession of belief in Scripture, but renunciation of Arianism. Otherwisemany may claim communion with the pan-Christian church yet "continue

under the Power of those Heresies, which are Inconsistent with the Life of

GOD in the Soul." Such claims, he suspected, signified "a strong and adeep Conspiracy in our very sinful Nation, to dethrone the Eternal SONof GOD."

Mather's professions of religious liberalism had led him into a compromised position two decades earlier, when he first endorsed the Pres-byterian-Congregational union in London, then blasted the creation ofthe Brattle church at home. As happened then too, others now accusedhim of contradicting himself. They reproved his stand on Salters' Hall, hesaid, for "not consisting well with my zealous profession for a union onthe terms of piety," a charge he thought "to be pitied rather than an-swered." One of his critics, the Baptist Thomas Hollis (whose bequest toHarvard was providing a scholarship to Sammy), pointed out that in dem-onstrating his Universal Religion, Mather had not long ago preached,surprisingly and generously, at the ordination of Thomas Callender, aBaptist minister. In his much publicized sermon Mather had denouncedintolerance, yet he now called the nonsubscribers at Salters' Hall here-tics. Mather must have received a misleading account of the controversy,Hollis suggested, or he would not impute damning sins to "his Brethrenwho Love the Lord Jesus. ... so contrary to the Catholic charity he ex-pressed" in his sermon. Invoking an old ghost, Hollis also complainedthat in alluding to a "plot" against Christianity, Mather was fomentingdiscord while those in England were seeking harmony. The charge thatMather overreacted to the events at Salters' Hall was probably just. Benja-min Colman wrote of a similar subscription crisis at an Irish assemblysomewhat later, that he did not approve of those who declined the sub-scription, "yet I am far from imputing Arianism to them. I am hereinwater to Dr. Mathers Heat."

At the same time, Mather was setting up his ministry for serious dam-age. This second aggravation began in 1720 with the Rev. Peter Thacherof Weymouth. As Benjamin Colman related the precipitating events,Thacher had grown melancholy and in ill health at Weymouth, so heasked his church to dismiss him to go elsewhere. The relation between aminister and his flock being to many New Englanders, Colman remarked,"like that between husband and wife," the church refused. Yet Thacherinsisted, got support from neighboring ministers, and the church re-leased him. In Boston, Thacher was invited to preach as the colleague ofthe Rev. John Webb at the New North—the church that had been formedby the swarmers who had abandoned the Mathers' church.

Almost all the Boston ministers disapproved Thacher's conduct in se-

curing his dismission from Weymouth, except the Mathers. They perhapsadmired his acknowledged learning, piety, and ministerial gifts, for theyare said to have advised and assisted him about his move from Weymouth,and they invited him to preach for several months with them. But Thacherencountered resistance within the New North itself. Forty or fifty congre-gants vehemently opposed his settlement with them, arguing that a min-ister ought to stay where God had appointed him, and deeming it unethi-cal for a larger and wealthier congregation to deprive a smaller one. Theyfelt strongly enough about Thacher's ordination to warn that if it proceededthey would swarm from the New North and form still another new congre-gation.

Shaken by the prospect of a third Congregational meetinghouse risingin the North End, Mather and his father "turned Cat in pan," as a contem-porary put it, and became Thacher's "utter Enemies," helping him "into aSnare and there leave[ing] him." Having at first advised and assisted him,they now worked to obstruct his settlement at the New North, lest hisopponents there band together as a new church, another rival to theirown. They joined Colman and some other Boston ministers in arguingthat a pastor should not be removed from his flock except for veryweighty reasons, such as did not appear in Thacher's case, nor without achurch council, which had not been called. They also urged the dissi-dents in the New North not to build another meetinghouse.

Despite this resistance from Mather and the others, Thacher's admir-ers in the New North pushed for and obtained his installation, which wasa fiasco. The Mathers, by one account, persuaded other ministers not toattend the ceremony; apparently only two participated, one of whom wasThacher's uncle. Thacher and his uncle came to the church out a backgate and through alleys to escape interception by a hostile crowd deter-mined to block the installation. When the crowd realized they hadslipped by, it stomped into the gallery and, standing instead of sitting,protested the ceremony so noisily that no prayers could be conducted. Inthe din, a minister called for and received the consent of the brethren andof Thacher to what passed for his installation: "no Bear Garden certainlywas ever like it," one contemporary said, "such Treatment and Languagehad they, that hardly was ever given to the vilest of men."

The end result of this row reached Mather on April 30, 1721, littlemore than two weeks after Creasy's "night-Riot," calling him "unto anuncommon Trial," he said, "wherein it will be found, whether I am Deadunto Creatures." Thacher's opponents in the New North had decided towithdraw and build the New Brick Church, popularly and appropriately

334 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COTTON MATHER

referred to as the "Revenge Church of Christ." As Mather had feared, too,in order to fill their house the "enraged, violent, boisterous Men" whobuilt the New Brick persuaded a "mighty Number" of his own flock tojoin them. He thus found his congregation abandoning him a secondtime, seduced by "the Religion of Pues which with a proud, vain, formalPeople seems to be now the chief Religion of the Town." Acknowledgingthat this new, very large, and nearby church was the finest in New Eng-land, while his own was in "crazy condition," he drafted a set of subscrip-tions toward building a new meetinghouse for his congregation. Itgrieved him too that his father took much to heart the swarming of these"foolish People from Him in His Age."

How many left Mather's ministry is unknown, but must have beensubstantial. "Tis incredible," he wrote on May 1, "what Numbers areswarming off." Just the same, in the customary show of fellowship he wasasked several days later to preach the first sermon in the new church. In ithe praised the New Brick as the most "Beautiful House" in the land, andat the end of the sermon he spoke directly to the many before him whohad left his ministry. Although Increase, who was present, was apparentlytoo ill to preach, he could not have surpassed his son in deploying pasto-ral concern for the salvation of the swarmers' souls as the vehicle forconveying squirming contempt for their treachery. Cotton offered the Ju-dases Christ-like absolution for having crucified him and his father:

When our dear SAVIOUR was within a Few Minutes of His Death, we read,Many of them, who attended on His Ministry, Went away and walked nomore with Him. A very Great Withdraw from our Ministry many may thinkit will be a Trouble to us; and if we were not used unto higher Sentiments,than the People who offer it, it might be so. But we have Learned CHRISTbetter than that. I do assure you, My Friends, I hope you will find it moreof a Triumph than of a Trouble to us.

Fusing his father's long-suffering manner with Matherese, he suggestedthat the building of the new church was timely, for he and Increase wereabout to die:

'Tis a Circumstance, that carries a Strong and a Strange Consolation in it;That our Claim to the Royal Priesthood is just finishing in this Addition tothe many Sacrifices, which our Lives have been fill'd withal. That we havenow done with a World, that has nothing in it worth Staying for; That weare just Entering into the Joy of our Lord, and are within a Few Weeks ofseeing the Best Hour that ever we saw. . . .

Reminding the swarmed members how diligently he and Increase had

TRIA CARCINOMATA 335

labored for their salvation, he ended with lovingly regretful insinuationsthat little of it seemed to have done any good. Of this bravura kiss ofdeath he observed in his diary: "with high Strains of Sacrificing, I give allthe People to see, how easily and cheerfully we endure their Departurefrom us."

Suddenly, just two weeks later, Mather's multiplying defeats in hischurch, his family, and the government were for the moment swept fromhis mind, replaced by a public catastrophe. Unaware that it also held forhim a personal triumph, he recorded on May 26: "The grievous Calamityof the Small-Pox has now entered the Town. The Practice of conveyingand suffering the Small-poxby Inoculation, has never been used in Amer-ica, nor indeed in our Nation. But how many Lives might be saved by it, ifit were practised?"

The Paths of the Destroyer

The smallpox epidemic that struck Boston in April 1721 lasted a full yearand infected half the city, yet it was not unexpected. Smallpox seemed tobreak out at regular intervals, the last epidemic having come in 1702-3.Because of the isolation of Massachusetts, the great infectious diseasesthere tended to be epidemic rather than endemic. Smallpox, measles, ordiphtheria might arrive devastatingly, then disappear for years; whenenough nonimmune people accumulated, it came again.

Mather himself observed that beginning in 1630 smallpox arrived inBoston precisely every twelve years. Betweentimes some vessel wouldbring the disease, but it would not spread. Yet in the twelfth year "noprecaution would keep it off"; it would become "so raging, so reaching"as to afflict even fetuses, who were "born full of it upon them." Somehowfor the seventh epidemic, predictable by Mather's computations in 1714,the pattern did not hold. He speculated that the irregularity was owing tothe measles epidemic of 1713 that killed three of his children and hiswife, the "compassion of Heaven" refusing to add smallpox "unto whatwe suffered the year before." Both Mathers later took credit for havingwarned prophetically against the near approach of the disease. About sixmonths before the outbreak Increase preached a sermon predicting someheavy judgment on Boston; a month or two later Cotton was stirred by aheavenly afflatus to deliver a lecture on Trouble Near, in which he tooforetold "the speedy Approach of the destroying Angel."

Civic authorities seem to have been no less aware than the ministrythat an epidemic might come soon. A law passed in February7 1718 re-quired ships carrying infectious diseases to anchor near Spectacle Islandin the harbor, so that the infected persons and cargo that might transmit

336

infection could be removed to the island's public hospital. The law wastested in October 1720, when a sloop arrived from the Canary Islandsbearing smallpox. Several persons were put ashore at the island's "Pesthouse," then allowed to continue to Boston in fresh clothing after beingdeclared healthy. The captain of the ship, however, apparently died, andthe selectmen ordered that no one who had attended him in his illnessmight enter Boston until judged to be uncontaminated.

It was the Seahorse, a ship from Salt Tortuga owned by John Frizzell,that brought the lethal epidemic of 1721. On April 15 the Council de-bated whether to grant the ship entry to Boston. Although the Seahorseseems to have stayed in the harbor, on May 8 the selectmen reported thata black man from the ship was in Boston, and stricken. They voted to haveDr. John Clark (Mather's former father-in-law) board the ship and reporton its condition. A second black man, a servant in Boston (whether con-nected with the ship is uncertain), had also taken the disease, and toisolate him the selectmen appointed two "prudent persons" to seal offthe house in which he lay, allowing no one to leave or enter without theirpermission. Four days later, apparently after Dr. Clark made his report,the selectmen noted that two or three other men aboard the Seahorse alsohad smallpox, and voted to ask Governor Shute to call a council, to adviseabout sending the ship to Spectacle Island.

The next week a group composed of justices, selectmen, Overseers ofthe Poor, and constables searched Boston houses. They reported findingno house contaminated but the one sequestering the black servant, whothey said had almost recovered. This report, like the many later officialannouncements, may have been designed less to inform the public thanto prevent panic, for the selectmen voted just the same to clean thestreets and lanes, impressing carts to carry off dirt and requiring twenty-six free male blacks and mulattos to work six days at the task. By the lastweek in May there were not one or two or three infected persons, buteight, one of them in Bennett Street, at the North End.

Mather feared for his children and himself, smallpox being probablythe most infectious of all diseases. His friend Dr. Zabdiel Boylston graph-ically described some of its hideous effects:

Purple Spots, the bloody and parchment Pox, Hemorahages of Blood atthe Mouth, Nose, Fundament, and Privities; Ravings and Deliriums; Con-vulsions, and other Fits; violent inflamations and Swellings in the Eyesand Throat; so that they cannot see, or scarcely breathe, or swallow anything, to keep them from starving. Some looking as black as the Stock,others as white as a Sheet; in some, the Pock runs into Blisters, and the

Skin stripping off, leaves the Flesh raw. . . . Some haw been till d withloathsome Ulcers; others have had deep, and fistulous Ulcers m theirBodies, or in their Limbs or Joints, with Rottenness of the Ligaments andBones: Some who live are Cripples, others Idiots, and many blind all theirDays. . . .

To such rank ravaging two of Mather's surviving children, Elizabeth andSammy, were vulnerable, having been born since the last epidemic. Theywere both terrified of catching the disease. Mather called to heaven forguidance about whether to send them out of town, and for help in sub-mitting "if these dear Children must lose their Lives." Because he wouldinevitably be called into the rooms of the sick, he felt his own life mustalso become threatened as the epidemic inevitably spread. Concernedalso for the general public, he asked ministers to hold days of fasting andprayer, adapted his own sermons and prayers to the calamity, and calledfor aid to the "Miserables neglected and perishing in Sickness."

Mather's charitable and zealous concern for the sufferers led him to amore important resolution also. He decided to propose to the Bostonphysicians that they try a new method of preventing the disease. Foryears, beginning with his boyhood interest in medicine, his life hadmoved him toward this resolution. In adolescence, when acting as anamanuensis for the physician William Avery, he had communicated toRobert Boyle in London some of Avery's theories about smallpox. Duringthe previous smallpox epidemic in 1702-3 he had pressed Boston physi-cians to use the more moderate methods of managing the disease favoredby the famous physician Sydenham. More recently, in 1716, he had ad-dressed to the Royal Society an essay on "Curiosities of the smallpox" inthe course of which he urged Dr. John Woodward to help bring inocula-tion into experiment and fashion in England. "For my owti part," headded, "if I should live to see the smallpox again enter into our city, Iwould immediately procure a consult of our physicians, to introduce apractise which may be of so very happy a tendency."

Mather now did that. He drew up an address, dated June 6, 1721,which was circulated in manuscript among local physicians, describing a"Wonderful Practice "lately come into use in some parts of the world. Infact, inoculation had been performed as folk medicine for centuries inAfrica, India, China, and even in parts of Europe. Late in the seventeenthcentury, accounts of the Asiatic practice began arriving in England, andbegan to be studied and recommended after the operation had becomepopular in Turkey early in the eighteenth century. The first recordedinoculation in England had been performed only two months before

Mather's address, in April 1721, smallpox having struck London almostsimultaneously with the epidemic in Boston, and probably also intro-duced by ships from the West Indies.

Mather based the method he recommended to the Boston physicianson two accounts published earlier in the Transactions of the Royal Soci-ety. The first, in 1714, had been sent from Constantinople by a physiciannamed Emanuel Timonius, and appeared in the issue that carried thesummary of Mather's Curiosa; the second, in 1716, had come from a Ve-netian named Jacob Pylarinus, who had observed the practice in Smyrna.The accounts seem to have been discussed in the Boston intellectualcommunity after their appearance, and Mather received some confirma-tion of the success of inoculation from people in his neighborhood whohad recently come from Constantinople. But Mather had learned aboutinoculation "many months" before the appearance of Timonius' account.His black servant Onesimus had described to him the use of inoculationamong his people, the Guramantese, and had shown him a scar on hisarm left by it. Onesimus' description, Mather told the Royal Society, was"the same that afterwards I found related unto you by your Timonius."

In his letter to the Boston physicians Mather briefly described thepractice related to him by Onesimus (and afterward confirmed to him byother Africans), then in greater detail summarized the published ac-counts of Timonius and Pylarinus. To the Africans, Mather said, a mercifulGod brought an "Infallible Preservative,1' which he tried to describe inOnesimus' own words: "People take Juice of SmallPox\ and cutty-skin,and putt in a Drop; then by'nd by a little sicky, sicky; then very few littlethings like Small-Pox; and no body die of it; and no body have Small-Poxany more." Mather's use of dialect here mattered, for now and later theopponents of inoculation made much of the social class and intellectualcredentials of those testifying to its effectiveness. Keenly aware thatOnesimus' folkish narrative would not be persuasive enough, Matheradded the fuller description of "Superiour Persons in the Levant."

As Mather summarized the account of Dr. Timonius, inoculation hadbeen used in the Levant for about forty years, and having overcome irra-tional prejudices against it had over the last eight years proved successfulon thousands of persons: not one of those inoculated died of the disease.At Constantinople the inoculation is ideally performed at the beginningof winter or spring, using as healthy a young person as can be found whois stricken with smallpox. Twelve or thirteen days into the illness, someof the youth's larger pustules are pricked with a needle, the matter beingpressed out into a washed vessel and carried without delay to the inocu-

lee in a stopped bottle, kept warm in the bosom of the messenger. Theinoculation is performed in a warm room. First, several small cuts aremade with a needle or lancet in the patient's arm muscles. Then on eachcut is placed a drop of the matter, or "variole," which is mixed well withthe flowing blood. The wound is covered by a concave object, such as awalnut shell, and bound so that the arm is not rubbed by garments. Usually,according to Timonius, ten or twenty pustules break out on the inoculee,who stays at home, keeping warm and on a light diet. The incision runswith pus several days, but in a short time the pocks dry and fall off, rarelypitting.

The method Pylarinus observed, Mather continued, differed onlyslightly, originating in Smyrna also as folk medicine among the "Mean,Coarse, Rude Sort of People." Pylarinus described the procedure used bya "notable Inoculatrix" who advised performing the inoculation only inwinter. Instead of incisions she made pinpricks with a gold or iron needlein the forehead, chin, cheeks, wrists, and insteps (unnecessarily many,Pylarinus felt). The wounds often became sore and sometime producedabscesses in some "Emunctory" (a body organ that drains off uselesssecretions). But, like Timonius, Pylarinus affirmed that ill consequenceshad been rare. For himself, Mather told the physicians, he felt "very confi-dent no Person would miscarry in it, but what would most certainly havemiscarried upon taking the Contagion in the Common Way."

How many physicians read Mather's address is unknown, as is thenumber of physicians then operating in Boston, but only one of themimmediately responded, Dr. Zabdiel Boylston. Born in Brookline, he hadbeen trained in medicine by his father, and ran an apothecary shop wherehe sold surgical instruments and a wide variety of drugs "both Galenical,and Chymical" as well as painters' colors and nostrums for growing hair.His wares do not inspire confidence, but they are deceptive. Before thesmallpox epidemic he had performed some virtuoso feats of surgery. Es-pecially interested in lithotomy, in 1707 he successfully removed an egg-sized stone from a thirteen-year-old boy whose life had been given up. In1718, in the presence of several ministers and other spectators, he did amastectomy on Mrs. Edward Winslow, whose life was also despaired ofbecause of the bleeding, growth, and stench of a cancer on her left breast.Her husband waited two years to be sure the cancer did not return, thenpublished personal testimonials to Boylston's skill in two Boston newspa-pers, observing that several doctors had labored unsuccessfully to relieveher "dreadful" cancer until Boylston "cut her whole Breast off" anddressed the surgery "in the space of five Minutes by the Watch of one

then present," wholly curing her. Eventually becoming the first Ameri-can-born physician to be celebrated in England, Boylston later lectured atthe Royal College of Physicians and was received with exceptional honorat the Royal Society.

Boylston approved of Mather's versions of the Levant accounts, andbelieved that in giving them to the physicians Mather had acted out ofcompassion. Mather wrote to him on June 24, praising the "very muchgood which a gracious God employs you and honours you to do in amiserable world," and suggesting that if after serious deliberation Boyl-ston thought it advisable to try the inoculation, "it may save many livesthat we set a great value on." Two days later, Boylston inoculated a thirty-six-year-old black servant, a two-and-a-half-year-old black child, and hisown six-year-old son Thomas. The adult became free of symptoms in twoor three days, but Boylston believed he had had the pox before. Thechildren began having complaints by the sixth day, became somewhat hotand sleepy on the seventh, showed about a hundred "kind and favoura-ble" pocks by the ninth—and after that soon were well.

The news of Boylston's experiments and of Mather's encouragementsto them scared most Bostonians. Civic authorities had made futile effortsto contain the epidemic and allay public dread, appointing more guards,moving the grammar school to the Town House after three cases brokeout in School Street, publishing bromidic progress reports that understatedthe size and seriousness of the epidemic. ("It is a thousand pities," Boyl-ston later remarked, "our Select-Men made so slight and trifling a Repre-sentation of the Small-Pox, that had always prov'd so fatal in New-Eng-land") Many people feared that inoculation would not halt theinexorably spreading disease but spread it further. The fear was not unjus-tified, because if used indiscriminately inoculation could in some cir-cumstances spread the disease and, as then practiced, could have painfuland revolting side effects. A reliable account of a successful inoculationlater in the year reported that the patient wished he had not been inocu-lated; after the eruptions began, his pupils dilated, his incisions ran, andabout eighty pustules appeared on his face, others on his scrotum.

Mather found himself and Boylston becoming objects of panickyabuse: "They rave, they rail, they blaspheme; they talk not only like Idiotsbut also like Franticks." He was of course no stranger to vilification. Andfeeling he had acted neither self-interestedly nor conflictedly, he enjoyeddespite the abuse an "unspeakable Consolation," he said, in having in-structed the physicians in a method of "infallibly" saving lives. Equallyconfident, Boylston placed an ad in the Boston Gazette affirming that his

three experiments had validated the accounts of Timonius and Pylarinus:their success showed that no one need fear receiving many pustules fromthe inoculation, being scarred in the face, or ever taking the diseaseagain. He also served notice that in a few weeks he planned to performfurther inoculations. Before doing so, however, he publicly invited theother Boston physicians to visit his patients and judge his success.

With Mather certain of his cause, and Boylston determined to pro-ceed, the selectmen took testimony on July 21 from a Dr. Lawrence Dal-honde—a "French Fellow of a very vicious Character," as Mather calledhim, who had witnessed disastrous inoculations in Europe. He testifiedthat in Italy twenty-five years ago he had seen thirteen soldiers inoculated,of whom three were unaffected, six made a difficult recovery but devel-oped tumors and gangrene, and four died; in Spain an inoculated soldierbecame frenzied, and his autopsy disclosed infected lymph glands andulcerated lungs. The Boston physicians found Dalhonde's testimony soconvincing that instead of accepting Boylston's invitation they signed astatement asserting that inoculation tends to infuse the blood with "ma-lignant Filth," spreads infection, kills many, and would likely have the"most dangerous Consequence" in Boston.

Three days after Dalhonde's interview, a pseudonymous correspon-dent to the News-Letter amplified the attack on Boylston. Mather, he said,out of a "Pious and Charitable design of doing good," had recommendedinoculation to the local physicians, who all declined except a "certainCutter for the Stone." Reckless and inept, and lacking an academic de-gree, Boylston tried inoculation at his home in Dock Square, the mostpublic trading place in Boston, and during the stifling heat of summer,although the Levant relations advised attempting it only in winter andspring, with the result that his own inoculated child took a violent feverand barely escaped with his life. The writer also hinted that Boylston'sacts could be construed as felonious, a "Propagating of Infection andCriminal"

These charges of incompetence provoked a sharp exchange betweenBoylston's defenders and detractors. Benjamin Colman, for one, thoughtthe letter grossly partial in rebuking Boylston but pardoning Mather, who"push'd on the Attempt and openly rejoic'd in it," Colman said, addingthat he believed both men had hoped to do good. In the next week'sGazette, he joined Cotton and Increase Mather and three other ministersin expressing distress over the lampooning of Boylston as a "Cutter forthe Stone." By his dexterity as a surgeon, they said, Boylston had honoredthe country and shown compassion for many miserable people; although

lacking a degree he had studied hard and observed much, and practicedlong and with great success. The ministers' endorsement was answeredthe next week by a writer who dismissed them as "Six Gentlemen of Pietyand Learning, profoundly ignorant of the Matter." In recommending the"Practice of the Greek old Women," he said, they pretended to expertiseon "one of the most intricate practical Cases in Physick." In defendingBoylston they fancied him "some Romantick Character, something be-yond that of candid Sydenham" begarlanding him with "all the fulsomecommon Place of Quack Advertisements." In fact many readers, he said,took their endorsement for humor.

This flurry opened what became a nearly year-long war of pamphletsand letters-to-the-editor, in which the successive attacks, counterattacks,and counter-counterattacks grew ever more bitter and personal. Mean-while the disease was becoming epidemic. On July 29 the selectmenagain assessed the town and discovered 168 persons infected—a probablyundervalued count, as the reassuring tone of their report suggests: "andbut Eighteen by GOD's Goodness are Dead, and Several of them lost byCarelessness and not by the Distemper." Public apprehension surgedwith the news that parts of the Mediterranean and France were beingvisited with bubonic plague, which could be brought to New Englandatop the smallpox. One newspaper writer implied that inoculation mightmake people more vulnerable to plague and even breed it, becauseplague boils break out in emunctories, the very places where the Levantaccounts said that abscesses sometime appear after inoculation. As Bos-ton newspapers told grisly stories of the streets of Marseilles strewn withdead cats and of slaves carting off corpses, Governor Shute issued a proc-lamation on August 4, requiring every vessel arriving from France or theMediterranean to undergo a forty-day quarantine before unloading.

Despite the thickening air of menace and a reprimand from the select-men and justices, who forbad any further inoculations, Boylston inoculatedseven other persons in July, and seventeen in August, of whom one died.Mather, undaunted also, prepared a short essay on the treatment of small-pox containing a notable medical point. The cause of smallpox was at thetime wholly unknown. But in discussing inoculation Mather speculatedthat the disease might be an "Animalculated Business''—that is, that itmight originate in tiny organisms, a suspicion which has been confirmed,he said, by viewing the pustules under a microscope. He does not makeclear whether he or someone else in Boston raised or confirmed thispossibility. If he came himself to the belief that smallpox was caused by apathogenic organism, he must be credited with having stumbled unaided

on the momentous germ theory of disease.

Opposition to Mather's and Boylstons further efforts now produced apermanent forum and a formidable spokesman. On August 7, 1721, appeared the first issue of The New-England Courant, a newspaper published by James Franklin (who had printed in 1719 Mathers Vigilius, asermon on drowsy devotions), soon to be joined by his younger brotherBenjamin. Its chief aim, one contributor wrote, was "to oppose the doubt-ful and dangerous Practice of inoculating the Small Pox" and for nearlyten months the Courant inveighed relentlessly against the inoculators'character, credentials, and beliefs. But the paper also set itself satiricallyagainst the college, the magistrates, the wealthy, and much of the Massa-chusetts establishment. More clearly than any other features of New En-gland's life, its lively verse and prose about cuckoldry and bachelordom,its serialization of Fielding's Jonathan Wild, its assaults on efforts to datethe Second Coming, its tone of tongue-in-cheek irreverence, giving au-thority to once-marginal social tendencies gathering throughout Mather'slifetime, sounded the funeral knell of the Puritan Fathers. The paper alsonow gave a public voice to Mather's and Boylston's main antagonist, Dr.William Douglass, whose presence in the debate highlighted the ama-teurism of Mather and Boylston both. A Scotsman educated at Edinburgh,Paris, and Leyden (where he studied with Boerhaave), Douglass was theone physician in Boston with an academic degree in medicine. Indeed itwas he who apparently loaned Mather—a "credulous vain preacher,"Douglass called him—the accounts by Timonius and Pylarinus wrhichMather knew, "that he might have something to send home to the RoyalSociety who had long neglected his communications as he complained."

Douglass first sprang on the inoculators in two anonymous pieces inthe Courant in August. In the first, a grim satire, he told of reading at thesame time a defense of inoculation and also news of an intended expedi-tion against the eastern Indians. The two blending in his mind produceda brainstorm: fight the Indians by inoculation. He would arm some inocu-lators with lancets and nutshells, supply pus and "Negro YawTs" for am-munition, and award a £5 bounty for each Indian killed by inoculation,and double that for each Indian who "survives, conveys and spreads theInfection among his Tribe." More soberly and frontally, in his secondessay he rejected inoculation as a desperate remedy more suitable forplague, dangerous in itself and useless in preventing smallpox from oc-curring in the common way. He also accused the inoculators of playingdown the severity of the reaction, which he said included violent feversand ulcers in the groin and other glandulous parts, with swelling and loss

of the use of limbs, as in cases of venereal disease. In the spirit of theselectmen, he also claimed that the number of burials since the arrival ofsmallpox was no greater than the number during the same period in otheryears. The real danger in the epidemic, he warned, was social chaos,which might destroy commerce and frighten others out of sending provi-sions to Boston.

What made Douglass worth hearing was not simply his professionaltraining but also his essential seriousness. No Neanderthal or fool, heobserved the epidemic with inquisitive scientific interest, recording "in-tricate incidents" in hope of learning the "mazes" of smallpox. Nor didhe doubt the potential value in inoculation. Rather, as a knowledgeablephysician, he deplored the present methods of performing it, pointingout correctly that inoculated persons might communicate the disease ifnot kept in isolation until the infection ran its course; the disease mightmore certainly be escaped, he said, by merely moving to the country. Healso thought the inoculators people with little knowledge and rash im-pulses, and believed the practice must be tested by other than "Greek oldWomen, Madmen and Fools." As this crack suggests, Douglass gainedadded confidence in his views from his haughtiness, his medical degreeand foreign birth making him feel superior to others in Boston and acttoward them patronizingly. He was also somewhat avaricious. Many physi-cians opposed inoculation, Benjamin Colman said later, "because itwould have saved the Town Thousands of pounds that is now in theirpockets," and Douglass cared about making money from the many small-pox victims he treated during the epidemic. Explaining afterward to acorrespondent why he had not had time to write up his medical observa-tions, he said he found it "more natural to begin by reducing my small-pox accounts into bills and notes for the improvement of my purse."However motivated, Douglass on his own and through the Couranthelped organize Boston against the inoculation.

The tense, charnal atmosphere ate at Mather's patience and energy.Day after day throughout the summer, he fulminated in his diary againstthe "false Reports, and blasphemous Speeches, and murderous Wishes."The situation also called to his demonology, in which such massive on-slaughts against mankind as epidemics and such obstructions to humanprogress as attempts to impede scientific knowledge, were characteristicworks of evil angels. Believing that only their unwelcome presence couldexplain the rage against inoculation, he saw Boston benighted by the

"Power of Darkness," "Satanic Fury" again astir, the place become "adismal Picture and Emblem of Hell; Fire with Darkness tilling of it." Onlytheir presence could explain the "crying Wickedness of this Town. (ATown at this time strangely possessed with the Devil,) and the vile Abusewhich I do myself particularly suffer from it, for nothing but my instructing our base Physicians, how to save many precious Lives." Repeatedly heapplied for "uncommon Assistance" from above so that he would not actfrowardly, "or fall into any of the common Iniquities, of Lying, and Railing and Malice."

Very tryingly, Mather found the festering epidemic no restraint on hiswife, his errant son, or his creditors. In July Lydia took into the householda young woman related to her (her niece, it seems certain), whom Matherregarded as negligent in piety and a usurper: "my own Children must beturned and kept out of Doors, and their Place be taken by a Stranger sounacceptable to me." Creasy apparently had been sent away again forimprovement, but Mather found him still impenitent, and by Septemberseemingly again in debt: "A vile Sloth, accompanied with the Power ofSatan still reigning over him, ruins him, destroys him." He decided to askthe boy to live with him once more "that I may have him under my Eyecontinually." Once he returned, Mather gave him reading to transcribeand extract for his commonplace books, and as ever prayed for the con-version of "my miserable Son Increase."

Smallpox or no, creditors to the Howell estate dunned Mather vigor-ously. Shortly before the epidemic, in April, he and Lydia had defaultedon a claim against both the Howell and George estates by the wealthyBoston merchant Andrew Faneuil, for nearly £120, a large amount thatFaneuil had long demanded. Apparently now wholly out of funds to payFaneuil, and still unable to win his release from the administration, Matherpetitioned the court for permission to sell part of Howell's warehouse onthe Long Wharf, which was granted. Although he managed thus to satisfyFaneuil's claim, he was unable to sell other property to settle otherclaims, seemingly because the court's decision applied only to Faneuil.And each sale had to be approved by Lydia's daughter and her husband,relatives who he believed had "laid a deep Design, assisted with craftyand cruel Adversaries, if they can, to ruin me." Having profited nothingfrom the estate, but being owed much by it, he was by July in "consider-able Poverty" owning not "a Foot of Land in all the World. My Salary isnot enough to support me comfortably, I meet with many Wants andStraits: in my Diet, much; in my Habit, more." The little estate he had hadbeen sold, and the money gone to pay debts; if he put something aside

for his necessities, it disappeared. He began forwarding new dunningletters to his attorneys, promising creditors he would spur their efforts tosatisfy the claims.

But having borne the deaths of ten of his children already, Matherworried most that smallpox might visit his family. His first concern wasfor the two frightened adolescents born after the last epidemic—Eliza-beth, about to turn seventeen, and Sammy, nearly fifteen. Sammy camehome from the college in June, as the disease spread in the North End,and was afraid to return to Cambridge; Liza lived even "in greater Fearsthan he." Mather wished to have them inoculated. But he also wished toavoid further exciting the town: the "cursed Clamour of a People strangelyand fiercely possessed of the Devil, will probably prevent my saving theLives of my two Children, from the Small-pox in the Way of Transplanta-tion." He importuned heaven for their safety, and to quicken Liza's flightsto Christ gave her a book relating the death of a young Frenchwoman.Sammy, however, begged to have himself inoculated. Mather reasoned onone side that if he denied Sammy and the boy took the disease he wouldhave to answer for it; on the other that if he agreed and the inoculationmiscarried "my Condition would be insupportable." But other circum-stances argued for inoculating him: ten "remarkable Experiments" hadbeen successfully performed in the North End; Sammy's Harvard room-mate and best friend had died of smallpox; Increase Mather advised thatthe inoculation be performed but kept secret. Deciding that "I could notanswer it unto God, if I neglected it," Mather uncertainly consented.

A few days after the inoculation Sammy became "pretty full" of pocksand his fever had risen beyond expectation. Mather thought his condition"very hazardous." He believed both that Sammy had been infected beforethe inoculation, and that the procedure had been imperfectly performed,Sammy receiving only one incision, and that "so small as to be hardlyworthy the Name of one." Again the possibility of the death of one of hischildren confronted him, this time the death of "so hopeful a son." Heset apart August 25 as a day of prayer for Sammy, begging that he mightlive and fulfill his ministry. Girding himself, however, he contrasted themeaning to him of his family with the meaning of an "infinitely moredesirable Christ," who would abundantly satisfy him "in the Withdraw ofthese and all Creatures from me." While praying in his study on August30, mentally offering Sammy as a sacrifice to God, he decided to open hisBible at random; if the place he chanced on did not provide appropriatematter for meditation, he would turn to and meditate on the story ofJesus' miraculous cure of the son of a nobleman. To his surprise, the

Bible opened at that very place, offering to his eye the line: Go tin Way,thy Son liveth. The same evening Sammy's fever rose to a distressingdegree. Apparently delirious, Sammy made a fervid request, "under anImpression of such Violence upon him, as if it came from sonic superiorOriginal." He asked impassionedly to have a vein opened in him, withthe result that his condition eased utterly and he smoothly recovered.

Unexpectedly, however, two of Mather's children born before the lastepidemic and presumed immune had also become stricken—conceiv-ably, but improbably, by some other disease. They were his daughterHannah, about twenty-five years old, and his twenty-seven year olddaughter Abigail, the wife of his attorney, Daniel Willard, and now in latepregnancy, near to giving birth. Hannah had remained unmarried, per-haps because as a child she had fallen into a fire, so seriously burning theright side of her face and her right hand and arm that her life was fearedfor; her face may have remained badly scarred. On September 3 the physi-cians announced that "poor Nancy, dear Nancy" had not many hours tolive. Praying with her often to prepare her, Mather felt a "strange Light"on his mind that she would recover, a persuasion encouraged when for afew minutes she regained her senses and speech and told him that shetoo had received some inner assurances. Although Nancy did recover,Abigail, "Nibby"—a good and kindly woman, Mather thought her—alsolay in "dying Circumstances," and in this condition gave birth to a daugh-ter. Named "Resigned," the infant was to be baptized on September 24;but that day she died, apparently while Mather was conducting services inchurch, with the baptismal water standing ready. Mather had little time togrieve, for the next days occupied him with strengthening Nibby in herown death struggle. Ironically, Nibby's mother and namesake had died(of breast cancer) during the previous smallpox epidemic, her eightmonths of suffering initiating with a miscarriage. Nibby, fearing for thestate of her soul and longing for deliverance, died a hard death betweenten and eleven on the evening of September 26—the eleventh of Mather'sfifteen children to die.

Now nearly sixty years old, Mather had discovered the proper, and forhim the logical, response to hard deaths, not meekness so much, or sub-mission, but, better, silence. The day before Nibby's burial he preached asermon later published as Silentiarius (1721), a title rich in personalhistory. Having given much energetic discipline to mastering his unrulyspeech, or much ingenuity to denying its quirks by gorgeous fluency, henow took for his doctrine the concept that "Our GOD is never morePraised than by our silence." Righteousness demands, he said, the recog-

nition that whatever sad things befall us, and whatever good things, rep-resenting God's will they must be received in noiseless uncomplaint.Recognition that "The Lord is in thy Adversity" demands, he repeatedover and again, the "Holy silence wherewith we are to Glorify Him."Unspeakingly we must let our feelings grow as cold as may be and bearour sad things with mortified muteness, "the Holy silence of those whoare Crucified unto the World." A man hanging on a cross "has little to say,unto any thing that this World has to offer unto him," is in his silence freeamong the dead. For himself too, he told his congregation, he would tryto hold his peace: "IT becomes me to do so, who have this Day, aDAUGHTER (together with her New-born Daughter,) waiting to be Bur-ied out of my Sight, whom others as well as I, could not but always withmuch Affection Look upon."

A canvass of the town at the end of September, perhaps again under-stated, counted 2757 persons infected since the beginning of the epi-demic, of whom 203 had died. Fear of contamination had also in effectembargoed Boston, so that with winter at hand, grain, butter, and fire-wood were not coming into town and sold at inflated prices. To deal withthe crisis, public officials provided a ferry to Boston from the harbor forwood-vending sloopmen who feared entering the town, ordered Indianhostages suspected of being diseased moved from the Cambridge prisonto Castle Island, and distributed funds from the public treasury to relievethe many otherwise able people financially reduced by the epidemic.Considering inoculation little less dangerous than the epidemic itself, atown meeting voted in November to require the immediate removal ofany in town found inoculated, and the selectmen voted to require anyperson coming to Boston from another town seeking inoculation to besent to the Spectacle Island hospital.

Mather and Boylston, however, persisted in administering and justify-ing inoculation. Boylston inoculated 31 persons in September, 18 more inOctober, and 103 in November, as the epidemic began reaching its worstintensity in Boston. With some 322 persons in the North Church strickenin mid-October, Mather daily visited "loathsome" sickrooms and himselffell ill of a fever brought on, he believed, "by the Poisons of infectedChambers." Although wondering "Is my Hour come?" (and adding, "Tiswelcome"), he joined Boylston at the end of October in publishing adefense of inoculation in the Gazette, partly to repudiate false rumors,—for instance, that those inoculated stank. In their view, inoculation had

succeeded beyond even their hopes. They claimed that only one inoculee, a Mrs. Dixwell, had died, and everyone who knew the case believedher death was not caused by inoculation. A few inoculees had erupted inmore pustules than the Levant accounts mentioned, but they had undergone little sickness; most inoculees had had few pustules, and had experienced "in a manner, Nothing." Some who were dying of smallpox orhad seen its terrors, Mather and Boylston concluded, had begged theirfriends to become inoculated.

Someone tried to kill Mather about two weeks later. One person whocame to Boston seeking inoculation was Mather's nephew Thomas Wal-ter, the minister at Roxbury—a supporter of the method and a leader inthe regular singing movement. A few months earlier, an anti-inoculatorhad attacked Walter in print as an "obscene and fuddling Merry'-Andrew',"depicting him and another debauched spark with some punch on a bed,together with "two Sisters of not the best Reputation in the World." Matherput the young minister up in his own "Lodging-Room," where, inocu-lated, Walter lay on November 14. Toward three o' clock in the morning,somebody threw into the room a "fired Granado." Had the ball landed onWalter's head, Mather said, its weight alone would have killed him. Butthe grenade was also loaded, the upper part with powder, the lower witha mix of powder and turpentine "and what else I know not." Had itexploded, Mather believed, it would probably have killed anyone in theroom, and certainly have set fire to the room itself and soon destroyed thehouse. But the grenade, in passing through the window, struck the iron inthe middle of the casement, so that when the grenade hit the floor the"fired Wild-fire" in the fuse shook out. When the grenade was examinedthere was found, tied around it with a string, the message: "COTTONMATHER, You Dog, Dam you; VI inoculate you with this, with a Pox toyou."

The attempted assassination was much talked of in Boston and, thank-ful, Mather marked his "miraculous" deliverance by preaching on thetext, This night there stood by me the Angel of the God whose I am, andwhom I serve. Yet while he felt providentially rescued, the episode alsoconfirmed with frightening lifelikeness his ancient conviction that nogifts suffice to win love, that, like Christ, those who Do Good arespurned. His execution had been sought, he wrote, for "such a Crime asthis. I have communicated a never-failing and a most allowable Method,of preventing Death." As the bomb had not only terrorized Mather's fam-ily but also endangered neighboring houses, Governor Shute, upon arequest by the House, made a proclamation at the college on November

16, directing the sheriffs, constables, and other officers to identify thewould-be assassin, calling on other citizens to help, and promising togive a reward of £50 plus a pardon to any accomplice who came forwardand confessed.

Not everyone, Mather discovered, was eager to help. Some applaudedthe bomb throwing and promised, he said, "that tho' the first Blow mis-carried, there will quickly come another, that shall do the Business moreeffectually." Intent as always on returning good for evil, he prayed for thewelfare of the "unknown Person, who sought my Death by the fired Gran-ado," and now found in himself a new, unfamiliar sort of thankfulness.Although he lived daily expecting another attempt to kill him, he becamefilled with joy at the prospect of his approaching martyrdom. Indeed, ifhe caught himself asking to be spared, his mouth became strangelystopped, his heart strangely cold; but when he thought of "sufferingDeath for saving the Lives of dying People," he became ravished by a "Joyunspeakable and full of Glory." Experiencing the divine consolationsthat sometimes irradiated the minds of martyrs, which previously he knewonly in his reading, he began to fear doing anything for his safety, even tolong for the hour of his assassination.

Insidiously the smallpox spread outside Boston to Newport, New Lon-don, Plymouth, Salem, Ipswich, Sandwich, Roxbury, and many other NewEngland towns. Mather and Boylston promoted the new method therealso: in all about 135 inoculations were performed outside Boston, it wasestimated, nearly a hundred of them by Boylston. In early December,Mather gave copies of a description of the method, perhaps in manu-script, to physicians and others "in several Parts of the Countrey." Asthese towns tried to stave off the disease with quarantines and fasts, theinoculations produced pamphlet controversies similar to Boston's, andother like results. Mather learned that a minister at Marblehead, for want-ing to be inoculated, was "likely to be murdered by an abominable Peo-ple, that will not let him save his Life."

Mather also addressed himself to the simultaneous, although worse,smallpox epidemic in populous London, and its attendant controversy. Asearlier noted, inoculation in London began in April 1721, with the daugh-ter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Mather seems not to have been awareof this when, in May, he proposed the method to the Boston physicians.Reports of the Boston inoculations were printed in London newspapers,just as Boston newspapers ran accounts of the London inoculations, theEnglish inoculators citing Mather, the English anti-inoculators citingDouglass. In November Mather wrote the first of three communications

on smallpox which he sent to the Royal Society. It gives a full historicalnarrative of the Boston crisis from May to November, followed by a stepby-step description of the Boston method, which was quickly publishedin the Society's Transactions. Here Mather offered several revisions of theLevant accounts, which he said had understated the number of pocks thaterupt on the inoculees; the Boston inoculations usually brought not tenor twenty, but in some persons hundreds of them and in others very few.While experimenting, Mather indicated, Boylston introduced somechanges in the Levant method, dressing the incisions with warmed cab-bage leaves instead of a concave object, and taking the variole from aninoculee instead of from a smallpox victim. In an important updated com-munication to the Royal Society a few months later, announcing the suc-cessful inoculation in America of, now, almost three hundred persons,Mather added several curiosa observed in Boston, such as the seemingimmunity to the disease of persons who had been smitten first by plague,and the failure of pigeons to hatch during the epidemic. Boston experi-ence also taught that in some seemingly hopeless cases, cure has beenachieved by blistering the patient's wrists, ankles, or both, allowing thedischarge to run until the danger is over.

Whether the accounts from Boston helped to turn English publicopinion for or against the inoculation has been debated. Whether ithelped or hurt, Mather's second communication was quoted extensivelyin, and the full text appended to, the second edition of Mr. Maitland'sAccount of Inoculating the Small Pox Vindicated (London, 1722). Dr.Charles Maitland, an eminent physician who had practiced inoculation inTurkey, had himself earlier provided support for the Boston inoculators.In August 1721, he successfully inoculated seven prisoners in Newgate(upon condition of their receiving the king's pardon) before about twenty-five physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries, news of which appeared inBoston newspapers. Maitland's lead and the example of Lady Mary Wort-ley Montagu did win some favor for inoculation in London. How muchMather's own communications contributed is speculative. The two factsmay not be related, but five days after Mather's second communicationwas presented at the Royal Society, the British royal princesses submittedthemselves to inoculation.

By about mid-December Boston had become so generally infected asto make further inoculations useless. As the epidemic peaked, the focusof controversy surrounding it shifted from the safety of inoculation to the

integrity of the New England ministers who had promoted it, bringing toa near climax several decades of building discontent with the ministry.Following Mather, many other ministers had come to advocate inocula-tion, including Benjamin Colman, Solomon Stoddard, John Wise, and sev-eral younger divines. Increase Mather, although ill, aging, and discour-aged ("I am now in my 83 year," he noted a day after his birthday,"Unprofitable"), had also often visited infected persons, prayed with sickblacks, and championed the new method. Their efforts were assailed inmonths of virulent newspaper articles and pamphlets, whose open con-tempt for the ministry seemed to Samuel Sewall "a Very great Degeneracyfrom Our forefathers."

The number of these attacks makes extensive summary and quotationtedious, but in essence the anti-inoculators pounded on two related in-dictments: that the ministers were hypocritical and authoritarian. Manyturned the ministers' own weapons back upon them and blasted them fordeserting orthodox religious principles. By the logic and long practice ofthe covenant theory and the jeremiad, disasters such as earthquakes orepidemics were to be regarded as divine judgments, to which the correctresponse—as indeed the ministers had always insisted—was repentanceand reform. Several writers in the otherwise satirical Courant claimedthat the epidemic was a divine judgment on the country's provoking evilsof profaneness, idleness, and luxury, and, sounding for all the world likeCotton Mather, called not for inoculation but for reformation, "returningunto Him who is smiting of us, that so he may turn from the Fierceness ofhis Anger, and cause his Fury towards us to cease." Others protested thatin taking their arguments not from Scripture but from heathens in Africaand the Levant, the ministers had "revolted from the good old way, andhave set up a way that their Fathers know not of."

While some anti-inoculators tried to outflank the ministers, otherscentrally assaulted the ancient alliance between Moses and Aaron, ques-tioning the ministers' qualifications for meddling in civic affairs. As theCourant portrayed the ministers, they had no knowledge of medicine,and rested their case for inoculation on nothing more than ex cathedrasay-so:

Clergyman]. The Ministers of the Gospel, who are our Spiritual Guides,approve and recommend this Practice; and they are great and good Men,who would not impose on the World; and surely, you ought to fall in withtheir Opinion.

Such complaints that the ministers used the traditional respect for their

office to enforce their ignorance often carried an undercurrent of classantagonism, as appears in two pamphlets by a man named John Williams.An acquaintance of the Mrs. Dixwell who was widely alleged to have diedof inoculation, he seems to have run a "tobacco-cellar" where he dispensed tobacco, drugs, and free medical advice. Mather flicked him off" asa "sorry Tobacconist; who could hardly spell a Word of English, (even theword English, from his acute Pen was Engleche)." But here Mathermissed, and in a degree confirmed, Williams's point. For in trying to showthat neither Scripture nor medical theory justified inoculation, Williamsflaunted rather than hid his rudimentary knowledge and garbled reason-ing. Most ministers, he wrote, are "of a contrary Party to the Bulk of thePeople, with respect to the public Affairs here in this Town," and heparaded illustratively as an illiterate mechanic, one of the commonswhom the ministers disdain as a vulgar mob and consider stupid for lack-ing a Harvard degree. Tracing the history of ministerial error in NewEngland back through inoculation and the banking crisis, he began withthe Salem witchcraft trials, "when so many innocent Persons lost theirLives." Many other anti-inoculators made the same taunting connection.Douglass observed that all countries have been subject to infatuation,which in New England seems to have concentrated in some of the minis-try, as shown by "The Persecution of the Quakers about the Year 1658,the hanging of those suspected of Witchcraft, about the Year 1691. . . . andInoculation, or Self procuring the Small Pox, in the Year 1721."

Pro-inoculation allies of the ministry returned these shafts point bypoint. Typical of many counterthrusts is a sixteen-page pamphlet entitledVindication of the Ministers of Boston (1722), published "By Some oftheir PEOPLE." (Mather seems to have supplied material for this pam-phlet, and may have written parts of it.) Alert to the Courant writers'"saucy" tactic of preaching Providence and Scripture to the ministers,they thought it "very strange and ridiculous, to see the Satyrists play theDivine." The Boston ministers, they said, were neither meddlesome inpolitics nor ignorant of medicine; rather they desired the good of thecommunity, and their ranks perhaps contained men "such as the bestPHYSICIANS in the Land, need not be ashamed to advice withal." Amongsuch men they particularly praised "the Learned Dr. COTTON MATHER,Fellow of the Royal Society," who scorns to "draw his GENEROUS PENfor his own Vindication, against the many foolish PAMPHLETS that arepointed at him; and who changes not his Temper for all their invidiousCalumnies."

Mather needed vindicating, for those who rose up at the ministry usu-

ally marked him out as the chief ministerial spokesman for inoculation,and the most authoritarian and ignorant. The many charges of deceitmade against him during his defense of Governor Shute clung and werenow repeated, ranging in seriousness from the Courant's hits at his"Equivocations, mental Reservations, and Jesuitical Evasions" to Doug-lass's charges of blatant lying. At the time of the first inoculations, in May,Mather and his supporters had justified the experiments on the groundthat Mather first cautiously sought the counsel of the Boston physicians,and gave them the accounts from the Levant and from his servant Onesi-mus. In the first months of 1722, however, Douglass reviewed these earlierevents and claimed that Mather had set Boylston experimenting beforethe physicians had a chance to meet and that, when consulted, the physi-cians condemned the practice. He also charged that Mather did not sendhim a copy of his letter to the physicians, excluding him from the consul-tations. Mather's reason, he implied, was that he owned the issue of theTransactions which contained the original, Latin, account by Pylarinus,enabling him to see what, to win support, Mather had omitted, mistrans-lated, and falsified. Douglass said that Mather translated as "ill conse-quences," for instance, a Latin word meaning "mortal," suggesting in histranslation that inoculation might have side effects where the Latin ofPylarinus indicated it might be mortal. Mather challenged Douglass toproduce the volume so the accuracy of his rendering could be judged.Douglass refused, with the unpersuasive excuse that concern for the livesof his neighbors obliged him to keep the account out of circulation.

Mather's detractors often struck for his jugular, declaring their hilarityover his many publications. One after another chuckled publicly over his"innate Itch of Writing," derided his want of "Grammar Learning," mirth-fully quoted him against himself, requoted Oldmixon on Magnalia ("soconfus'd in the Form, so trivial in the Matter, and so faulty in the Expres-sion"), flouted without naming those who "have so great an Opinion oftheir own Works, although there is no Beauty nor comeliness in them,"took off his literary posturing: "/ am a Man of Letters. . . but all the illiter-ate Scribblers of the Town (the Leather Apron Men) are proud and vainFellows." Douglass aimed for an equally vulnerable place, ridiculing"Curiosa Americana" as "trivial credulous Stories"—for instance Mather's"Fancy" that pigeons in New England roosted in "some undiscover'dSatellite" of the earth—advising that instead of writing on inoculationMather "write some Observations on a Physical Account of a Phantom hedoes not comprehend." Many others gibed at Mather's D.D. and F.R.S.,for instance explaining that the University of Glasgow had "gratify'd his

Vanity" with a D.D. out of respect for New England, or that he won hom-age by coyly showing himself receptive to it, having, the Courant said,"kept an open Breast to receive Honours of all Sorts." One pamphleteer,cheekily addressing himself to "the Very Reverend and Learned Dr. COT-TON MATHER" (otherwise "CM. D.D. and F.R.S."), travestied Mather'sself-puffery and annoyingly advertised sonship: "The young Gentlemanhas been above Forty Years a celebrated Preacher, and has been so ac-knowledged by Foreign Universities, as no American ever was beforehim, and justly merits the Honour of being a Member of the ROYALSOCIETY: He has a GREAT NAME in distant Lands; and foreign Countrieshave a great Veneration for him."

Mather's membership in the Royal Society, an important item in thesquabble over his qualifications, itself came under suspicion. Doubtsabout it were first raised by John Checkley, an apothecary and self-pro-claimed virtuoso who had studied at Oxford. Although born in Boston ofold Puritan stock, Checkley was an Anglican, and he accused the NewEngland churches of praying to the devil. He had also seen a printed listof Fellows of the Society and noticed, as Mather had noticed earlier, thatit did not include Mather's name. Just before the epidemic, he wrote tothe astronomer Edmund Halley at the Society, asking him to send proof,if any existed, of Mather's membership. It would be, he said, "an Act ofCharity to a disturbed, persecuted . . . Son of our holy Mother Church ofEngland," and would help him defend himself against "these Sons ofStrife, Schism, and Sedition." As the inoculations began, Checkley be-came associated with Douglass and the anti-inoculators of the Courant.

Amidst the winter campaign against the ministry, and before the truthof the matter could be determined, the anti-inoculators publicly ques-tioned the authenticity of Mather's F.R.S. In January the Courant, whilealleging that a supposed account of successful inoculations from Londonhad been invented by Boston inoculators, said the account was no moreto be found in a certain London newspaper "than COTTON MATHERD.D. is to be found in the List of the Royal Society." Douglass recom-mended in a pamphlet that Harvard might disown Mather, "as it seemsthe Royal Society have already done, by omitting his Name in their yearlyLists." Mather wrote to Dr. Woodward asking him to confirm his election,but for some reason received no reply; indeed it took him two full yearsto establish his membership. When Checkley's letter was read before theSociety, in June 1721, an official explained that the membership listsexcluded the names of Fellows who had not been inducted in person. Dr.Waller explained to Mather that the lists were not official rosters; rather,

they were used in voting at yearly elections, and consequently they omit-ted the names of Fellows who could not attend the elections. To silencecharges of impersonation against Mather, the Society decided to investi-gate the case thoroughly. But their goodwill only disclosed a real discrep-ancy. Somehow the minutes of the Society's meetings failed to show thatany vote had ever been taken on Mather's candidacy.

Mather wrote to the Society in May 1723, saying he relied on its justiceto clear him, but would instantly comply should the Fellows intend himto "lay aside my pretensions to be at all related unto that illustriousbody." At the time he wrote he seems to have been unaware that, theprevious month, Dr. Woodward had explained to the Society that Matherhad been nominated for membership a decade ago; the nomination wasto have been voted upon, but somehow the ballot was never taken. AfterWoodward laid out the situation, the Society voted and elected Mather aFellow. There is no question, however, but that Mather's correspondentsin the Society believed, and had led him to believe, that he had beenelected a Fellow in 1713.

This onslaught of diatribe and insinuation against Mather angered hissons. Creasy, despite his own running battle with his father, exposedhimself to danger, Mather recorded, "by a violent and passionate Resent-ment of an Indignity, which a wicked Fellow offered unto me," althoughno details of this incident survive. Sammy, having prospered from inocu-lation himself, defended his father truculently in the Gazette. There hecharged James Franklin and his Courant with trying "to Vilify and Abusethe best Men we have," and threatened that "there is a Number of us whoresolve, that if this wickedness be not stop'd, we will pluck up our Cour-age, and see what we can do in our way to stop it." Sammy's articleappeared anonymously but was quickly identified as his, bringing downon him a half-dozen separate blasts. He was dubbed an "Ill-bred School-Boy," a "young scribbling Collegian," a "Chip of the old Block (by Direc-tion)." One Couranteer quoted a line from his father's Magnalia—"Bloody fishing at Oyster River; and Sad work at Groton"—and observedthat Sammy's readers would feel "There is bloody Fishing for Nonsense atCambridge, and sad Work at the College." Another condemned Sammy's"poysonous and more than Humane Malice" as a lasting reproach to Har-vard, but concluded: "It seems the venomous Itch of Scribbling is Heredi-tary; a Disease transmitted from the Father to the Son."

Although well practiced in receiving comeuppance, Mather had neverbefore been so publicly, relentlessly, and ferociously clawed. Consider-ing his many other nerve-fraying trials at the time and his quick temper,

he acted with remarkable and uncustomary restraint. Privately he railed inhis diary against the "prodigious Nonsense, and Folly, and Baseness evernow and then expressed by the People," and probably supplied somematerial for pamphlets and articles by his defenders. Once he alsostopped James Franklin, the publisher of the Courant, in the street andwith an "Air of great Displeasure," according to Franklin, warned himthat "many Curses" awaited those who made it their business to traduceministers: " The Lord will smite thro' the Loins of them that rise up againstthe Levites. I would have you consider of it, I have no more to say to you."Otherwise Mather this time obeyed his own injunctions to beware ofspeaking intemperately and of spreading false reports. But the silence heimposed on himself in the insulting hullaballoo left him depressed: "By adark and a faint Cloud striking over my Mind," he wrote on December 31,"I begin to feel some Hazards, lest my Troubles, whereof I have a greaterShare than any Minister in the Country, grow too hard for me, and unfitme and unhinge me for my Services."

In this defeated mood, Mather addressed a meeting of ministers onJanuary 16 and implied that he was considering moving his ministry fromBoston. By daily pursuing his desire to Do Good, he said, he had "entirelyruined myself as to this World, and rendered it really too hot a Place forme to continue in." He and his conduct had become subjects of the"most false Representations imaginable," which he might easily haveconfuted but chose to bear in silence. As a result, except among a few ofhis "little Remnant of a Flock," his serviceableness had become crippled."I must employ my Faculties," he told the ministers, "in projections to dogood in more distant Places"; he had "there"—without saying where—"aProspect of some Things, whereof I shall know more hereafter." Promis-ing to cooperate with other ministers in their own designs, he announcedthe cessation of his: '7 have done! I have done! I have done treating youwith any more of my Proposals."

Mather's announcement of his withdrawal from public affairs, and per-haps from Boston itself, failed to convince the anti-inoculators. Even afterhis address, they repeatedly lambasted him for reviling the town in dailyspeech ("Who is it that in common Conversation makes no Bones ofcalling the Town a MOB?") and for claiming that the Courantwas run bya Hell-Fire Club, referring to the notorious London clubs whose membersblasphemously styled themselves God the Son or St. John the Baptist, andunder such names toasted the devil. Douglass accused Mather of beingthe author of a scurrilous pamphlet, published around February, entitledA Friendly Debate; or, A Dialogue Between Academicus; And Sawny &

Mundungiis, Two Eminent Physicians (1722). It does seem probable thatMather collaborated in writing this rather nasty skit, in which the pro-inoculation character Academicus defends Mather as a "CelebratedPreacher" well-read in medicine, the sense and style of whose writing"charm all Competent Judges." In addition to praising Mather, the skitridicules Douglass as a malicious liar and the tobacconist Williams as anilliterate, turning upon them the same caricatures that had earlier beenapplied to Mather. Here it is Douglass who pompously swaggers, de-nouncing the other Boston physicians as "Illiterate Numskulls. . . while, Itraffic to the Metropolis of Literature, and receive ample Communica-tions from the very learned A.S.F.R.S. & M.D." Academicus even darklyhints that Douglass and his supporters conspired in the attempted assassi-nation of Mather. Williams appears as the moronic Mundungus (a slap atthe allegedly cheap quality of his tobacco), who believes that the bestplace to write a treatise on inoculation is a tobacco cellar; or, in hiswretched spelling, that the best place to "rigte tretes on Inokelacion is aThobacko cillery The pamphlet offers as an appendix a dictionary of the" Mundungian Language," and proposes designating Williams Professorof Mundungian at Harvard.

By the time this skit saw print, the epidemic was dramatically waning,nearly revealing its toll. The selectmen ascertained in February that some5889 persons had been infected, of whom 844 had died. By early springthe surrounding controversy had degenerated into almost entirely ad ho-minem screeching. In its issue of March 19-26, 1722, the Courant com-pared Mather to a "peevish Mongrel" and to "Dunghill Cocks" and calledhim, among other things, a "Baboon." Whatever the nadir of catcalling,the most resonant and auspicious epithet appeared in the April 2 Cou-rant, which published the first of a series of satirical essays by JamesFranklin's sixteen-year-old brother, Benjamin. At an even younger age hehad published and written two ballads (no copies of which survive), butthese essays mark his literary debut and offer in the bud the adult Frank-lin's inimitably sly boldness. He created for his pseudonymous narrator ahomely widow at whose house lodges the minister of the town, by whoseassistance she promises to beautify her writings with "a Sentence or twoin the learned Languages, which will not only be fashionable, and pleas-ing to those who do not understand it, but will likewise be very ornamen-tal." By nature the widow is a person of "extensive Charity, and a greatForgiver of private Injuries." But she is likewise endowed with "a naturalInclination to observe and reprove the Faults of others, at which I have anexcellent Faculty." She is called Silence Dogood.

In that devastatingly felicitous name, Franklin summed up what Matherhad become in the minds of many Bostonians, a biddyish seriocomicmartyr eternally vaunting his tiresome benevolence and meekness. Although Silence Dogood did not join the Courant's war on the inoculators, her satires of Harvard and of New England funeral elegies also sumup the effects on Puritan Boston of a half-century of religious bickering,political melees, economic crises, crown politics, and urban growth—theoutspokenness of the rambunctious young, the new spirit of amusement,the diminished force of custom, the declining authority of the ministry.

The selectmen found isolated smallpox cases in the spring, includingtwo in April; one of these, a collarmaker, was buried late at night to avoidthe possibility of infecting people who had recently returned to Boston,having fled town to escape the epidemic. But by mid-May, about a yearafter its outbreak, the epidemic was all but over. Ads in the Courantcalled to gentlemen wishing to "Recreate themselves with a Game ofBilliards." About a hundred regular singers in the New Brick Churchperformed three-part singing from the gallery, a decisive innovation, ineffect a concert of sacred music by trained singers separated from thecongregation.

Ironically for Mather, just as the epidemic ended it meshed with hisongoing troubles over the Howell estate. Out of funds himself, we haveseen, he had tried to satisfy creditors by selling off part of Howell's prop-erty on the Long Wharf, although these sales had first to be approved bythe court and by Lydia's daughter, Katharin, and her husband SamuelSewall, people who "intend my Hurt." In January he had been able togive part of George's warehouse to a creditor to pay off more than £250owing from the estate. In May he again petitioned the court to sell someproperty, but Sewall and his wife, along with their two children Georgeand Nathan Howell (and Lydia and her troublesome niece), were now atthe hospital or pest house on Spectacle Island, where the selectmen hadremoved them on May 15. (By a different account, they were driven thereby a "mobbish Crew" in Boston.) The Sewalls and two other people hadbecome subjects of Boylston's six final inoculations, on May 11 and 12. Avisitor found them supplied with nurses and necessaries, the two chil-dren, aged eight and ten, playing about without complaint, but Katharin'smenstrual schedule thrown off by the inoculation, and the incisions onher and her husband running badly. Under inoculation, Sewall addressedthe court clerks from Spectacle Island, saying he had been informed that

Mather had petitioned to sell some of Howell's real estate; if the courtfound it true that the "Bad Debts'1 made the estate insufficient to satisfycreditors, he said he had no objection to disposing of the property.

These final inoculations apparently stirred rumors and apprehensionsin country towns that "great Numbers" in Boston were again infected,and brought some final salvos against Mather and Boylston. Boylston wasbrought before a town meeting, where he solemnly promised to inocu-late no one else without permission from town authorities. Recalling thatMather had continued his pneumatological experiments even after thewitchcraft trials ended, the Courant scowled that although inoculationseemed to have exited in January it had returned, "like the InfatuationThirty Years ago, after several had fallen Victims to the mistaken Notionsof Dr. M r and other learned Clerks concerning Witchcraft."

Impaled by the Courant as a pontifical bogeyman of the superstitiouspast, Mather had in fact spoken on behalf of the future. Inoculation wasthe first major achievement in preventive medicine. Credit for introduc-ing it can be given to no single person, but Mather and Boylston made thefirst large-scale test of the practice, a critical event in its eventual adop-tion in Europe and America, and in the history of immunology. AlthoughDouglass continued to doubt the safety of the method, with the epidemicover he conceded confidentially to Cadwallader Colden in New York thatsmallpox "seems to be somewhat more favourably received by inocula-tion than received in the natural way." Here if nowhere else Mather hadbeen, unambidextrously, on the right side.

To say that Mather's behavior seems in retrospect heroic leaves openthe question of his motives at the time. Did he blunder ahead on skimpyevidence and knowledge, as the anti-inoculators charged, propelled byarrogance about his ministerial rank, vanity about his accomplishments,pride in his family name, and contempt for the mob? Was he driven, asPerry Miller believed, by neurosis? On the contrary, Mather's every com-ment about smallpox in his published and unpublished works bespeakslong and much pondering of the disease, intelligent trust in Boylston'sgifts, strenuous self-control in a furnace of abuse, and transcending thesea desire that his neighbors live, not die. True, he was not a trained physi-cian. But none of the English colonies had licensing authority, medicalschools, or general hospitals, and many ministers practiced medicine.Indeed a professional physician such as Douglass would likely have doneless than Mather, whose zealous efforts during the epidemic required asmuch moral enthusiasm as medical understanding, and whose scienceand religion nourished each other.

362 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COTTON MATHER

Of course Mather could not escape being what he was, and his dailyconversation and behavior during the crisis may often haw carried provocatively Matherean fire and water. By the same token, part of Matherremained genuinely nurturing and generous. Toward those who riskedinoculation he felt a paternal intimacy: "being all of them indeed myPatients" he wrote, "I would consider them as my Relatives." As thedisease reached unstoppably into several parts of Europe at the end of theyear, he also considered sending an account of the Boston experiments toHolland: "Who can tell, but Hundreds of Thousands of Lives, may besaved by this Communication." Moreover, he consistently gave the realcredit for inoculation to Boylston: "this is the gentleman," he wrote later."When the rest of our doctors did rather the part of butchers or tools forthe destroyer to our perishing people, and with envious and horrid insinuations infuriated the world against him, this worthy man had thecourage and conscience to enter upon the practise." Boylston, Mathersaid generously, and "he alone, with the blessing of Heaven, saved thelives of I think several hundreds; yea, at one time he saved a whole townfrom a fearful desolation."

A year after the epidemic Mather sent the Royal Society a seventeen-page essay on smallpox. In its final blast at Mather, the Courant hadgloated to think that he was sending further accounts to England, for theRoyal Society, they observed, had for its secretary the eminent Dr. JamesJurin, a "Man of solid Judgment" who took pride in detecting "whimsicalgroundless Conceits, credulous Relations, and false or trivial Reason-ings." Again the Courant was wrong, for the Fellows devoted to Mather'sessay, and his other communications, three consecutive meetings. Theirinterest was evidently intensified by the decimating continuance of small-pox in London, where by one count more than two thousand personsdied of the disease in 1722, and more than three thousand in 1723. In hisessay Mather refuted a host of religious and seemingly commonsenseobjections to inoculation. Written in retrospect, his arguments are betterorganized and more assured than in his earlier writings on the subject,based now on " Constant Experience"—a pounding refrain in the essay—and offered with conclusive firsthand experience of the success of inocu-lation "upon both Male and Female, both Old and Young, both strongand weak; Whites and Blacks; on Tawnies, on Women in childbed... onWomen with child, at all Seasons." He also rehearsed for the Society hispersonal role in the epidemic, his initial appeal to the Boston physicians,the dubious satisfaction they and Douglass and Williams might derivefrom "seeing above a Thousand of their Neighbours within a few months

THE PATHS OF THE DESTROYER 363

killed before their eyes," the rage against himself of people who "actuallyseek the Death of the Friends, that only show them how to save theirLives."

But the gist of Mather's message to the Society was in his impassionedbeseeching tone, a plea for the adoption of the method in England andelsewhere. In his final paragraphs he hypothetically interrogated thosewho vehemently opposed inoculation. Had they "no dread at all," hewould ask them, "of being accessory to the Innumerable Deaths, whichmay be, in part, owing to their boisterous Opposition." Was it not boldpresumption in them, he would ask, to make that a sin which God theJudge of all commanded as a duty? Was it not criminal ingratitude to theGod of health to treat with neglect and contempt a method of sparinglives from so great a death, and to multiply abuses on those who thank-fully and obediently embraced His blessing? He answered his questionshimself, hardly sounding like a Silence Dogood:

We, that cry with a loud voice to them, Do yourselves no Harm, and showthem, How to keep themselves from the paths of the Destroyer, are con-scious of nothing, but of a pity for Mankind under the Rebukes of God; Aconcern to see the madness of the people; A desire to have our neighboursdo well; and a solicitude for a Better State of the World. And all the Oblo-quies, and Outrage we suffer, for our Charity, We shall entertain as Perse-cutions for A Good Cause, which will not want its Recompences.

Crackling of Thorns Under a Pot

The two years that followed the smallpox epidemic were the most har-rowing of Mather's life. The departures from him, each more comfortlessthan the one before, began in the fall of 1722. On September 25, fastswere held at the Old North and the other New England churches, toevoke an effusion of God's spirit on the rising generation. Such fasts wereof course frequent, but for Mather the occasion and aftermath of this onewere specially ominous. Indeed giving both the morning and the after-noon sermons, he preached all day, on the text Matt. 9:18, My Daughter iseven now dead. For once this was not literally his daughter nor literally adeath, although it brought little less distress.

Together with its ominous occasion, soon to be explained, the fastmarked the last appearance in his pulpit of Increase Mather. Now eighty-five years old and ailing, he had been treated gently or ignored by theanti-inoculators even though he too had sponsored the new method. Inthe wake of the epidemic he felt so debilitated by age that he had nohopes of preaching another sermon. His gouty right hand had become"Paralitica^ and shook so that he was unable to pen a long discourse.On September 4 he wrote an attestation for his son's Coelestinus (1723)in which he announced that he was every hour looking and longing forheaven. Such announcements were also frequent, of course, but as heperformed during the fast-day ceremonies three weeks later, one congre-gant observed that he prayed "so low that I could hardly hear a word; wasspent." Two days after the fast he fainted, suffering what his son believedwas apoplexy. He revived in a few minutes, but "it so enfeebled him,"Cotton wrote, "that he never went abroad any more."

Other losses beset Mather as Increase lay dying. Unexpectedly he lost

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a different father on December 27, when Governor Shute boarded theSeahorse—the ship that had brought in smallpox—and suddenly left forEngland, having notified no one of his departure. Shute had become"tired and soured," Mather wrote, by opposition from a "little andwretched" but politically powerful clique, old-line frustrated supportersof the private bank who misled the House into producing votes "whichany Governor must count intolerable." These votes included one to cuthis annual salary by £200, but he had wrangled constantly with theHouse, increasingly so around 1722. Mather had counted on his cordialrelation with Shute to restore his political effectiveness. Considering theaccusations Shute might make against New England, perhaps again en-dangering the charter, he not only regretted Shute's departure but alsoexpected "miserable changes, and very heavy chains, to be hastenedupon us."

Mather quickly gained the displeasure of the interim government, un-der acting governor William Dummer (the brother of Jeremiah Dummer).In February 1722, near the end of the epidemic, he had preached on thetext They shall go out of one Fire, and another Fire shall devour them(Ezek. 15:7). Upon Shute's departure, Mather claimed that this referenceto "another Fire" ten months earlier had been a prophecy of the neardissolution of the government and of new threats against the charter byShute's complaints in London. The Courant made sport of his claim andspoofed his breastbeating ("behold a more Cruciating fire is devouringus! Ah sinful people of New-England"). In reply to the paper's continu-ing attack on the ministry, Mather began publishing in the Boston News-Letters, nine-part series of articles on "The State of Religion," a lengthymiscellany of pieces with extracts from his own Advice, To the Churchesof the Faithful (1702). Either thoughtlessly or deliberately, he includedextracts from this earlier work that criticized the "iniquities" of two Eng-lish monarchs and that upbraided the Church of England for harboring "aSet of men, who call themselves Protestants, and yet Assert and Attemptan Ecclesiastical Coalescence with a Foreign Jurisdiction." Outdated as-persions on former English rulers and on the English church were un-likely at this sensitive time to please authorities in London to whomShute was addressing complaints about New England's loyalty. For hiscarelessness or misjudgment, Mather found the new government viewinghim as "a publisher of dangerous libels," forbidding him to continue hisseries, and directing him to "look upon it as a piece of proper modesty, tobe as little as possible in their presence."

Losing money also, Mather remained never-endingly dunned for large

sums he could not pay, and in this, as in little else, now being copied byCreasy. One suit came from the Cambridge minister Nathaniel Appleton,for £264; another from Joseph Baxter of Medrield, for £31H. In both casesMather and Lydia defaulted by not appearing in court, and were orderedto pay the debts. But he seems to have successfully appealed the judgments because of irregularities in the writs, and he retaliated by latersuing Baxter for £l6l owing to the Howell-George estate, the sheriffattaching Baxter's house and land to the value of £200. Creasy, at lastwalking and talking just like his father, was bound over in March 1723 for£3 he owed to a Boston tailor named Foxley Sanderson, ordered to "notdepart without license" but to answer the charge in court. As his fatheroften did, he failed to appear, and the court ordered payment plus dam-ages. In June Creasy was sued twice, once for £8 owing to a Bostonwidow and again for the same amount on a promissory note nearly twoyears old to Increase Gatchel, a dancing master and vendor of "Choicegood Italian Fiddle-Strings." Creasy's debt to Gatchel provides at least apeep at what dismayed Mather about the boy's company. When someyoung men were denied admission to Gatchel's Hanover Street dancingschool, they shattered all of his windows and threatened to kill him.

In these circumstances Mather awaited the loss of his father. Increaselingered helplessly, sometime judged unable to live out the week. Toreturn now to the occasion of the September fast, Mather and many othersattributed Increase's moribund state to his grief over the figurative deathof the figurative daughter. The "daughter" was a minister named TimothyCutler, who two weeks before the fast had closed his public prayers withthe words "and let all the people say, amen." Had Cutler been an Angli-can preaching at King's Chapel his choice of words would have goneunnoticed. But he had been born in Charlestown and educated at Har-vard, and was rector of Yale College; and he had publicly closed the Yalecommencement by thus reciting the words of the Episcopal form of prayer.This was the death. It was as if the president of the United States at theTomb of the Unknown Soldier on the Fourth of July had sung the Inter-nationale.

Mather was aghast at the "treacherous Rector," not only as a founderof Yale but also as a minister. For the day after the infamous commence-ment Cutler had declared, as Samuel Sewall put it tersely, that "there wasno Minister in New England." Cutler, one Yale tutor, and five neighbor-ing Congregational ministers met with the college trustees in the Yalelibrary. Each speaking for himself said he had come to consider his Con-gregational ordination invalid, and to believe that only ordination accord-

ing to the Church of England practice might entitle him to administer theordinances. Three of the defectors were ultimately dissuaded, but thetrustees excused Cutler from the rectorship and he left for England to bereordained as an Anglican. One exultant Anglican contemporary, compar-ing Cutler's rebellion to the overthrow of Governor Andros in 1689,called it the "glorious revolution of the ecclesiastics of this country." Tothe Mathers it represented not merely the climax of long-mounting anti-ministerial sentiment, but also a direct threat. Cutler's passage abroad waspaid by a group of Bostonians who wished him to serve as minister to anew Anglican church which they hoped to erect in Boston, a companionto the chapel that had been built under Andros. As King's Chapel stood inthe South End, they proposed placing the new Anglican church in theNorth End—a perhaps five-minute walk from the Mathers' church.

The tumult brought Mather an offer of the rectorship of Yale. Theinvitation must have been tempting for, a contemporary noted, the "Con-tumelies and unworthy treatment he has met with in Boston would facili-tate his parting with it." But probably his father's grave illness, his con-tinuing litigation, his liking for Boston as the metropolis of America, andthe reluctance of his church to release him decided him against it. WhileBoston newspapers reported Cutler's spectacular departure, however, hereceived letters from several Connecticut ministers lamenting that Yale,though newly founded, should "groan out Ichabod." The ministers con-fided their fear that Cutler's declaration might encourage Anglican prose-lytizing in Connecticut and that many students "leavened" by him mightassume his principles. They sought Mather's advice on checking thesethreats and on handling the issue of apostolic succession. In denying thevalidity of their ordination, the defectors had alleged, and probablywould allege again, that in the past some ministers in Connecticut hadbeen invalidly ordained by laymen; these ministers had acted in laterordinations, presumably rendering them invalid also. The grim situation,they told Mather, demanded a stand: "we must put on our armour andfight, or else let the good old cause, for which our fathers came into thisland, sink and be deserted."

Mather and the other Boston ministers had no intention of watching"the good old cause" sink. To the defenses of Boston Congregationalismwhich now, one Anglican said, "glutted" every town in Connecticut,Mather contributed three anonymous works. When promoting his Maximsof Universal Piety he had not envisioned an apostate like Cutler, muchless his apostacy coinciding with the death of Increase Mather, and whatthat meant to the survival of the world of the Fathers. In his rejoinders

Mather dropped the gladsome ecumenical language of the Universal Religion, already toned-down to exclude Arians, and took up the old bludgeoning idiom of the covenanted people. Cutler and the others, he saidwere "Degenerate Offspring" of their infinitely better fathers, treacherous "Sons of New England" who would "assist the Common Enemy,papistical "Cudweeds" who cast indignity on the "Leaders of the Flockthat followed our Saviour Into this Wilderness." Especially had they betrayed their fathers, and were collaborating with Rome, in fussing over layordination, "that vile, senseless, wretched whimsey of an uninterruptedsuccession." No longer calling on Congregationalists to join godly Epis-copalians at communion, he now emphasized that the New Englandchurches had been "Planted on the very Design of withdrawing from theEpiscopal Impositions." While he recommended patiently affording thedefectors time to rethink their views, he said he saw no reason why, asthey had disowned their ordination, their flocks might not disown them.

Increase reacted to these events, Mather wrote, with "too extreme aconcern of his Mind." But atop his mental distress, which included delir-ium and bouts of forgetfulness, Increase also suffered exhausting bodilyinfirmities. A torturous hiccup sometime seized him for a week or twowithout stop, then intermitted, but returned with such violence as tocorrode his diaphragm. He was also wracked by stones, which had firstafflicted him at the time of his conversion, when he was fifteen. Cottonhad probably witnessed the sore effects as a child, when a violent fit ofstone struck his grandfather Richard Mather at Increase's house in 1699,the prelude to his death a week later. Cotton worried that he might die ofthe ailment himself. Increase's pain from the stone was excruciating be-yond the power of fortitude to manage. Once Samuel Sewall stopped atIncrease's house and heard him cry out, "Pity me! Pity me!"

Helpless to pluck out the unremitting scalding in Increase's body,Cotton tried to comfort his father spiritually. Increase was troubled by thestate of his soul, and "in the Minutes of the Darkness wherein he lay thusfeeble and sore broken" Cotton wrote, "he sometimes let fall expressionsof some Fear lest he might after all be Deceived in his Hope of the FutureBlessedness." Yet he resisted his own doubts, often calling to Christ,promising to mention His righteousness and His alone. On February 19he told Cotton, joyfully, "/ now see, that I was deceived, when I fear'dLest I might be deceived." Scarce allowing Cotton to leave his room with-out some prayer, he also had his grandsons transcribe the account he hadmade in adolescence, seventy years earlier, of his conversion, and he readthe relation consolingly. Whether these grandsons included Creasy is un-

known, but Samuel Sewall thought it must have been "pleasant" to In-crease to live to have Sammy, in the summer of 1723, graduated fromHarvard.

Appropriately, Increase's final three days on earth began with a pre-monition. Coming out of a "Dark Minute," as Cotton recounted it, hesaid: "It is now Revealed from Heaven to me, That I shall quickly, quick-ly, quickly be fetch 'd away to Heaven, and that I shall Die in the Arms ofmy Son." After this he kept calling for Cotton, who did what he could tostrengthen him. Near noon on Friday, August 23, with Increase visiblynear death, Cotton said to him: "Sir, The Messenger is now come to tellyou; This Day thou shalt be in Paradise. Do you Believe it, Sir, and Re-joice in the Views and Hopes of it?" Increase said "/ do! I do! I do!" anddied in his arms. The Westfield poet-minister Edward Taylor wrote that"Cutler's Cutlary gave th'killing Stob." But the autopsy performed onIncrease's body revealed a polyp on his bladder and six large gravellystones, some over an inch around. Only one of them, an observer said,"would have been Enough to have tortured a Giant to Death."

Mather had always seen his father as a celebrity, and felt proud of thehonors accorded Increase at his funeral, "a Greater Funeral," he wrote,"than had ever been seen for any Divine, in these (and some Travellers atit, said, in any other) parts of the World." Increase had earned the hom-age, too: through his charter agency he had irrevocably transformed thelife of New England, whose purity he had labored to maintain from hisconspicuous pulpit for sixty years. The pallbearers thus included actinggovernor Dummer, John Leverett as president of Harvard, his old friendSamuel Sewall, and Benjamin Colman, aided by twelve "under bearers"from the North Church. Before the pall walked 160 students from Har-vard; behind came a "vast number of Followers," in Sewall's description,including fifty ministers—a good part of the entire ministry of New Eng-land. As an also vast number of spectators looked on from the streets ofBoston, the procession bore the coffin around the North Church, pastIncrease's house, up Hull Street, to Copp's Hill, the cemetery of theNorth Church. There Increase was buried in the Mather family tomb nearhis first wife, Maria Cotton.

Increase had drawn up a will four years earlier. His soul, he wrote, hadbeen given to God in Christ more than sixty years ago; his goods, excepthis library, amounted to little. "It has been thought that I have bags byme," he explained, "which is a great mistake. I have not twenty pounds insilver, or in Bills." He specified that his black servant Spaniard should notbe sold, but given his liberty and "esteemed a Free Negro." His widow

apparently received nothing, their prenuptial contract providing that nei-ther should figure in the other's estate. To his son Samuel, preaching inEngland, he left only a fourth of his library, noting that Samuel had hon-ored his father's name but that more had been spent on Samuel's education than on the other children's, and that Samuel had gained a largeestate through marriage. Another fourth of his library he gave to his "Fa-therless grandson" Mather Byles, the son of his daughter Elizabeth, re-questing that Cotton see to the young orphan's education; that the boywould not add to his son's financial burdens, he left him all his clothingexcept a chamblet cloak. To his grandson Sammy he left his three foliovolumes of Piscator's Commentary; to Creasy, his other grandson andnamesake, he left nothing.

What little money and few goods remained Increase gave to Cotton.This included his pendulum watch, pendulum clock, silver tankard, andchamblet cloak, as well as all his manuscripts and half his library, desir-ing that the latter not be sold. Had he any great estate, he added, hewould have given the greater part to Cotton. For Cotton was, he said, "agreat comfort to me from his childhood having been a very dutiful sonand a singular blessing both to his Father's Family and flock."

Considering that Increase had at last fulfilled his lifelong threat ofabandonment, that he had reinforced through long and daily contact hisunusually potent role as his son's model, critic, confidant, and rival, andthat the two men had been for more than forty sometimes momentousyears close colleagues, links in a dynasty, Mather's feelings about hisfather's death must have surged at him from every side, a swirl of compet-ing pains. Most unfortunately, however, Mather's diaries for the periodare missing, his extant letters scarcely mention the event, and what re-mains of his reaction is anticlimactic and uninformative. The lost docu-ments may conceivably have recorded his sorrow. Or Mather may havebeen steeled against his father's death by repetition, Increase having ineffect been dying all his life. He may also have been distracted by hismany other problems and keeping his vow of silence. Or his feelings mayhave been too deeply delicate to submit for public scrutiny, or raced sofast as to outrun expression. For whatever reasons, his surviving remarksabout his father's death are surprisingly indirect and dispassionate.

Two days after Increase's death, as pulpits throughout New Englandfilled with mourning sermons, Mather again entered the North Church.There, thirty-eight years earlier, he had heard his father preach his ordi-nation sermon and had felt Increase's hand laid upon him, symbolicallypassing on the ministerial succession. What he delivered, however, was a

formal sermon on the character of a Good Man, one who prays much,contrives good, and spreads truth—a routine sermon he might havepreached on the death of any other minister. He did offer an adulatorysketch of Increase's life, and toward the end he did comment that "thisHouse is this Day become a Bochim; and we are a Congregation of Weep-ers." But he made no attempt to stand forth as an example of resignation.And he well knew that his rather tidy and low-keyed sermon could not betaken for a tribute to his father: "in this very great Auditory," he acknowl-edged, "there will not be One that will approve of my Performance. Theywill all to a Man complain, That I have spoke too Little." He promised tomake amends by writing his father's biography, but the intention hardlyseems to justify or account for the sermon's unexpected impersonality.The 239-page biography he published the next year does give a colorfullyfull and historically valuable account of Increase's life (on which thisbiography has often drawn), and makes clear Mather's near worshipfulsense of his father's greatness, and his indignation over (and identifica-tion with) his father's ill treatment by others. Yet despite its title, Paren-tator is not a life of his father but, as he refers to Increase, of "Mr. Math-er" a famous but misappreciated New England minister. The biographysays virtually nothing of their personal bond.

Mather may have disclosed some of his feelings, indirectly, in thewholly detached sermon he preached three weeks after Increase's death,on the suggestive text God, our Father (Phil. 4:20, the same text on whichIncrease had preached after the death of his own father, Richard Mather).Addressing himself to all those who have lost fathers, he explored thedoctrine of Adoption, by which God makes all believers His children.The intended audience and the subject themselves intimate a renewal ofchildlike feelings of helplessness in Mather, and need for a substitutefather. He did not mention Increase, but something of the inner strain ofdenial perhaps shows in his opening remark that the doctrine defies ex-pression by the "stammering Tongue of a sinful and shallow mortal."Read in this way, many of Mather's seemingly impersonal comments con-vey resisted feelings of vulnerability and diminishment following In-crease's death, and residual resentment over his failings as a parent. As ifhe felt somehow safer when Increase was alive, he instructed those whofound themselves fatherless to think, "I have a Father, that will providefor me, protect me, advise me, uphold me, take my part against my Ene-mies." His sense of capability always needing to be authenticated by theapproval of Increase (and others), he also wrote as if his father's deathhad left hollow the meaning of his being a minister, a doctor of divinity, a

Fellow of the Royal Society: "perhaps the biggest and bravest of themappears but an Empty Title; well, But This thy Title: A Child of God! C)Glorious Title! Nothing, Nothing in this World can equal It." If Matherfelt littler in his father's absence, however, part of him also rememberedthat Increase could be present but unavailable and nearly unpleasable. Inconsoling other orphans for the loss of their earthly fathers, he remindedthem that the Everlasting Father still lives, "A Father who give[s] me infinitely better than ever any earthly Father did. ... A Father infinitely fullerof pity."

What few other clues to Mather's state of mind can be dug from hisother works of the period point to longings for substitute, supernaturalguardianship and for contact beyond the grave. In the angelological tractCoelestinus (1723), written during Increase's last illness, he observedthat "one such significant Friend, as a Good Angel concerned for us, willsignify more than ... if all the Friends in the World refuse to be anyfurther concerned for us." He seems also to have hoped for, but greatlyfeared, converse with Increase's ghost. Several people in his neighbor-hood, he said, had been visited by spirits of the dead and he may himselfhave been visited by the spirit of his brother Nathanael. He did not regardcommunications with the dead as unlawful, nor to be confused with nec-romancy, since the departed elect are the "Nobler Members of the Fam-ily, which we in a Lower State belong unto. And they may be thus con-vers'd withal." Thus in the published version of the sermon he preachedimmediately after Increase's death, he depicted Increase replying to aseries of questions from "the Courts of the Lord," that is, from heaven. Yetin some other works of this time he warned that visitations by spirits ofthe dead can be even more disturbing than angelic visitations. Seeingangels, he remarked in The Lord-High-Admiral (1723), puts people "inFrightful Sweats; Their Hair stands; their Blood runs cold; They are al-most scared out of their Wits. . . . 'Tis rather more so, when the Ghosts ofthe Dead visit us, and show themselves unto us."

Whatever else Increase's death meant to Mather, his daily existence ashe neared his sixtieth year, his way of life, would never again be thesame. On December 18 his father's successor, and soon perhaps his ownalso, was installed at the North Church—Joshua Gee. Raised under theMathers' ministry, Gee was respected as a learned man of powerful intel-lect, but also considered indolent; no Increase Mather, he never devel-oped his potential. The carefully conducted installation was widely takenas reasserting the validity of Congregational ordination against Cutler andthe other apostates. One spectator wrote that "if I had been wavering

about the validity of our ordination before, I should have been then fixedand established by the solemnity and religious devotion visible in allparties at the sacred action." Cotton Mather delivered the charge, Colmanand other ministers imposed hands.

On January 19, Mather entered blotchily into his assiduously kept andusually neat church records the baptism of a man named James Cox. Itwas the first baptism administered by Gee, "And indeed," Cotton wrote,"the First, that has been administered, by any Hand, but that of Mather(Father and Son,) in the old North Church, for more than half an hundredyears together."

Other vexations and crises left Mather little time to mourn. Withinabout six weeks after Increase's death, the "miserable apostate" returnedfrom England, where he had been awarded the degree of S.T.D. by bothOxford and Cambridge universities and had been ordained a priest. OneBostonian reported that when news came that Cutler had been made"Doc Devinity," three Boston Anglicans were "so zealous to tell docmather that they called him out of bed to acquaint him with it."

Shortly after arriving, Cutler preached at King's Chapel, railing againstCongregational ordination and, by one account, sparing not to "Belch itout That we have no Ministers but two or Three." On December 29 hepresided over the first large meeting held in the new Church of Englandchapel in the North End. This formidable new building, following on theerection of Queen Anne's Chapel at Newbury in 1713 and St. Michael's atMarblehead in 1714, made visible how substantially the Church of Eng-land had penetrated once purely Congregational territory. About seventyfeet long and built of brick, many of its features inspired by Wren'schurches in London, the chapel was originally thirty-five feet high, exclu-sive of the wooden spire that was added later, from which were hung thelanterns that set off Paul Revere's ride. It was not merely the outstandingchurch building in the North End, but the first great Georgian church inAmerica.

Mather usually shrugged off the activities of Anglican ministers inNew England. When any arrived, he either made a show of welcomingthem under the Universal Maxims of Piety, scorned New Englanders whoflocked to them as "ignorant, vicious, contemptible people," or dis-missed them as debauched rakes. His nonchalance could be justified bysuch recent cases as that of James McSparran, a Scots Presbyterian whohad been invited to settle as pastor in Bristol, Rhode Island. Mather urged

against his settlement because of some alleged misconduct, and wroteabroad to inquire after his credentials. McSparran offered to go abroadhimself to secure proof but, like Cutler, returned with Anglican ordina-tion, and started a Church of England parish in Rhode Island. In 1721 awoman named Frances Davis testified under oath that McSparran hadstayed at her parents' house and lured her to his bedroom. She said "hewould have me sit on the Bed, but I said I would not, but he put his Handround my Waste, and shoved me along, and set me down on the Bed, andthen sat by Me, and pulled me down on the Bed." This "grievous wolf,"as Mather called him, also tried to take off her petticoat and to feel herbelly but succeeded only in clutching her leg as high as her knee.McSparran knew, the woman testified, that she resented his behavior, andtold her "that if I came to Naraganset I should not come Home a Maidagain." In light of such cases Mather disdained protesting the presence ofAnglican ministers, reasoning that protest would induce the English Di-ocesan to send over abler ministers, while those already in America "havegenerally been such Ignorant wretches, and such debauched and fin-ished villains, that, like the rattlesnakes in our country, they carry withthem what warns and arms our people against being poisoned withthem."

The mediocre success of the new chapel in the North End at first boreout Mather's strategy of allowing Church of England ministers to con-demn themselves. Cutler himself estimated his listeners at about fourhundred; Mather ordinarily preached to four times that number. Mathergloated over a report to him from a woman who had attended Cutler'schurch that "it was amazing to see, how few there, and what a sort ofshabby people they were." Cutler also quarreled bitterly with his SouthEnd Anglican colleague, the lecturer at King's Chapel, the Rev. HenryHarris, who suspected that Cutler's conversion was insincere and chieflyinspired by "the prospect of a new Church in this Town." Cutler in turnblasted him as "in Lying and Villainy... a perfect over match for anydissenter."

But Mather soon discovered that Anglican infighting and the size ofthe Queen's Chapel congregation were no measures of Cutler's zeal.With something of the convert's combativeness, Cutler renounced hisbeginnings (Cambridge he described as a "Snotty7 Town of the SameName" as English Cambridge) and saw himself as the vanguard of a thor-ough anglicanizing of New England. Believing it would "never be w7ell"until Harvard became "an Episcopal College," he prosecuted a claim tobe admitted by right, as a "teaching elder" of Boston, to a place on the

Harvard Board of Overseers. The Overseers rejected the claim, whichhowever created a sensation. He proseletyzed outside Boston too,—forinstance, conducting Church of England services in Scituate.

Mather later felt some of the apostate's "killing Stob" himself when,in a real show of force, Cutler managed to prevent the calling of a Con-gregational church synod. In May 1725, Mather addressed a memorial tothe General Court, in behalf of a convention of ministers. The ministers,he wrote, had observed a "great and Visible Decay of Piety" in New Eng-land, had recalled their ancestors' use of synods to "recover And Estab-lish the Faith and order of the Gospel," and now wished to convenerepresentatives of the several churches to consider the evils that had pro-voked the "Judgments of Heaven." No general synod had been held inNew England for more than forty-five years, since before the loss of thecharter, and behind Mather's airing of the musty covenantal idiom of theFathers, Anglicans correctly sensed insecurity. The calling of the synodwas partly meant as a display of undying tribal solidarity, to squelch en-thusiasm for the further spread of the Church of England. The outspokenAnglican John Checkley, who had first questioned Mather's membershipin the Royal Society, wrote that the synod was intended to halt the build-ing of new Anglican churches, and might end in creating "something likethe solemn League and Covenant, to prejudice the rising Generationagainst the Church."

The Council approved Mather's memorial, and sent it to the House forconcurrence. But Cutler and Samuel Myles (rector of King's Chapel) ad-dressed a vigorous counter memorial to the House and Council. Basicallythey charged that in calling for a synod, Mather's memorial undertook tospeak for all New England, and thus treated the Church of England as if itdid not exist. They also argued that because by royal authority the Ameri-can colonies were annexed to the Diocese of London, it would be unduti-ful to the king and inconsistent with the rights of the Bishop of London tocall the synod before knowing the king's pleasure. Both the Council andthe House rejected this memorial as containing "indecent reflections"and "groundless insinuations." Unabashed, Cutler and Myles then com-plained directly to the Bishop of London, who brought the matter beforethe Lords Justices. Opinion in London was that, if called, the synod wouldreach decisions hostile to the English church, and would encourage En-glish Dissenters to propose a synod as well, putting them in competitionwith the established church. The attorney general and solicitor generaldecided the issue on legal grounds, giving it as their opinion that synodscannot lawfully be called without royal license, and that the ministers'

application through Mather to the provincial legislature was a contemptof the king. The synod never met.

Mather professed to consider Anglican fears of the proposed synod"Unaccountable!" But surely he found nothing obscure in this plain demonstration of the loosening Congregational grasp on New England's religious life, any more than in the addition soon after to Cutlers fine newchurch, so near his own, of a large green curtain trimmed with scarlet andwhite lace, and an altarpiece painted with cherubs and festoons.

While looking for Cutler to shame himself, Mather also eyed warilythe complaints being made in London by the angered Governor Shute,which might risk the charter. Jeremiah Dummer wrote home that someLords of the Regency, after hearing Shute's case against the House, de-clared that Massachusetts was again "dancing to the Old tune" of sedi-tion, and under any government but Shute's mild one would be judgedguilty of treason. Mather and Colman, probably to cool Shute off, tried toenlist the Boston ministers around November 1723 in composing anaddress to him, but it seems that the greater number of them provedunwilling.

In Boston Mather's support of Shute gained him "the utmost rage ofthe satanic party," he said, including "attempts made upon my very life,"details of which are unknown. But at the same time he had lost favor withShute himself. The governor's unannounced departure to make represen-tations against Massachusetts in London had apparently left Mather uncer-tain whether to offer public prayers for his voyage; as the Courant point-ed out, to pray for Shute's voyage amounted to praying for the destructionof Massachusetts. Mather thus learned that Shute had struck him from"the list of his Friends" because of a "mis-report" to him "of my being ata loss how to mention his voyage in our public prayers, immediately uponhis very sudden withdraw from us." Shute probably was not pleased ei-ther by an earlier "misreport" that Mather had called his brother, LordBarrington, an Arian (which Mather denied, saying, "I never spoke it,never wrote it, never thought it"). Obviously hoping he retained enoughof Shute's esteem to persuade him not to hazard the charter, he wrote tothe governor himself in early December, with somewhat timorous formal-ity—the tone, compared with the bonhomie of his earlier letters to Shute,itself registering estrangement. He told the governor: "I cannot wish toYour Excellency the infelicity of ever being the instrument, or so much asthe occasion, of bringing any hardships upon a people (be the faults of asmall party among them what they will!) whose ancestors deserved andpurchased all the liberties their charters have engaged unto them."

Mather's fidelity to Shute produced a new scandal, and friction be-tween Mather and Jeremiah Dummer. The House, wanting to defend it-self in London against Shute's complaints, appointed Elisha Cooke, Jr., aspecial agent to appear at court to explain its side of the quarrel. Cookewas of course Shute's personal and political enemy, the man he had nega-tived as Speaker. The choice also displeased Dummer, the regular Massa-chusetts agent, who disliked Cooke and his colleagues. Cooke's support-ers in Boston, presumably, now undertook to discredit Dummer andMather. Around March 1724, Mather discovered that his study had been"knavishly and c—kishly riffled," he said, and six pounds of money sto-len ("enough to bear the expense of several tankards"). Also stolen was aletter to Mather from Dummer, criticizing Cooke, who was now his co-agent. Somehow the letter turned up in Cooke's hands. Copies of it werespread around Boston, with malicious comments, and with insinuationsthat Mather had himself released the letter and betrayed Dummer.

Mather denied this angrily. "I would much sooner have died," hesaid, "than have been guilty of so vile an Action, as to betray a Friend, andto his Enemies what he writes unto me." Dummer seems to have dis-trusted his denial, however thumping. He wrote him a rather Mathereanletter, of unqualified exoneration followed by qualification. He was sure,Dummer said, that the letter came to Cooke "not with your privity"; buthe added, "A little thing can't efface the remembrance of the many happyhours I have formerly pass'd in your Company. I say this in case you hadinadvertantly given out my letter." As Mather put it, Dummer "rejectedme as well as my Apologies" and looked on him as a "Sinner."

Mather may well have been innocent, for around the same time thestudy of his friend Samuel Penhallow was also rifled, and a letter to himfrom Mather was also shown around. Sometime later, too, Dummer hadCooke to dinner at his London apartment and asked him how he came bythe letter, but Cooke refused to say. When Dummer added that he hadsince written only one other letter to Mather, Cooke replied with a sneerthat he had that letter too at home. The espionage anyway proved unnec-essary, for Cooke's agency failed. Shute successfully defended himself onpoints of law in official hearings, and the House was forced to accept an"explanatory charter" declaring the governor's power to negative thechoice of Speaker. Having won his fight against the House, Shute, despiterecurrent rumors to the contrary, never returned to New England.

As he had done when similarly under fire during Dudley's administra-tion and the smallpox epidemic, Mather resolved once again to withdrawas far as he could from political affairs. He had become disillusioned with

Shute and Lord Barrington, his two former friends, "the Two GentlemanBrothers (I wish I could say, on all accounts, Gentlemen,) whose oddusages of me, have made me to be . . . Ashamed of my Hope, concerningthem." On April 4, shortly after the exposure of Dummer's letter, heturned down a dinner invitation from the acting governor, explaining thatthe government's having silenced his pen a year earlier, and his publicnotoriety, had forced him to retire "from the old Familiarities of the Ta-ble, as well as other Freedoms, which I once been used unto." He se-cluded himself not from imagined slights, he emphasized, but because ofdejection born in real difficulty. His withdrawal "may be smiled at asVapour; yet this Vapour will appear to be Reason unto one under thepower of it; having at the same time a thousand other more heavy Loadsupon him."

The load now included such nervewracking demands against the es-tate that he feared for his health and sanity. The harassments during hisseven-year ordeal with the administration had been "beyond all expres-sion miserable." But the current demands against him, for sums he reallydid not owe, seemed large enough to ruin him. And there seemed nopossibility of avoiding the ruin. He felt bitterly deserted as well: "TheFriends who might be capable of helping me, keep at a Distance fromme, and appear to do little for me. The Relatives on whose Account, Ihave brought all this Distress upon myself, treat me like Monsters ofIngratitude." Even God seemed to have turned from him, stirring worri-some thoughts of atheism: "My continual Cries to God, all this while,

seem to have no Answer, but a Growth of my Confusions And from

the strange Dispensations that I meet withal, sometimes hideous Tempta-tions to Infidelity are shot in upon me." The only prospect of a way out,he believed, lay in wiping himself out, "selling all my Goods to pay theDebts, and breaking up my Family." He called out to the Redeemer, "Isink, I sink; Oh! Reach out thy Hand, and save me!"

Worst of all, Mather's predicament had a revelatory effect. Like someprecipitant giving body to invisible crystals in a solution, it gave shape towhat had imperceptibly constituted his life, bringing before his view thehidden but all suffusing pattern of his existence. He was a man whose lotit was, he could now see, to have been denied his very self. He was a manwhose unique fortune it was to be taken precisely for what he was not. Tofind himself near ruin for paying the debts of people who despised himwas not incidental to his life but of its pervasive substance, a life that hadbeen somehow turned inside out, where reality and appearance wereperversely transposed. How much had he done for sailors, in sermons, inprayers, in books, in projections?

AND YET, there is not a Man in the world, so Reviled, so slandered, socursed, among the Sailors.

How much had he done for the salvation and comfort of blacks?

AND YET, some, on purpose to affront me, call their Negro's, by the Nameof Cotton Mather, that so they may with some Shadow of Truth, assertCrimes as committed by one of that Name, which the Hearers take to beme.

How much had he done for the profit and honor of the female sex, espe-cially in publishing biographies of holy women?

AND YET, Where is the Man, whom the female Sex have spit more of theirVenom at? I have cause to Question, whether there are twice Ten in theTown, but what have at some time or other spoken basely of me.

Had he not kept a catalogue of all his relatives, and each week devisedsome good for one or another of them?

AND YET, Where is the Man, who has been tormented with such mon-strous Relatives?Job said, / am a Brother to Dragons.

Had he not written many books to advance piety and promote the King-dom of God, more than three hundred and thirty of them?

AND YET, I have had more Books written against me; more Pamphlets totraduce me, and reproach me, and bely me, than any man that I know inthe World.

For pages in his diary Mather extended this ranting catechism of bewil-dering misperceptions of his being, and bewilderingly mean rewards forhis services. He had comforted his parents "AND YET" received the con-trary of comfort from his children; had made "Applications without Num-ber" for the country's interest "AND YET" been loaded with calumny andaversion; had labored for the reputation of Harvard "AND YET" it showedhim more contempt than if he were "the greatest Blockhead that evercame from it"; had done more to vindicate the reputation of Scotlandthan perhaps any other Englishman "AND YET" no Englishman had beenso defamed by Scots tongues and pens; had hardly ever, for fifty years,neglected to say something useful in company "AND YET" his companywas as little sought as that of any minister he knew.

Near the end of his list of "Dark Dispensations" Mather returned inhis diary to the most oppressive and urgent of them, the one that mightruin him:

XUl.Wbat bas a gracious Lord given me to do, in Alms, and in Disbursements on pious Uses? For whole Years together, not one Day has passedme, in which I have not been able to say, that I have done something thatWay.

AND YET, tho' I am strangely provided for, yet I am a very poor Man Ihave not a Foot of Land upon Earth. Except a Library and a little Housebold Stuff, I have nothing upon Earth. And this also I am now offeringunto my Creditors, to satisfy for Debts, whereof I never did myself owe aFarthing. My very Library, the Darling of my little Enjoyments, is demand-ed from me. . . .

To perfect the mind-fuddling sting of these brutal paradoxes, Mather ob-served, even his constant preaching about affliction as God's chastise-ment for sin had been inverted and turned against him. People pointed athim as by far the most afflicted minister in all New England—and in-ferred he must consequently be the greatest sinner, "and are pretty Arbi-trary in their Conjectures on my punished Miscarriages." In searching forconsolation he told himself that Christ had taken possession of him, andthat he had been granted a strong persuasion of a future state, to whichwould be postponed his receipt of "the whole Harvest of my mean Stud-ies to glorify God."

About two weeks after Mather poured out this long entry7 came themoment he had dreaded all his life. The exact circumstances are un-known, but to him they seemed final. "I must either be lodg'd in thePrison," he wrote on April 2, "or fore'd into a private Withdraw." Fromthe earliest days of his ministry he had taken notice of sorry examples ofmen, including his own uncle John Cotton, who through lust, avarice, orother personal weakness had disgraced their sacred vocation, and he hadprayed often to be spared such a fate, the more fervently because of hishonored family. But it seemed evident to him now that he had not beenspared, or that others had dragged him down, and that his role as a minis-ter was ended. Preparing to take the virtually unthinkable step, "a stepwhich much more than all New England will ring of," he had decided tofind by God's direction and by hard study the most important and affect-ing things to say in taking "my Farewel of the Flock withal."

The same evening, however, Mather received a "marvellous Appear-ance of GOD my SAVIOUR!" When feeling doomed he had often thoughtacrimoniously of the friends who might have eased his situation but hadfailed to come forward, "like Persons in a Maze and a doze." That eve-ning, however, four leading members of his congregation, "men full ofPrudence and Goodness," visited him. Awakened to the extremity of his

situation, they kindly rebuked his anxiety, and promised they would im-mediately undertake to extricate him, "and that without any furtherThought of mine."

But there was Lydia . . . and Creasy. On April 7, five days after Matherwas visited by concerned members of his flock, he wrote in his diary:Misera mea Conjux in Paroxysmos illos vere Satanicos, a quibus perAnnos quosdam fuerit plerumque Liberata (Vel ego Saltern Liberatus)iam rursus delapsa—My poor wife has now again lapsed into those trulySatanic paroxysms from which for some years she had been for the mostpart free (or at least I was free).

Exactly what set Lydia off is uncertain, but for months the householdatmosphere must have been explosively irritable. A proud woman, shecannot have been pleased by Mather's financial condition, which appar-ently reduced him to accepting doles; in March he had thanked his land-lord for "obliging presents for the support of my family." Nor can shehave enjoyed the notoriety. Feeling criminal, he seems to have declinedinvitations to preach at other churches, and in turning down a dinnerinvitation he explained that his "well-known circumstances of prosecu-tion to restore what I took not away, rendered it a disgrace unto such atable, as well as unto any pulpit, for me to make my appearance there."The presence in the house of Lydia's niece cannot have made its moodless touchy, for Mather thought her contemptible, "a monstrous Liar anda very mischievous Person, and a sower of Discord, and a Monster ofIngratitude." Lydia had already given signs of her discontent, venting an"unreasonable and implacable Aversion" toward Hannah, the daughterwho had been severely burned during infancy, "My dear, dear Nancy; aChild of so many Afflictions all her Days"; Mather weighed finding anotherhome for Nancy to board in. The immediate cause of Lydia's renewedoutbursts on April 7, however, may have been a fresh suit brought againstMather. During the April court session, an executor of the estate of theBoston merchant Joseph Buckley sued Mather and his former attorney(and son-in-law) Daniel Willard for debts contracted in 1717, of £444. Itwas probably the largest single suit Mather ever faced. He again did notappear in court to answer and was ordered to pay £209 plus court costs.

Lydia's new paroxysms came with volcanic violence, and Matherfound them unbearable. Lydia began spewing, he wrote, absurdissimis acsordidissimis mutitur Stomachationibus—the most absurd and obsceneoutbursts of splenetic anger, blowing her top. Believing that her "Insan-

iae" had been ordained by Christ to arouse his prayers and test his patience, he lay his troubles before God. Creasy was away again at sea, butLydia's "horrid, froward, malicious Disposition" now also began ragingover Sammy too. He prayed not only for patience but also for protection.

Virtually week by week, as happened five years earlier, Lydia's assaultsalternated with wooings, but of an ardor, erotic in Mathers description ofit, on the same order as her reviling. Thus two weeks after Lydia's initialparoxysms he wrote, in Latin, that not only was everything at home againcalm and cheerful, but also that/ere Extatico erga me Amore, condita—Lydia behaved with an almost frenzied show of love toward him. OnlyMather's account of these episodes survives, leaving it unclear whetherLydia suffered from a clinically severe emotional disturbance or was onlyfed up with Mather's behavior. At his best he could act needlingly, at hisworst impossibly. And his letters and diaries for the period groan with adull self-disgust, self-deprecating remarks about his uselessness, dejectedplaints that his ministry is finished. Whether he behaved at home in thisblack mood is unknown. But in his description of them, Lydia's ravingssometimes seem no more than extreme versions of conduct he had oftenreceived from, and often provoked in, others. Indeed his chronicle ofLydia's emotional rhythms seems loosely geared to times when a freshlawsuit was pressed or an older one resolved.

Whatever the case, Mather found Lydia's metamorphoses unaccount-able: tarn inexplicabilis est conjugis meae ad Extrema se Vertentis incer-tissima mutabilitas!—how inexplicable is the unpredictable changeable-ness of my wife directing herself ad extrema. Two weeks after the househad become calm and peaceful he was again writing, Familia mea perfurentis uxoris insaniam rursus misere distracta ac turbata—My house-hold is again wretchedly torn asunder, and thrown into disorder throughthe madness of my raging wife. But, the following week, serenity againand ardor: mea conjux in mei non tantum Amorem flagrantissimum, sedat Admirationem raptaf— Lydia was enraptured not only with the mostflagrant love for him but also with the most extreme admiration. On thedownside of these swings Mather prayed for the safety of himself and hischildren; on the upswings he resolved to be patient, and tried to helpLydia by strewing their conversation with holy thoughts. Her ardor duringher recoveries guiltily excited him. While trying to maintain her calm andto restore their marriage with soothing displays of love, he warned him-self not to let his mollifying grow too intense, presumably sexual: "O! Letall possible Purity accompany it, and let me watch against all such inordi-nate Affection, as may grieve the holy Spirit of GOD!"

A historically fascinating, if not very revealing, glimpse of Mather's

condition at this time is provided by Benjamin Franklin. Now twentyyears old, the recent creator of Silence Dogood returned to Boston fromhis first trip to Philadelphia in late April or early May, visited Mather inhis library, and later recounted their leavetaking in his Autobiography.Mather showed him a shortcut out of the house, through a narrow passagecrossed by an overhead beam:

We were all talking as I withdrew, he accompanying me behind, and Iturning partly towards him, when he said hastily, "Stoop, stoop!" I did notunderstand him till I felt my head hit against the beam. He was a man thatnever missed any occasion of giving instruction, and upon this he said tome: "You are young, and you have the world before you; STOOP as yougo through it, and you will miss many hard thumps."

Franklin remarked that he often thought of Mather's useful advice whenhe saw misfortune brought on people by their "carrying their heads toohigh." Mather had begun looking up himself, however. By early June, notlong after Franklin's visit, he believed he saw some relief ahead: "I amnot without very great Hopes, that the Designs of Satan to discompose myFamily and prejudice my Ministry, are gloriously and eternally defeated."

But with July came new demands on the estate for more than fourhundred pounds. "I feel the Iron . . . entering into my Soul," Matherwrote, wearing down. "I cry to my SAVIOUR, as Peter just ready to sink inthe Waves." He managed to pay one debt, of over two hundred pounds,when members of his congregation again privately gathered money forhim, which he accepted with desperate relief, "even fainting with a Senseof Gratitude." To show his profound thanks he published at his ownexpense a sermon on being temporally poor but spiritually rich in Christ,copies of which he gave his benefactors, writing in their names himself.He had often privately denounced many in his flock as foolish andworldly. But now he wrote an apologetic, self-pitying Preface to the work,bemoaning his unworthiness to serve people so "fill'd with knowledgeand full of Goodness^-, they had been to him, he professed, "what mighthave been more equally look'd for, if I had been, what I should havebeen," and he promised to act again as their pattern. The promise souredfour days after he wrote the Preface, however, when he was apparentlypresented with a new claim on the estate, also for more than two hundredpounds. He could meet the debt only if the creditor agreed to take hislibrary, "which tho' so very dear to me above all temporal Possessions, Ioffer to Depredation." Once more, however, a few members of his con-gregation gave him the necessary money.

Inundated with new demands, Mather also found a change in Lydia's

outbursts. They were becoming daily and more dangerous. On the Lastday of June, although he unfortunately provides no details, she fled fromchurch and attempted violence on him and his household {summits mibimeisque tentat Injurias). In July she acted so tempestuously that he believed it necessary to banish her perfidious niece and to send ill-treatedNancy away. Otherwise wholly at a loss what to do, he turned to Christwith fearful eyes, he said, swollen with tears, praying that if the Redeemerdid not snatch him from the water, pereo, obruor, Actum est—I perish, Iam overwhelmed, it is finished. On July 31, Lydia's raging mood oncemore receded. Composed again, meque summis cum Amoris Ardoribusamplexata—she embraced her husband with the greatest heats of love.

The next five weeks heaped on Mather a new outrage, Lydia's depar-ture . . . and then another departure, climactic and undoing. The outragearose from the death in May of John Leverett, who had gone to bed wellbut in the morning, a Sabbath, was found dead. Leverett's death left openthe presidency of the college, for which Mather was an obvious althoughnow tarnished candidate. Mather had always detested Leverett, but withSammy attending Harvard as a scholarship student had treated him cor-dially and requested his "wise, and kind, and paternal tuition." With Le-verett gone, Mather referred to him as an "Infamous Drone." He did notconceal his opinion of Leverett's administration when undertaking aninquiry at the behest of the Overseers in August 1723. The date matters,for Sammy had graduated a month earlier, leaving Mather no longer de-pendent on "that unhappy Man, who sustained the Place of President."Leverett being no longer useful to him, he called stridently for an investi-gation of the state of the college on eleven counts, including whether ithad not undergone a "notorious decay" of "solid learning"; whether Lat-in had not been discountenanced; whether the books most read by stu-dents were not "plays, novels, empty and vicious pieces of poetry";whether the theological recitations were not cursory, the tutors uncaring,and the education in general designed to promote principles destructiveof New England's religious, political, and social ideals. The Overseersinvestigated Leverett's administration but upheld it against Mather's in-dictments.

With Leverett's death Mather believed himself to be a desired succes-sor. The stain of his many lawsuits and his now public quarrels with Lydiawould seem a liability in the office, but he was told, he said, that hispresidency was "most generally wished for." Benjamin Colman, himself aleading candidate for the presidency, doubted Mather's prospects. "Werethe Doctors spirit of Government," he remarked, "esteemed equal to his

Literature we should go into no other name but his." But Mather's "spiritof Government" had never been estimable, and he himself suspected thathis chances were dim. Choosing to stay home from the July commence-ment—that "insipid, ill-contrived, anniversary Solemnity"—he restrictedhis hopes to praying that the presidency "not be foolishly thrown away."

But Mather learned that it had indeed, by his standards, been thrownaway, and rather in his face. The presidency was offered to the Rev. Jo-seph Sewall, the thirty-six-year-old son of Judge Samuel Sewall. With stillanother Sewall uprisen to torment him, Mather wrote on August 12: "I amnow informed, that yesterday the six Men, who call themselves the Corpo-ration of the College met, and Contrary to the epidemical Expectation ofthe Country [i.e. that he would be selected], chose a modest young Man,of whose Piety (and little else) every one gives a laudable Character." Ashe often did when defeated, he turned affliction into advantage, and sawin this drubbing "unspeakable cause to admire the Compassion of Heav-en." The dismissal of him was a saving joy. Actually he had dreaded"what the Generality of sober People expected and desired; the Care ofthe College, to be committed unto me." Actually he had always fore-known that the presidency would have earned him not prestige but sor-row: "I had a dismal Apprehension of the Distresses, which a call toCambridge would bring upon me." Actually he was thankful that he hadbeen redeemed by having been rebuffed: "the Slight and Spite of my sixFriends, has produced for me an eternal Deliverance." But not even bythe gratifying logic of Matherese could he hide his wrath from himself,and his tirade of self-content wound down into the recognition that hehad spoken "with a little too much Alacrity." He called on God to "Helpme to a wise Behaviour!"

This subsurface seething may have agitated Mather's mood the nextnight, August 13, and perhaps detonated Lydia's full fury. She becamefinally utterly disgusted and may have had some sort of breakdown, "aprodigious Return of her Pangs upon her," Mather called it, "that seemedlittle short of a proper Satanical Possession." His remarks on JosephSewall make it evident that he felt rancorous himself; yet by his under-standing nothing more happened between them during the day than thathe somehow, unaccountably, managed to displease her. "What was pre-tended as the Introduction to the present, was, that forsooth, for a Day totwo, my Looks and Words were not so very kind as they had been. A mereFancy and Whimsey!" That Mather had behaved distantly seems not un-likely, but Lydia now had no patience for being told that her feelings ofrejection were imaginary: "the bare telling her so, threw her into . . .

Violences, wherein she charged me with Crimes, which obliged me torebuke her lying Tongue, with Terms I have not been used unto.'' Thebattle seems to have raged all day, through "a thousand unrepeatableInvectives."

At midnight Mather got out of bed and retired to his study to pour outhis soul to God. But Lydia would not let him escape. She arose also and,in a "horrid Rage," said she would never stay with him or live with him.In the dead of night, collecting her niece and maid, she left the house. Asshe had gone to lodge with a-neighbor, Mather feared the scandal shemight enflame by telling "numberless Lies, which a Tongue set on Fire ofHell, would make no Conscience of." He spent the rest of the nightkeeping a vigil with Sammy and Nancy in his library, praying and singingpsalms until nearly morning, when he at last went to bed and found somerest.

Mather kept busy over the following days, yet amidst preaching oncontentedness with one's condition or deciding how to handle a trouble-some minister at Harwich, he brooded on the Harvard presidency andLydia's departure. His rejection by the Corporation, as he began to assessit a bit more realistically than before, was a mixed dispensation. Hewould have found the work of the presidency fatiguing and troublesome("I could never have lived a Year to an End!"). But he could no longerdeny that the office might have brought him many opportunities to nour-ish the New England churches. Perhaps God had reserved him for other,different opportunities to do good. Mostly he worried about how his ownabhorred vanity might be affected by the choice of Joseph Sewall, the"preferring of a Child before me, as my Superiour in Erudition, or in aCapacity and Vivacity to manage the Government of an Academy, or inPiety and Gravity." Although the Corporation had snubbed him for hisinferior, he felt it would be "a Crime in me to be disturbed at the choice,"and he prayed for help in tolerating the insult without becoming in-censed and impetuous.

Mather found it even harder to comprehend Lydia's leaving him. Itseemed incredible to him that the woman in whom he had invested hisfullest capacity to love could value his bountiful affection not at all. Herdeparture stood forth as the crowning instance of his queerly inverteddestiny, an "AND YET" unmatchable in its perverse betrayal. "She, whomI have perpetually studied in the most exquisite Ways, to serve, andplease, and gratify, and have even undone myself to oblige her, not onlydoes by her unaccountable Humours . . . wherein she expresses the great-est Hatred and Contempt for me, prove the most heavy Scourge to me,

that ever I met withal, but also takes, various Methods, all she can to ruinmy Esteem in the World, and the Success of my Ministry." The blame, hebelieved, was entirely hers, for he had given her no reason to mistreathim. Her behavior said as much, for her "lucid Intervals" were always"filled with Expressions of the most enamoured Fondness for me." Feel-ing spent and hopeless, he resolved to pray formally seven times a day(once more than usual), hoping God might grant him "comfortable Cir-cumstances relating to the Death, which is approaching to me." Returnedto celibacy after Lydia's flight, he also asked divine aid in conqueringwhat he always knew had been excessive, and now also recognized asunworthy, desire for her: "my Consort's leaving of my Bed . . . affords meOccasions of particular Supplications, that the Holiness and Purity where-to I am so singularly called of GOD, may have its perfect Work, and that Imay no longer so foolishly dote as I have done, upon a Person who treatsme with such a matchless Ingratitude, and Malignity."

Two days after writing this, on the morning of August 20, as he wasprojecting new services for God, Mather received overwhelmingly crush-ing news: "my Son Increase, is lost, is dead is gone." He staggered underthe dreadful news: "Ah! My Son Increase! Niy Son! My Son! My Head isWaters, and my Eyes are a Fountain of Tears! I am overwhelmed!"

At the time that he became the twelfth of Mather's children to die,Creasy was about twenty-five years old. Despite the young man's manyfailings, Mather had always cherished him, perhaps more than any of hisother children. Certainly he took greater pride in Sammy, in whom, hehad written, "a gracious GOD wonderfully makes up to me, what I miss ofComfort in his miserable Brother." As Creasy had not, Sammy had under-gone conversion and had been admitted to the North Church; as Creasyhad not, Sammy had graduated from Harvard; as Creasy particularly hadnot, Sammy was following his father, grandfather, and great-grandfathersinto the ministry. Yet Creasy had also been his first son to survive infancyand at the time of his birth Mather had received heavenly advice that thechild would be "a Servant of my Lord Jesus Christ throughout eternalAges." When not irate with Creasy, he saw him as Sammy later describedhim, a boy "well beloved by all who knew him, for his Superiour goodNature and Manners, his elegant Wit and ready Expressions." If Sammyperpetuated his father's learning and piety, in Creasy were much of hisfather's facetiousness, gentlemanly charm, and unenacted rebelliousness.

Creasy, Mather was informed, had been aboard a ship bound fromBarbados to St. Peter's, Newfoundland. The ship had been out fivemonths without arriving, and the passengers including Creasy were be-

lieved to have perished in the sea. Why Creasy undertook another voyageis unknown—on business, perhaps, or in some connection with the law-suits against him in the spring. Mather, as a preacher to a seafaring congregation, well knew that such voyages could be perilous, and regularlypreached to his flock on death by water. "Drowning," he wrote in onesermon, "is one of those Accidents, than which there is none more hequent; Thus is the Lamp of Young men put out\ It is at once plunge! intothe Water, and in less than three minutes perhaps it is /;/// out" Howoften in New England had been heard "concerning our Sons," he wrote,the words "The Young Men are Dead." Mather's acquaintance with thedangers of the sea may explain why, for a month and a half before hereceived news of Creasy's fate, he had been having presentiments of somemisfortune overtaking Creasy, which he recorded cryptically in his diary.On July 1 he had written: "Oh! what Advice from Heaven, is come to methis Day, about my poor Son Increase!Tea, how many Times have I beenof late overwhelmed with Afflations, which tell me, that—" at wThich theentry breaks off. Four weeks later he recorded, again cryptically, "My SonIncrease! my Son, my Son!"

But no afflations prepared or consoled Mather for the killing news thatarrived on August 20. Added to the appalling threats of jail, the demean-ing denial to him of the Harvard presidency, and Lydia's withering indif-ference to his love, it made a weight he felt he could withstand only withGod's help: "O my God, I am oppressed; undertake for me." At the timeof his drowning Creasy was unconverted, too, and Mather feared for hissoul. Before leaving on his voyage, Creasy had written out and left onMather's table an "Instrument of a Soul repenting and returning toGOD," lamenting his rejection of Christ and promising to choose onlygodly companions and to follow his business industriously. Matherprayed that this last-minute repentance might win Creasy his salvation:"If the Papers which he left in my Hands, were sincere and his Heartwrote with his pen, all is well! Would not my GOD have me to hope so?"Yet he had his doubts; Creasy's drowning itself suggested that God hadrefused him. Taking the manuscript autobiography he had begun forCreasy (but in pique rededicated to Sammy), he at some time wrote inafter the account of Creasy's birth: "tho' this were a Son of Great Hopes,and One Son who Thousands and Thousands of Prayers, were Employ'dfor him; Yet after all, a Sovereign GOD would not Accept of him. He wasBuried in the Atlantic Ocean."

Three days after Mather learned about Creasy, and probably in re-sponse to the news, Lydia returned home. She returned, too, chastened

and conciliatory: "my poor Wife, returning to a right Mind, came to me inmy Study, entreating that there might be an eternal Oblivion of everything that has been out of Joint, and an eternal Harmony in our futureConversation." Toward making this new start he and Lydia promised topray oftener together than ever before, and joined in raising prayers toGod, their arousing devotions being followed on Lydia's part, Matheradded, by "Tokens of the greatest Inamoration." However wretched andconfused she had made him by her paroxysms and her flight, he contin-ued fixedly to love her. Through the late fall he increased his efforts toplease her, especially resolving to see things her way, to improve "inCompassion to her with regard unto the Things which threaten her Com-fort."

However fulsome Lydia's "Inamoration" it could not distract Matherfrom his bursting anguish. Nor entirely could his faith. He deeply wishedto glorify God by silent acquiescence in His judgments. He even praisedhis Savior for enabling him to bear all the sacrifices He called him to,including the "continual Dropping which I suffer in my Family." Yet as ifambidextrously sounding out Governor Dudley or some other mortal tor-mentor who returned hurt for good, his praise was embittered: "I freelysubmit and consent unto it, that the Glorious Lord should continue theSorrows of it upon me all the few remaining Days of my Pilgrimage, andnever give me any release until I die."

Indeed what Mather's obedient resignation tried to submerge keptchurning up. The Servant of Christ throughout eternal ages who had fa-thered a bastard and owed money to a dancing master was buried in theAtlantic Ocean. It kept returning to him: "that heavy, heavy, heavy, andamazing Heap of Distresses, which I have in the Death of my Son In-crease, my Son, my Son!" He sought as always to make his dry cross yieldfruits of righteousness. He lay plans to awaken the young to turn to God.He decided to do something toward catechizing the girls in his congrega-tion. Yet almost daily he numbly reverted in his diary, with little furtherremark, to what had happened to him. "The Death of my Son Increase,"

he wrote one day; then, on others, "Ah my Son! my Son! The Death

of my poor son INCREASE the Death of my Son."

To screw his anguish tightly to the bottom, Mather remained underpersonal attack, even from those close to him. Constantly, indeed, eachone of his troubles had driven more deeply into him the woe from anoth-er, each new difficulty with the Howell estate rendering Lydia's parox-ysms the more painful, his grief over Creasy swelling his disappointmentin being passed over for Joseph Sewall. Now, despite the "heavy Calami-

ties upon me," some denounced his ministry, taking "all possible Fains... to fix a vile Character on me among the People of God," depictinghim as "a Person from whose Hands the Bread of Life is by no means tobe received." Yet under the shadow of whatever notoriety he noticed thatwhen he once more mounted his pulpit on August 30, to offer himself asan example of forbearance under affliction, unusually many young peo-ple came to hear him, from several parts of Boston, including some whohad earlier swarmed from his ministry. Preaching on early piety, a favoritetheme, he told them that "upon Computation" more than half the chil-dren born die before the age of seventeen. That the young should cry forthe safety of their own souls and live as if they were about to die, werelessons born in dumb departedness, "the Loud Voice from the Mouths ofSome, who have gone down to the Place of Silence!—The Young Persons,who have been in the Morning like the Flowers of the Field, but have beencut down before the Evening."

Within the week after he preached this sermon, Mather twice receivednews that was astonishing. The first arrived on September 5. "We aresurprised with very probable Advice," Mather wrote, "that my poor SonIncrease is yet living." The ship on which Creasy had been voyaging hadlost all its masts, but after a "long, long, sad Passage" it had landed inNewfoundland. After his dismal fears, tempting him to atheism, that Godhad chosen not to requite his acts of good, the news was doubly joyous:"O the astonishing Dispensations of Heaven! must it always be so, that Imust see a Sentence of Death upon good Things; and then will the GODof Patience and of Consolation, give me to see some Comfort in them!"Spared, Creasy might yet be converted, although after his many disap-pointments Mather still felt cautious about reforming him. "If it be so,Oh! may the Distresses of the poor Prodigal bring him home to GOD. Oh!may I yet see strange Answers and Effects of the Prayers that have beenemploy'd for him!"

There was need in fact for caution about "my Son that was dead and isalive." The second astonishing news arrived two days later, when Matherlearned that the God of Patience and of Consolation had not chosen torequite him. "'T was another Vessel," he wrote. The previous report hadbeen misleading. It had concerned a different ship: "the good News ofpoor Creasy's being rescued and revived from Death, is all come to noth-ing." Creasy, it was now certain, was dead. "Lord," Mather called oncemore, "Thou hast lifted me up, and cast me down. Oh! Let there not bethy Indignation and Wrath, in what is done unto me!"

391

Two months later, in November, the cruel plot of Creasy's fate wasplayed out again for Mather with different actors. Joseph Sewall havingdeclined the Harvard presidency, the office was again open, and the Cor-poration passed over Mather a second time. The rebuke touched on oldresentment toward Benjamin Colman, a member of the Corporation, go-ing back to the opening of the Brattle church, unhealed by twenty yearsof friendship, and likely compounded by Lydia's ties to Colman'sministry.

On November 6, Mather dispatched a vicious letter blaming Colmanpersonally for having denied him the presidency. In surpassing Mather-ese, he first thanked Colman for considering him qualified on account ofhis "Biblia Americana"—"for I know you can't on any other account"—then offered his concurrence in Colman's defeat of his hopes: "I do withthe greatest acquiescence and gratitude approve the declaration of yoursentiments to all the country, that I am on other accounts utterly disquali-fied. Yea, for erudition too, as well as capacity and activity for manage-ment." What evidence remains of Colman's part in choosing the presi-dent makes Mather's high dudgeon seem irrational; at most Colman mayhave reported to others the view of the Corporation (of which he wasonly one member) that while they respected Mather's learning theydoubted his ability to govern Harvard because of his temper. But Mathercould see the situation only as another "AND YET," and he concludedwith hearty thanks for being spurned: "I do with all possible sinceritythank you for the inexpressible ease you have given to, Sir. ..."

On November 18 the Corporation chose for president Colman him-self. "I rejoice, I rejoice, I feel a secret Joy in it," Mather wrote in hisdiary, "that I am thus conformed unto Him who was despised and reject-ed of Men." The Corporation of the "miserable College" having againtreated him with their customary malignity, he felt he could easily "throwConfusion upon the Men, who would make me low in the Eyes of all theCountry," but instead he looked to God for help in bearing his conditionwith "Prudence, and Patience, and Silence." In fact, Colman had beenaway from academic studies for thirty years and saw in the presidency afinancial loss to himself. He declined the post, which went to the Rev.Benjamin Wadsworth, for whose encouragement the House voted £1000of public funds toward building a handsome presidential residence.

For all the many strains in their long acquaintance, Mather genuinely

392 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COTTON MATHER

liked Colman, and the following year praised in print Colman's "pious.and acute, and cogent Pen. " His nasty letter was probably a by productof his distraught state. For as December drew on there remained the"dreadful Sacrifice," the thing he returned to, "the grievous Calamitybefalling me in the Death of my poor Son Increase." As he seems to haw-done after his father's departure, he seems after Creasy's death also tohave thought of his ghost returning. In a sermon on the death of a seventeen-year-old girl he remarked that we know little of the condition ofdeparted souls, of what vehicles they use, "and how much of what theyhad in this World; they carry away out of the Shipwreck with them."

As the event receded what stood out for Mather was the demand todraw from it services to God, so that "the Child, who did so little Good,but much ill, in all the Days of his Life, may do some good at his Death."One result was The Words of Understanding (1724), a set of savagelymournful sermons that betray his unwillingness, despite all his calls forresignation, to subdue his will. Introducing the book as the work ofCreasy's "Afflicted FATHER, upon his Extinction in the Atlantic Ocean, "he in one place used the sudden premature deaths of "lovely YoungPeople" to emphasize the need for early piety, and imagined for himselfand his readers Creasy's drowning:

Perhaps, by perishing in the Water, on which they were doing Business,they have been extinguished!—And by being Lost, none can say how, orwhen, or where, at Sea, their Light put out in obscure Darkness. . . . TOsee a sparkling Youth pass through a curious and polite Cultivation; Bril-liant, with a ready Wit, a singular sweetness of Temper, and many Circum-stances inviting us to look for something from him;—And,—All at onceextinguished.

The entire work resounds with muffled rage at past tormentors, at Shute,at Harvard, at his father, at spouses who although not so criminal as adul-terers yet "carry it so Basely, so Bitterly, so Frowardly, to their Mates, thatthey deserve to have the Doves of the Valleys pluck out their Eyes." Identi-fying himself and Creasy with Christ as doomed Sons, Mather alsosummed up what he had learned from life, that man is born for troubleswithout number or evasion:

When we are wading thro' some grievous and some tedious Trouble, weare prone to flatter our selves, Well, this is the last! If I were once got wellout of this Trouble, all would be well. 'Tis a great mistake. There will sooncome another Trouble in the room of that which is gone. Men are Fools, ifthey think, their mirth can last any longer, than Sparks, or than the Crack-ling of thorns under a Pot. . . .

CRACKLING OF THORNS UNDER A POT 393

Late in December, Mather's cruciating fire crackled once more. Sam-my had begun preaching, and now hoped to improve his training—bysailing the Atlantic to London. In part Mather wished to keep Sammy athome simply because he valued the young man's conversation and culti-vation as his greatest relief. But it might also happen to Sammy. "Lord, "Mather wrote, "what Sacrifices dost thou call me to!My Son, my only Son,Samuel, whom I have at home with me." Sammy was passionately setupon the voyage, and Mather believed a refusal might lead him to "griev-ous Temptations." Besides, clearly becoming a Mather himself, Sammyhad been experiencing a "strange Persuasion" that he would prosper inEngland. Full of distress all over again and fatalistic, Mather threw him-self on God's will: "/ sacrifice him, O my GOD and SAVIOUR, I sacrificebim to thy Holy Pleasure!"

As had not happened often to Mather, this proved a prayer-hearingGod. Mather allowed Sammy to make the voyage. But God, he found,disposed him to persuade Sammy not to make it by way of the WestIndies, rather aboard a ship bound more directly to London. Somehowthe ship's departure was aborted, however. And in January, after this de-feat of his intentions, Sammy gave up the idea of sailing abroad altogeth-er. Unspurned for once by reality, Mather had been allowed to fortifyhimself against loss without having to bear it. "I have . . . had an Opportu-nity to make a Sacrifice of my only Son; and yet," he wrote thankfully,"without the actual Accomplishment thereof, to receive him again asfrom the Dead."

COTTON MATHER

(1724-1728)

An Inventory of the Estate of Dr Cotton Mather late Deced taken by us the Subscrib-ers July 23d 1728 as it was shew'd to us by his widow Mrs. Lydia Mather & theChildren

12 Flag Chairs 24/ 8 Leather Chairs 2 of 'em high backt 24/ £ 2. 8.

17 Low Turkey work Chairs some defective @6/ 5.2.

10 Turkey work Chairs 5 broke 2.

2 Broken Cane Chairs 10/ & a Cane Couch 44/ 14 Cane Chairs

@14/£9.l6 12.10.

1 Feather Bed No. 1. 65 at 2/3 7. 6. 3.

1 Ditto 2. 47 2/6 5.17. 6.

1 Do. 3. 57 2/4 6.13.

3 Bolsters & 5 Pillows 44 2/3 £5 4d 3 Old Ruggs 10/ 5.10.11/2.

1 Old Quilt and 2 Blanketts 30/ 4 Old Bedsteads 50/ 4.

2 Old Oval Tables and a broken Stone Table 1.6.

2 Old Chest of Draws Table & dressing box 3.

A Japan Looking Glass 50/ 2 Ditto black frames £4 6.10.

1 pr. Old China Curtains & Vallens lased, bedstead & Curtain Rods . 5

1 pr. of Red Curtains Motheaten 1.

4 pr. brass Andirons 2 pr. of Iron Dogs, other broken Dogs 4.

1 pr. brass fire Shovel & Tongs, and an old warming pan 1.1.

114 Pewter Viz. 18 Dishes, a pasty-plate, pye plate, cheese plate

broken pewter 11.8.

V/z doz. Pewter Plates 34/ Knives & forks 10/ 2. 4.

2 brass Skillets, 1 Saucepan, 2 Candlesticks skimer, frying pan trennel

spit 2.

1 brass Kettle 33 £4. 19/ One Copper 35 £7 11.19.

17 Iron 8/ Belmettle Mortar 15/ 1.3.

1 Old Standing Candlestick 10/ a Cross cut Saw 30/ Lumber 20/ . . 3.

1 Bed & Bolster 75 @ 2/6 9. 7. 6.

147 oz. of Silver Plate @ 16/6 Viz. One Tankard, 2 Servers, 1 pairCandlesticks Snuffers & Standish, & Tea Pott Several Broken

Spoons, one Spout Cup, 1 Sugar dish, 2 Porringers 121. 5. 6.

235.10. 10.500 Acres of wast Land Scituate in the County of Hampshire as appears

to us bv Deed Cost 36.

John BarnardJohn GoldthwaitGraffton FeveryearSuffolks: By the Honble. Samuel Sewall Esq Judge ol Vn> ftc

Nathaniel Goodwin Adminr: presented the foregoing and made Oath thai it con

tains a true and perfect Inventory of the Estate of the Rev. Dr. Cotton Mather afore

said deceased so far as hath come to his knowledge and that if more hereafter

appear he will Cause it to be added. The subscribing apprizers were at the same

time sworn as the Law Directs.

Boston August 5th 1728.

;,„.,,„ Samuel Sewall

Exam per John Boydell Reg

As Merry as One Bound for Heaven

A cough, a "grievous Breast-beater," accompanied by fever and a suffo-cating asthma, confined Mather to his house for about five weeks at theend of 1724 and early in 1725. His diaries after this "winter of muchfeebleness," if he kept any, are missing. Information about his dailyround during the last three years of his life is therefore scant, but hiscorrespondence and the remarks of others indicate that he remained infairly good health through most of 1725 and 1726, then in the spring of1727 underwent the first of three increasingly serious bouts of illness.

Seemingly drained by his illness in 1724-25, and by Creasy's deathand the double loss of the Harvard presidency, Mather again withdrewfrom government affairs. Jeremiah Dummer applauded his "noble Reso-lution" to quit politics and "Solace your self in your Study and the busi-ness of your Divine Profession." Mather might well have retired fromNew England's political life, for although turbulent throughout his life-time it had become relatively quiet. The Indian war ended with a peacetreaty in December 1725, and while Samuel Shute remained in England,William Dummer administered the government without serious conflict.Mather's private life, as far as is known, had eased as well. In October1724, Joseph Tallcott of Hartford brought an action against the Howellestate and was awarded £71 plus costs of the suit. But this may well havebeen the final demand against the estate; no further suits appear in thecourt records. Nor apparently did Lydia's return home after Creasy's deathproduce new domestic warfare. Here the lack of Mather's diaries is spe-cially tantalizing, but the surviving bits of evidence about his marriagesuggest reconciliation, however arrived at.

Sixty-two years old in 1725, Mather was, by his own standards and

397

those of the time, an old man. In A Good Old Age (1726) he observed thaiscarce three persons in a hundred live to seventy, and he commended thework to those "whose Arrival to, or near, SIXTY, ranks them among, TheAGED." He had not expected to live so long. Once he had fancied that hewould die when he had written 365 works. But when he looked at hiscatalogue in 1726 he found he had written more than 369—not to mention the "much more bulky and weighty and wealthy" works that re-mained unpublished—so that "I know not the death of my death."

Despite Mather's filiopietism, his view of old age was unsentimental.He cited approvingly the Oriental maxim "that old age is to be reckonedno part of life." In "Biblia Americana" he drew an ugly picture of thestage: the mercurial spirit of youth exhausted, the mouth disabled forsinging, teeth unable to chew, stomach squeamish, arms trembling,thighs shrunk, the aged person grown headachy, gray, deaf, fearful ofstumbling—"Clouds of Ignorance, prejudice, and mistake, then impairthe understanding; the Memory becomes feeble and faithless; the Imagi-nation grows conceited . . . Suspicions of Evil, but Lothe to Believe anyGood. " The condition, Mather felt, was however lamentable also incur-able, thus futile and graceless to protest. To those liable to such follies ofold age as hoarding, trying to act young, or refusing to retire, his advicewas severe: "Good Sir, Be so Wise, as to Disappear of your own Accord assoon and as far as you lawfully may."

Some of these, and other, effects of age now wore on Mather himself.Grateful for having escaped the stone, he offered special thanks on hissixty-first birthday for arriving at "this great Age, free from the grievousDiseases, which carry Horror with them." On the other hand, he hadbegun wearing spectacles, perhaps the ones Thomas Hollis had takenfrom his own nose and sent him in friendship. In his enthusiasm formaterial progress and for alleviating human misery, he regarded specta-cles as a wonderful invention. "We that are Old People" he wrote, "aremarvelously Blessed of GOD, by the Use of Glasses, which preserves thepower of Reading with us. Inexcusable has been the Ingratitude of Man-kind, shamefully to bury in Oblivion the Name of the Benefactor that wasthe First Inventor of Spectacles; when there stand on Record so manyExecrable Oppressors and Murderers of Mankind, under the Name of Con-querors." Nostalgia set in also. In 1724 Mather published his first publicsermon, which he had preached to a religious society when just sixteenyears old. Several times he wrote to friends with whom he had not corre-sponded in years, inquiring whether one or another mutual acquaintance"be yet sojourning in this Land of the Dying."

But above all, old age meant to Mather uniquely a time for productivi-ty, Fructuosus. His recovery from the long illness at the end of 1724brought a swell of initiative: "The very little Time that remains of myPilgrimage thro' this evil World, must be carried on with new Measures.No Time is to be lost. I must be at Work for my Glorious Lord continuallyand assiduously, and more than ever." Making one final attempt to "doenough," he expended in his final years a torrential energy, reading andwriting, his son Samuel said, "as if he had but newly taken a Pen or Bookinto his Hand."

Except his withdrawal from political life, scarcely one of Mather'smany interests failed of embodiment in some publication or activity inthe final three or four years of his life. He continued adding illustrationsto his never-to-be-published "Biblia Americana." As a Protestant states-man, always watchful for the fate of international Protestantism, he wasshocked by new edicts against French Protestants and by a similar revivalof persecutions in Poland, Hungary, and Germany, prompting him to callattention to the Protestants languishing overseas in dungeons or exe-cuted, in such works as Une Grande Voix du del a la France (1725) andSuspiria Vinctorum (1726). Still also alarmed about Arianism, he contin-ued writing to England denouncing its spread. Most of his colleagues inthe German Pietist movement had died, but he received accounts fromPietist missionaries in the East Indies, and the expectation of answersfrom him. His correspondence remained demandingly huge: letters, asalways, from Scotland, even longer and more frequent than before; fromsympathizers or those in distress, people of no repute who sought hiscounsel from afar; from his old and dear friend John Winthrop, whom hepressed to move to Boston from New London, Winthrop himself nowbeing hauled to court over the administration of an estate.

Mather also continued serving as a commissioner for the New EnglandCompany, and continued to find the "Languid Aspect" of the work dis-couraging. Yet he believed Christianity had become fairly widespreadamong the Indians, and rated the success of their conversion "one of NewEngland's peculiar glories." To promote further progress, he urged rein-stituting the practice of appointing "A visitor of all the Indian villages"who would return from his visits with suggestions to the commissionersfor redress and reform. Until the last year or two of his life he strove to getothers' accounts of missionary work printed, although his own lastlengthy writing on the subject was a discourse delivered before the com-missioners at Samuel Sewall's house, published in 1721 as India Chris-tiana—notable for its speculations on how the Indians came to America, a

subject of popular controversy well into the eighteenth century. (He inclined to the view that the Indians were Asiatic in origin, and that Asiaand America had once been contiguous.) He also published a Proposalfor an Evangelical Treasury (1725), urging that a fund for missionaryendeavors be collected from donations in the churches.

In his final years Mather turned over the keeping of the North Churchrecords to Joshua Gee, but otherwise he does not seem to haw restrictedhis ministerial duties. The astonishing thirty-nine titles he published be-tween 1725 and 1727 include works on every major theme of his ministry:baptism {Baptismal Piety), marriage {Mystical Marriage), grace {Signa-tus), dishonest gain {The Balance of the Sanctuary), charity {Some Sea-sonable Advice unto the Poor), catechizing {Instructor). Mather's ageand celebrity now ranked him as the foremost minister in New England,and his name routinely headed lists of signatories to ministerial petitionsand addresses. He still personally presided over many church councils,sometime writing up the council decisions himself. For the last timesnow, he preached and published sermons on such traditional occasionsas a royal accession {Christian Loyalty, 1727) and, for more than the tenthtime, capital executions. Having no reason to be fond of pirates (they

immediately forced their captives, he heard, "To curse Dr. M "),

he preached in July 1726 on the execution of the villainous William Fly,who with several crew members had taken over a ship after throwing thecaptain and mate overboard, and set out pirating. His undiminished nar-rative ability appears in his compelling relation of the pirates' captureand of the obdurate Fly being led to the gallows—cursing, blaspheming,but holding a nosegay, settling the noose on his own neck (with an asideto the hangman that he did not know his trade), smiling until at theentrance to Boston Harbor his corpse dangled from chains.

On one grimly customary event Mather was called to preach, merciful-ly, for the last time. On August 7, 1726, midway through his sixty-thirdyear, his twenty-two-year-old daughter Elizabeth died. She had survivedthe 1721 smallpox epidemic although non-immune, and in 1724, about amonth before the news of Creasy's death, Mather had performed her mar-riage to a shipmaster named Edward Cooper. Now for the last time hedramatized the need for early piety to young members of his congrega-tion by using as an example the death of his own child, "a Young Person,of a Polite Education, in the Fresh Bloom of Youth. . . just Entering intothe World, in Comfortable Circumstances." As for himself, the "Poor OldSacrificer," Elizabeth had been one of his three remaining children. Hehad been called on, he explained, for "the Thirteenth (and not the

Least!) Sacrifice of this One Sort, the Amputation and Resignation of aDesirable Offspring." Of fifteen, only Sammy and Nancy were left.

Mather earnestly wished to leave some personal legacy to the NewEngland churches and ministry, and did so in two of his most importantand lengthiest late works. Although the apostate Cutler continued chal-lenging the Congregational establishment, Mather looked hopefully onthe rising generation of ministers who were about to replace his fatherand himself, "Excellent Young Men" he thought them, "who Study andResolve their Duty, and are the Rain-bows of our Churches." He was notmistaken, for they included one of the most profound thinkers in Ameri-can history, the grandson of his old rival Solomon Stoddard, young Jona-than Edwards, who was ordained pastor at Northampton early in 1727.Among this new generation Mather felt closest to Thomas Prince, anolder member although twenty-five years his junior. In 1718 he had en-couraged Prince's settlement at the Old South church, apparently un-fazed that Prince had recently returned from England wearing, SamuelSewall as usual noticed, a wig and russet coat. By 1726 Prince had cometo be, Mather wrote, "as Cordial and Constant a Friend unto me, as any Ihave in the world." In his last few years he put Prince to many tasks,asking him to enlist subscribers to his works, to teach and care for hisorphaned nephew Mather Byles, to get material for his communicationsto the Royal Society, and to read and comment on his manuscripts.

Mather's successors also included Samuel, whose carefully nurturedcareer now was blossoming. Sammy's earliest sermons, preached when hewas seventeen, won "uncommon acceptance," Mather wrote, and he waspraised for "an early piety, for a manly discretion, for some erudition, andnone of the worst tempers. ' When attending the Yale commencement in1724, while not yet eighteen, he was awarded an honorary M.A. degree(probably in gratitude to his father). Sammy's swift success greatlypleased Mather, but also made him wary. Lest the boy become prideful heresolved to inculcate in him "the profoundest Humility, that he may ex-press a due Gratitude unto the glorious Lord who so remarkably smilesupon him; and a Conduct so full of Wisdom, that he may not make themashamed who have promoted him, and that he may not fail the just Expec-tation of the World concerning him." However cautious, Mather felt bythe fall of 1724 that Sammy had advanced far enough to be shown untoIsrael, as after many delays he had been a half-century before. On Octo-ber 25, still short of eighteen, Sammy preached on a text recommended

to him by Mather, He is my Father's God and I will exalt Him (Exod. 15:2). He spoke now from the place where two generations of Mathers hadgarnered much of whatever respect they could claim in the world, theNorth Church—"in the Pulpit," Mather wrote, "where his Father andGrandfather before him, have served our Glorious Lord."

Mather viewed Sammy and the other young ministers as the hopes ofthe New England churches, and in a spirit at once of apostolic continuity,professional friendship, and paternal care he reached out to them as "MyYOUNGER BRETHREN in the Evangelical MINISTRY." As a legacy tothese young colleagues he prepared several works on the ministry, whosesubstance is comprehended in his book-length manual for ministers,Manuductio ad Ministerium (1726). Addressing himself to "My Son "—ahypothetical ministerial candidate, but suggesting some surrogate forCreasy—he here summarized his long professional experience. The toneof the book, except at the beginning and end, is urbane and convivial,and thus emblematic of the ideal of the ministry it promulgates, an idealderived from humanist scholarship and Reformed doctrine but also fromPietist activism and personal practice.

Mather equated the function of the minister with the chief end of lifeitself, namely the service of God. But he defined this service broadly toinclude "Whatever contributes unto the Welfare of Mankind, and such aRelief oi their Miseries, as may give the Children of Men better Opportu-nities to Glorify Him." He envisioned ministers such as he had striven tobecome himself, not only thunderous preachers winning souls to Christfrom their pulpits, but also humane, liberal, and erudite gentlemen sensi-ble of the large human good to be achieved by scientific advancement,capable of moving people to pious ends by entertaining conversation,and aware that true piety is not limited to one sect. The training he pro-posed thus consists not only of Scripture reading and fervent private de-votions, but also of acquiring a high gloss of civility, the "Pursuit of thatLearning, and those Ingenuous and Mollifying Arts, which may distin-guish you from the more Uncultivated Part of Mankind." As a guide tobehavior in society he recommended "Wise Observation of what you seepasses in the Conversation of Politer People." He also recommended theactive study of science, and acquaintance with (but not absorption in)poetry and music, including, for ministers so disposed, the refreshmentof learning to play well on some musical instrument.

Mather equally emphasized urbane polish in theological study andpreaching, to make the minister "a Skilful Artist for the Work of yourGOD." Nearly as much a writer as a preacher himself, he not surprisingly

paid much attention in his manual to the writing of sermons and to literary style. Resentful to the end of his life over criticisms of his prose, healso gave space to defending his "Massy Way of Writing," however fallenout of taste and derided by a "Lazy, Ignorant, Conceited Set of Authors.""The Writer pretends not unto Reading" as he explained his stylisticpractice, "yet he could not have writ as he does if he had not Read verymuch in his Time; and his Composures are not only a Cloth of Gold, butalso stuck with as many Jewels, as the Gown of a Russian Embassador."Such a style would come back in use when a better taste returned, hepredicted, and meanwhile he asked for the same indulgence in style as inmodalities of religion. "Every Man will have his own Style, which willdistinguish him as much as his Gate," and people ought to "handsomelyindulge one another in this, as Gentlemen do in other Matters." Still irateafter twenty years over Oldmixon's twitting, he cursed for one last timethat writer's English Empire in America as "the most foolish and faithlessPerformance in this Kind, that ever Mankind was abused withal."

Mather did not forget other abusers either. In addressing his "sons"he also imparted to them the less palatable experience he had gainedfrom Calef onward, so that for all its amiable liberality Manuductio, likeBonifacius, begins and ends in gall. The twenty-page Latin Preface reeksof his rejection for the Harvard presidency and of compensatory triumphin his honorary D.D. years earlier, spitefully dedicating the work to studi-ous youths in academies, "Principally in that of Glasgow; Next, to thosein New England." "I know how meanly I am furnished," Mather toldthem, "and all New-England know it, and deem me utterly incapable ofaddressing Persons of Academical Education; and they rightly judge as Ido." The personal recommendations in the equally rancid concludingsection range from simple cynicism:

One must not Spend all he hath; nor Do all he can; nor Tell all he knows;nor Believe all he hears.

to a sort of ecclesiastical Machiavellianism:

[Influential persons] will soon fall out with you, if you don't keep Touchwith them, in all their Designs; and when you cease to be their Tool, theywill most Forgetfully and Ungratefully abandon you.

to near paranoia:

Let them that have abused you, know nothing that you know any thing ofthe matter. For such is the Baseness of many People, that (measuring youby themselves) they will hate you, because you know that they have hurt

you; and they will persist in their Hatred, which they must Justify, because

they imagine, that you can't Forgive than.

Growing however old, Mather thus composed his legacy to the futureministers of New England in spunkiest Matherean counterpoint, My sonsYou Are the Hopes of Our Flocks piped against They Don't Have CottonMather to Kick Around Any More.

To the churches, as distinct from the ministry, Mather bequeathed abook-length account of their principles and practices, Ratio Disciplinae(1726). The work had a rocky history, for Mather originally wrote it in1701, but its publication and later revision were several times delayed. In1726, greatly revised, it was again ready for publication, but this time two-thirds of the manuscript blew away, it seemed irretrievably; some of thepages, however, were picked up by strangers, others found in a garden,others in a woodpile. That was fortunate, because Ratio Disciplinae con-tains much of what is known specifically today about New England's man-ner of worship—the gathering of a church, marriage and ordination cere-monies, administration of baptism and communion, and much else.Mather believed the work would "prove one of the usefullest things thatever were offered unto the churches," a substitute for an updated plat-form of church discipline, such as might have been written by the pro-posed church synod of 1725, which the government had refused to con-vene. He also intended the book for readers abroad, to show "unto theChurches in the other Hemisphere, the Relation of what is practised inthese Regions of America." Ratio belongs with such early American clas-sics as Cr£vecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer (1782) in demon-strating to Europeans basic differences between the New World and theOld.

Mather devoted most of the book to straightforward descriptions ofspecific church practices, inviting consultation rather than summary here.This historically valuable information also serves to illustrate, however,an ambidexter point. On one hand Mather repeatedly emphasizes that theNew England churches are Congregational (thus uniquely close to theform of the primitive church), and demonstrates their orthodox}7 by citingmatching practices recommended by the church Fathers and by continen-tal Reformers. But he equally emphasizes that the New England churchesare not fractiously individualistic, and demonstrates their spirit of tolerantcooperation by stressing their use of church councils and the variety thatprevails among them in the practice of circumstantials. The churcheshave made Franckean Piety the only basis for admission: "A CharitableConsideration of nothing but PIETY in admitting to Evangelical Privi-

leges, is a Glory that the Churches of New-England, would lay claimunto." Thus although Congregational, the New England churches havefrom the beginning renounced the idea of independency: "Every particu-lar Church is to consider it self as a part of the Catholic, and owes a Dutyto the whole Visible Church of our Lord in the World."

Of course Mather had long tried unsteadily to maintain this equilib-rium between seeing New England as a pristine Wilderness Zion and asbut one outpost of international Protestantism, tilting one way or anotheraccording to the deeds of government in Boston and London, his owntreatment at home and abroad, activities of the Church of England, amongother things. But Ratio Disciplinae indicates that at the end of his life hebelieved that the founders' ideal had failed. A person "must not becalled, A Calumniator," he writes, who frankly informs Europeans "Thatthey will not find New-England a New Jerusalem." Most New Englandersare sober and well acquainted with religion, but worldliness and apostasyare growing. As to the country's looked-for role as a beacon in the comingworldwide reformation, "some of their Seers have not been without mel-ancholy Apprehensions, lest New England have now done the most that itwas intended for." These words—unchanged from Mather's first draftingof the work in 1701—suggest that he and his father had seen too much oflife in New England to believe that it could ever be perfect or exemplarythere, and that to them the City upon a Hill remained in the realm ofwhat-might-have-been.

On balance, what Mather lost in exclusivism he gained in liberality. Atthe end of his life he returned to his ecumenism, and extended it toinclude Quakers, whom he had always regarded as not less subversive ofChristianity than Catholics. In his remarkable Vital Christianity (1725)—significantly, published in Philadelphia—he declared that he "unspeak-ably abhors and laments the abominable Persecution which you havesuffered in former Days." Now viewing virtually all Christians as one, heowned a unity with Quakers in sharing a "Christ within" (construed astaking Christ for a pattern of holiness), and on this principle he embracedQuakers as fellow Christians, "our beloved Friends."

Age did not dampen Mather's enthusiasm for science. Partly becauseof his constant encouragement of scientific study he could now look outon a much enlarged Boston scientific community. Several Bostonianswere sending specimens and observations to the Royal Society, and theBoston News-Letter invited local scientific contributions so that it might

some degree serve for the "Philosophical Transactions of New England."

Continuing his encouragement, Mather took up Dr. Jurin's suggestionthat he interest his friends in meteorology, and presented a Bostontradesman named Grafton Feveryear with a barometer—evidently the firstused for meteorological observation by New Englanders, the results ofwhich were forwarded to the Society in 1727. As always he particularlyfostered the young, especially Sammy's contemporary Isaac Greenwood, aHarvard graduate and member of his church whom, like several otheryoung men in his last years, he decided to treat "as a sort of a Son."Bearing a letter of recommendation to the Royal Society from Mather,Greenwood went to London, where he spoke with Newton and becamean assistant to Dr. Jean Theophile Desaguliers, curator of experiments atthe Society and inventor of the planetarium. He brought back with him toBoston apparatus for scientific demonstrations and, in January 1727,launched a series of sixteen public lectures on science, the first of theirkind in New England. The same year the Harvard Corporation appointedhim to a new professorship of mathematics and natural philosophy, mak-ing Mather's protege probably the first American to earn his living byscience.

Mather was disappointed, however, in his own relation to the RoyalSociety during his final years. He continued sending communications,but often complained privately about the Society's failure to publish moreof them or to send copies of what it had published already. Sometimesthe Society replied tardily or not at all, which he feared meant eitherindifference or lost mail. The second fear was not fanciful, for his entireseries of Curiosa for 1720—twelve letters on the whale, the MississippiRiver, the quadrature of the circle, and other subjects—seems to havedisappeared after being delivered to Isaac Newton as president of theSociety. Despite concern over his packets miscarrying, and some resent-ment, he sent seven letters in 1723 and a final collection of ten letters in1724, none of which was published, however, in the Transactions.

In sending his 1724 series, Mather explained that the reason he didnot send Curiosa as often as he wished was partly that he had been writ-ing, and had now completed, a large new medical work he might soon try7to publish in New England. His preoccupation is understandable, for ex-cept his defense of inoculation, The Angel of Bethesda is his single mostimportant achievement in science—the only comprehensive Americanmedical work of the entire colonial period, filling in its modern editionsome 322 large pages. Mather first mentions it in the "catalogue of desira-bles" that concludes Bonifacius (1710), so that the book may well have

been the off-and-on labor of fourteen years. His threefold purpose wasreligious, medical, and in a broad sense scientific. He wished to supplyfor those in ill health, ingenious pious "improvements" of their condi-tion. ("Let thy Odious Breath" he advised victims of scurvy, "cause theeto think, in Speaking, how much has my Throat been like an Open Sepul-chre!") He also wanted to offer general and specific rules for preservinghealth: temperate diet, no tobacco, wholesome exercise, refreshment bytoast and tea (which he relished himself and specially recommended toministers after preaching). But mostly he tried to provide a popular phar-macopeia or colonial Dr. Spock, a "Family-physician" by whose scores ofremedies families might "Save Life, and Health, and Money." Accordinglythe work emits a warm charity, sympathy for human suffering, and partic-ular care for the poor.

Mather classified his remedies according to diseases as they wereidentified in his time, ranging from smallpox to stinking feet ("Be notslovenly, wear Socks, often shifting 'em"). He treated as illnesses condi-tions that would now be viewed as symptoms, such as headaches, andpresented as single diseases such conglomerates as "fevers"—confusionsof a sort which lingered in medical thought into the nineteenth century.Eclectic in medical theory as elsewhere, he borrowed from the publishedmedical works of competing schools: the Galenical school of botanicalremedies as well as the school of chemical remedies, even to a less extentfrom the occult school. The book quotes more than two hundred and fiftymedical writers, and repeats several remedies verbatim from RobertBoyle's Medicinal Experiments (London, 1688), a collection in part in-tended to supply cheap prescriptions for poor people in America. Matherdid not simply list prescriptions, however. Instead he related them in aperky conversational style invigorated by questions, interjections, and sal-lies of erudition, dividing the work into sixty-six sections called, with hisusual formal wit, Capsulas.

Some of Mather's remedies remain of value, such as the use of citrusjuice to treat scurvy. But many others must strike modern readers asweird: a wolfskin girdle for epilepsy; a needle first thrust into a centipedefor treating toothache; a dead hand applied to wens and tumors "till thePatient feel the Damp sensibly Strike into him"; a clyster made of freshbutter in which have been fried the parings of stone-horse hooves. Manyof these are folk remedies, and Mather so represented them, noting that"some have said" they work without vouching for their efficacy himself.But some of his other, equally weird remedies are based on contemporarymedical theory. One large group, including many remedies taken from

Boyle, derive from a theory of repellency, by which it was believed thaisome illnesses could be expelled by repulsive substances, including ver-min, pig dung, and human excrement. Discreetly apologizing that "lishardly Good Manners to write so much about it," Mather yet offeredcow's urine as a remedy for asthma, "powdered Mouse-dung' when othermeans fail to relieve ischury, and boy's urine as a gargle lor sore throat("Some fancy, a Mixture from diverse Lads").

The Angel of Betbesda also contains Mather's maturest reflections onseveral medical ideas he had long contemplated. He devoted the longestCapsula to the symptoms and treatment of smallpox. The Capsula entitled"Ephphatha. or, Some Advice to Stammerers"—another backward glanceof his last years—represents the first treatise on stuttering written inAmerica. The seventh Capsula, "Conjecturalies. or, Some Touches upon,A New Theory of many Diseases," expands his earlier speculations on thegerm theory of disease. Mather now proposed that the "Invisible Velites"or their eggs might "insinuate themselves by the Air*1 and infiltrate bodily juices; being numerous and perhaps of different sorts, they might beresponsible not only for smallpox but also for such such other varyingdiseases as syphillis, consumption, measles, and agricultural blight. Alsomerging and refining his earlier brief writings on psychogenic illnesses,he tried to show that many diseases arise from or are exacerbated bydistress. He treated specific emotional and mental ills as well, to some ofwhich he may have become sensitized by his father and Lydia, includingnightmares, melancholia, and insanity. He urged understanding treat-ment of disturbed persons: " We that are Strong must bear the Infirmitiesof the Weak; and with a patient, prudent, Manly Generosity, pity them,and Humor them like Children, and give none but Good Looks and goodWords unto them. . . . Tis not They that Speak; Tis their Distemper!" Howmany of these conjectures and conclusions Mather arrived at himself isarguable. He derived many of his comments on the germ theory, for in-stance, from Benjamin Marten's A New Theory of Consumption (London,1720). Whatever their originality, however, Mather's remarks at leastspeak for his humane open-mindedness, and his prescient ability to se-lect from contemporary science ideas of lasting importance.

In the most imaginative Capsula of The Angel of Betbesda, Matherconsolidated several of these ideas in the single master concept of a"Nishmath-Chajim. The Probable SEAT of all Diseases, and a GeneralCURE for them." The Nishmath-Chajim is his fullest elaboration, afteryears of pondering the notion, of the plastic spirit, an attempt to harmo-nize his scientific and religious ideas, his understanding of matter and of

spirit, his natural philosophy and pneumatology, his vitalistic and mecha-nistic views of the universe—Mather's own unified field theory. In con-ceiving the Nishmath-Chajim he drew particularly on the notion of anArcheus propounded by the devout Swiss physician Jean Baptiste vanHelmont, whose works he had known since youth. As defined in VanHelmont's huge folio Oriatrike or, Physick Refined (London, 1662), theArcheus is the inner "air" in every material object which determines itsdevelopment, a soullike entity responsible for all change and coming-into-being in the thing, the governor of generation, the "chief Workman,containing the fruitfulness of generations and Seeds, as it were the inter-nal efficient cause." Mather's Nishmath-Chajim is the body's Archeus, itsown unique plastic spirit, a set of biological signals directing its activitieswithout its volition. It is that by which the body "knows" to digest, "theSpirit, whose Way we know not, for shaping the Bones, and other Parts, inthe Womb of her that is with Child:" Neither pure matter nor pure spirit, itmay be "of a Middle Nature, between the Rational Soul and the Corpo-real Mass" a superfine matter whose particles, cohering by some un-known principle, may be finer than those of light. Most important, it maybe through the Nishmath-Chajim that body and soul interact: "It wonder-fully receives also Impressions from Both of them. And perhaps it is theVital Tie between them."

Mather saw this vitalistic Nishmath-Chajim as the possible link be-tween a diverse host of unexplained natural and pneumatological phe-nomena—muscular motion, digestion, psychogenic illness, nidification(the instinct in birds to build nests), and the waxing of the human bodyfrom the original infolded animalcule, as well as witchcraft, ghosts, andteleportation. Because the Nishmath-Chajim connects body and soul, andis affected by mental tranquillity, Mather following Helmont urged at-tending it in the treatment of disease: the physician who can find a way to"Brighten, and Strengthen, and Comfort, the Nishmath-Chajim, will bethe most Successful Physician in the World." Having never wholly aban-doned his pneumatology (he thought recently that Satan "obtained a per-mission" to scatter the pages of his Ratio Disciplinae) he believed that afuller understanding of the Nishmath-Chajim might explain "Indisput-able and Indubitable Occurrences of Witchcrafts (and Possessions)." TheNishmath-Chajim might also account for apparitions of the dead, forMather considered it probable that upon the body's death "the Nishmath-Chajim goes away, as a Vehicle to the Rational Soul; and continues untoit an Instrument of many Operations," a ghost thus being a soul inhabit-ing a Nishmath-Chajim. Similarly he attributed to it cases in which dying

persons who strongly desired to visit some distant place had been seen atthe place and could describe it. He also speculated that in conjunctionwith the concept of indestructible animalcules, the Nishmath Chajimcould help explain the ultimate Resurrection of the Dead

While writing The Angel of Betbesda Mather surmised tHat booksellerswould demand a sale of forty or fifty pounds before risking publication.Even before completing the "large Work" he despaired of "my Angel'sbecoming visible" otherwise than in manuscript. Although he deter-mined to "apply myself both to Heaven and Earth, to bring on the Publi-cation" his applications failed, as did those of Samuel, who noted that ithad cost his father "many Years study," and in 1739 even advertised forsubscribers to bring it into print. The work was not published, however,until the twentieth century.

Despite this uncommonly ample late harvest, Mather's health was fail-ing. In the last year of his life, 1727, he suffered three periods of seriousillness. In April several ministers met at Joshua Gee's house to pray forhis recovery; in June and July he was ill again, "Chastened sore, but . . .not given over to Death"; ill again in October, he characterized himselfas "a Dying Man, and one that sees himself going out of the World."Although weak, he carried on, preaching, occasionally serving on a com-mittee or at an ordination, holding a church council at his home. He alsosat for the well-known portrait of him by Peter Pelham, a 30" x 25" ovalpainted on canvas. It shows nothing of ill health, and may not be a closelikeness, although persons who knew Samuel well when he was oldersaid the portrait much resembled Mather's son. Pelham later preparedand sold a print based on the portrait, the first mezzotint known to havebeen made in the New World. Mather seems to have been the first Ameri-can whose portrait others wanted and bought for their homes.

Lacking Mather's diaries, his general mood in the last year or two ofhis life can only be glimpsed in other sources. His last works and few lastletters touch many moods. Some are sombrous, for he no more sentimen-talized the dying than he did the elderly:

They may Chatter like a Bird which a violent Hand is pulling out of itsNest; / shall behold Man no more with the Inhabitants of the World. MyAge is departed; My Life is cut off like the Thread of the Weaver. I feelDeath like a Lion breaking all my Bonds. They have no Prospect of anyother, but that within a few Days or Hours, they shall have their Lifesmitten down to the Ground, and go to dwell in Darkness. . . .

Yet at other times near the end Mather seems if somber also unsubdued,as in his Manuductio and in a letter he wrote one year before his death toThomas Prince. It concerns the Rev. Nathaniel Clap of Newport, membersof whose congregation charged him with neglecting his ministry. Appar-ently, some Boston ministers asked Mather to write a letter of reproof toClap, as he did. When he learned that another letter was substituted for it,his old touchy petulance flashed out:

/ very well understand the meaning of the indecency and indignity I amtreated withal. To order me to draw up letters, and make me lose my time,which grows more and more precious to me . . . and then turn 'em uponme again and substitute instead of them, that which can be of no other usebut only to render them useless—I say, / very well understand it. . . .

Assuring Prince that he would remain patient and easy, he added that hewould also "look on myself as excused for the time to come from thelabors of your clerkship."

Mather's dominant mood, however, seems to have been an agitatedexaltation, varying in pitch from lyric joy to hectic merriment. As a Puri-tan, he believed and often emphasized that the true Christian dies joyous-ly. He had witnessed such victorious deaths many times himself. In 1716,for instance, when "my dear, good, wise, and lovely Katy"was told thatshe was dying, she replied, "Oh!1 could even Sing for Joy, at what youtell me. "So despite his grim imaginings of illness and decay, Mather wasmoved himself to Whitmanesque carolings of death as liberation andease:

In Death, what shall we have to be afraidof! Death, which will be a Mercystroke to finish the uneasy things wherein we Die daily and release usfrom all the Pain, and Grief, and Care, and the Daughters of Heth, whichmade us to say, What Good shall my Life do unto me!. . . . The Angel ofDeath coming with a Commission to strike us and kill us, yet says unto us,/ shall do you no hurt. Ben 't scared; I won't hurt you!That which has theAspect of the Worst, as well as the last Enemy, becomes a good Friendunto us. In the most gloomy Darkness of the Valley, we may Sing. . . .

Mather's readiness to rejoice at death may account for the heightenedlyricism of many of his final works, as expressed in such poetically exoticHebrew titles as ElShaddai (1725), Zalmonah (1725), Hatzar-Maveth(1726), and HorHagidgad (1727). His late works also cultivate manystriking figures of speech (for instance comparing Christ, surprisingly, tothe Old Testament brazen serpent) and are pervaded by interacting com-

plex images of trees, birds, and, particularly, singing. When he sat aloneduring his long illness of 1724-25, unable to read or write, he often

composed and sang hymns pertinent to his condition, remarking thai asoul in which piety flourishes "can sing in the Valley of the Shadow ofDeath. . . . triumphing over the Fear of Death, and beginning to sing theSongs of the Lord, even in a strange Land; the Songs, which none butthose chief Musicians, the Redeemed from the Earth, are skilful at." Hewrote several poems in his last few years as well. Six of them he includedin Agricola (1727) as "The Plain SONGS OF THE Pious HUSBAND-MAN"; he seems also to have sent his friend Thomas Hollis a poem onspectacles.

At times Mather's lyric joy in the prospect of death was transposed intoa feverish levity. Such is the mood of a strange madcap letter he hurriedlywrote to Prince on a cold day in January 1726, dated "Madding Day" andbeginning, "If you ask, What I do?—Alas, methinks; my name is Do Lit-tle. "Lopsidedly written, words crowded at the bottom or crosswise in themargin, the letter acknowledges pain ("I want Strength. My Side Acheswith This!") and ends by quoting the Protestant martyr Mrs. Askew(whose name also puns on the askew script): "I am, your Brother, AsMerry as one bound for Heaven." Still more hectic is the unfinishedpoem Mather handwrote in 1727 across the title page and inside thecovers of a published poem entitled A Monumental Gratitude (New Lon-don, 1727). The published poem narrates the fate of some Yale studentscaught in but delivered from a storm on Long Island Sound. Mather wroteacross the bottom of its title page:

Poor Lads! the Storm has whirld your Brains around;And all the Sense is ship-wrack'd in the sound.

There is no knowing whether to take this as literary criticism, a swipe atYale, self-pity, or all three. Even more bizarre, considering the occasionof the poem (with its overtones of Creasy's drowning), are the mock-heroic verses Mather wrote inside. Suited for no place so much as theCourant, they render as a miniature comic apocalypse a rowdy holidayfeast of pigeon pie:

Hark, Stygian Muse; the Noise and discord dire,

Of Heated Ovens, and of Crackling Fire,

While Smoke, and Soot, and falling Sticks of Wood,

And Scattering Coal, and foaming Pidgeons Blood,

With hideous Riot all deform the Floor,

Rage, fury, firebrands, bellowing Outrage, roar,

Reason and Sense avaunt, the py appears,

And charms at once Touch, Eyes, Nose, Mouth, and Ears.Fall on, Huzza! Break down the Bulwarks StrongLet Gravy gush and pidgeons Sprawl along.Salt, pepper, Butter, Marrow, Flesh and Bones,Mix in the Mouth while Spoons encounter SpoonsForks rush at Forks, and plates on plates resound,Knives Knives repel, and crust recrackles round,War, tumult, Havock, Sputt'ring, Out-cries, Threats. . . .

And so on through about another eight lines. Mather probably wrote theverses when seriously ill, but their unexpected and mysterious death-bound merriment eludes explanation. Perhaps, like some Puritan KingLear, he returned at the worst to laughter.

Having spent much of his life preparing his soul for death, Mather alsolived now in a mood of expectancy. A little before dying, he wrote, an oldman "Realizes the Invisible World more than formerly. Invisibles becometo him the greatest Realities" When seriously ill in the summer of 1727he had come close to knowing what would be revealed to the elect atdeath. He had visited then "the very Gate of the Invisible World, and hadOpportunity to look a little way into the Paradise of GOD." What heexpected to find in his afterlife he recorded in an unpublished treatiseentitled "Tri-Paradisus." Apart from its eschatological interest, thislengthy work is biographically among the most revealing documents thatremain from Mather's last years. For although grounded in Scripture, itamounts to an elaborate fantasy of the journey of his own soul after deathand for the duration of time.

The three paradises of Mather's title refer respectively to Eden; to theplace of departed souls; and to the New Heaven and New Earth to be builtafter the Second Coming. The first section, drawn largely from "BibliaAmericana" and based on writings of Lydia's father, Samuel Lee, is anerudite exercise in scriptural geography, identifying biblical Eden withthe whole of Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Thispart of the work Mather seems to have written in 1712. The descriptionsof the other two paradises he seems to have written in 1726, at a timewhen he believed himself to be hastening to them. His manner through-out the work is tentative and guarded. Praying to be free from error hereckons with what "seems" to be the dark meaning of Scripture, extrapo-lating the nature of the place of departed souls typologically from the OldTestament depiction of the Jewish Temple of Solomon, and the nature ofthe New Heaven from the biblical description of Babylon, of which it isthe reverse image.

Following Scripture, Mather envisioned the future history of his liber-

earth would be literal, not allegorical as some commentators held, norlimited to the burning of Jerusalem. He had also come to believe that theSecond Coming would be personal, an actual return of Christ to earth, asubject on which he had previously had a "thousand hesitations He alsono longer believed that the conversion of the Jews must take place beforeor during the Second Coming, as many others believed (including hisfather) and as many passages in Scripture seemed to suggest. With "amost Humble, and even Trembling, Heart and Hand," as he wrote in "Tri-Paradisus," he had come to consider this view both unscriptural and irrational, among other reasons because it seemed to him impossible thatanyone could be converted amidst the flames. What the prophecy meant,he now thought, was that the Jews would be converted after Christ's Com-ing; or, since many Jews had been converted in early Christian times, theprophesied event may have already taken place.

Mather now believed, in fact, that there remained no signs to belooked for, that all the foretold preliminaries of the Second Coming hadalready occurred. Although he had once accepted the probability ofWhiston's date of 1716, he otherwise frowned on commentators whobrought prophetical study into disrepute by trying to fix the day and timeof Christ's return too precisely. But feeling near the end himself, he wasnow convinced that the end of time was imminent. He had reached thisconclusion by the summer of 1724, but feared publicizing it lest he seem"a vain Dreamer ... a Man in the Falling Sickness, seized with I know notwhat kind of Enthusiasm." But reluctance faded in the last year or two ofhis life, when he at least alluded to the nearness of the Second Coming inthe Latin Preface to his Manuductio, in such sermons as Terra Beata(1726) and Fasciculus Viventium (1726), and in a Latin commentary,Diluvium Ignis (1726).

Mather does not seem to have fully divulged his view publicly, howev-er, until August 1727, when he preached on the accession of the newking, George II. He may have been encouraged to declare himself byfront-page newspaper accounts, early in the year, of earthquakes in Italy.The Gazette reported on its front page that in Palermo an earthquakelasting twenty-five minutes had ruined most of the churches and a quarterof the houses, under which were buried more than fifteen-thousand per-sons; in Sicily people ran from their homes and gathered prostrate on theground in the squares, "shedding Floods of Tears, smiting their Breasts,and saying over their Rosary with the most fervent Devotion." Whether ornot inspired by this news, Mather thundered to his flock stupendous tid-ings:

... it may NOW, most awfully be said, His Wrath will QUICKLY Flame!—we NOW know of nothing that remains to go before the Fulfillment of thatWord, The Son of Man shall conic in the Clouds of Heaven: At which therecomes a tremendous CONFLAGRATION on a World horribly Ripened totit: and as Thoughtless of it!

This was on August 20, 1727, six months before his death.

It began, the earthquake, on October 29—a Sabbath, between half-past ten and ten forty-five at night. The sky, many remembered, had neverbeen more fair, the air never more serene, the stars never more glittering.To Mather it became audible as a "horrid rumbling like the Noise ofmany Coaches together, driving on the paved Stones with the utmostRapidity." Others heard a crashing noise, or violent thunderclap, or agreat fired chimney's bellowing "but inconceivably more fierce and terri-ble."

Movables clattered as the earth, in the largest quake in New England'shistory, began tremblingly reeling. Cups and mugs tumbled off the man-tel, windows and doors flew open; the kitchen in Judge Sewall's house"Rocked like a Cradle." Houses cracked as if collapsing. Many wakenedpeople fled to the streets, fearful they would be buried in rubble. Thebooming was not bounded by Boston. The splitting earth upthrew cart-loads of sulfurous sand and ashes at Newbury, about forty miles northeast.A bell tolled in Guilford, Connecticut, a hundred and sixty miles away.Ships along the coast shook. The initial shock lasted only two or threeminutes, but until early morning could be felt the roll of aftershocks anddistant rumbles. Their possible meaning was obvious. Many persons inMethuen, according to the local minister, feared "that it was the GreatDay of the Son of man's appearing in the clouds of heaven." Bostoniansassembled in the churches throughout the night and day, the Gazettereported, in a state of "great and Just Terror and Dread."

Mather may have been feeble at the time of the quake, for two weeksearlier he had addressed his congregation as "One coming to you fromthe Dead. " But having also recently warned of an imminent tremendousconflagration, he felt that if ever he had preached a seasonable word hemust do so now. The Lord had spoken, and he must "render the Voice ofthe Glorious GOD in the EARTHQUAKE, while it was yet scarce over,Articulate and Intelligible unto the Hearers." The morning following thequake he hurriedly put together what he called a speech rather than a

418 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COTTON MATHER

sermon, on Mic. 6:9—The Voice of the Lord, crieth unto the City. Thebells of the North Church rang, and services were held at eleven o'clockin the morning, lasting until two in the afternoon.

Mather spoke now to a full meetinghouse. Nothing is known of histhoughts and his physical condition as he delivered the speech, but heperhaps felt very near death. For although he dealt with the earthquake,his startlingly oral depiction of a vindictive God speaking in fire andconvulsion put before his listeners a lifetime of undernourishment and illreward, its straining vatic energy a personal cry for last-minute retribution. Now no ambidexter tongue-tied jest for some Oldmixon, he commanded his congregation to listen to what he said: "O People Tremblingbefore the Lord; Hear now my SPEECH, and hearken to all my Words.For Indeed, I may declare unto you, The opening of my Lips will be ofRight Things." They had now heard unmistakably, he said, the voice ofthe Lord roaring out of Zion: "Who is here of you, among them who feltthe Earth trembling under them, that said not upon it, When I heard, myLips quivered at the Voice." They had all heard his copious Voice beforebut had not attended "the Sound that went out of His Mouth." But now atlast they could not ignore the Voice: "I see none Asleep at this Time. Tisa Congregation of Hearers, that I am this Time speaking to. . . . Now, Sirs,you have an Earthquake to give you a push." The time called for reforma-tion, "particularly, for the stopping of that Language of Fiends, heard sooften in our Streets, from the Tongues that are set on Fire of Hell" Therest of what he knew Mather had come to warily, but now, following thequake, it was "like a Fire in my Bones. "Even so, he divulged it cautious-ly: "If I should make the Cry, FIRE, FIRE! The Fire of GOD will soonerthan is generally thought for, fall upon a wretched World... I should beas much mocked, and as little minded, as Lot was in the Morning of theDay when he went out of Sodom" He might again be mocked, he said,but he believed that the universal conflagration and Christ's "Literal, Per-sonal, Visible Coming' were at hand, and that all the promised signs"have been given; and are passed, and over."

Mather's warning was not easily mocked, for widespread earth tremorscontinued through November. In December, news also arrived of earth-quakes in such improbably remote places as the West Indies, where it wassaid that mountains shook and that the streets rose and fell like waves ofthe sea. Coupled with reports of quakes in England, Sicily, and elsewherein Europe earlier in the year, these unsettling accounts inspired a sub-stantial rise in admissions in many New England churches. Mather's ownchurch admitted seventy-one persons in 1727, the largest number of his

AS MERRY AS ONE BOUND FOR HEAVEN 419

entire ministry. (The previous largest number was fifty-five, in 1691, justbefore the witchcraft crisis.) The converts included, on November 19, hissole surviving daughter, Nancy, for whose conversion he had long prayed.

Hoping to prolong the mood of reformation, Mather sent to GovernorDummer on December 9 a memorial he had prepared, calling for a prov-ince-wide Day of Humiliation and Supplication, that "we may be foundreligiously preparing for the things which may be coming." In furtherpreparation he preached again on the earthquakes on December 14,warning once more that those who denied God would soon be con-sumed: "I again, and again, declare it unto you; The Coming of the Son ofMan in the Clouds of Heaven, 'tis what we know of Nothing to Retard it orProtract it."

On December 24, with the shocks continuing, Mather preached forthe last time. Speaking to his flock on the death of the Rev. PeterThacher, he selected the text, Come my People, Enter thou into thyChambers (Isa. 26:20). He did not threaten or warn. Instead he offered acomforting certainty, that the troubled body which goes to the cold cham-ber where the sun shines not, shall be reborn at rest in paradise, envision-ing God. Beginning in late December, other ministers, including his sonSamuel, took his place in his pulpit.

Conclusion: Copp's Hill

A Post set out; made the best of his Way; and in a few HoursReached the Stage Intended. I'll tell it yet again: A Ship Weighd, andunder full Sail, right before a Wind, run after the Rate of TwentyLeagues a Watch, and Anon Bore in with the Harbour . . . once more. AnEagle Hungry for a Prey, saw it, and with a Nimble WmgSeiz'd the Prey.This is the Short and the Long of the Story. Sirs, I have told you theStory of Life. This is the Story. In the V Chapter of Genesis, you have theStory told, Nine times over, so; The Man was Born, he had an House,and he Died. That's All!

—A New Year Well-begun (1719)

Cotton Mather's final illness kept him at home for the last five or sixweeks of his life. Certain he was dying, he wished to live only longenough to force his will into entire resignation to the will of God; afterthat, he told his successor Joshua Gee, "then farewell all friends below; Ishall have nothing more to do here." One other task remained to him,however. In his last affliction too he wished his own condition to instructothers, this time in the skill of dying. The many persons who visited himand recorded his final statements understood his behavior as the finaldemonstration of the Christian connoisseurship he had practiced all hislife, a consummate example of meeting the King of Terrors with divinecalm. Throughout his last illness and in his last days and hours, BenjaminColman observed, "abundant gracious Words. . . flow'd from Him to ev-ery one that came about him," making "one of the brightest Accounts weyet ever had of Grace and Peace, and living Comforts in dying Mo-ments."

But to Mather resignation had never come easily. Unlike his father, hehad never been greedy to depart but, however beset, had found much ofhis life savory and devoured it, a voluptuary of time. Many comments

420

ascribed to him at the end (some smacking of deathbed hagiography)suggest a longing to linger. Often, Samuel reported, he quoted the textThou that hast showed me great and sore Troubles, shalt quicken meagain (Ps. 71:20), sometime applying it to the possibility of recovering hisstrength—but adding that he would be content to have the promise ful-filled at the Resurrection. Or he spoke of wishing to live at least longenough to complete some unfinished writings. And there was Lydia, shewho had left him, still a "very valuable fish," he had called her in theircourtship. Reminding her of their ardent devotions, he said, "You and Imust never any more retire and pray together, as we used to do." But hetold her to think, when praying by herself, that he at that moment wouldbe singing hallelujahs before the same throne of grace, and he added:"I'll meet you there as often as you please."

With a boom "like a great Gun," the earth again shook and rumbledon January 14, a Sabbath, preluding not the vindication Mather predictedbut a kind of vindication nevertheless, terrible in form. The next day twobrothers, skating at the bottom of Boston Common, fell through the iceand drowned. They were young George and Nathan Howell, the two chil-dren of Lydia's daughter, offspring of the "monsters of ingratitude" whoMather believed had designed his ruin. They had been unfortunate sonsof a "wretched Father," he wrote when taking on the administration oftheir father's estate, and he had resolved to extend over them "the Eye ofmy Care."

At daybreak two Sabbaths later the earth trembled again for a minute.Houses vibrated, rattling glassware and pewter on the shelves. Shocksfollowed over the next two days—the worst since the first quake in Octo-ber, again sending people in great consternation into the streets. (Aston-ishingly, the tremors would continue into September.) The same day,January 28, the brethren of the North Church agreed to call a day ofsupplication, beseeching God to prolong the life of "Our Reverend andDear Pastor." God, they said, "has greatly endeared him to us, and threat-ens his Removal from us by Death, which we would deprecate as a mostawful Frown of Heaven."

Saturday, February 10, onlookers judged Mather to be in his worstagonies. In his last illness as before, he prayed to be spared from thetorturous stones that had made his father cry for pity. Apparently he was,for Samuel described his condition as "a hard Cough and a suffocatingAsthma with a Fever." He even managed to say, with a "sort of triumph inhis air and accent," as Gee recorded his words, "And is this dying! Thisall! is this what I feared when I prayed against a hard death! Is it no more

than this! O I can bear this! I can bear it, I can bear it!"

Sunday, as he had done throughout his last days, Mather dispensedblessings and charges to his visitors, according to their character andrelation. The surviving accounts do not mention Nancys presence ButMather assured Sammy that he knew that his soul was in a state of grace.Instructing his son how to dispose of his private affairs and papers, healso blessed him on bended knee, saying:

You have been a dear Son and a pleasant Child unto me, and I wish youas many Blessings as you have done me Services which are very- many. Iwish and Pray the God of ABRAHAM, ISAAC, and JACOB may be yoursand His Blessing rest upon you. I wish that, as you have a Prospect ofbeing serviceable in the World, you may be great and considerable, as thePatriarchs were, by introducing a CHRIST into the World.

When Sammy asked him what sentence or word he would have him con-sider constantly, Mather said, "Remember only that one word Fructuo-sus." Although he had confided to Gee that his final views of Christ, God,and Heaven had been neither so many nor so lasting as in some formerillnesses, when a friend asked what sight he now had of the invisibleworld he answered, "All glorious. " Indeed he seems to have felt relief.According to Samuel, when Lydia tried to wipe his eye he said, "I amgoing where all Tears shall be wiped from my Eyes. "

Monday was Cotton Mather's sixty-fifth birthday. Praying as usual withhis family in the morning, he told them he had expected to die the daybefore, but would wait his appointed time patiently. Whether buoyed byhis birthday or enacting his exemplary part to the end, he seemed toothers in good spirits. A visiting minister was surprised to find him sittingup in bed with his glasses on, reading, and asked whether he was readinghis name written in the Book of the Lamb; he replied, "Yes I have foundit/' and turned down the leaf. When Lydia remarked that he was smilingat her pleasantly while she, at his bedside, was in tears, he said, "Whyshould not I smile, when every thing looks smiling upon me." A few hoursbefore his death, which occurred on Tuesday morning, February 13, be-tween eight and nine o' clock, he called for Gee to pray with him and saidto him after the prayer, "Now I have nothing more to do here. . . . My willis now entirely resigned to the will of GOD " Someone observed to himthat God had heard his prayers for an easy death. He answered, his lastword was, "Grace/"

By custom, Mather's body lay awaiting burial for nearly a week. Mean-

while, Boston newspapers printed laudatory accounts of his life anddeath, and Benjamin Colman, Thomas Prince, and other ministerspreached eulogistic sermons about him, assessing the human meaning ofhis life, and its importance to his flock and his colleagues, to Boston, toNew England, and to America itself. Many of the sermons have the apolo-getic air, common to later accounts of Mather, of trying to do justice inlimited space to someone gargantuan and perplexing. But all agree thatMather had been an uncommon person, a presence.

It was of course as a minister that Mather's colleagues most extolledhim. He had been "the first Minister in the Town," as Colman called him,"the first in Age, in Gifts and in Grace. . . . the first in the whole Provinceand Provinces of New England, for universal Literature, and extensiveServices." Since his youth he had given an illustrious public example ofheaven-minded piety, having lived, said Thomas Prince, "in an eminentmanner in the Mount with GOD." His eulogists recalled the untiringearnestness he gave, after much study and writing, to composing anddelivering his thousands of sermons. Many recalled how he had zealouslyawakened the impenitent, heartened the discouraged, pleaded with all tocome to Christ. "No more will he here weep over perishing Souls inPrayer; no more scatter the thunders and lightnings of God in flamingSermons," Colman lamented, "No more is he to weary and spend him-self, as we have often seen him wearied and spent for your Souls; neverweary of his work, but often wearied in it." They recalled as well hisindefatigable pastoral visits and innumerable consolatory personal callson the afflicted or bereaved, the tempted and wounded. Nor had hisconcern been only for the North Church, but for the welfare and the civiland religious liberties of Protestants everywhere.

The ministers who praised Mather recognized themselves also as hisbeneficiaries. He had been a minister when the eldest of them were chil-dren, and before most of them were born, then had supervised their train-ing, performed at their ordinations, obtained jobs for them, presided re-sourcefully over their councils. Gee recalled Mather's indulgent help inhis own youthful ministerial studies, how he "bore with my infirmities;and helped me under difficulties: He quickened me to my work; andshowed me an example: He instructed, admonished, and exhorted me asa father; while by his condescending goodness he raised me to the levelof a friend and a brother."

Especially Mather's eulogists remembered him as the most learnedman and the most voluminous writer New England had ever produced—the 388 works he published, the huge works he left unpublished, his

devotion to science, his quick apprehension, tenacious memory, andready invention. "He was a wonderful Improver of Time," Thomas Princesaid, "and 'tis almost amazing how much He had read and studied—Howmuch He has wrote and published—How much He corresponded abroad;not only with the several Provinces in the British America, but also withEngland, Scotland, Ireland, Holland, Germany, and even the Eastern aswell as the Western Indies." Among Mather's works illustrative of his lovefor the church and its people, Prince singled out Magnalia Christi Ameri-cana "for the noble Care He has taken to preserve the Memory of thegreat and excellent Fathers of these religious Plantations, that was just asinking into Oblivion." He also called attention to the ill-fated "BibliaAmericana," an "extraordinary Work, that his Heart had been set on fromhis early Days, and has taken Him up almost Fifty Years to compose."

But not even Mather's lively and curious writings, the ministersagreed, conveyed the rich zest of his personality. Only those who hadconversed with him knew its tang. Sought and welcome for his instructiveand engaging talk, he rewarded all who came to him, the greatest man ormeanest child, with some pertinent saying, some agreeable quotationgraced with his own improvements, some anecdote fetched from his in-comparable knowledge of the New England past, now irrecoverably lostwith him. "How easy and natural did his vast Learning appear in everyCompany," Prince recalled, "How agreeably temper'd with a various mix-ture of Wit and Cheerfulness? The most knowing cou'd scarce ever leavehim without knowing more, the most ungracious without some Impres-sions of Goodness, or any without a grateful Pleasure."

Among Mather's more general personal qualities his eulogists empha-sized his passionate stamina and courteous charity, as well as his parentalaffection and power of resignation. "He seem'd to have," Prince re-marked, "an inexhaustible Source of divine Flame and Vigour

Tho' fatigued in Body, never tired in Mind." Much of this energy he gaveto endless projections to Do Good, abounding in generosity to the poor.Samuel praised his loving qualities as a father:

. . . how kind, how loving, nay how fond: We went into his Presence withDelight and never left it without Regret; His Company was so entertaining-ly pleasant and profitable; his Temper so free and open, and his Concernfor us, for our external, but much more for our interior Welfare, so verygreat; and, in a Word, his Carriage towards us so all-Christian, and allGentlemanly, that in our Opinion, it rendered him the Delight of Man-kind.

Without mentioning Mather's torments under injury to his reputation andin the deaths of thirteen of his children, several eulogists rememberedhow as a testimony of faith he had suffered his awesome bereavements insilence. "Scarce any on Earth," Prince said, "have gone thro' such a greatVariety and constant Succession of extraordinary Trials"

It was of course not the role of Colman and the others to enlarge onMather's many and much discussed faults. These his inner fears and his-torical circumstances make comprehensible but no less disfiguring. Hissubmissiveness that would not grasp that at Salem people were beinglegally murdered; his meddlesome ambitiousness that stooped or struttedfor petty advancement; his guile that wrote self-promoting letters underothers' names; his vanity that scented out lurking slurs yet sensed noprovocations in himself; his rashness that tendered spite as amity; hisenvy that sneered at what it could not get. Of this and what else in Matherwas odious his eulogists said nothing. "Love to Christ and his Servantcommands me," Colman explained, "to draw a Vfe/Vover every Failing: forwho is without them?"

Among Mather's eulogists, Samuel probably came closest to identify-ing the overall achievement on which his father's future reputation mightsolidly rest. Might solidly: for in the popular panorama of the Americanpast Mather still stands, like some limping Vulcan, in the mists of thecountry's history, from which only later emerge the more real and sub-stantial figures of Franklin, Jefferson, and Washington. In a country thatendorses democratic tolerance, reasonableness, individuality, and down-rightness, this nebulous mythological Mather serves to symbolize whatAmerican character is not, or should not be—bigoted, superstitious, au-thoritarian, and devious. In its elements the conception is simplistic andinaccurate, while in toto one must look to cultural psychologists andhistorians of ideas to account for its gross distortion of so complex a maninto a national gargoyle. Yet Sammy, in estimating his father's stature,provided part of an explanation: "he alone was able to support the Char-acter of this Country abroad, and was had in great Esteem thro' manyNations in EUROPE."

Mather looms disfigured but large, that is, in part because he standsalone. Many of the beliefs attached to his name and scorned were after allshared by thousands of other settlers whose names few remember. But noother person born in America between the time of Columbus and ofFranklin strove to make himself so conspicuous—strove, more accurately,to become conspicuous as an American. For he looked out eagerly fromthe New World on major intellectual developments abroad, aspiring to

contribute to them by capitalizing on the limitations of provincial life.Unlike his father, who was also born in America and who won lesser(ultimately) fame, he did not hanker to live and die in England. The tidesof some of his major works—"Biblia Americana," Magnalia Christi Amer-icana, "Curiosa Americana," Psalterium Americanum—announce his alfection for the place and his hope of putting America on the cultural map.To speak very generally now, but with no intent of putting Mather in anutshell: he was the first person to write at length about the New Worldhaving never seen the Old. Much of his career illustrates, for the firsttime, the costs and gains to America's intellectual and artistic life of itsdivorce from Europe. These costs and gains have been one and thesame—a lack of standards or a freedom to create (depending on how it isviewed) which has often inspired works tainted by provincial crabbed-ness, eccentricity, and overreaching, but also often distinguished by theirclose kin, pungency, innovation, and grandeur. Some or all of these quali-ties impart the feel of the New World to work by many later Americanswho have accepted or declared, and deeply explored, their isolation fromthe European mainstream—Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, WaltWhitman, Charles Ives, Gertrude Stein, Frank Lloyd Wright, Jackson Pol-lock. The list might be extended (and challenged), and to be sure Matherwas far more an artist of sorts than an artist. In his curiousness, epic reach,and quirkily ingenious individualism he was nevertheless the first unmis-takably American figure in the nation's history.

Mather was buried on February 19, 1728, a cold and cloudy morning.The large number of people who gathered for the event from Boston andother towns made, said one contemporary, a "Vast Concourse Exceedinglong Procession and numberless Spectators. Every heart Sad."

Taken from Mather's house on Ship Street near the wharves and har-bor, his corpse was borne up Fleet Street past the Old North Church,where it was met by Joshua Gee, in deep mourning, and by the threedeacons and the brethren of the church, who as a mark of special respectproceeded to walk before the coffin instead of behind it. Following theidentical route that had been taken for the funeral of Increase Mather fiveyears earlier, the procession moved along Hull Street toward the burialground. On the uphill journey, Colman, Prince, and another Boston min-ister held down the funeral pall; some brethren took turns at bearing thecoffin underneath, behind which walked Mather's family, in mourning,then Lieutenant Governor Dummer, the Council and House of Represent-

CONCLUSION: COPP'S HILL 427

atives, followed by a large train of ministers, justices, merchants, scholars,and other principal citizens, both men and women, including SamuelSewall riding in a coach. "The Streets were crowded with People," theWeekly Journal reported, "and the Windows fill'd with Sorrowful Specta-tors all the way to the Burying Place."

The procession ended on Copp's Hill, the cemetery of the Old North.The level plain atop the hill had been, and probably still was, the site of awindmill. Although only about fifty feet high, Copp's Hill was one of themost commanding spots in Boston, affording a view of Charlestown andof a large part of Boston Harbor. Mather was interred in the large familytomb—the "Cave of the Treasure," he had called it—together with hisfather and other members of the family. "It look'd very Sad," one observ-er said, "almost as if it were the funeral of the Country."

Immediately after Mather's death his pulpit was filled by the unitedministers of Boston preaching a course of sermons. The North Churchvoted to continue Mather's salary (presumably to Lydia) as long as thesesermons lasted, which was about a week; after that, the church voted £100to Lydia out of its treasury, at the rate of £5 a month, until the end of1729—five years before her death. Samuel prepared some of Mather's lastworks for posthumous publication and also began writing a brief butvaluable biography of his father, containing a fresh advertisement to pub-lish "Biblia Americana." Meanwhile his funeral sermon on his father, TheDeparture and Character of Elijah (1728), became the first of his ownpublished works. In January 1732, after a probationary period, he waschosen pastor of the North Church, as the colleague of Joshua Gee; be-cause of contention in the church he stayed only nine years, but re-mained in the ministry until his death in 1785. In 1762 he learned that hisson Increase, also nicknamed Creasy, had fallen mortally ill of a fever inHavannah, only to learn that Creasy was in fact aboard a ship homewardbound . . . only to learn soon after that Creasy had indeed died. After di-vine services on August 15, 1776, he read to his congregation the Declara-tion of Independence and urged compliance with it.

Cotton Mather died intestate. The fact is surprising, for he had alwaysbeen concerned about the plight of orphans and had often called onparents to provide for their children against their deaths: "Make a Testa-mentary Provision for them. Let your Willsbe made, and in a Good orderalways Lying by you." Since he left no will, the power of examining andadministering his estate fell to Samuel Sewall as probate judge. Sewallcalled on Lydia to appear in court, but she declined to act as administra-tor. Samuel petitioned to so act, but for some reason his petition was

428 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF COTTON MATHER

withdrawn. Sewall then assigned the power of administration to a Bostonshopkeeper named Nathaniel Goodwin, who prepared an inventory inJuly 1728 as Mather's effects were shown to him and others by Lydia andthe children. One of Mather's creditors charged that the inventory fraudu-lently omitted items of great value in order to avoid paying debts Heprobably referred to Mather's library, his most valuable property, whichdoes not appear in the inventory and which by some means or otherdescended to Samuel. Otherwise the only striking item on the inventoryis five hundred acres of wasteland in Granville, Massachusetts, valued atonly £36, to which Samuel also later laid claim. After some legal wran-gling the estate was valued at £245, 5s, lOd of which the judge gave athird to Lydia, a third to Samuel, and divided the other third among thechildren of Mather's deceased daughter Abigail, and his one other surviv-ing child, Nancy—the hapless daughter who had been burned in child-hood, later caught smallpox and was put upon by Lydia, and afterwardappears on the surviving records as "Hannah Mather, Spinster." Samueland Lydia, however, signed over their shares in the estate to Nancy aswell, for £30 and for what the quitclaim calls, without explanation, "di-verse other good Causes."

But there was little to sign over. However luxuriantly he lived in heav-en, Mather had not lived affluently on earth, and had lost much. What heleft behind, as set down in the inventory of his estate, was dingy andmean: pie plates, lumber, a crosscut saw, three old rugs, four old bed-steads, two old oval tables, two old chests of drawers, old china curtains,old quilt, old warming pan, old standing candlestick, red curtains moth-eaten, broken stone table, broken fireplace dogs, broken chairs, brokenpewter, broken spoons.

Documentation

In reproducing printed and manuscript primary sources I have retained the capitals,punctuation, and italics of the originals. But I have modernized spellings, loweredsuperscript letters, and expanded abbreviations. Legal documents, titles of works,and most quotations of verse, however, appear exactly as in the originals, with a veryfew deviations mentioned in the notes. In his preaching and writing, Mather appar-ently used several versions of the Bible, which sometimes makes his citation of textsseem erratic. For the sake of consistency in the text of the book, I have styledbiblical citations in the modern fashion (e.g. Phil. 4:20), keyed to the King Jamesversion. But in the documentation I have reproduced Mather's own citations. I havereproduced dates according to the modern calendar, although Mather and his con-temporaries used the Julian calendar, which began the year on March 25. Thuswhere Mather dated a letter "12 month 1682" I have used the modern date, Febru-ary 1683.

I have indicated internal omissions from quoted material by an ellipse. Butexcept for indented quotes, I have not included an ellipse for matter omitted fromthe end of a quotation. I am keenly aware of the possibilities this affords for misrep-resentation, but I believe that in no case in the text does the lack of a final ellipsedistort the meaning of the quotation. Where an omission has run over into thefollowing paragraph of the source, I have indicated the gap by a double ellipse (sixdots).

In the documentation below, I have used the first three words of each paragraphin the text, printed in bold face, to locate and group references in that paragraph.The references appear serially in the order of their appearance in the text. Individ-ual references are separated by a semicolon. I trust these entries are full and clear,but their large number has made it unwieldy to group them in smaller clusters, or todocument every tittle of information. Works specified in the text by date are notfurther documented in the notes, except in the case of Magnalia Christi Americana.Unless otherwise noted, all places of publication are Boston.

In the documentation I have used the following abbreviations:

A: "The Autobiography of Increase Mather," ed. Michael G. Hall, Proceedings of the

American Antiquarian Society, LXXI (1961), 271-360.AAS: American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Mass.BA: Cotton Mather's manuscript "Biblia Americana," in MAP (below), Reels 10-13;

quotations identified by biblical book, chapter, and verse.

429

430 DOCUMENTATION

BG: The Boston Gazette.

BNL:77?e Boston News-Letter.

BPL: Boston Public Library, Boston, Mass.

CM: Cotton Mather.

CMHS: Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

DI and DII: Diary of Cotton Mather, ed. Worthington Chauncey lord. Collections of

the Massachusetts Historical Society, 7th ser., VII VIII [1912].Dili: The Diary of Cotton Mather, D.D., ER.S. for the Year 1712, ed William R.

Manierre II (Charlottesville, Va., 1964).ERB: Extended Record Books, Clerk's Office for Suffolk County of the Supreme

Judicial Court, Boston, Mass.H: Cotton Mather: A Bibliography of His Works, ed. Thomas J. Holmes, 3 vols. (1940;

rpt. Newton, Mass., 1974).HCR: Harvard College Records, in Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachu-setts, XV-XVI (I and II; 1925), XXXI (III; 1935), XLIX-L (IV and V: 1975).HL: Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.IM: Increase Mather.IMD: Increase Mather, manuscript diaries, American Antiquarian Society. My deep

thanks to Professor Michael G. Hall for allowing me to quote from his painstak-ing transcript of the diaries.M: Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 4th ser., VIII (1868; "The

Mather Papers").MAP: The Mather Papers, Part I (Cambridge, Mass., 1970; microfilm). References are

identified in the notes by reel and frame numbers.MCA: Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana (London, 1702). References are

identified in the notes by book and page number.MHS: Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Mass.NEC: The New-England Courant.

NEHGR: New England Historical and Genealogical Register.P: Cotton Mather, Parentator. Memoirs of. . . Dr. Increase Mather (1724).PA: Cotton Mather, Paterna: The Autobiography of Cotton Mather, ed. Ronald A.

Bosco (Delmar, N.Y., 1976).PAAS: Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society.PCSM: Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.PMHS: Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

R2C: Manuscript records of the Second Church, Massachusetts Historical Society.RS: The Royal Society, London.

SF: Suffolk Files, Supreme Judicial Court, Boston, Mass.SLCM: Selected Letters of Cotton Mather, ed. Kenneth Silverman (Baton Rouge,

1971). Citations of this volume give the page number only; full bibliographical

information appears on the cited page in the volume itself.SML: Samuel Mather, The Life of the Very Reverend and Learned Cotton Mather,

D.D. &F.R.S. (1729).SPG: Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.SSD: The Diary of Samuel Sewall 1674-1729, ed. M. Halsey Thomas, 2 vols. (New

York, 1973).SVW: Salem-Village Witchcraft, ed. Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum (Belmont,

Calif., 1972).SWP: The Salem Witchcraft Papers, ed. Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, 3 vols.

(New York, 1977).W: Winthrop Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society (microfilm).

1. Quantum Nomenf Quanta Nomina!

Both his grandfathers: quote from MCA, III, 125; other information from B. R.Burg, Richard Mather ofDorchester (n.pl., 1976). Cotton Mather's maternal: JohnCotton, "Gods Promise to His Plantation," in Literature in America: The Foundingof a Nation, ed. Kenneth Silverman (New York, 1971), p. 36. Other informationfrom A. W. M'Clure, The Life of John Cotton (Boston, 1846) and Larzer Ziff, TheCareer of John Cotton (Princeton, 1962). Except for uncertain: A, pp. 279, 280.Increase improved his: A, pp. 282, 285, 286. Returned from England: A, p. 286.The first eight: Wither Muir Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical History (Cam-bridge, Mass., 1959), pp. 6-7; Justin Winsor, et al, The Memorial History of Boston,II (Boston, 1882-83), 496. Although settled only: "Copy of a Curious Paper,"CMHS, 1st ser., IV (1795), 217; Whitehill, Boston, p. ii; A Report of the RecordCommissioners. . . Containing the Boston Records from 1660 to 1701 (Boston,1881), pp. 65, 71. The Mathers' house: Arthur B. Ellis, History of the First Churchin Boston, 1630-1880 (Boston, 1881), pp. 42-43; Kate M. Cone, "Cotton Mather'sBirthplace," Genealogical Quarterly Magazine, III (1902), 55-64; Chandler Rob-bins, A History of the Second Church, or Old North, in Boston (Boston, 1852),p. 216; IM, A Sermon Concerning Obedience & Resignation (1714), p. 39. Virtual-ly nothing is: IMD, 1 Dec 1664, 27 Oct 1664, 28 Jun 1665, 25 Aug 1665. These andIncrease's: A, p. 314; PA, p. 6; IM, Pray for the Rising Generation (Cambridge,Mass., 1678), p. 20. While such nurture: IM, Sermon Concerning Obedience, sig.A3; A, p. 352; P, p. 182; Benjamin Colman, The Prophet's Death (1723), p. 33. YetIncrease Mather's: P, p. 40; CM, Early Religion Urged (1694), pp. 83-84. On larg-er, impersonal: A, p. 284; M, pp. 96, 156. But Increase's inwardness: P,pp. 79, 66; A, pp. 297, 318; Colman, Prophet's Death, p. 36. The years of: R2C, p. 1;A, p. 287. The brethren of: IMD, 10, 11, 16, 19 Apr 1664 and 29 Jul 1664; P,p. 26. Immediately Increase regretted: IMD, 14 May 1664, 21-22 Jun 1664, 17 and29 Feb 1664, 1 Mar 1664, 20 Aug 1664, 8 Sep 1664; P, p. 34; IMD, 2 Jun 1666. Whatmust have: A, p. 359; CM, Maternal Consolations (1714), passim. But these eulo-gies: IMD, 4 May 1663, 28-29 Jun 1663. The speakers in these exchanges appear inIM's diaries as "C" and "M"—undoubtedly "Crescentius" and "Maria." See alsoIMD, 8 Apr 1664. In the fall: A, p. 287; IM, The Life and Death of. . . Mr. RichardMather, in Collections of the Dorchester Antiquarian Society, no. 3 (1850), pp. 86,77; A, pp. 288, 291; P, p. 68. The possibility of: A, pp. 291, 293. During thisperiod: Annie Haven Thwing, The Crooked & Narrow Streets of the Town of Boston1630-1822 (Boston, 1920), p. 52; Robbins, History of the Second Church, p. 216.Cotton later called: DII, p. 723; Winsor, Memorial History, q. I, 548; Peveril Meigs,"Energy in Early Boston," NEHGR, CIV (1950), 83-90; John Bonner, The Town ofBoston in New England (map, 1722); Report of the Record Commissioners, p. 154;Boston in 1682 and 1699, ed. George Parker Winship (Providence, 1905), p. 39.Cone, "Cotton Mather's Birthplace," dates the move in 1669, but this seems errone-ous. CM remarks that the family lived in the new house for five years, and IM isknown to have moved out of it in 1676. By moving near: A, pp. 297-98. Notsurprisingly, Cotton's: PA, pp. 6-7. In study and: CM, Corderius Americanus(1708), p. 32; PA, p. 7 By 1674 Cotton: PA, p. 7; HCR, III, 329; CM, The Angel ofBethesda, ed. Gordon W Jones (Barre, Mass., 1972), p. 231; A, p. 301. Just whenand: An Analysis of Stuttering, ed. L. L. Emerick and C. E. Hamre (Danville, 111.,1972), p. 12; Stuttering: A Second Symposium, ed. Jon Eisenson (New York, 1975),p. 55; SML, p. 26. In explaining the: Emerick and Hamre, Analysis of Stuttering, p.128 et passim; Eisenson, Stuttering, p. 47. Whether Cotton Mather's: Angel ofBethesda, pp. 230, 226. Christ was not: Angel of Bethesda, pp. 226, 230-31. Other

problems than: Hamilton Vaughan Bail, Views of Harvard: A Pictorial Record to

1860 (Cambridge, Mass., 1949), pp. 1-25; HCR, I, lxvii ff. No ampler facilities:John Maynard Hoffmann, "Commonwealth College: The Governance <>t Harvard inthe Puritan Period," Diss. Harvard (1972), p. 70; John Langdon Sibley, "Cataloguesof Harvard University," PMHS (1864-65), p. 23 (IM's class ol L656 had eight mudents); Robert Boyle: The Works, ed. Thomas Birch (Hildesheim, 1965), VI, 653.But in the: SML, p. 4; [fragments of IM's diaries], PMHS, III (1855 58), 317 I see noreason to connect these threats by his fellow students, or general conditions ;itHarvard during Hoar's administration, with the "onset" of CM's stutter, .is DavidLevin implicitly does in his Cotton Mather: The Young Life of the Lord's Remem-brancer 1663-1703 (Cambridge, Mass., 1978). Very little is known concretely aboutHoar's administration, and even far less about CM's years at Harvard. Authorities onstuttering agree that it is extremely unusual for some particular, traumatic event toprecipitate the impediment. For other arguments against making the connection seeHoffmann, above, esp. p. 308, n. 62. President Hoar fared: Records of the Gover-nor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in Neiv England, ed. Nathaniel B.Shurtleff (Boston, 1853-54), V, 20; [fragments of IM's diaries], pp. 317, 319. Thechange in: [fragments of IM's diaries], p. 318; "Diary of Increase Mather," PMHS,2nd ser., XIII (1899-1900), 346, 348, 349, 351; [fragments of IM's diaries], p. 319.The demoralized atmosphere: A, p. 302; Thomas Hutchinson, The History of theColony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay, ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo (Cambridge,Mass., 1936), I, 260; John Gorham Palfrey, History of New England (Boston, 1875,1890), III, 215. While Cotton was: P, p. 77; Joseph B. Felt, The EcclesiasticalHistory of New England (Boston, 1855), II, 638; MCA, III, 199. The war hardly: A.pp. 302-3; MS letter, IM to John Cotton, 13 Dec 1676, AAS. Increase frequentlysuffered: IM to John Cotton, 13 Dec 1676. Cotton Mather saw: IM to John Cotton,13 Dec 1676; A, p. 303. Increase lost by: IM to John Cotton, 13 Dec 1676; Recordsof the Suffolk County Court 1671-1680, PCSM, XXIX-XXX (1933), 782; "Diary ofJohn Hull," Transactions and Collections of the American Antiquarian Society, III(1857), 242. After the fire: A, p. 303; Robbins, History of the Second Church, pp.23, 216. No record remains: Josiah Quincy, The History of Harvard University(Boston, I860), I, 591; HCR, III, 333. Cotton later wrote: PA, pp. 7-8; M, p. 9;Julius Herbert Tuttle, "The Libraries of the Mathers," PAAS, NS XX (1910), 348-49.Cotton usually took: PA, pp. 7-8; I. Bernard Cohen, Some Early Tools of AmericanScience (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), p. 27; PA, p. 10. Cotton came down: CM, Angelof Bethesda, p. 50; PA, p. 8; SLCM, pp. 6-7. CM's 1677 sermon notebooks show himto have been in Boston virtually every week. For whatever reasons: PA, p. 10.During his last: R2C; PA, p. 10. At the Commencement: SML, p. 5

2. The Solemnest Work in the World

The ministry, for: PA, p. 15. In his sixteenth: R2C, p. 8; CM, Religious Societies(1724); SML, p. 27; R2C, 27 Sep 1680; MS letter, Samuel Bache to CM, 28 Feb 1682,BPL; M, pp. 624, 352, 606; DI, p. 34. But that Cotton: PA, pp. 15, 17; IMD, 6 Sep1680; Chandler Robbins, A History of the Second Church, or Old North, in Boston(Boston, 1852), p. 216; A, p. 310; IMD, 11 May 1683. Cotton feared being: CM,Addresses to Old Men, and Young Men, and Little Children (1690), p. 105; MAP,Reel 3C, fr. 0454; DI, pp. 36, 20. Increase's grave illnesses: MAP, Reel 7, fr. 0012;MAP, Reel 3C; DI, p. 22; MS letter, CM to Richard Chiswell, 2n Nov 1683, BodleianLibrary; DI, p. 63. Cotton was correct: R2C, 23 Feb 1681, 8 Jan 1683- How intent-ly the: IMD, 8 Sep 1681; Massachusetts Archives, XI, 15. Yet Increase did: IM,Practical Truths (1682), Preface; SML, p. 27; A, p. 310. Cotton also received: M,

pp. 611, 607; DI, p. 53; PA, p. 19. Yet Increase seems: PA, p. 19. Cotton spentmuch: DI, p. 9. To discern whether: PA, p. 19; CM, Religious Societies, p. 11; DI,pp. 79, 32; MAP, Reel 3C, fr. 0537. Cotton also felt: DI, p. 15; P, p. 27; DI, pp. 36,

93, 16. As his own son, Samuel, later wrote of CM, "while he was yet young he bidfair to be great for he believed he should be so: he expected it" (SML, p. 6). Thestains on: DI, pp. 21, 5, 11, 34, 17, 39. But having identified: DI, pp. 28, 69. Thiscertainty that: DI, pp. 6, 22, 91 However brokenhearted, Cotton: DI, p. 8; PA,p. 43. Cycles of assurance: DI, p. 35; PA, p. 44. Such high attainments: PA, p. 201;MAP, Reel 3D, fr. 0038; PA, p. 38. Some means of: CM, The Retired Christian (1703),p. 2; DI, p. 58. Until around the fall of 1683, CM apparently kept a diary similar tohis father's, telegraphically brief entries on the day's activities, especially his read-ing. He found this a waste of time, however, and apparently burned the diary. Theearlier years of his surviving diaries also are a revised version of some z/r-Diary, arecord of his spiritual struggle intended for profitable reading by his children andothers in the future. As if he: DI, pp. 41, 37, 72; PA, p. 65; DI, pp. 29, 71; PA, pp. 41,67; DI, p. 94. Not even this: DI, p. 62; PA, p. 50; DI, pp. 81-84; PA, p. 50. As Cottonnoted: DI, pp. 37, 80, 81. "Give my Stammering: CM, Religious Societies, p. 18;Carol Gay, "The Fettered Tongue: A Study of the Speech Defect of Cotton Mather,"American Literature, XLVI (1975), 451-64; IMD, 6 Sep 1680. During the first: DI,pp. 2, 49, 50. Cotton tried as: DI, p. 49; MAP, Reel 3C, fr. 0426. In seeking the: DI,pp. 16, 70; MAP, Reel 3C, fr. 0426; DI, p. 55. In fact, Cotton: CM, The Angel ofBetbesda, ed. Gordon W.Jones (Barre, Mass., 1972), p. 228; MAP, Reel 3C, fr. 0326;DI, p. 67. There seems little doubt that CM's stutter was largely the product of hisanger. One authority writes that where anger is inhibited by parental and culturaldisapproval, fear and anxiety become attached to it, and to the child's feelings,thoughts, and words at the time he or she feels angry. Among other evidence of thechild's distress is stuttering, "the inhibition of speaking for fear of revealing angerand its several associates." Stuttering: A Second Symposium, ed. Jon Eisenson (NewYork, 1975), p. 438. Cotton seems to: DI, p. 77; SML, p. 20; DI, p. 93; SLCM, p. 6.Meanwhile, Cotton had: PA, p. 54; DI, pp. 92, 132. Cotton's deliberateness and:Massachusetts Archives, X, 196. Among CM's adolescent draftings of other publicdocuments see also Massachusetts Archives, XI, 8a and 21a. And beginning in: DI,p. 284; CM, Angel of Betbesda, p. 228. I do not intend the foregoing discussion as anEphphatha, magically unlocking the secret of CM's personality and works. Bothwere obviously the sum of much more than his stutter, whose own origin is anywayobscure. Yet I do believe that his feelings about his stutter and his efforts to controlit influenced many of his later non-speaking activities, and help explain many fea-tures of his writing—its voluminousness, repetitiousness, frequent long-winded-ness, and pervasive oral imagery—as well as his acute sensitivity to criticism of hisstyle. Needless to say, these too were not the product of his stutter alone. In hisbook Stuttering: A Psycbodynamic Approach to its Understanding and Treatment(New York, 1954), Dominick A. Barbara describes the working in some stutterers ofwhat he calls the "Demosthenes complex." His elaborate discussion defies briefsummary, but is virtually a blueprint of CM's adult personality, and applicable to hiswritten work as well. Such stutterers, Barbara explains, are often the children ofpersons who stress intellectual values and social prominence. Speech begins todominate their lives, and they feel compelled to excel in something they feel ismost lacking in themselves. "Through words," Barbara writes, such a stutterer"feels he can either triumph or succumb in relation to the world about him. When-ever he expresses himself, he should be able to hold the absolute attention ofothers and to keep his listeners in a constant state of enthusiasm and enlighten-ment. With words he should be powerful enough 'to build or destroy empires.' His

speech becomes filled with feelings of utter perfection, boundless ambition, andrage at the slightest awareness of shortcomings or realistic inconsistencies in him-self." In addition to being the wittiest and most intelligent, he musi also remainhonest, considerate, unselfish, and above all uncomplaining. Yet, understandably,he carries a hidden grudge, in believing he has been humiliated and shamed sincechildhood because of his affliction. And he uses these early hurts "to feel justifiedin humiliating, hurting, and vindictively triumphing over others in j compulsivelyindiscriminate manner" (pp. 103, 110). I believe this goes far in explaining CM slater strong feelings of envy, jealousy, and resentment toward others. Some connec-tion between: Thomas Prince, The Departure of ELIJAH lamented I 1728), p. 1 \.Cotton's stutter may: CM, Angel of Bethesda, p. 228; M. p, 379. Cotton's affec-tions and: PA, p. 17. Cotton says virtually: the volume of John Cotton's sermonsis at AAS, among the Cotton Family Papers; MCA, IV, 211, MS letter. NathanaelMather to John Cotton, [ca. Jul 1685], MHS. Among his numerous: Josiah Cotton.MS account of Cotton family, Houghton Library, Harvard University; Josiah CottonMS journal, MHS; SSD, I, 379, n. 14. But the many: Josiah Cotton, MS account; M,p. 251 etpassim; SLCM, p. 19; M, p. 246; SF #1915 (23 [Jul?]) 1679). From BostonCotton: SLCM, p. 6. Within his family: Theodore Hornberger, "Puritanism andScience: The Relationship Revealed in the Writings of John Cotton," New EnglandQuarterly, X (1937), q. p. 513; MCA, IV, 211; MS letter, Nathanael Mather to JohnCotton; Michael G. Hall, "The Introduction of Modern Science into 17th-centuryNew England: Increase Mather," Ithaca 26 VIII 1962-2 IX 1962 (Paris, 196-4),pp. 261-64; IM to John Richards, 10 Nov 1682, W, Reel 12. The Cotton and: M,p. 63; A, p. 307; Raymond Phineas Stearns, Science in the British Colonies of America(Urbana, 111., 1970), pp. 150 ff.; IMD, 23 Jul 1683. Cotton later described: P. p. 86;Massachusetts Archives, LVIII, 133; Stearns, Science in the British Colonies, p. 156.Although far older: MS letter, Avery to CM, 10 Nov 1683, BPL; on Avery, see notesat Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; George L. Kittredge,"Letters of Samuel Lee and Samuel Sewall Relating to New England and the Indi-ans," PCSM, XIV (1913), 164; MS letter, Boyle to Avery, 6 Oct 1685, MHS; MS letter,Avery to Boyle [in CM's hand], [no day] Jul 1683, MHS. Cotton also took: M, p. 638;CM, Elegy on . . . Collins, p. 5; MAP, Reel 7, fr. 0011. The beginning of: R2C, 31 Jul1684; A, p. 310. But Increase still: MAP, Reel 3C, fr. 0596-97; DI, p. 93. Cotton'sordination was: DI, p. 97, PA, p. 76. On the morning: PA, p. 76; DI, p. 98 In thisstate: DI, p. 98; DII, p. 415. Cotton began the: DI, p. 98. Having spoken three:MAP, Reel 3D, fr. 0042-48. Cotton's ordination as: CM, Ratio Disciplinae ( 1~26).pp. 10 ff. Now Increase and: DI, p. 99. The minister chosen: MCA, III, 186; DI.p. 99. Elevated into partnership: MAP, Reel 3D, fr. 0047-48; SSD, I. 63. Withinabout a: DI, pp. 102-3; R2C, Oct and Nov 1685; DI, p. 114; SLCM, p. 17; A,p. 313; Kenneth Ballard Murdock, Increase Mather: The Foremost American Puri-tan (Cambridge, Mass., 1926), pp. 178-79. Cotton preached extensively: DI,pp. 109, 122; CM, The Call of the Gospel (1686), p. 51; SSD, I. 99; CM, MS sermonnotebooks, HL, 11 Mar 1686. Morgan perhaps sensed: CM, Call of the Gospel pp.124 et passim. Cotton's concern for: DI, pp. 122-23, 132. While pleased by:MAP, Reel 3D, fr. 0047; M, p. 514; SSD, I, 94-95. If Cotton's plush: MAP, Reel 3D,fr. 0340; MAP, Reel 7, fr. 0477; DI, p. 90; IM, A Sermon Occasioned by the Execution(1686), sig. A3. Especially Cotton feared: DI, p. 126; Deloraine Pendre Corey. TheHistory of Maiden (Maiden, Mass., 1899), pp. 266 ff.; DI, p. 125. Cotton completedhis: DI, pp. 104, 107, 124. Around his birthday: DI, p. 121; Genealogies andEstates of Charlestown . . . 1629-1818, ed. Thomas Wyman (Boston, 18^9), II.740-41; Middlesex County Registry of Deeds, VIII: 501-2, IX:237, X:5; CM, MSsermon notebooks, HL, 30 May 1686. Despite mounting spiritual: PA, p. 89; DI,

p. 127. The wedding, Cotton: PA, p. 89; DI, pp. 127, 129. From the first: DI,pp. 131, 127, 133; MAP, Reel 4A, fr. 0021; DI, p. 131. Yet as happened: CM, MSsermon notebooks, HL, 30 May 1686; MAP, Reel 4A, fr. 0044; MS sermon notebooks,HL, 23 May 1686; MAP, Reel 4A, fr. 0049 and 0030. A year before: MCA, IV, 206. Itwas about: DI, p. 129.

3. The Glorious Revolution

The mentality of: "Diary of John Hull," Transactions and Collections of the Amer-ican Antiquarian Society, III (1857), 236-37; John Gorham Palfrey, History of NewEngland (Boston, 1875," 1890), II, 465 ff. and III, 88 If. The elements in: IM,Remarkable Providences (1684; rpt. London, 1890), p. 228; "Diary of IncreaseMather," PMHS, 2nd ser., XIII (1899-1900), 407; George J. Lankevich, Boston.- AChronological & Documentary History (Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., 1974), p. 11; "Diary ofJohn Hull," passim; Peter Gregg Slater, Children in the New England Mind inDeath and in Life (Hiimden, Conn., 1977), p. 16; Lankevich, Boston, p. ll;SLCM,p. 7.The Puritans' habit: CM, The Terror of the Lord (1727), Appendix, p. 4; IM, Heaven'sAlarm to the World (1682), p. 28; Williston Walker, The Creeds and Platforms ofCongregationalism (1893; rpt. Philadelphia and Boston, 1969), q. pp. 410-11; M,p. 594. I am aware of the large body of recent scholarship that hears in these groan-ings a "myth" of decline. It argues that later generations of Puritans felt an exagger-ated reverence for their forebears, and demanded more of themselves than did theearlier generations; they perceived a decline, the argument runs, only from theviewpoint of these unrealistic demands. I consider this interpretation wrong, butthe question is too complex to discuss here. Generally, it seems to me that mostscholars who speak of a myth of decline fail to make clear the standards by whichthe intensity and authenticity of religious experience may be judged. What thesecond and third generations of Puritans considered a decline embraced the socialas well as the strictly religious; indeed the two were never for the Puritans separa-ble. And the social decline was unmistakably real. Among the chief: Walker,Creeds and Platforms, p. 264 f. Christian Israel felt: "Diary of John Hull," p. 232;Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness (New York, 1938), p. 72; SSD, I, 9, 4, 83;A Report of the Record Commissioners . . . Containing the Boston Records from 1660to 1701 (Boston, 1881), p. 139; Hamilton Andrews Hill, History of the Old SouthChurch (Boston, 1890), q. p. 193; "Diary of Lawrence Hammond," PMHS, 2nd ser.,VII (1891-92), 169. The courts and: Records of the Governor and Company of theMassachusetts Bay in New England, ed. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff (Boston, 1853-54),V, 59; IM, A Call from Heaven (1685), pp. 77, 39; Massachusetts Archives, X, 196.But however alarming: Records of the Governor and Company, IV, pt. 2, p. 166.The royal commissioners: The Glorious Revolution in America, ed. Michael G.Hall et al. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1964), p. 10. In their own: Paifrey, History of NewEngland, III, 39; Records of the Governor and Company, IV, pt. 2, p. 216. Domesticand international: David S. Lovejoy, The Glorious Revolution in America (NewYork, 1972), ch. 7 passim; Records of the Governor and Company, V, 495. In thepublic: MS letter, Nathanael Mather to John Cotton [ca. Jul 1685], MHS; IMD, 21 Jan1684; Lovejoy, Glorious Revolution, pp. 154-55. That New England's: A, p. 313.The following Monday: SSD, I, 113-15. Until the arrival: John Dunton's Lettersfrom New-England (Boston, 1867), p. 137; SSD, I, 116. The full meaning: SSD, I,128. Andros's seeming appeasement: SSD, I, 135; Hill, History of the Old South,p. 267; SSD, I, 136. The new government: Lovejoy, Glorious Revolution, ch. 10;SSD, I, 143; The Andros Tracts (Boston, 1868), III, 124; Palfrey, History of NewEngland, III, 554. A possible means: SSD, I, 140; A, p. 320; Andros Tracts, III, 124;

M, pp. 105, 102; A, p. 309; MAP, Reel 4A, fr. 0380. Increase now openly: MAP, Reel4A, fr. 0412; A, p. 322. About ten o'clock: this and the next paragraph from vpp. 322-23. While Increase was: this and the next paragraph from DI, pp. x\i x\n(misdated 1691). Other fragmentary evidence: MAP, Reel 3B, fr. 063 \sic}: M,

p. 388; SLCM, p. 13; DI, pp. 80, 93; MAP, Reel 3D, fr. 0106. lake others, however. CMwas at first wary of Andros but not alarmed by his behavior See SLCM, p. ll>>. Exact-ly how soon: Thomas Hutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province ofMassachusetts-Bay, ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo (Cambridge, Mass. 1936), I. 3l6n.Andros had cause: A, p. 331 (on the lost letters, see IM to John Richards. 17 Oci1688, W, Reel 13); M, p. 531. One month into: Andros Tracts, 11,211; Calendar ofState Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies I London. 1 896 1937 I. XIII165; Andros Tracts, II, 211-12. On the authorship of Brief Discourse, see DI,pp. 133-34. The Mathers' longtime: Andros Tracts, II, 212; PA, p. 96. The newthreat: Hutchinson, History, I, 317; Samuel G. Drake, The History and Antiquitiesof Boston (Boston, 1856), p. 481 f. What remains of: MAP, Reel 8, fr. 0069 71.Four days later: Edward Randolph. . . 1678-1700 (1898-1909; rpt. New York.1967), VI, 313; Publications of the Prince Society, XXX (1909), 291. WhateverCotton Mather's: Lovejoy, Glorious Revolution, p. 240; Hall et al, Glorious Revolu-tion, p. 50. Cotton Mather spent: in considering the authorship of the anonymous"Declaration," it should be remembered that the other Boston ministers were alsopresent in the Council chamber. Randolph later said that these ministers, as agroup, wrote some of the rebels' "printed papers," suggesting that the "Declaration" was the work of a committee {Calendar of State Papers, XIII, 47). Moreover,while no handwritten copy of the "Declaration" has survived, a related "Memoriallto explaine . . . the Declaration" does exist (MHS, Misc. Bound), written as an ap-pendix to the "Declaration," and it is not in CM's hand. For these and other reasons,and lacking any evidence of Mather's authorship, I cannot accept Prof. David Levin'sassumption that Mather wrote the "Declaration." See his Cotton Mather-. The YoungLife of the Lord's Remembrancer 1663-1703 (Cambridge, Mass., 19^8), p. 165. Lovejoy, above, makes no attempt to assign authorship to the document, wisely I believe.On the importance of the "Declaration" as a political document, see Theodore B.Lewis, "A Revolutionary Tradition, 1689-1774," New England Quarterly, XLVI(1973), 424-38. All that can: CM, Decennium Luctuosum (1699), pp. 27-28.Whether Cotton Mather: SML, pp. 42-43. Cotton Mather seems: Calendar ofState Papers, XIII, pp. 47, 93; Edward Randolph. . . 1678-1700, VI, 313. By thenapparently: Drake, History and Antiquities, p. 484; MCA, II, 45. Having filled his:Albert Matthews, "Notes on the Massachusetts Royal Commissions 1681-1775,"PCSM, XVII (1915), 17. Cotton Mather preached: The Wall and the Garden:Selected Massachusetts Election Sermons 1670-1775, ed. A. W. Plumstead (Minne-apolis, 1968), p. 135n; CM, The Way to Prosperity (1690), p. 30; SML, pp. 43-44;Calendar of State Papers, XIII, 95. On the debate over resumption of the charterand CM's position in it, see Richard R. Johnson, Adjustment to Empire: The NewEngland Colonies, 1675-1715 ([New Brunswick, NJ.,] 1981), pp. 94-106. Whatev-er his doubts: CM, The Wonderful Works of God Commemorated (1690), p. 43;Massachusetts Archives, XI, 45a. Cotton Mather remained: Calendar of State Pa-pers, XIII, 384: M, p. 485; Calendar of State Papers, XIII, 165; MS letter, Myles toBoard of Trade, 12 Dec. 1690, Phips Papers, MHS. In July the: Calendar of StatePapers, XIII, 120, 111; CM, The Present State ofNeu'-England(l69Q), p. 28; SSD, I,251-52; "Journal of Dr. Benjamin Bullivant," PMHS, 1st ser., XVI (1878), 105. Toeliminate France: SLCM, p. 27; CM, Present State of New-England, p. 38. Theexpedition was: Palfrey, History of New England, IV, 51 ff.; SSD, I, 260; Calendarof State Papers, XIII, 369; Publick Occurrences (1690). In this edgy: Victor Hugo

Paltsits, "New Light on 'Publick Occurrences,"* PAAS, NS LIX (1949), 75-88. Cot-ton Mather found: SLCM, pp. 27-28. Although this contrast: PA, p. 92; CM, RightThoughts in Sad Hours (London, 1689; text quotes Dunstable edition, 1811),pp. 21-22, 51. In October 1689: M, p. 672; MCA, IV, 211, 221-22. Never able to:CM, Little Flocks Guarded (1691), p. 7; CM bought the new house on 25 Jul 1688(see Thwing card catalogue at MHS and Suffolk Deeds 17.1); the sermons survive asa bound manuscript of around two hundred very closely written pages in doublecolumns, in MAP, Reel 7, fr. 0895 ff.; MS letter, IM to Richards, 4 Jun 1690 and 4 Jul1691, W, Reel 13; DI, p. 14^. Much of this: SLCM, pp. 25-26. While awaiting his:A, p. 338; Dl, p. 113; Drake, History and Antiquities, p. 458n.; SLCM, p. 29. Therumors came: SSD, I,. 291; DI, pp. 147-48. Increase's four years: MS sermonnotes 1690-1694 '5, AAS (in "Boston, Mass. Church Records"); A, p. 347; MAP, Reel4B, fr. 0047 ff. If the Mathers: MS letter, Josh[ua?] Brodbent to Francis Nicholson,21 Jun 1692, Phips Papers, II, MHS; DI, p. 148. Cotton Mather also: A, pp. 335-36;P, p. 143. Opposition to the: MAP, Reel 4B, fr. 0120; CM, Optanda (1692), p. 86.Cotton also wrote: CM, "Political Fables," in Cotton Mather: Selections, ed. Ken-neth B. Murdock (New York, 1926), pp. 364, 367. The charter's full: MAP, Reel 4B,fr. 0051.

4. Letters of Thanks from Hell

To Cotton Mather: quotations in this and the next six paragraphs are all from CM,Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions (1689), in Narra-tives of the Witchcraft Cases 1648-1706, ed. George Lincoln Burr (New York, 1914),pp. 93-143. Mather's experience with: CM, Memorable Providences, p. 123; R2C,25 Jan 1691; MS letter, Sir Henry Ashurst to CM, 28 Dec 1691, AAS. The historianThomas Hutchinson later wrote of the Goodwin case contemptuously, but he alsoremarked that he knew one of the Goodwin children, probably Martha, when shewas an adult, and that she "had the character of a very sober, virtuous woman, andnever made any acknowledgment of fraud in this transaction." Samuel G. Drake,The History and Antiquities of Boston (Boston, 1856), q. p. 496n. The book had:John Hale, A Modest Enquiry Into the Nature of Witchcraft (1702), in Burr, Narra-tives, pp. 413-14. The linking of: MS letter, Joshfua?] Brodbent to Francis Nichol-son, 21 Jun 1692, Phips Papers, II, MHS; Robert Calef, More Wonders of the InvisibleWorld (1700; the text follows the 1861 Salem edition, published as Salem Witch-craft), p. 357. Even ignoring Calef s: CM, Little Flocks Guarded (1691), p. 9; CM,Addresses to Old Men, and Young Men, and Little Children (1690), p. 48; CM, ThePresent State of New-England (1690), p. 38; CM, Fair Weather (1692), p. 50. Yet inpreaching: MAP, Reel 4A, fr. 0441; Willard sermons in Edward Bromfield's MSnotes of sermons, MHS; MAP, Reels 3C and 3D. IM was widely read in pneuma-tology and fascinated by the invisible world. In England as a young man he spokewith a jailed witch, who confessed to him that every night for years the devil "hadthe use of her body." Edward Taylor Commonplace Book, MHS. More important,if: The New York Times, 23 Mar 1981, p. B6; H. R. Trevor-Roper, The EuropeanWitch-Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and Other Essays (NewYork, 1969), pp. 156-57; Frederick G. Drake, "Witchcraft in the American Colonies,1647-62," American Quarterly, XX (1968), 697; "Diary of Noahdiah Russell,"NEHGR, VII (1853), 59; IM, Remarkable Providences, in Burr, Narratives, pp. 37-38;CM, Memorable Providences, Burr, Narratives, pp. 131-34. It must also: sociologi-cally, according to Keith Thomas, most witchcraft cases express "an unresolvedconflict between the neighbourly conduct required by the ethical code of the oldvillage community, and the increasingly individualistic forms of behaviour which

438 DOCUMENTATION FOR PAGES 89 98

accompanied the economic changes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries."Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic ( New Y< >rk, L971 ). p. $61. Thai was trueof Salem, where charges of witchcraft expressed antagonism between the villageand the growingly commercial town. See Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salew Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge, Mass , 1974). To us,the: Gananath Obeyesekere, "The Idiom of Demonic Possession," Social Scienceand Medicine, IV (1970), 97-111; CM, Memorable Providences, Burr, Narratives,p. 121. When read in: CM, Memorable Providences, Burr, Narratives, pp. 109, 1-^.119. Mather and his: CM, "A Discourse on Witchcraft." in Memorable Provident e$Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions (1689), p. 4. CM's definition is (lose toperhaps the best-known definition of witchcraft at the time, that in Joseph G lama 11 \Saducismus Trinmphatus (3rd ed. 1689; rpt. Gainesville, Fla., 1966). Glanvill calls awitch one who "can do or seems to do strange things, beyond the known Power ofArt and ordinary Nature, by vertue of a Confedercy [sic/ with Evil Spirits" (p. 269 IMather held the: CM, "A Discourse on the Power and Malice of the Devils," inMemorable Providences (1689), pp. 2, 10, 4; CM, "A Discourse on Witchcraft." p. 6.In their physical: CM, "Discourse on . . . Devils," p. 2; Wallace Notestein, A Histo-ry of Witchcraft in England (1911; rpt. New York, 1968), p. 286. Mather's view of:Moody E. Prior, "Joseph Glanvill, Witchcraft, and Seventeenth-Century Science,"Modern Philology, XXI (1932-33), q. pp. 178-79; CM, "Discourse on Witchcraft. 'p. 16; CM, Memorable Providences, Burr, Narratives, p. 98. Mather also longed:CM, Memorable Providences, Burr, Narratives, p. 98; DI, p. 23; MS sermon notebooks, HL, 23 May 1686; CM, Memorable Providences, Burr, Narratives, p. 120.Mather's determined defense: Prior, "Joseph Glanvill," pp. 170-93; Glanvill,Saducismus, Introduction. Glanvill and IM corresponded. In the style: CM, Bron-tologia Sacra (London, 1695), in MCA, VI, 16-17, 20; CM, "Another Brand Plucktout of the Burning," in Burr, Narratives, p. 313; CM, The Wonders of the InvisibleWorld (1693; London, 1862), p. 52. Cotton Mather's concern: CM, "Discourse onWitchcraft," p. 25; "Mather-Calef Paper on Witchcraft," PMHS, XLVII (1913-14),258; CM, Memorable Providences, Burr, Narratives, p. 102. Like other ministers, CMoften denounced the widespread dabbling in amulets, fortune-telling, astrology,and other magical practices, inveighing against them not only as a form of non-institutional popular religion, but also because he believed in magic and feared itspotency. In BA, he transcribed a magical practice in Latin and Hebrew so that "Ordi-nary Readers" would not be tempted to test it "and give the Devil a command overthemselves" (section headed "Psalms Psalms"). CM often flirted with magic him-self, especially sortilege. In the "Mather-Calef Paper" he claims to have personalknowledge of someone who could find missing objects by muttering a charm. Seealso Jon Butler, "Magic, Astrology, and the Early American Religious Heritage,1600-1760," American Historical Review, LXXXIV (1979), 317-46. The Goodwincase: CM, "Discourse on Witchcraft," p. 29. The surest test: CM, Wonders of theInvisible World, q. p. 32; CM, "Discourse on Witchcraft," p. 9. Pretrial examina-tions were: SVW, pp. 5, 8, 10, 9. A jury found: SVW, pp. 10, 16; "Sundry Docu-ments Relating to Witchcraft in Massachusetts," NEHGR, LXX (1916), 65-66; Deo-dat Lawson, A Brief and True Narrative (1692), in Burr, Narratives, p. 159; SVW,p. 16. By April 11: SVW, pp. 99, 120. As these events: DI, pp. 147, 152; SLCM,p. 35. Judging by the unusual gaps, brief entries, and messy script of CM's sermonnotebooks in this period, he seems to have been ill much of March, April, and May1692. See MAP, Reel 4B. However ill, Cotton: SLCM, pp. 35-40. Much as he: SWP,III, 749; George Lyman Kittredge, "Notes on Witchcraft," PAAS, NS XVIII (1906-7),197-98; SLCM, p. 36. CM believed that devils could produce whatever shapes theypleased. In BA (I Sam. 27, 28) he argues that such biblical apparitions as the specter

of Samuel that appeared to Saul were probably "Cacodaemons, which feignedthemselves to be the Spirits of men departed." While the devil cannot use a depart-ed soul for his purpose, CM explains, he can feign its likeness, having power toassume an innocent shape. By witches, it might be added, CM understood both menand women. See BA, Exod. 22. Such further evidence: SLCM, pp. 39, 37-38. Onthe ultimate: DI, p. 149; SLCM, p. 40. By the standards: SVW, pp. 45, 47, 51.Bishop's execution alarmed: italics reversed in quotations in this and the nextparagraph. Had this document: Robert Calef, More Wonders (Salem ed.), p. 362.Calef s very astute: on Richards's close ties to the Mathers, see "Richards, John"Thwing card catalogue, MHS; MS document, "Cotton Mather, subscribers to salary,"Curwen Papers, AAS; M, p. 494; John Richards Treasurer's Accounts 1669-1693,Pusey Library, Harvard University; SLCM, pp. 46-50. On CM's ties to the others see,inter alia, CM, Memorable Providences, Burr, Narratives, p. 94; SLCM, M, SSD, DIand DII. And, in particular: John L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates ofHarvard University (Cambridge, Mass., 1873-1975), I, q. 200; Records of the FirstChurch in Dorchester (Boston, 1891), pp. 41, 93; inscribed copy at MHS; SLCM,p. 43. CM may have composed the very lengthy, adulatory epitaph on Stoughton'stombstone. See History of the Town of Dorchester, Massachusetts (Boston, 1859),p. 277. Cotton Mather's relation: DI, p. 148; CM, Optanda (1692), pp. 86, 14, 68.The "ambidexterity" of: DI, p. 151; SLCM, pp. 40, 37. Stoughton aside, the judges'behavior should not be too quickly dismissed as irrational. Some judges tried tosquare their legal principles with the facts of the case viewed in light of recentscientific knowledge. See for instance Burr, Narratives, pp. 171-72. Indeed, Cot-ton Mather: SLCM, p. 37; DI, p. 150 (the revision appears in the MS diary, MAP,Reel 1); SLCM, p. 37. The court turned: Brodbent to Nicholson; SVW, pp. 13 ff.Despite the cautions: SVW, p. 121; SWP, I, pp. 376, 375, 374; Calef, More Wonders,Burr, Narratives, p. 358. Considering Cotton Mather's: SLCM, p. 40. The confes-sion of: "Letter of Thomas Brattle," in Burr, Narratives, pp. 180-81; Calef, MoreWonders, Burr, Narratives, p. 375; SWP, II, 689. Cotton Mather may: CM, Wondersof the Invisible World, pp. 102-3; SWP, III, 882. Virtually all the: SWP, II, 527-28etpassim. But the most: SWP, II, 522; SWP, I, 66; SWP, II, 647-48; SWP, III, 769. ToCotton Mather: see Norman Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons (New York, 1975), esp.p. 262. On August 4: SLCM, p. 40; "Diary of Lawrence Hammond," PMHS, 2nd ser.,VII (1891-92), 163; CM, Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 38. Like other Puritan:quotations in this and the next two paragraphs are from the sermon as printed inCM, Wonders of the Invisible World, pp. 38-107. Knowing his time: The Works ofthe Pious and Profoundly-Learned foseph Mede, B.D. (3rd ed., London, 1672),p. 800. Mede seems to apply his theory to Mexico and South America, but it becameextended, perhaps by the Puritans, to North America as well. Many in England sawAmerica as uniquely prone to pneumatological wonders. Richard Baxter, for in-stance, reported the view "That in America, it is a common thing to see Spiritsappear to Men in various Shapes day and night." The Certainty of the Worlds ofSpirits (London, 1691), p. 107. For CM's other versions of Mede's views see hisSouldiers Counselled and Comforted (1689) and his French Preface to EzekielCarre's Enchantillon (1690). Mather's sermon indicates: CM's bafflement alsoappears in his letter to the witchcraft judge John Foster on August 17, in which heoffers the judges, in about equal measure, encouragement, caution, and perplexity,and rightly concludes, "Sir, you see the incoherency of my thoughts" (SLCM, p. 43).For the first: DI, pp. 151-52. The two surviving: SSD, I, 294; Calef, More Won-ders, Burr, Narratives, pp. 360-61. Both these accounts: SWP, I, 132, and II, 617;SLCM, p. 43; SVW, p. 75; CM, Wonders of the Invisible World, p. 159; SLCM, p. 40.With apparently hundreds: H, III, 1261, n. 12; Calendar of State Papers, Colonial

Series, America and West Indies (London, 18% 1937), XIV, 63; Hamilton AndrewsHill, History of the Old South Church (Boston, L890), pp. 286 9 ; P, p 167. Accus-tomed to putting: SLCM, pp. 43-44. While Cotton Mather: Calef, More Wonders.Burr, Narratives, p. 367. The next day: "Letters of Cotton Mather, NEHGR, XXIV(1870), 107-8. The same day: "Diary of Lawrence Hammond," p. 164; SVW, p. L21.Advice came to: I have followed the text of Cases included In the London 1862edition of CM's Wonders of the Invisible World. The one was: SLCM, pp. 45 i<YAround mid-October, just: all quotations from Wonders of the Invisible World inthis and the following four paragraphs are from the London 1862 edition. Althoughthe book: on English notices, see George H. Moore, "Notes on the Bibliography ofWitchcraft in Massachusetts," PAAS, NS V ( 1887-88), 259 ff. These insistent dis-closures: on Baxter, see Drake, History and Antiquities, p. 4%n.; DI, pp. 153 54.Cotton Mather's book: DI, p. 153. But Cotton Mather: FA, p. 131 Cotton Math-er did: DI, p. 154. About ten days: SSD, I, 299; SVW, p. 121. Despite the suspen-sion: DI, p. 156; SLCM, p. 47. Because of Increase's: SLCM, pp. 46-47; R2C; DI,p. 162. About three years: R2C; on the significance of CM's Companion, see E.Brooks Holifield, "The Renaissance of Sacramental Piety in Colonial New England,"William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., XXIX (1972), 33-48. The crux of: "TheCommonplace Book of Joseph Green (1675-1715)," ed. Samuel E. Morison, PCSM,XXXIV (1943), 240. The acceptance of: SVW, pp. 121-22. On November 29: theaccount of Mercy Short's case in this and the following paragraphs is drawn fromCM, "A Brand Pluck'd out of the Burning," Burr, Narratives, pp. 259-87. These andmany: CM, Wonders of the Invisible World, p. l6l. The notion of: William B.Hunter, Jr., "The Seventeenth Century Doctrine of Plastic Nature," Harvard Theo-logical Review, XLIII (1950). 197-213. Just as important: DI, pp. 156, 152; SLCM,p. 42. On March 28: DI, pp. 163-64. In a footnote, the editor of CM's Diary incor-rectly identifies this infant as "Joseph." His error represents a misreading of CM'shandwriting. In the list of his children that CM drew up on the back of one of hisnotebooks in late 1713 or early 1714 (MAP, Reel 2, fr. 0061), the infant is plainlylisted as "Increase." The editor also wrongly attributed to CM a child named Wil-liam, based on a like misreading of the handwritten name "Katharin" in this list.Mather may have: DI, p. 164. Mercy's "Wonderful Spirit": for Mercy's admission, see R2C, 21 Jan 1694. Such good angels: Calef, More Wonders, Burr, Narra-tives, p. 346. Mather began longing: PA, p. 110; DI, p. 163 Mather's prayers for:CM, The Way to Excel (1697), p. 6; CM, Meat Out of the Eater (1703), p. 88; MAP,Reel 7, fr. 0297. While Mather's views: IM, Angelographia (1696), p. 65; ThePractical Works of Richard Baxter (London, 1845), I, 625; Jacques Guillet et al,Discernment of Spirits (Collegeville, Minn., 1970; my thanks to Mr. Jeff Donnelly forintroducing me to the subject of spiritual discernment); Richard Baxter, The Cer-tainty of the Worlds of Spirits, p. 222. However it risked: DI, pp. 166-67; PA,p. 111. Mather made another: DI, pp. 171-72; As if in: DI, pp. 172-73; CM,"Another Brand Pluckt out of the Burning," Burr, Narratives, pp. 308-23 (fromwhich also the quotes in the next paragraph). In its other: DI, p. 175. It wasprobably: this and the next four paragraphs from DI, pp. 86-87. On the question ofdating this visitation see my "Note on the Date of Cotton Mather's Visitation by anAngel," Early American Literature, XV (1980), 82-86, and compare David Levin,"When Did Cotton Mather See the Angel?" ibid., pp. 271-75. Some further support-ing evidence for dating the visitation around September 1693 is the sermon CMpreached on 3 Sep 1693, in which he remarked suggestively that "Of the beings ofspirits there is manifest demonstration as Good Angels appearing to some" (MSsermon notes, 1690-94/5, AAS, identified as "Boston, Mass. Church Records"). Forthe translation of CM's Latin here I have followed that given in DI, with some

revisions by Professor Robert Raymo. Here and elsewhere I have also reproducedthe Latin entries in CM's diaries as transcribed by their editor, although the tran-scriptions would seem in a few places to be inaccurate. However extraordinary,Cotton: Hallucinations: Behaviour, Experience, and Theory, ed. R. K. Siegel and L.J. West (New York, 1975), passim; BA Cor. I. 10. As a Puritan: A, p. 345; MAP, Reel4B, fr. 0362 ff. Hallucinatory experiences occurred often enough among Puritans tocreate notice but not wonderment. Several are recorded in the diary of the Harvardtutor Noahdiah Russell, NEHGR, VII (1853), 53-59. Like the demons: one author-ity remarks that the voices in the auditory hallucinations of schizophrenic personsare fused with the patient's image of self" and "speak the patient's own thoughts."Hallucinations, ed. Louis Jolyon West (New York and London, 1962), p. 169; DI,p. 16. Mather's need at: CM, "Another Brand," Burr, Narratives, p. 321. As Matherusually: CM, The Day, & the Work of the Day (1693), p. 65; CM, The Short History ofSen England (1694), p. 32; DI, p. 175; CM, "Another Brand," Burr, Narratives,p. 320; CM, Meat Out of the Eater, p. 35. For CM's further references to good andevil angels at this time see his Warnings from the Dead (1693) and the MS sermonnotes, 1690-94/5, at AAS. Mather's most vigorous: a "Robert Calef of BostonDyer" appears in an anonymous MS account book, 1702-1715, MHS (Ms-L); Calef,More Wonders, Salem ed., pp. 359, 113; Burr, Narratives, p. 326. On September 13:Calef, More Wonders, Burr, Narratives, pp. 324-26. This "lying Libel": DI,pp. 172-73; Calef, More Wonders, Burr, Narratives, p. 329. Instead Mather indig-nantly: this and the next paragraph from Calef, More Wonders, Burr, Narratives,pp. 333-39. Mather and Calef: Calef, More Wonders, Salem ed., pp. 116-17, 90.Calef kept needling: quotations in this and the next two paragraphs from the"Mather-Calef Paper." The good angels: "Records of the Cambridge Association,"PMHS, XVII (1879-80), 271. The counterdescent of: R2C; MAP, Reel 4B, fr. 0249;P, p. 194. CM's nephew, Mather Byles, later recalled this rise in admissions as "agreat Revival of the Work of God ... at the Old No. Church." Savage Papers, PMHS,XLIV (1910-11), 685. Both Mathers regarded: Savage Papers, pp. 685-86. Thisepisode and the one recounted in the next paragraph cannot be dated certainly, butboth seem to have occurred in the fall of 1694. A second young: "Mather-CalefPaper," pp. 266-67. However cautious about: this and the last two paragraphsfrom PA, pp. 120-26.

5. The Parter's Portion

Six months into: MCA, II, 67; oath of Joseph Short and John Hams, 25 Mar 1693,Phips Papers, III, MHS; deposition of William Hill and Henry Francklyn, 17 Jul1694, Phips Papers, V, MHS. The governor treated: unsigned, unaddressed "Letterfrom New England," 1 Nov 1694, Phips Papers, IV, MHS; SSD, I, 323 and n. Theunreliability of: MS diary of Thomas Marshall, 1689-1711, MHS; CM, To His Excel-lency Richard, Earl of Bellomont (1699); DI, p. 302. Cotton Mather's hope: "Earlof Bellomont," NEHGR, XIX (1865), 236. The succession of: CM, A Pillar of Grati-tude (1700), pp. 32-33; on the adaptation of New England to English politicalstandards after the loss of the charter see Richard R. Johnson, Adjustment to Empire:The New England Colonies 1675-1715 ([New Brunswick, N.J.], 1981), ch. V. In thisspirit: the Heads of Agreement is reprinted in Williston Walker, The Creeds andPlatforms of Congregationalism (1893; rpt. Philadelphia, I960), pp. 455-62; CM, ALetter of Advice to the . . . Non-conformists (London, 1700), pp. 1-2. In England theunion was short-lived, for the United Brethren fell apart within a few years in theo-logical controversy. Mather moved even: DI, p. 149. On the growth of toleration,see G. R. Cragg, From Puritanism to the Age of Reason (Cambridge, England, 1950),

ch. IX. To show himself: MS "Ratio Disciplinae," MAP, Keel 5, fr. 0130; CM,

Blessed Unions (1692), pp. 76, 75. Becoming something of a spiritual statesman, CMalso wrote at this time many works calling attention to distant religious persecutionand assaying the current conditions of global Protestantism see for instance A Pastoral Letter to the English Captives, in Africa (1698), A Letter Corn erning . Out-Protestant Brethren, on Board the French Kings Galleyes ( 1701 ). and AmericanTears upon the Ruines of the Greek Churches ( 170] ). While opening Christian:on IM's opposition, see Niel Caplan, "Some Unpublished Letters ol Benjamin Colman, 1717-1725," PMHS, LXXVII (1965), 116. Yet in an: MAP, Reel 8, tr. 0488 89;MS letter, CM to brethren of Marlborough church, 28 May 1702, Marlborough PublicLibrary; SVW, p. 308. In the same: Walker, Creeds and Platforms, p. 469; "Recordsof the Cambridge Association," PMHS, XVII (1879-80), 254 81. Mather alsowished: on May see also DI, pp. 313-15, 318, 323-24. A more dolorous: SSD, 1,378 and n. (the same shipbuilder called the charge "a Base piece of villainy that theman was no more Guilty of. . . than you or I was," ibid.); DI, p. 236 (on CM'sagreement with the condemnation, see SSD, I, 379, where "Mr. Mather" probablyrefers to CM, as opposed to his father, "Dr." Mather); MS letter, John Cotton toRowland Cotton, 1 Feb 1698, MHS; MS letter, John Cotton to Joanna Cotton, 6 Jul1698, MHS; DI, p. 277. In or out: of CM's many writings on reform in this period(which make a valuable digest of his social views), see for instance A Good MasterWell Served (1696), A Family Well-Ordered (1699), The Young Man's Preservative(1701), A Christian at his Calling (1701), A Cloud of Witnesses (1701?), Methodsand Motives for Societies to Suppress Disorders (1703), and The Day Which theLORD hath made (1707). Mather did not: Richard F. Lovelace, The AmericanPietism of Cotton Mather (Grand Rapids, 1979), pp. 258-59; Robert Middlekauff,The Mathers (New York, 1971), p. 215. It is more: Henry Latimer Seaver, "Hair andHoliness," PMHS, LXVIII (1944-47), q. p. 16; SSD, I, 276. In another dozen:"Letter of Reverend Benjamin Colman," PCSM, VIII (1906), 247, 249. This genialadvice: John L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University(Cambridge, Mass., 1873-1975), IV, 122-23; Ebenezer Turell, The Life and Charac-ter of the Reverend Benjamin Colman, D.D. (1749; rpt. Delmar, N.Y., 1972),pp. 231, 5. A Presbyterian Board: "Memoirs of Rev. Benjamin Colman," NEHGR,III (1849), 112n. etpassim. On ministerial identity, see David D. Hall, The FaithfulShepherd (Chapel Hill, 1972), pp. 223, 272. The organizers of: Henry WilderFoote, Annals of King's Chapel (Boston, 1882), I, 89-93; Marian Card Donnelly."New England Meetinghouses in the Seventeenth Century," Old-Time New Eng-land, XLVII (1957), 91. In December, shortly: on the change in psalmody, seeRecords of the Church in Brattle Square (Boston, 1902), p. 5; typed transcript of MSletter, Henry Newman to the Bishop of London, 26 Feb 1726, MHS. In fact the: DI,pp. 325-26. As a first: DI, p. 326; "Memoir of Rev. Benjamin Colman," p. 117; SSD,I, 419; MS letter, IM and James Allen to Benjamin Colman (but in CM's hand), 28Dec 1699, MHS; DI, pp. 329-30. With Sewall and: SSD, I, 421; DI, p. 332; R2C;SSD, I, 422. But the darkness: DI, p. 333. By coincidence, Increase's: M, pp.83-84; IM, A Call from Heaven (1685), p. 119. Now, atop the: DI, pp. 364, 358,384-88. Caught in the: Bartholomew Green, The Printer's Advertisement (1700).The publication of: DI, p. 378. All of the: The Letter-Book of Samuel Sewall,CMHS, 6th ser., I (1886), 255. Indeed Colman and: Caplan, "Some UnpublishedLetters," q. p. 104; on IM's opposition to the proposal, see Middlekauff, The Math-ers, p. 225. Mather proposed the: "Records of the Cambridge Association," p. 270;IM, MS sermon (partly in CM's hand), 10 Jul 1679, Dreer Collection, HistoricalSociety of Pennsylvania; MS "proposals Concerning the Recording of Illustriousprovidences," 12 May 1681, BPL; MCA, VI, 2. Mather having begun: Chester N.

Greenough, "A Letter Relating to the Publication of Cotton Mather's Magnalia,"PCSM, XXVI (1927), 297-312; DI, pp. 400, 427 etpassim. As published in: SamuelStone to Wait Winthrop, 9 Jun 1696, W, Reel 14. CM's friend Nicholas Noyes ofSalem also apparently donated much material. What unifies this: MCA, III, 13;Sacvan Bercovitch, "Cotton Mather," in Major Writers of Early American Literature,ed. Everett Emerson (Madison, 1972), p. 138, and see also Bercovitch's analysis ofCM's life of Winthrop in The Puritan Origins of the American Self (New Haven andLondon, 1975); MCA, III, 11. Typical of Mather's: MCA, III, 176, 179, 180. Virtual-ly the whole: MCA, "General Introduction"; MCA, III, 11-12, 74. See also theimportant article by Peter H. Smith, "Politics and Sainthood: Biography by CottonMather," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., XX (1963), 186-206. Indeed Math-er recreates: MCA, III, 12, and "General Introduction." Although Mather set:MCA, "General Introduction." Perhaps no feature: Cyrus H. Karraker, "The Treas-ure Expedition of Captain William Phips to the Bahama Banks," New EnglandQuarterly, V (1932), q. pp. 736, 740. Yet Mather gave: MCA, II, 66. Mather had a:MCA, II, 39-40. Although Magnalia places: MCA, II, 38, 68, 39, 42. Like JohnEliot: MCA, II, 38-39, 41; Robert H. George, "The Treasure Trove of WilliamPhips," New England Quarterly, VI (1933), 294-318. The disparate voices: MCA,III, 180. For all its: CM speaks of "Massy" writing in his Manuductio ad Minister-ium (1726), p. 45; MCA, I, 31. For all its: DI, pp. 230, 169. In several ways: SML,"Preface," p. 3, italics reversed; DI, pp. 230-31. Mather began the: BA, Ps. CIV; theindex appears in MAP, Reel 2; DI, pp. 170, 231. Later chapters will: TheodoreHornberger, "Cotton Mather's Annotations on the First Chapter of Genesis," Univer-sity of Texas Publications, no. 3826 (1938), pp. 112-22. "Let it not: on Boyle andthe corpuscular theory, see E. J. Dijksterhuis, The Mechanization of the World Pic-ture (Oxford, 1961), pp. 40 ff. As early as 1689 CM declared corpuscularianism the"only right" philosophy. See Early Piety, Exemplified (1689), in MCA, IV, 211. Inmany sermons: CM, MS sermon on Eph. I. 2. (17? May 1702), Yale UniversityLibrary; Winter-Meditations (1693), pp. 19-20.

6. Particular Faiths

Until May, 1702: DI, pp. 430, 449. Cotton Mather's bodings: DI, pp. 222, 264.Such revelations would: DI,pp.l98,191;CM, The Retired Christian (1703), p. 32;CM, The Faith of the Fathers (1699), p. 3; DI, pp. 261-62. Like many others:Robert Middlekauff, The Mathers (New York, 1971), ch. 18; CM, Things to be Look'dfor (1691), p. 46. At this time: "Problema Theologicum," MAP, Reel 7, fr. 0492-0539; IM's eschatological sermons are preserved in CM's sermon notebooks, MAP,Reel 4B, esp. fr. 0246-49; Tulley's Almanack (1699), n.p.; CM, Things for a Dis-tress'd People to think upon (1696), p. 34. Together with hints: DI, pp. 316, 195;PA, p. 143; DI, p. 368. If the caliber: DI, pp. 204, 422. With these many: DI,pp. 188, 193, 206, 311. In 1701 CM published a now lost work entitled The GoodLinguist, or, Directions to avoid the Sins of the Tongue. In part he wrote the work,he explained, in gratitude for "the wonderful Work of God, in restoring, and enlarg-ing of my once-fettered Speech" (DI, p. 348). One sort of: Retired Christian, p. 27;PA, p. 102; CM, Christianusper Ignem (1702), p. 47. Most of Mather's: DI, pp. 185,217, 282-83, 376. Only two months: DI, pp. 380, 382. Mather's longing for: DI,p. 307; PA, pp. 157-58. The Christ-like birth: DI, p. 336; R2C; MS letter, IM to[probably his brother Nathaniel], 4 Sep 1699, MHS; CM, Parental Wishes andCharges (1705); PA, passim. Increase, Jr., became: DI, pp. 336, 340, 345, 348.Under the Phips: HCR, IV, 174. For years after: DI, p. 305; Massachusetts Ar-chives, LVIII, 187; DI, p. 308. This time Mather's: DI, pp. 308-9, 327-28. The test

of: DI, pp. 354-55. But it, Mather: DI, p. 356. But by next: HCR, IV, 173; JohnMaynard Hoffmann, "Commonwealth College: The Governance of Harvard in thePuritan Period," Diss. Harvard (1972), pp. 4 18 ft'.; The Ai ts and Resoltvs, Public andPrivate, of the Province of the Massachusetts Hay (Boston, 1869 1922). VII, 25SPerhaps because there: DI, p. 360; HCR, IV, 146; Acts and Resolves. \ II, 271 ^2;DI, p. 400; P, p. 175. Both Mathers felt: A. p. 352. Abigail Mather had: 1)1. p. \y,R2C, 25 Aug 1689; DI, pp. 405, 452. A week after: with the exception noted in thenext entry, the account in this and the following five paragraphs is based on DI,pp. 405, 430-49. By October, after: CM's later remark about Abigails prophetic-dream appears in SLCM, p. 116. Pleased with seeing: DI, p. 445; A Report of theRecord Commissioners of the City of Boston . . . 1701 to 1715 ( Boston, 188 4), pp. 23ff.; Ernest Caulfield, "Some Common Diseases of Colonial Children," PCSM, XXXV(1951), 24-25. Within a month: DI, pp. 449, 447. Always busy, Mather: DI,p. 446; CM, MS sermon on Eph. I. 14., 1 Nov 1702, Houghton Library, HarvardUniversity; DI, p. 447; CM, Wholesome Words (1702?- rpt. 1713), pp. 4, 23. WhateverMather's fears: DI, pp. 447, 452, 448. Abigail lingered in: DI, pp. 448-49.Mather took pride: DI, pp. 449-50; MAP, Reel 8, fr. 0218. While stressing such:MAP, Reel 8, fr. 0221; CM, Meat out of the Eater (1703), Preface to final sermon. Asthe year: quotations in this and the next two paragraphs from DI, pp. 448-57. Tothe extent: DI, p. 451; MAP, Reel 8, fr. 0219. Or, Mather speculated: DI,pp. 453-54. Yet Mather's puzzling: DI, p. 454. Only two months: DI, p. 457.Mather never names: DI, pp. 457-58. On the Maccartys see "Cotton Mather andMiss Maccarty," PMHS, XLVIII (1914-15), 135-38; Middlesex County Registry ofDeeds, 19: 397; "The King's Arms Tavern in Boston," NEHGR, XXXIV (1880), 44.As Mather pondered: this and the next two paragraphs based on DI, pp. 457-59,466-83. Mather's heavenly messages: DI, p. 457; MS letter, [Elizabeth Maccarty]to CM, 3 Jun 1703, transcribed in CM's hand on verso of her letter to him on 7 Jun1703, MHS. Susceptible to flattery: Elizabeth Maccarty to CM, 7 Jun 1703. Matherfelt that: this and the next four paragraphs based on DI, pp. 488-95.

7. Joseph Dudley

As the new: IMD, 1704 passim; on the gloves, see the MS letter, IM to unaddressed,4 Dec 1704, MHS; IMD, 1 Jan 1704. Increase conspired in: IM, Soul-Saving GospelTruths (1703), pp. 3, 6; IM, Meditations on the Glory of the Lordfesus Christ (1705),p. viii; IM, An Earnest Exhortation to the Children (1711), "To the Reader"; A,p. 353. The congregation Mather: R2C, passim. IM speaks in 1714 of preaching totwo thousand persons. See the typescript of his letter to William Ashurst, 22 Jun1714, MHS. CM noted on one occasion that of the persons recommended by thecongregation that day for particular prayers, some ninety were then abroad at sea.See CM, The Bostonian Ebenezer (1698), p. 77; on the widows, see ibid., p. 9. TheMathers' salaries and the distribution of church donations are recorded in the MSTreasurer's Account Book in vol. 1A of R2C. Gifts of money to the Mathers appear inmany different sources, for instance the will of John Richards (Suffolk Probate#2140) and SSD, II, 676. Richards left CM and IM £20 each. Mather approachedhis: DI, p. 319; on the number of sermons CM preached each year, see his annuallists in DI and DII; DI, p. 100; PA, p. 219. Differing considerations dictated: DII,p. 241; CM, Brontologia Sacra (London, 1695), Preface; CM, Man Eating the Food ofAngels (1710), Preface. Mather devoted equally: on the length of CM's sermons,see for instance DII, p. 237, and CM, Ratio Disciplinae (1726), pp. 57 ff.; M, p. 34;CM's views on delivering sermons appear in his Manuductio ad Ministerium(1726), pp. 103-7, and PA, p. 77; DI, p. 531. However demanding, preaching:

CM, MS list of marriages, 1709, Dartmouth College Library; on CM's connection toreligious societies, see PA, p. 224; on his deathbed witness, see his Thoughts of aDying Man (1697), p. 4; on his nearly four hundred prayers, see Dili, p. 85. Someat least: MS letter, Elizabeth Atwood to CM, 2 Jul 1720, AAS; MS letter, EdwardGoddard to CM, 19 Feb 1727[8?], AAS; DII, pp. 98-99. But no aspect: I here acceptthe number of CM's publications as thoughtfully computed in George Selement,"Publication and the Puritan Minister," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser.,XXXVII (1980), 219-41. Selement omits from his count reprints under new titles,fragmentary pieces, postscripts to other works, etc., and notes that if such materialswere included, the number of CM's publications would reach 468. On CM's plan tobring forth one title a month, see DII, p. 162. In 1713, CM also published an A,B,C.of Religion. One reason Mather: DI, pp. 539, 518, 548; CM, The Nets of Salvation(1704), p. 48; DI, p. 520; DII, pp. 14, 28; DI, p. 568. The sheer number: CM, MSsermon on Eph. I. 3., 23 Mar 1702, New York Public Library. CM's other MS sermonson Ephesians in this series are deposited at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania,and at the libraries of Yale University, the University of Virginia, Brown University,and Harvard University. CM's "Quotidiana" appears in MAP, Reel 7. Mather alsomaintained: Dili, p. 124; DII, pp. 74, 227, 212. Mather alternately gloried: Dili,p. 108; DI, p. 228; CM, Winter-Meditations (1693), Introduction; DI, p. 340; IM, AnEarnest Exhortation, "To the Reader"; CM, Utilia (1716), Preface. IM often madepublic his dislike for elaborately learned prose. See, for instance, his PracticalTruths (1704) and especially his Preface to Joseph Capen's funeral sermon on Jo-seph Green, published in Boston in 1717. That CM took his father's stylistic criti-cisms personally is suggested by his having declined contributing a preface to afuneral sermon in 1717, in part because he was "warned ... in a very odd preface toa funeral sermon on Mr. Green, by a javelin thrown, as it was thought, with a particu-lar aim at me" (SLCM, p. 250). IM in his Preface had attacked the preacher "whosedesign is to set forth himself to show his Wit and Learning, that would lace hisDiscourse with fine florid Phrases,'' etc. In a variant: MCA, II, 63; DI, p. 335.Whatever his misgivings: CM mentions the bishop in his Grace Triumphant(1700), "To the Reader"; DI, pp. 593, 545-47; DII, p. 162. Unlike his father:Benjamin Colman, The Holy Walk and Glorious Translation of Blessed Enoch(1728), p. 24; Thomas Prince, The Departure of Elijah Lamented (1728), p. 20.Both Mathers had: M, p. 482; Everett Kimball, The Public Life of Joseph Dudley(London, 1911), ch. I, passim; IM to Joseph Dudley, 20 Jan 1708, CMHS, 1st ser., Ill(1794), p. 128. With the appointment: John Gorham Palfrey, History of New Eng-land (Boston, 1875, 1890), III, q. 526n.; Kimball, Public Life, q. p. 14. Particularlybecause of: Kimball, Public Life, q. p. 52; Dudley to CM, 5 Jun 1689, CMHS, 6thser., Ill (1899), 503; Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and WestIndies (London, 1896-1937), XIII, 111, 120; Kimball, Public Life, p. 53. Dudley'spolitical career: Kimball, Public Life, p. 67; on the scientific activities of Dudleyand his son Paul, see Raymond Phineas Stearns, Science in the British Colonies ofAmerica (Urbana, 111., 1970), pp. 455-72; on Dudley's activities in London, see thecorrespondence in CMHS, 6th ser, III (1899), 513 if., where the quoted phrasesappear on pp. 529 and 514. Dudley began determinedly: MS letter, Joseph Dud-ley to William Blathwayt, 29 Jul 1701, MHS; Sir Henry Ashurst to Wait Winthrop, 10Jul 1701, CMHS, 6th ser., V (1892), 91; MS letter, Joseph Dudley to William Blath-wayt, 22 Jul 1701, MHS; MS letter, John Quick and other London Presbyterian minis-ters to IM, 28 Jul 1701, HL. Dudley also sought: MS letter, Jacob Melyen to Abra-ham Gouvernour, 25 Jun 1692, Melyen Letterbook, AAS; Ashurst q. in Richard R.Johnson, Adjustment to Empire: The New England Colonies 16751715 ([NewBrunswick, N.J.], 1981), p. 336; MS letter, Joseph Dudley to CM, 10 May 1701, AAS.

Mather of course: SLCM, p. 65. Like his defense: Thomas Hutchinson, The Histo-ry of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay, ed. Lawrence Shaft Mayo(Cambridge, Mass., 1936), II, q. 92n.; MS extract of unaddressed Letter from JohnLeverett, 28 Oct 1701, in MS "lixtract of Several! Letters from New England," HL.However recent or: Palfrey, History of New England, IV. 24 6 n.; SSD, I, 469 70Five days later: DI, pp. 464-65. From the beginning: William Fencak, War, Poli-tics & Revolution in Provincial Massachusetts (Boston, 1981), pp. 45 16; Kimball,Public Life, p. 90; Philip S. Haffenden, New England in the English Nation 16891713 (Oxford, 1974), pp. 123, 184; Hutchinson, History of the Colony and Province,II, q. p. 101; Palfrey, History ofNeiv England, IV, q. 253. Dudley offended others:George Keith, The Doctrine of the Holy Apostles & Prophets (1702); petition to theArchbishop of Canterbury, 23 Dec 1702, The American Papers of the Society for thePropagation of the Gospel (World Microfilms, 1974), Reel 12; Henry Wilder Foote,Annals of King's Chapel (Boston, 1882), I, 226. Dudley's patronage encouraged:Christopher Bridge to SPG, 19 Nov 1702, American Papers, Reel 12; John Chamberlayne to Joseph Dudley, ca. 1705, American Papers, Reel 12; Foote, Annals, I, 176.Quid pro quo: John Chamberlayne to Joseph Dudley, 10 Apr 1703, CMHS, 6th ser.,Ill (1899), 537; SSD, I, 502, 475. Dudley's large bills for silver, wigs, and other suchitems survive at the Massachusetts State House, Boston. At first the: IMD, 1 Jul1702; IM to William Blathwayt, 6 Mar 1705, HCR, IV, 209. Christopher Bridge, one ofthe ministers at King's Chapel, wrote home: "you cannot think how very industriousboth the Mathers have been in opposing this design [of opening chapels outsideBoston]. They have preached and prayed against it, and have treated [severely?] withmany of them that come to hear me" (to SPG, 19 Nov 1702). By contrast, Cotton:CM, The Pourtraiture of a Good Man (1702), pp. 21-22; Palfrey, History of NewEngland, IV, 248. Mather and Dudley: MS letter, Joseph Dudley to CM, 25 Dec1706, AAS; MS letter, Joseph Dudley [unaddressed but certainly to CM], 16 Jan 1706,MHS. While playing now-you-see-it-now-you-don't: SLCM, p. 70, on the rumored plot, see MS deposition of Joshua Gee, 21 Sep 1702, BPL; Ashurst letters inCMHS, 6th ser., Ill (1899), 324 fF. Mather's main choice: Dili, p. 72; SLCM, pp. 68,70, 71. This hint of: on the Deerfield massacre, see SSD, I, 498 and n.; on the costsof the war, see Commonwealth History of Massachusetts, ed. Albert Bushnell Hart etal. (1928; rpt. New York, 1966), II, 75 ff. That Dudley's handling: on Dudley'swartime efForts see the correspondence in CMHS, 6th ser., Ill (1899), passim; onthe new fortifications see Massachusetts Archives, 244. Nevertheless, in the: DI,p. 565; Palfrey, History of New England, IV, q. 302. Mather and Sir: SLCM, p. 73;John Winthrop to Fitz-John Winthrop, [no day] Jul 1707, CMHS, 6th ser., Ill (1899),388. The new accusations: SSD, I, 576; Palfrey, History of New England, IV, q. 303.Dudley's remarkable comeback: SLCM, pp. 75-76. The justness of: Kimball,Public Life, p. 187; SSD, I, 578, 587; John Chamberlayne to Joseph Dudley, 16 Dec1702, CMHS, 6th ser., Ill (1899), 534. In the added: SLCM, p. 105; SSD, I, 573. CMhimself had been nominated for college president by the House in 1703, but theOverseers replied that they could not accept a president "Named by that House."See Calendar of State Papers, XXI, 256. Most writers on CM have assumed that atthe time Leverett was chosen he wished the presidency for himself. But no evidenceexists that at this time he, any more than his father, desired to trade Boston forCambridge. But the man: MS letter, CM to unaddressed, 7 Oct 1707, Pusey Library,Harvard University. In behalf of: HofFmann, "Commonwealth College," q. p. 46l.Leverett in fact is viewed as a rather conservative man concerned with revivingdisused academic traditions, in Arthur D. Kaledin, "The Mind of John Leverett,"Diss. Harvard (1965). Yet Mather's view: MS letter (typed transcript), Henry New-man to Taylor, 29 Mar 1714, MHS; on Leverett's connection to the SPG see

American Papers, Reel 12; Henry Ashurst to Gurdon Saltonstall, 27 Jun 1709,CMHS, 6th ser., V (1892), 196; Henry Ashurst to IM, 10 Oct 1709, CMHS, 6th ser., V(1892), 199. In one of: The Acts and Resolves, Public and Private, of the Provinceof the Massachusetts Bay (Boston, 1869-1922), VIII, 796; photostated MS letter, CMto unaddressed, 7 Oct 1707, MHS. However Dudley obtained: Leo M. Kaiser,"'We Are All Filled with the Greatest Hope . . . ' An Installation Speech of GovernorJoseph Dudley," Harvard Library Bulletin, XXVII (1979), 443-44. For Mather,who: the account of CM's letter in this and the next two paragraphs is drawn fromSLCM, pp. 77-82. Taken aback by: Joseph Dudley to CM, 3 Feb 1708, CMHS, 1stser., Ill (1794), 135-37; SSD, I, 586-87. Dudley's stiff personal: I have followedthe text of Dudley's Modest Inquiry in CMHS, 5th ser., VI (1879), 65-95. Latergenerations can: CM's superb bibliographer, Thomas J. Holmes, accepted thewhole of the Deplorable State as his, but large portions of it seem to me both nothigh toned enough and overly factual to be by him; DII, p. 15; SSD, II, 627, 663. IMmay have been among the North End ministers who dined with Dudley, for hewrote later in the year that he had no personal quarrel with the governor. "He treatsme with all Respect, calling me his Spiritual Father" (HCR, IV, 229). IM seems tohave remained amicable with Leverett as well. For Mather, the: DII, p. 146.Pranks had often: PA, p. 183; DII, p. 139; Dili, p. 59; DII, pp. 216-17. Abuseissued from: John Winthrop to CM, ca. 1725, CMHS, 6th ser., V (1892), 428; SLCM,p. 32. Mather of course: SLCM, p. 72; DII, p. 105; Register of Diplomas and MSFaculty Minutes (GUA 21320, 26632), University of Glasgow (for this information Iam indebted to my fine graduate student Patricia Thompson; the degree was sent toCM together with letters from the Principal of the school and the Dean of Faculty);HCR, IV, 244; MS letter, CM to Principal John Stirling, ca. 1712 (beginning "MostReverend Sir. Every opportunity of addressing you"), National Library of Scotland;for one such letter of congratulations see the MS letter, Thomas Reynolds to CM, 19Jun 1711, MHS. Inwardly Mather always: DII, pp. 63-64, 77. But howeverguilty: CM, To the . . . Professors, of the Renowned University of Glasgow (1710); MSletter, CM to Principal John Stirling, 21 Aug 1713, National Library of Scotland; TheCorrespondence of the Rev. Robert Wodrow, ed. Thomas M'Crie (Edinburgh, 1843),II, 504. However honored abroad: Letter-Book of Samuel Sewall, CMHS, 6th ser.,I (1886), 407; SSD, II, 645-46; the jury message was apparently printed in BNL,18 Dec 1710, but unfortunately no copy of this issue has survived. See Sewall'sLetter-Book, p. 408. Unfortunately also, I am unable to identify "Facetious George"in the verses, although the name may refer to John George, the husband of thewoman who later became CM's third wife. The question of: CM's letter appears inHCR, IV, 244; MS diary of John Leverett, 16 May 1712 and Jun 1712, Pusey Library,Harvard University. The addition did: Dili, pp. 44, 32. Within a year: A, p. 359;DII, pp. 195, 213. Publicly forbearing, Mather: DII, p. 194; "Autobiography ofthe Rev. John Barnard," CMHS, 3rd ser., V (1836), 214-15. IM's instincts may havebeen sound, for Barnard later donated money to the new Anglican chapel in Marble-head. See Thomas C. Barrow, "Church Politics in Marblehead, 1715," Essex InstituteHistorical Collections, XCVIII (1962), 121-27. At Webb's ordination: SSD, II, 772.

8. Bonifacius

"The Minister's Tongue"-. BA, James III. 1; SSD, I, 455. With unrelenting, some-times: Dili, p. 39; DII, p. 204; DI, p. 333; CM, Golden Curb for the Mouth (1707; rpt.1709, which text I have followed); CM, The Sad Effects of Sin (1713), pp. 49-50; CM,Faithful Warnings (1704). p. 33. In whole works: CM, The Right Way to Shake off aViper (London, 1711; rpt. Boston, 1720, which text I have followed), pp. 48, 15;

448 DOCUMENTATION FOR PAGES 228 240

SML, p. 65; Dili, p. 67. In his mighty: tor CM's notes in 1684 on one sermon b\ IMconcerning Doing Good, see MAP, Reel 3C, fr. 0533; CM, undated MS sermon onCol. IV. 5., ca. 1685, Brown University Library; PA, p. 217. Yet Mather's acts: 1)11,pp. 26, 126, CM, Desiderius (1719), p. 7; MAP, Reel 8, fr. 0146. How fully Mather:CM, The Minister (1722), p. 14; DII, pp. 41-42, 263. Mather's numberless acts:DI, p. 518; DII tor 1711, pp. 93, 148, 151 et passim; A Report of the Ret <>nl Commis-sioners of the City of Boston . . . 1701 to 1715 (Boston, 1880, p. 102; PA. p. 229Mather's program for: DII, p. 23. The discussion of Pietism which follows isindebted to Dale W. Brown, Understanding Pietism (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1978); 1Ernest Stoeffler, German Pietism During the Eighteenth Century I Leiden, 1973); F.Ernest Stoeffler, The Rise of Evangelical Pietism (Leiden, 1971 ). Some more per-sonal: CM, The Echo's of Devotion (1716), p. 11; John Arndt, True Christianity.trans. William Boehm (Boston, 1809), pp. xiii, 462, 247. When CM first read Arndt isuncertain. Anthony Boehm sent him an English translation of True Christianity in1716. See MS letter, Boehm to CM, 28 May 1716, AAS. But CM mentions the work asearly as Nuncia Bona, below. One other side: CM, Man Eating the Eood of Angels(1710), p. 63; Kuno Francke, "The Beginning of Cotton Mather's Correspondencewith August Hermann Francke," Philological Quarterly, V (1926), 193-95. Matherpublicized Francke's: I have followed the text of Nuncia Bona in Kuno Francke,"Further Documents Concerning Cotton Mather and August Hermann Francke,''Americana Germanica, I (New York, 1897), 54-66. The impact of: on Pietist refer-ences to Bonifacius, see the MS letter, Anthony Boehm to CM, 19 Mar 1717, AAS,wherein Boehm notes that to make CM's work known in Germany he has inserted apassage from Bonifacius in some historical collections printed at Halle in HighDutch. In discussing Bonifacius I have followed the edition by David Levin (Cam-bridge, Mass., 1966). In recognizing the: on CM's place in the history of Americanphilanthropy, see Robert H. Bremner, American Philanthropy (Chicago, I960),pp. 12-14; The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, ed. John Bigelow, VIII (NewYork, 1888), 484. Besides its value: for other works of the period in which CMexplains the propriety of flaunting one's authorship, see the prefaces to ChristianityDemonstrated (1710) and Memorials of Early Piety (1711). Brazened by Doing:DI, pp. 563-64, 570. After advertising "Biblia: DII, p. 162; SLCM, p. 176. Namma[etc.]. Christianizing the: MCA, III, 193; CM, Another Tongue brought in (1707),p. 2; CM, The Nets of Salvation (1704), p. 35. In converting the: CM, SouldiersCounselled and Comforted (1689), p. 28; MCA, III, 191-92; CM, Decenruum Luc-tuosum (1699), p. 154; CM, The Way to Prosperity (1690), in The Wall and theGarden: Selected Massachusetts Election Sermons 1670-1775, ed. A.W Plumstead(Minneapolis, 1968), p. 133. More than that: CM, Memorable Providences (1689).in Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases 1648-1706, ed. George Lincoln Burr (NewYork, 1914), p. 99; CM, Souldiers Counselled and Comforted, p. 31; BA, II Kings 1;The Works of The Pious and Profoundly-Learned Joseph Mede, B.D. (3rd ed. Lon-don, 1672), p. 800; Higginson quoted in CM, Wonders of the Invisible World (1693;London, 1862), p. 160; CM, Decennium Luctuosum, p. 103. In hopes of: on theNew England Company, see William Kellaway, The New England Company 1649-1776 (New York, 1962), and Frederick L. Weis, "The New England Company of1649 and its Missionary Enterprises," PCSM, XXXVIII (1959), 134-218; on thechoice of CM as a commissioner, see Letterbook, 1688-1761, of the Company for thePropagation of the Gospel in New England, ed. Vesta Lee Gordon, University ofVirginia Library Microfilm Publications #8 (Charlottesville, 1969), p. 25; on theIndian youth, see MS letter, CM to William Ashurst, 7 Sep 1^1-4, HL. Mather'sinvolvement in: SSD, II, 621-22; Letter-Book of Samuel Sewall, CMHS, 6th ser., I(1886), 400-3 (Sewall's note to this letter seems to identify these views as CM's);

SLCM, p. 27; on the difficulties of the London printers, see Letterbook. . . of theCompany, p. 126. Mather also personally: SLCM, p. 127; Dili, p. 54; MS letter, CMto William Ashurst, 7 Apr 1713; HL; SLCM, p. 152; CM, Just Commemorations(1715), p. 56. Mather and the: Letterbook. . . of the Company, pp. 71-72; SPGMinute Books, Lambeth Palace Library (microfilm edition, 1974), 19 Oct 1705; JohnChamberlayne to William Ashurst, 23 Jan 1706, in The American Papers of the Soci-ety for the Propagation of the Gospel (World Microfilms, 1974), Reel 12. Mathergenerally approved: MS letter, Thomas Reynolds to CM, 9 Jun 1711 (but contain-ing CM's letter of 1706), MHS; DII, p. 416. Mather received no: William Ashurst toSamuel Sewall, 3 May 1709, American Papers, Reel 12. Writing from a: CM speaksof his design for the work in DI, p. 271. A final, outstandingly: DII, p. 85-86.Founded around 1660: on the Royal Society, see Dorothy Stimson, Scientists andAmateurs: A History of the Royal Society (New York, 1948), and Raymond PhineasStearns, "Colonial Fellows of the Royal Society of London, 1661-1788," Williamand Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., Ill (1946), 208-68; SLCM, p. 175. In addition to:DII, p. 266; the drawings appear in CM's MS communication to Richard Waller, 25Nov 1712, RS; MS communication ("Uncommon Dentition"), CM to Dr. John Wood-ward (but not in CM's hand), 30 Sep [1724], RS; SLCM, pp. 119-20. On dates andother bibliographical issues concerning "Curiosa Americana" I have followedGeorge Lyman Kittredge, "Cotton Mather's Communications to the Royal Society,"PAAS, NS XXVI (1916), 18-57. The weakness was: SLCM, p. 135; CM to Waller, 25Nov 1^12. In terms of: MS draft communication ("A Triton"), CM to Dr. JohnWoodward, 5 Jul 1716, MHS: Kittredge, "Cotton Mather's Communications," passim.Mather collected his: Kittredge, "Cotton Mather's Communications," passim.Mather's favorite source: M, pp. 442, 421; CM, Hades Look'd into (1717), p. 40;on rubila, see IM to John Winthrop, 23 Jun 1718, W, Reel 19, and Winthrop Com-monplace Book, W, Reel 39. A large part of the second John Winthrop's librarysurvives at the New York Academy of Medicine. See Ronald Sterne Wilkinson, "TheAlchemical Library of John Winthrop, Jr., (1606-1676), and his Descendants in Co-lonial America," Ambix, II (1963), 33-51. Mather frequently praised: John Win-throp to Fitz-John Winthrop, CMHS, 6th ser., Ill (1899), 333-34; M, pp. 427, 417;SLCM, pp. 245-48; MS letter, John Winthrop to CM, 29 Dec 1719, MHS. Mather'sletters to: on the plants, see CM's letters to the naturalist James Petiver, SLCM,pp. 216-19, and Raymond Phineas Stearns, "James Petiver Promoter of Natural Sci-ence, c. 1663-1718," PAAS, NS LXII (1952), 243-365; on the piece-of-eight, see MSdraft communication ("A Singular Lime-stone"), CM to Dr. John Woodward, 24 Sep1716, RS. The first series: in the account of the first series I have followed the MSversions at RS; on the reported merman, see NEC, 16-23 Apr 1726; on the bass, seeBG, 17-24 Feb 1724; on the waterspout, see The New York Times, 11 July 1979,p. A18. But the very: on the tendency of natural religion to displace Christianity,see John Dillenberger, "The Apologetic Defence of Christianity," in Science andReligious Belief ed. C.A. Russell (London, 1973), pp. 170-94, and John Redwood,Reason, Ridicule and Religion (London, 1976). Mather shrank, however: thefinal quotation is from CM, Utilia (1716), p. 272. Mather also considered: MS draftcommunication ("Monstrous Impregnations"), CM to Dr. John Woodward, 2 Jul1716, MHS; MAP, Reel 7, fr. 0564. See also Lester S. King, "Basic Concepts of Early18th-century Animism," American Journal of Psychiatry, CXXIV (1967), 797-802.In conceiving of: on the New Science and the experimental method, see RichardS. Westfall, The Construction of Modern Science (Cambridge, England, 1977), esp.pp. 115 ff. Leaving aside Mather's: on CM's Copernican views, see SSD, II, 779; onspontaneous generation, see Christian Philosopher, p. 145; on scrofula, see MS let-ter, CM to Jos[eph] Web [undated, but beginning "Sir, At your desire"], AAS; on

hybridization, see SLCM, p. 218; on dominance, see 1. Bernard Cohen, "Ethan AllenHitchcock," paas, NS LXI (1951), 30; tor a thoughtful assessment ol CM s achieve

ments, see Raymond Phineas Stearns, Science in the British Colonies of America(Urbana, 111., 1970), pp. 403-26. The Royal Society: Stearns, Science in the BritishColonies, q.p. 407; MS "Notes from Dr. Woodward/' 171 ». W, Keel IK; CM s hintappears at the close of his MS communication to Richard Waller. 1^ Nov 1712, RS.Seeking recognition even: Dili, p. 93; Stearns, Science in the /iritis/) Colonies, q.pp. 405-6; DII, p. 246; MS communication (identified as "Separate Letter ). CM to[probably Richard Waller], [ca. Nov 1713], MHS. In the "ER.S.': DII. p. 246. Thedenning moods: DII, p. 423-24. Squire was not: MS letter, Benjamin Colman toCM, 25 Dec 1711, AAS: DII, p. 235. When not surfacing: CM, Man Eating the FoodofAngels (1710), p. 41; CM, The Wayes and Joy es of Early Piety (1712), p. (3; CM,Persuasions from the Terror of the Lord (1711), pp. 34, 35. Mather's tantrumsand: Dili, p. 39. Some of this: SLCM, p. 231; Niel Caplan, "Some UnpublishedLetters of Benjamin Colman, 1717-1725," PMHS, LXXVII (1965), 106-7. Mather'sstepped-up promotion: on the size of "Biblia Americana," see DII, p. 416. YetEnglish readers: SLCM, pp. 170, 190; MS draft letter, CM to Anthony Boehm, 6 Aug1716, AAS; DII, p. 312. The New Offer: The Correspondence of the Per. PohertWodrow, ed. Thomas M'Crie (Edinburgh, 1842), I, 628; DII, p. 332; MS letter, An-thony Boehm to CM, 19 Mar 1717, AAS. Boehm indicates that CM had at this pointdeposited the manuscript at Harvard. Mather was wholly: MS draft letter, CM toThomas Reinolds, [ca. 1715, beginning "Reverend and very dear, Sr. The GenerousFriendship"], AAS; MS letter, CM to William Ashurst, 18 Oct 1715, HL; DII, p. 376.Mather's service to: SLCM, p. 146; on Leverett, see MS letter, IM to WilliamAshurst, 22 Dec 1712, HL; on the commissioners' sluggishness, see Dili, p. 65; onthe award, see Some Correspondence between . . . the Neir England Company and.. . America, ed. John W Ford (London, 1896), p. 89; MS letter, CM to William Ashurst,10 Dec 1712, HL; DII, p. 252. New frustrations came: Correspondence of. . .Wodrow, II, 36l; Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, #339 (Apr-Jun1714), p. 64; SLCM, p. 129. Mather also discovered: SLCM, p. 219.

9. Of 15, Dead, 9

At the time: Isaac J. Greenwood, "A Review of William Clarke's Genealogical State-ment," NEHGR, XXXIII (1879), 226-29; James Savage, A Genealogical Dictionaryof the First Settlers of New England (Boston, 1860-62), II, 485; SML, p. 13. Eliza-beth may have: Henry Wilder Foote, Annals of King's Chapel (Boston, 1882), I,46-48; CM, The Religion of the Cross (1714), pp. 44-45; R2C, 24 Feb 1706; DII.pp. 185-86, 132. 210; Dili, pp. 7, 81. Mather and Elizabeth: on CM's house, seeSuffolk Deeds 33. 131, quoted in Thwing Card Catalogue, MHS. See also DII. pp.239, 54; DI, p. 428; Dili, p. 72; CM, Christianas per Ignem (1702), p. 195; SML,pp. 98, 22. CM seems also to have owned a farm at this time, which he leased out.See the appendix to the MS lease of 26 Jul 1705, Williams College Library. Thecenter of: CM describes his library in PA, p. 42, and DI, p. 447; on the volumes CMowned, see Julius Herbert Tuttle, "The Libraries of the Mathers," PAAS, NS XX(1909-10), 268-356; on the large accessions, see Clarence S. Brigham, "HarvardCollege Library Duplicates, 1682," PCSM, XVIII (1917), 407-17, and DII, p. 2; DI,p. 548; PA, p. 42. How many books: John Dnntons Letters from New-England(Boston, 1867), p. 75 and n. Entering middle age: IMD. 1710 passim: DII, pp. 204,51. On the birth dates of CM's children, see Horace E. Mather, Lineage of Rev.Richard Mather (Hartford, 1890); MS list of marriages (in CM's hand). 1704, Univer-sity of Virginia Library (Elizabeth); A Report of the Record Commissioners . . .

Containing Boston births from A. D. 1700 to AD. 1800 (Boston, 1894), p. 46 (Samu-el); DII, pp. 8, 20 (Nathanael); DII, p. 57 (Jerusha). Mather's household also:DII, p. 687; CM, The Negro Christianized (1706), p. 26; DI, p. 570; CM, GrataBrevitas (1712), p. 8; PA, p. 221; DII, p. 364. In his lifetime CM owned at least threeand probably more black slaves. His church records suggest that his congregationcontained thirty or forty blacks, whom he often addressed in sermons. The subjectof CM and slavery deserves book length treatment, but for a useful brief study, seeDaniel K. Richter, "It Is God Who Has Caused Them To Be Servants': CottonMather and Afro American Slavery in New England," Bulletin of the CongregationalLibrary, XXX (1979), 4-13. In 1706 some: DI, p. 579; DII, pp. 222, 271, 282; Dili,p. 83; DII, p. 139. Amidst his multitudinous: CM, Orphanotrophinm (1711), p.20; CM, The Man of God Furnished (1708), pp. 138-39; DI, p. 536. To inducechildren: DI, p. 536. Mather conscientiously applied: DII, p. 21; Dili, p. 14; DII,p. 149; Dili, p. 91; DII, p. 53. True to his: Dili, p. 105; DI, p. 535; DII, pp. 113, 144,198; Dili, p. 85. As Mather proposed: DI, p. 536; DII, pp. 127, 44. In attendingto: DII, p. 140; Dili, p. 33; DII, pp. 245, 4, 134. In preparing his: DII,pp. 51, 153, 111-12; CM, Victorina (1717), sig. A2 etpassim; DII, p. 78. Mather'stwo sons: Dili, p. 89; DI, p. 583; Dili, pp. 41, 72; DII, p. 106; Dili, p. 45; DII,pp. 161, 151; Dili, p. 9. But Creasy somehow: Dili, p. 110; DII, p. 203; DII, pp. 76,92, 212. When Creasy reached: DII, p. 204; samples of Creasy's handwriting sur-vive in the Mellen Chamberlain Autograph Collection, MHS: DII, pp. 278, 239, 225.The winter of: Ernest Caulfield, "Some Common Diseases of Colonial Children,"PCSM, XXXV (1951), 5-6; CM, A perfect Recovery (1714), p. 47; DII, p. 248. Inabout two: DII, pp. 249-52. As such threats: DII, pp. 252, 272. One historian of:Caulfield, "Some Common Diseases," p. 8. Elizabeth was the: DII, pp. 254, 250-51. Three days after: DII, pp. 252-53; DI, p. 568; DII, p. 255. On November 8:CM, The Will of a Father submitted to (1713), pp. 28, 31; DII, p. 254. WhateverMather's own: CM, The Religion of the Cross (1714), passim; DII, pp. 254-55. Thenext to: DII, pp. 257-58. The twins Eleazer: DII, pp. 258, 260. The need to: CM,Orphanotrophinm, p. 12; on the older Jerusha, see CM, Memorials of Early Piety(1711), and DII, p. 38; DII, pp. 258, 256, 26l. Next day, with: CM, The Best Way ofLiving (1713), p. 23; DII, pp. 263, 259, 261; CM, The Best Way, sig. A3 et passim;SLCM, p. 145; CM, Hezekiah (1713), pp. 1, 35. In December, with: DII, pp. 266,270, 273. As Mather digested: DII, p. 266; MAP, Reel 2, fr. 0061; DII, p. 283.Mather's fifty-second year: IM, A Sermon Concerning Obedience & Resignation(1714), sig. A2; A, p. 359; CM, Maternal Consolations (1714), pp. 5-6, 40.

10. Lydia Lee George

To be sure: The description of Boston in this and the six following paragraphsdraws on a very wide variety of sources, of which only the more substantial can becited. On the quake, see BNL, 18-25 Jun 1705; many accounts of the 1711 firesurvive, but see esp. BNL, 1-8 Oct 1711, and CM, Advice from Taberah (1711); onthe new First Church building and the new Town House, see esp. Walter MuirWhitehill, Boston: A Topographical History (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), pp. 26-27.Indeed a half: Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness (New York, 1938),pp. 146,155-65; on the fire department, see A Report of the Record Commissioners . . .1716 to 1736 (Boston, 1885), p. 279. Despite the restraining: the quotation andmost of the details are drawn from Daniel Neal, The History of New-England (Lon-don, 1720), II, 587 et passim. To walk that: details gleaned from advertisements invarious Boston newspapers, esp. BG, 4-11 Apr 1720 ("choice Pictures"); NEC, 31Dec-7 Jan 1723 (Boyer); BG, 8-15 Feb 1720 (Faneuil); BG, 12-19 Jul 1725 (Hed-

man); BG 29 May-5 Jun 1727 ("Black Boy"). Social life kept: Neal, History of New-England, II, 587, 591; Bridenbaugh, Cities in the Wilderness, pp. 291 92; on Har-vard enrollment, see Niel Caplan, "Some Unpublished Letters of Benjamin Colman,1717-1725," PMHS, LXXVII (1965), 111; BNL, 2-9 Mar 1713 (Brownell); BNL, 7 MMar 1715 (moving pictures); BNL, 22-29 Aug 1715 (horse race); BG, 23 30 May1726 (bear). Urban pleasures also: on the growth of crime, see CM, A Plying Roll(1713); on the 1711 statute, see The Acts and Resolves, Public and Private, of theProvince of the Massachusetts Bay (Boston, 1869-1922), I, 673-74; on the report olslaves, see Caplan, "Some Unpublished Letters," p. 131, and Robert C. Twomblvand Robert H. Moore, "Black Puritan: The Negro in Seventeenth Century Massachusetts," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rdser., XXIV (1967), 224-42; BNL, 17-24 Dec1711, 26 Nov-3 Dec 1711, 20-27 Apr 1713; Caplan, "Some Unpublished Letters,p. 131; SLCM, p. 368. Here a John: Neal, History of New-England, II, 590. In someways: MCA, III, 223; PCSM, XXXIII (1940), xiii; Wilfred H. Munro, The History ofBristol, R.I. (Providence, 1880), pp. 131-33. Although Lee returned: "Letters ofSamuel Lee and Samuel Sewall Relating to New England and the Indians," PCSM,XIV (1913), 142-86; Samuel A. Green, "An Early Book-catalogue printed in Bos-ton," PMHS, 2nd ser., X (1895-96), 540-45; "Dr. Stiles's account of Rev. SamuelLee," PMHS (1864-65), pp. 219-20; Samuel Lee to IM, 25 Aug 1687, in M, pp. 540-42; CM's sermon notebooks, MAP, Reel 4A, Jul 1686-May 1687. This heritage of:"The Story of Boston Light," Bostonian Society Publications, VII (1910), 64-65 andn.; Long Wharf Corporation Documents 1713-1729, BPL; advertisements for JohnGeorge, BNL, 18-25 Aug 1707 and 16-23 Mar 1713; on George's sloops, see Massa-chusetts Archives, VII: 370, 396, 482. Well-to-do and socially: Henry Wilder Foote,Annals of King's Chapel (Boston, 1882), I, 137; "A List of all the Stated Communi-cants," in Records of the Church in Brattle Square, Boston, (Boston, 1902), n.p.;"Letter of Reverend Benjamin Colman," PCSM, VIII (1906), pp. 248-49; SuffolkProbate #3629 (27 Nov 1714). Mather waited scarcely: SLCM, pp. 166-67; DI, pp.581-82. Even more than: SLCM, pp. 166-68. But actually Mather: SLCM,pp. 173-74. In the same: SLCM, pp. 171-73. Lydia did grant: this and the nextthree paragraphs from DII, pp. 305-8. In the spring: SLCM, p. 131; Boston Mar-riages 1700-1751 (Boston, 1898), 26 May 1715; Kenneth Ballard Murdock, IncreaseMather (Cambridge, Mass., 1926), p. 385; MAP, Reel 6, fr. 0112, 0114; SLCM, p. 174.On June 24: "Will of Increase Mather," NEHGR, V (1851), 445-47; Suffolk Deeds35. 34 (24 June 1715). Ten days later: CM, MS "Extract of passages in my Diaries,"Houghton Library, Harvard University; SLCM, p. 183. CM's wedding sermon wasprinted as "Shemajah" in his Utilia (1716). For identification of the connection ofthe sermon with his marriage, see MS letter, CM to Elizabeth Clark, 13 Oct 1718,AAS. It seemed that: CM, MS "Extract of passages"; CM, The Sacrificer (1714), p.45; DII, pp. 325, 392; MS "Extract of passages." No portrait of: CM, MS "Extract ofpassages." Whatever subtle sensuality: DII, pp. 481, 335-36, 340; MAP, Reel 16,fr. 0658; DII, p. 346. Mather's removal to: MS Second Church Treasurer's Ac-counts, MHS; Chandler Robbins, A History of the Second Church (Boston, 1852),p. 298. Surviving evidence about the house conflicts. Samuel Sewall described it as"the house that was Mr. Kellond's" (SSD, II, 794), but the Second Church accountsays that it belonged to Thomas Hutchinson. It seems probable that Kellond ownedthe house but conveyed it to Hutchinson, and that it was known locally by thenames of both former owners. See also Thwing Catalogue of Suffolk Deeds, MHS(14 May 1713). The house and land CM had bought in 1688 he put up for salearound 1717. See SLCM, p. 249. Mather now lived: Abbott Lowell Cummings, "TheFoster-Hutchinson House," Old-Time New England, LIV (1964), pp. 6l ff.; DII,pp. 770, 577, 619, 458, 363 and n., 384, 477, 549- Altogether, in his: DII, p. 360. To

Mather's great: CM, MS "Extract of passages"; SLCM, p. 184; Boston Marriages, 28Aug 1716; CM, The Tribe of Asher (1717), title page. Samuel, about eight: DII,pp. 459, 353, 565, 499, 554; Samuel's "Quotidiana" are preserved at AAS; MS draftletter, CM to Jeremiah Dummer, 13 Jul 1720, AAS. Sammy's admission forced:SLCM, p. 294; "A Mather Manuscript in the Congregational Library," Bulletin of theAmerican Congregational Association, III (1952), 16-17. One dark intrusion:CM, Betbiab (1722), p. 4; SML, p. 14; CM, Victorina (1717), sig. A2, pp. 66, 80. Butabout a: DII, p. 370; on Culver's Root, see SLCM, pp. 220, 224, and WinthropCommonplace Book, W, Reel 39; CM, Victorina, p. 79; DII, p. 388; SSD, II, 840.Katharine's death did: SLCM, pp. 179, 169. The visit turned: Thomas J. Holmes,"Samuel Mather of Witney, 1674-1733," PCSM, XXVI (1926), 312-22; A, p. 360; DII,pp. 322-23. But curing Creasy: DII, pp. 322-23. Mather's disappointment in:DII, p. 347. For once, Mather: DII, p. 352; SLCM, p. 207; DII, p. 354. By the time:Sir Henry- Ashurst to Wait Winthrop, 24 Aug 1708, CMHS, 6th ser., V (1892), 173;Dili, p.81; Alan Simpson, "A Candle in a Corner: How Harvard College Got theHopkins Legacy," PCSM, XLIII (1966), 304-24. Dudley also gave: Foote, Annals ofKing's Chapel, p. 224; on Dudley's alleged Congregationalism, see CMHS, 1st ser.,VII (1801), 216-17; SSD, II, 792. Nothing so nearly: DII, pp. 292-93; Albert Mat-thews, "Colonel Elizeus Burges," PCSM, XIV (1913), 360-72. Mather was glad:SLCM, p. 168; on Shute, see DNB. Shute no sooner: DII, p. 375; MS draft letter, CMto [Samuel Shute], [undated, beginning "Sr, The God of Heaven"], AAS; on Shute'smembership in a Congregational church, see HCR, IV, 265 (the pronouns are con-fused, but "He" seems to refer to Shute); on Shute and King's Chapel, see Foote,Annals of King's Chapel, pp. 267-68; CM, A Speech Made unto His Excellency(1717), p. 2; SLCM, p. 244. For his efforts: Dili, p. 380; MS draft letter, CM toSamuel Shute, [16?] Oct 1719, AAS; MS draft letter, CM to John Shute Barrington,[undated but ca. Oct 1716, beginning "Sr, An American Composure"], AAS; MS draftletter, CM to Thomas Bradbury, 13 Oct 1718, AAS. The change of: on Dummergenerally, see Charles L. Sanford, "The Days of Jeremy Dummer, Colonial Agent,"Diss. Harvard, 1952; on the "female beauties," see MS Memoranda of Jeremy Dum-mer, 1709-11, MHS; on Dummer as prime minister, see "A Sketch of Eminent Menin New-England," CMHS, 1st ser., X (1809), 155. Dummer greatly admired: MSMemoranda; on the pigs, see Sanford, "The Days of Jeremy Dummer," q. p. 90; onWaller, see MS letter, Jeremiah Dummer to Stephen Sewall, 23 Jan 1712, AAS; on"Religio Generosi," see MS draft letter, CM to "J.feremiah] D.[ummer] Esq.," 7 Sep1719, AAS; CM's attack on Dummer appears in The Day which the Lord hath made(1703); DII, p. 414. Dummer's value to: mention of CM for rector appears in aletter from Rev. James Noyes (a Yale trustee) in 1717, cited in Sanford, "The Days ofJeremy Dummer," p. 239; DII, p. 474; HCR, II, 424. Yale College began: FranklinB. Dexter, "The Founding of Yale College," New Haven Historical Society Papers,III (1882), 1-31; Franklin B. Dexter, "Governor Elihu Yale," ibid., pp. 227-48;Sanford, "The Days of Jeremy Dummer," p. 237. Mather wrote to: Yale's commentq. in Dexter, "Governor Elihu Yale," p. 244; MS draft letter, CM to Elihu Yale, 14 Jan1718, AAS; Dexter, "Governor Elihu Yale," pp. 242-43. Mather was greatly: MSdraft letter, CM to Gurdon Saltonstall, 25 Jun 1718, AAS; MS letter, Yale trustees toCM, ca. Sep 1718, Yale University Library. A simultaneous and: on the develop-ment of CM's ecumenism, see Richard F. Lovelace, The American Pietism of CottonMather (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1979), pp. 251-81. Around 1715 Mather: CM, Mala-chi (1717), p. 36; DII, p. 416; the list of places to which CM intended sending thework is compiled from various mentions of Lapis in DII, SLCM, and India Chris-tiana (1721); SLCM, p. 205; MS fragmentary draft letter, CM to Anthony Boehm,[undated but ca. 1716, beginning "there is none that has more"], AAS. In Lapis,

Mather: all quotations from Malacbi, except the last, which appears in SLCM, p.205. How far CM had drifted from the older Congregational view of church government appears in his blasts at the publication in Boston of an edition of The ChurchesQuarrel Espoused, by the Ipswich minister John Wise. Here and in his later Vindi-cation of the Government of New-England Churches (1717) Wise attacked as adeparture from Congregationalism the movement to develop formal clerical associations. For CM's furious response, see SLCM, p. 185. Mather's Universal Religion:all quotes from Malachi. Mather's ecumenism increasingly: Malacbi, p. 69; CM,"To my much Honoured Mr. Francis De la Pillonniere," in The Occasional Paper(London), III (1718), 25-29; CM, Brethren dwelling together in Unity I 1718), p. 37.Many different features: on the Pietists' praise, see MS letter, Anthony Boehm toCM, [undated but ca. 1716, beginning "Reverend Sir. It was in the Month"], AAS.Boehm added that some persons to whom he gave copies of Lapis called it "aCompendium of Mystical and Universal Divinity." CM entitled one of his own worksPia Desideria (1722), after a famous work of Spener's. Mather's career in: CM,Zelotes (1717), pp. 41-42. At various times: on Whiston, see Margaret C. Jacob,The Newtonians and the English Revolution 1689-1720, (Ithaca, N.Y., 1976), pp.130-34; on Louis XIV, see CM, Shaking Dispensations (1715), pp. 42, 45; on the"greatest Sign," see MS draft letter, CM to Henry Walrond, 11 Jan 1718, AAS. Oneother ambitious: DII, p. 786; H, III, 1008. Both of CM's grandfathers had beeninvolved in the production of The Bay Psalm Book (1640), and his grandfather JohnCotton had written a treatise on psalmody, Singing of Psalmes A Gospel-Ordinance(London, 1650). In 1718 Mather: CM, Proposals for Printing by Subscription(1718); SLCM, pp. 311, 188; CM, The Accomplished Singer (1721), p. 15. For anexpanded study of CM's Psalterium, see my article "Cotton Mather and the Reformof Puritan Psalmody," Seventeenth-Century News, XXXIV (1976), 53-57. Matherhad a: Richard Baxter, Paraphrase on the Psalms of David in Metre (London, 1692);DII, p. 437. To improve public: SLCM, pp. 376, 388; Ebenezer Parkman, MS sing-ing book, dated Jul 1721, MHS. Often sympathetic to: DII, p. 608; SSD, II, 976.David P. McKay has published a sermon on psalm singing allegedly preached by CMon 18 Apr 1721, as "Cotton Mather's Unpublished Singing Sermon," New EnglandQuarterly, XLVIII (1975), 410-22. The manuscript does contain CM's name at theend, but seemingly not his signature. I cannot accept the sermon as his, first be-cause the manuscript is not in his hand, second because the sermon emphasizes themusical and aesthetic side of singing whereas CM paid these lip service while em-phasizing the exegetical and devotional aspects. Most important, CM's sermon listfor 1721 (DII, pp. 677-81) shows that he preached on April 16 and 20, but not onApril 18.

11. Tria Carcinomata

Mather's newfound happiness: DII, p. 480; CM, Help for Distressed Parents(1695), p. 13. "Suppose," Mather asked: DII, pp. 465-66. But by November: DII,p. 484. However shaken, Mather: MS Book of Sessions, 1712-1719, Suffolk Coun-ty Supreme Court, Boston (17 Jan 1718 and p. 201); DII, p. 485. But despite Math-er's: DII, p. 489; PA, p. xvii. Powerless to reclaim: DII, p. 583. Whatever herother: on Lee's daughters, see "Dr. Stiles's account of Rev. Samuel Lee," PMHS(1864-65), 219-20, and "Genealogical Gleanings in England," NEHGR, XLIV(1890), 393-94; on Augustus, see MAP, Reel 4C, fr. 0299. Early in their: DII.pp. 583-86. Among the objects: DII, p. 584; CM, MS "Extract of passages in myDiaries," Houghton Library, Harvard University. Fear of what: DII, pp. 584-85.

Lydia turned her: DII, pp. 338, 590-91; on the possibility of revolution, see CM,Concio ad Populum (1719), p. 25; SLCM, p. 317; HCR, IV, 302-3. Increase himselfadded: IMD for 1717, passim; R2C, 13 Oct 1717; "Earliest Wills on Record in Suf-folk County, Ms.," NEHGR, V (1851), 445-47; DII, p. 512. IM showed CM the provi-sions of his will more than a year before drawing it up. See DII, p. 505. Matherdealt with: DII, pp. 523, 533, 557, 514. Mather's distress also: DII, pp. 589, 571,578, 521, 579. On March 9: SF #13120 (24 Mar 1719). The following account ofCM's legal difficulties appeared previously as my article "Cotton Mather and theHowell Estate," Boston Bar Journal, XXVI (1982), 5-13. This ominous summons:Samuel Sewall, MS Probate Records, MHS (the administration appears as "Nota"written in the margin of a grant of administration to Ebenezer Withrington on 29Mar 1716); SF #15183 (25 May 1721). In taking on: DII, p. 410; SSD, II, 817n.; DII,p. 349. Mather undertook this: CM, "The Answer of the Administrator of theEstate of Nathan Howel deceased, unto the Citation served upon him," MS docu-ment reproduced in sale catalogue of Charles Hamilton Galleries Inc., New York,XC (4 Sep 1975), 46; DII, pp. 386, 444, 136; CM, Fair Dealing (1716), p. 12. Matherexplained later: CM, "The Answer"; BNL, 31 Dec-7 Jan 1716/17. Forever benton: SF #11222 (14 Dec 1716); Mather v. Oliver &c, ERB (1 Jan 1717); SF #11386(19 Feb 1717). Packanet was apparently released when he promised to pay off thedebt to CM at the rate of forty shillings a month. For Mather this: SF #11588 [sic](5 Mar 1717); SF #11453 (5 Mar 1717); SF #11454 (18 Mar 1717); Mather v. Dun-ham and Mather v. James, ERB (2 Apr 1717); Mather v. Davison, ERB (2 Jul 1717).These cases can: Mather v. Morrell, ERB (1 Apr 1718); York Deeds (Portland,Maine, 1894), X, fol. 22; Province and Court Records of Maine (Portland, Maine,1964), V, 106; Mather v. Marshall, ERB (2 Apr 1717). Other of Mather's: DII, p.494; MS draft letter, CM to Pelatiah Whittemore, 11 Dec 1717, AAS; BNL, 9-16 Dec1717; CM, "The Answer." The sheriff who: SF #13120 (24 Mar 1719). The manu-script probably: MAP, Reel 8, fr. 0135, 0138. Several of CM's published sermons inthis period also refer to his marital and financial difficulties. See for instance Fehri-fugium. An Essay for the Cure of Ungoverned Anger (1717) and A Glorious Espousal(1719). In the latter, CM speaks of "the Curse, which every Marriage in this World,is likely to be more or less Encumbered and Embittered withal!" Aside from vent-ing: see "The Answer"; Mico v. Mather, ERB (7 Jul 1719). Mather began trying:"Supposed Letter from Rev. Cotton Mather, D.D.," CMHS, 4th ser., II (1854),122-29. Judge Sewall did: Letter-Book of Samuel Sewall, CMHS, 6th ser. (1886-88), II, 111. With his passion: this and the next paragraph drawn from the "Sup-posed Letter." The seriousness of: [John Colman], The Distressed State of the Townof Boston (1720), p. 2 et passim. Mather depicted his: M, pp. 460-62. The editorsassigned this undated document the date 1725, but its content makes a date of 1720far more probable. Certain that Sewall's: DII, p. 630; SLCM, pp. 326-27. Appar-ently despairing of: MAP, Reel 6, fr. 642 43 [sic]. Auspiciously, this time: MS"Petition of Dr. Cotton Mather," 8 Nov 1720, Council Records, Massachusetts StateHouse, Boston. But no proper: SLCM, pp. 333, 336. Mather needed no: DII, pp.611-12; IMD, 14 Apr 1721. CM does not say what happened during this "Night-Riot." But documents do survive of a riotous episode apparently two weeks later,which may by some confusion of dates be the same episode. On the streets ofBoston on the evening of April 20, three young male servants cursed, swore, brokewindows, threatened to break down doors, and offered "affronts and abuses" towomen, for which the court offered them the choice of a fine or a public whipping.See MS Sessions Minutes (1719-1728), Suffolk County Supreme Judicial Court, Bos-ton, pp. 85 ff. That Creasy may have been involved with this group is suggested by

the fact that one of the young men was a servant to Foxley Sanderson, to whomCreasy owed money. See documents related to Creasy in Mellen Chamberlain Autograph Collection, MHS. As always, Mather's: SLCM, p. 337; DII, pp. 614-15. Seek-ing some help: SLCM, p. 337 Opposition to Shute: SLCM, p. 156. The change of:SLCM, p. 223. Amid this plethora: CM, Concio ad Populum, p. 25. Mather hadbeen: H, II, 537-40; "Dr. Mather's Letter to Lord Barrington," CMHS, I (1792),105-6; SLCM, pp. 291, 292; for Cooke's alleged drunkenness and the retraction, seeSLCM, pp. 295-96, and the undated draft memorandum in CM's hand beginning"Desirous forever to preserve the most unspotted care," AAS; for the "party of Tip-plers," see MS draft letter, CM to William Ashurst, 10 Sep 1719, AAS. Opposition toShute: John L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University(Cambridge, Mass., 1873-1975), IV, 351-52. Apprehensive that such: ThomasHutchinson, The History of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay, ed. Lawrence Shaw Mayo (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), II, 218. Although the House: Hutchinson, History of the Colony, II, 185; text of Reflections upon Reflections in ColonialCurrency Reprints, ed. Andrew McFarland Davis (1911; rpt. New York, 1971), II,118. Mather, probably hoping: CM, undated MS draft document, beginning "AnExtract of a passage in Eachards," AAS. Mather was also: SLCM, pp. 319, 304-5. Anew session: CM, undated MS draft document, beginning "In case the Representa-tives," AAS; Hutchinson, History of the Colony, II, q. 179. At this point: SLCM,pp. 334-35; MS draft letter, CM to Samuel Penhallow, 21 Nov 1720, AAS; SLCM, p.335. In this Mather: Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Prov-ince (Cambridge, Mass., 1953), p. 310. Neither upbringing nor: SLCM, p. 229; MSdraft letter, CM to Samuel Penhallow, 8 Sep 1718, AAS; SLCM, pp. 327-28. Theother case: SLCM, p. 312; Daniel Neal, The History of New-England (London,1720), II, viii. The day before: SLCM, pp. 313-15, 269. In the past: CM, A Voicefrom Heaven (1719), p. 13; DII, p. 607. Mather's ministry dealt: CM, MS sermonon Eph 1.13. (20 Sep 1702), University of Virginia Library. That Arianism might: I.Bernard Cohen, "Introduction" to William Whiston, Astronomical Lectures (1728;rpt. New York, 1972), p. v ff.; DII, p. 106; Dili, p. 48. On Arianism in general, seeRonald N. Stromberg, Religious Liberalism in Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford,1954). Mather wrote several: on the advance of Arianism, see MS letter, CM toJohn Stirling, 10 Dec 1717, National Library of Scotland; on Salters' Hall, see HenryW. Clark, History of English Nonconformity (1911-13; rpt. New York, 1965), II,193-95. Mather learned of: SLCM, p. 289; MS draft letter, CM to Isaac Watts, 7 Sep1719, AAS; MS letter, Isaac Watts to CM, 11 Feb 1720, MHS. Mather regarded the:Richard F. Lovelace, The American Pietism of Cotton Mather (Grand Rapids, Mich.,1979), p. 273. Mather also set: SLCM, p. 273; Some American Sentiments in. ThreeLetters from New-England (London, 1721), pp. 7-27. Mather's professions of:SLCM, p. 303; HCR, IV, 349; Niel Caplan, "Some Unpublished Letters of BenjaminColman, 1717-1725," PMHS, LXXVII (1965), 128. At the same: Caplan, "SomeUnpublished Letters," p. 119. Almost all the: Hamilton Andrews Hill, History ofthe Old South Church (Boston, 1890), I, 400. Shaken by the: Thomas Lechmere toJohn Winthropjr., 18 Jan 1720 and 14 Mar 1720, W, Reel 19; CM et al, An Accountof the Reasons (1720). Despite this resistance: SSD, II, 940n.; Sibley, BiographicalSketches, IV, 306; Lechmere to Winthrop, 14 Mar 1720. The end result: DII, p. 615;Samuel G. Drake, The History and Antiquities of Boston (Boston, 1856), p. 558n.;DII, p. 615; CM, MS draft document, undated but beginning "Considering the crazycondition of the Old N.M.," AAS; DII, p. 617. How many left: DII, p. 6l6; CM, AVision in the Temple (1721), pp. 37, 42-43; DII, p. 617. Suddenly, just two: DII,pp. 620-21.

12. The Paths of the Destroyer

Mather himself observed: SLCM, p. 213; P, p. 198; DII, p. 487 Civic authorities

seem: The Acts and Resolves, Public and Private, of the Province of the Massachu-setts Bay (Boston, 1869-1922), II, 91; A Report of the Record Commissioners of theCity of Boston . . . 1716 to 1736 (Boston, 1885), p. 76; Acts and Resolves, X, 28. Itwas the: SSD, II, 979; Report of the Record Commissioners . . . 1716 to 1736, p. SI; AReport of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston . . .from 1700 to 1728(Boston, 1883), p. 154. The next week: BNL, 15-22 May 1721; Report of the RecordCommissioners. . . 1716 to 1736, p. 82. Mather feared for: Zabdiel Boylston, His-torical Account of the Smallpox Inoculated (1726; rpt. Boston, 1730), p. 38; DII,pp. 622, 621, 623, 628. Mather's charitable and: Robert Boyle: The Works, ed.Thomas Birch (1722; rpt. Hildesheim, 1965), VI, 610-11; DII, p. 388; SLCM, p. 214.Mather now did: on the June 6 address and CM's other unpublished writingsduring the smallpox epidemic, I have followed the exhaustive and dependableaccount of their dates and content in George Lyman Kittredge, "Some Lost Works ofCotton Mather," PMHS, 2nd ser., XLV (1911-12), 418-79; Otho T. Beall, Jr., andRichard H. Shryock, "Cotton Mather: First Significant Figure in American Medi-cine," PAAS, LXIII (1953), 137-38; John B. Blake, "The Inoculation Controversy inBoston: 1721-1722," Neiv England Quarterly, XXV (1952), 489. Mather basedthe: on discussion of inoculation in Boston, see Niel Caplan, "Some UnpublishedLetters of Benjamin Colman, 1717-1725," PMHS, LXXVII (1965), 124; SLCM, p. 214.In his letter: accepting the history of the June 6 address given in Kittredge, "SomeLost Works," I have followed the text in CM, The Angel of Bethesda, ed. Gordon W.Jones (Barre, Mass., 1972), pp. 107-12. How many physicians: BNL, 23-30 Mar1713, 5-12 Mar 1711, 3-10 Mar 1707, 28 Nov-5 Dec 1720; BG, 21-28 Nov 1720;Raymond Phineas Stearns, Science in the British Colonies of America (Urbana, 111.,1970), pp. 435-42. Boylston approved of: Massachusetts Magazine, I (1789), 778;Boylston, Historical Account, p. 2. The news of: Boylston, Historical Account,p. 53; Thomas Robie, MS Smallpox Journal, 1721-22, MHS. Mather found himself:DII, pp. 631-32; BG, 10-17 Jul 1721. With Mather certain: CM's characterizationof Dalhonde appears in his MS "Case of the Small-pox Inoculated, further cleared,"21 May 1723, RS; Dalhonde's testimony appears in the appendix to Boylston's "His-torical Account." Three days after: BNL, 17-24 Jul 1721. These charges of: MSletter, Benjamin Colman to unaddressed, 25 Jul 1721, Francis A. Countway Library',Harvard Medical School; BG, 27-31 Jul 1721; NEC, 7 Aug 1721. This flurryopened: BNL, 24-31 Jul 1721; NEC, 7-14 Aug 1721; BNL, 7-14 Aug 1721. Despitethe thickening: Boylston, "Historical Account." Again following Kittredge, I havequoted the text of this essay in The Angel of Bethesda, p. 94. Opposition to Math-er's: NEC, 14-21 Aug 1721; on Douglass, see Stearns, Science in the British Colo-nies; for Douglass's remark on CM, see "Letters from Dr. William Douglass to Cad-wallader Colden of New York," CMHS, 4th ser., II (1854), 169. Douglass firstsprang: NEC, 7-14 Aug 1721, 14-21 Aug 1721. What made Douglass: "Lettersfrom Dr. William Douglass," pp. 166, 170; William Douglass, Inoculation of theSmall Pox as Practised in Boston (1722), p. 20; Caplan, "Some Unpublished Let-ters," p. 124; "Letters from Dr. William Douglass," p. 171. The tense, charnal: DII,pp. 641, 635, 634, 636-37. Very tryingly, Mather: DII, p. 634; Creasy had signed apromissory note for £3 15s on 9 Sep 1721 to the dancing master Increase Gatchell(see SF #16999, 17 Jun 1723); DII, pp. 647, 669, 674. Smallpox or no: Faneuil v.Mather, ERB (4 Apr 1721); SF #15183 (25 May 1721) and documents attached to SF#15308 (17 Apr 1721); the allowance of CM's petition appears in the MS recordsand Minute Books of the Superior Court of Judicature, 1702-27, Supreme Judicial

Court, Boston (25 May 1721); DII, p. 630; SLCM, p. 345. But having borne: 1)11pp. 626, 632, 628, 635, 638. A few days: DII, pp. 639 43. Unexpectedly, howev-er, two: DII, pp. 643-44, 648-49. A canvass of: NEC and BNL, 2 9 Oct 1721;Thomas Lechmere to John Winthrop, Jr., 2 Oct L721, W, Reel 19; Report of theRecord Commissioners. . . 1716 to 1736, p. 89; Report of the Record Commissioners. . . 1700 to 1728, p. 159. Mather and Boylston: Boylston, Historical Account, p50; DI, pp. 683, 650, 654; BG, 23-30 Oct 1721 (for the identification ol this as CM S,see H, I, 357). Someone tried to: NEC, 14-21 Aug 1721; DII. pp. 657 S8. Thisepisode was much talked of and distorted, so that to prevent misrepresentation, CMgave the NEC his own account, which the newspaper published. It closely rescmbles the account in DII, except that in NEC the message fixed to the shell reads:"Cotton Mather—I was once of your Meeting; But the cursed Lye you told of—youknow who, made me leave you, you Dog. And Damn you, I'll Inoculate you withthis, with a Pox to you" (NEC, 13-20 Nov 1721). The attempted assassination:SLCM, pp. 345-46; DII, p. 659; General Court Records, Massachusetts State House(15 Nov 1721), and BNL, 13-20 Nov 1721. Not everyone, Mather: DII, pp. 659-60,663. Insidiously the smallpox: on inoculations outside Boston, see Stearns, Sci-ence in the British Colonies, p. 444; DII, pp. 662, 670. Mather also addressed: thatCM was unaware of the April inoculation in London is suggested by his remark onAugust 17 that he hoped the method "may be introduced into the English nation"(DII, p. 638); CM [but published as "Communicated by Henry Newman"], "Theway of proceeding in the Small Pox inoculated," Philosophical Transactions of theRoyal Society, XXXII (1722), 33-35; CM, MS communication headed "Dr Mather ofNew-England" (but not in CM's hand), 10 Mar 1722, The British Library, identifiedby Kittredge, "Some Lost Works," as "Curiosa Variolarum." Whether the ac-counts: on the debate, see Genevieve Miller, "Smallpox Inoculation in Englandand America: A Reappraisal," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., XIII (1956),476-92. By about mid-December: for works by other ministers, see for instanceBenjamin Colman, Some Observations on the New Method of. . . Inoculating(1721); IMD, 22 Jun 1721; MS letter, Samuel Sewall to Benjamin Colman, 12 Sep1721, MHS. The number of: NEC, 30 Oct-6 Nov 1721; John Williams, SeveralArguments, Proving, That Inoculating the Small Pox Is not contained in the Law ofPhysick (1721), p. 14. In this and the following paragraphs I have tried to conveythe main themes of the debate, especially as they concerned CM, rather than tocapture its escalating effect of attack and rejoinder. As a result the summaries ofvarious arguments are not chronological, and some later works may in the account-ing precede earlier ones. While some anti-inoculators: NEC, 1-8 Jan 1722; onWilliams, see Kittredge, "Some Lost Works," pp. 471-72; John Williams, An AnswerTo a Late Pamphlet (1722), pp. 9, 4; Douglass, Inoculation of the Small Pox, sig. A2.Pro-inoculation allies of: on CM's part in writing this pamphlet, see Kittredge,"Some Lost Works," pp. 428, 467, and DII, p. 672. Mather needed vindicating:NEC, 30 Oct-6 Nov 1721; Douglass, Inoculation of the Small Pox, and Postscript toAbuses, &c. Obviated (1722), p. 4. Mather's detractors often: on the itch, seeDouglass, Postscript to Abuses, p. 6; on CM's grammar and his opinion of his works,see Williams, Several Arguments, pp. 14, 15; on quoting CM against himself, seeNEC, 15-22 Jan 1722; on Oldmixon and on CM's posturing, see [Anon.], A FriendlyDebate; or, A Dialogue between Rusticus and Academicus (1722), pp. 6, 1; on"Curiosa," see Douglass, Inoculation of the Small Pox, p. 20, and Introduction, andhis The Abuses and Scandals of some late Pamphlets (1722), p. 6; on the D.D., seeDouglass, The Abuses and Scandals, Introduction, and NEC, 15-22 Jan 1722. Math-er's membership in: on Checkley, see George L. Kittredge, "Further Notes onCotton Mather and the Royal Society," PCSM, XIV (1913), 281-92; MS letter, John

Checkley to Edmund Halley, 26 Apr 1721, BPL. Amidst the winter: NEC, 15-22 Jan1722; Douglass, The Abuses and Scandals, Introduction; on CM's membership inthe Royal Society, see Kittredge, "Further Notes," and Stearns, Science in the BritishColonies, pp. 110-11 and 111, n. 65. Mather wrote to: SLCM, p. 360; RaymondPhineas Stearns, "Colonial Fellows of the Royal Society, 1661-1788," William andMary Quarterly, 3rd ser., Ill (1946), 228-29. This onslaught of: DII, p. 664; BG,8-15 Jan 1722; NEC, 15-22 Jan 1722; MCA, VII, 86. Although well practiced: DII,p. 622; NEC, 27 Nov-4 Dec 1721; DII, p. 667. In this defeated: DII, pp. 670-71.Mather's announcement of: NEC, 15-22 Jan 1722 and 5-12 Feb 1722. By thetime: selectmen's figures in NEC, 19-26 Feb 1722; the quotations from SilenceDogood appear in NEC, 26 Mar-2 Apr 1722 and 9-16 Apr 1722. The selectmenfound: BG, 14-21 May 1722; Report of the Record Commissioners . . . 1716 to 1736,p. 96; NEC, 16-23 Apr 1722 and 28 May-4 Jun 1722. Ironically for Mather: DII, p.669; Writ of Execution, 23 Oct 172[1?], with note by Edward Winslow dated 1 Jan1722, State Records Center, Grafton, Mass. (the exact dates and details of this trans-action are obscure: the date on the writ is torn, and the date on the note couldrepresent 1722/3); CM's petition appears in SF #16015 (May 1722), which alsocontains Sewall's reply from Spectacle Island,-dated 11 Jun 1722; on the selectmen,see Report of the Record Commissioners. . . 1716 to 1736, p. 97; on the "mobbishCrew," see MS letter, Thomas Robie [to John Higginson], 18 May 1722, AAS; on thecondition of the Sewalls, see Robie, Smallpox Journal. These final inoculations:NEC and BG, 14-21 May 1722. Impaled by the: "Letters from Dr. William Doug-lass," p. 170. To say that: for a judicious assessment of CM's part in the inoculationcontroversy, see Beall and Shryock, "Cotton Mather." Of course Mather: DII, pp.664-65; SLCM, p. 402. A year after: NEC, 14-21 May 1722; Stearns, Science in theBritish Colonies, p. 411; NEC, 13-20 Apr 1724; CM, MS communication ("The Caseof the Small-pox Inoculated, further cleared"), 21 May 1723, RS (not in CM's hand,but signed by him).

13- Crackling of Thorns Under a Pot

The two years: Hamilton Andrews Hill, History of the Old South Church (Boston,1890), I, 409. Together with its: IM, A Dying Legacy of a Minister (1722), p. 2;SSD, II, 996; P, p. 201. Other losses beset: SSD, II, 1001; SLCM, pp. 356, 375;William Pencak, War, Politics & Revolution in Provincial Massachusetts (Boston,1981), p. 71. Mather quickly gained: SSD, II, 992; on CM's claims of foresight, seeSLCM, pp. 375-76; NEC, 7-14 Jan 1723; BNL, 15-21 Mar 1723; SLCM, p. 384. Losingmoney also: Appleton v. Mather, ERB (3 Jul 1722); Baxter v. Dr. Mather, ERB (2Oct 1722); on the irregularities, see Appleton v. Mather, ERB (2 Oct 1722), and Dr.Mather v. Baxter, ERB (1 Oct 1723); on CM's countersuit, see SF #17269 (10 Sep1723); on Creasy and Sanderson, see SF #16702 (18 Mar 1723) and Writ of Execu-tion, 9 May 1723, State Records Center, Grafton, Mass.; on Creasy's suits in June, seeSF #16980 (17 Jun 1723) and SF #16999 (17 Jun 1723); on Gatchel, see NEC, 25May-1 Jun 1724 and 4-11 Mar 1723. In these circumstances: Kenneth B. Murdock,"Cotton Mather and the Rectorship of Yale College," PCSM, XXVI (1927), 397; P, p.201; "Original Paper Respecting the Episcopal Controversy in Connecticut,MDCCXXII," CMHS, 2nd ser., IV (1816), 298. Mather was aghast: SLCM,p. 356; SSD, II, 996; BG, 8-15 Oct 1722; "Original Paper," p. 299; on the "gloriousrevolution," see Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas,Personalities, and Politics 1689-1775 (New York, 1962), q. p. 68; Henry WilderFoote, Annals of King's Chapel (Boston, 1882), I, 316. The tumult brought: Mur-dock, "Cotton Mather and the Rectorship," q. p. 395; "Original Paper," p. 297;

460 DOCUMENTATION FOR PAGES 367-378

"Some Original Papers Respecting the Episcopal Controversy in Connecticut,MDCCXXII," CMHS, 2nd ser., II (1814), 130. Mather and the: Bridenbaugh, Mitre

and Sceptre, q. p. 70; [CM], undated MS document, ca. Nov 1722, entitled A Faithful Relation, of a Late Occurence in the Churches of Ac// England," MHS; someOriginal Papers," pp. 133-36; CM, Some Seasonable Enquiries < 1^23>. p. 1^ TheMS "Faithful Relation" appears to be in the hand of Samuel Mather, hut containsinterpolations in CM's hand, thus my attribution of it to him. Many key words andphrases in the essay also appear in "The sentiments of several ministers" (in "SomeOriginal Papers"), which is known to be by CM. Increase reacted to: P, pp. 201,207, 66; SSD, II, 1007. Helpless to pluck: P, p. 207; DII, p. 686; P, p. 13; Letter Hookof Samuel Sewall, CMHS, 6th ser. (1886-88), II, 151. Appropriately, Increase'sfinal: P, p. 210; Edward Taylor, "A funerall Teare . . . upon ... Dr. Increase Mather,''Edward Taylor's Minor Poetry, ed. Thomas M. and Virginia L. Davis (Boston, 1981 ),p. 247; P, p. 210; MS letter, William Waldron to Richard Waldron, 26 Aug 1723, MilsMather had always: P, p. 211; SSD, II, 1008; "Diary of Jeremiah Bumstead ofBoston, 1722-1727," NEHGR, XV (1861), 199. Increase had drawn: this and thenext paragraph from "Earliest Wills on Record in Suffolk County, Ms.," NEHGR, V(1851), 445-47. Two days after: CM, A Father Departing (1723), £>p. 23-24, 28-29.Mather may have: CM, MS sermon on Phil. IV. 20., 15 Sep 1723, New York PublicLibrary. What few other: on neighborhood visitations and Nathanael, see MAP,Reel 7, fr. 0557-58, 0583; on the "Courts," see CM, A Father Departing, p. 31.Whatever else Increase's: Chandler Robbins, A History of the Second Church(Boston, 1852), pp. 115, 312-13. On January 19: R2C, 19 Jan 1724. Other vexa-tions and: SLCM, p. 390; Abraham English Brown, "The Builder of the Old SouthMeeting House," New England Magazine, NS XIII (1895), 397. Shortly after ar-riving: MS letter, William Waldron to Richard Waldron, 9 Oct 1723, MHS; SuzanneFoley, "Christ Church, Boston," Old-Time New England, LI (1961), 67-85. Matherusually shrugged: SLCM, p. 387; on McSparran, see Wilfred H. Munro, The Historyof Bristol, R.I. (Providence, 1880), pp. 135-40; for CM's inquiry, see Letter-Book ofSamuel Sewall, II, 118-20; Rena Vassar, "Testimony of Frances Davis," William andMary Quarterly, XXXIV (1977), 475; SLCM, pp. 344, 375. The mediocre success:Foote, Annals of King's Chapel, I, 325; DII, p. 806n.; Murdock, "Cotton Mather andthe Rectorship," p. 395n.; MS letter, Timothy Cutler to unaddressed, 2 Apr 1725,BPL. But Mather soon: Cutler to unaddressed, 2 Apr 1725; Bridenbaugh, Mitre andSceptre, p. 73; BG, 26 Jul-2 Aug 1725. Mather later felt: The Acts and Resolves,Public and Private, of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay (Boston, 1869-1922),X, 628; MS letter, John Checkley to "Doctor Bennet," 15 Jun 1725, BPL. The Coun-cil approved: MS "Memorial of Dr. Timothy Cutler and Mr. Samuel Myles," 23 Jun1725, MHS; John Gorham Palfrey, History of New England (Boston, 1875, 1890), IV,454-55. Mather professed to: CM, Ratio Disciplinae (1726), p. 174; Foley, "ChristChurch," p.75. While looking for: MS letter, Jeremiah Dummer to Timothy Wood-bridge, 10 Sep 1723, MHS. Apparently CM and Colman were able to get an addresssigned by ministers in Essex County, however. See MS letter, William Waldron toRichard Waldron, 2 Dec 1723, MHS. In Boston Mather's: SLCM, p. 376; NEC, 7-14Jan 1723; SLCM, pp. 354, 378. Mather's fidelity to: SLCM, p.385. Mather deniedthis: DII, p. 794; MS letter, Jeremiah Dummer to CM, 22 Aug 1726, AAS; MS draftletter, CM to unaddressed, undated [ca. 1725, and beginning "I had for many years,the Happiness of a Correspondence"], AAS. Mather may well: SLCM, p. 385; MSletter, Jeremiah Dummer to CM, 15 Mar 1726, MHS; for the explanatory charter, seeActs and Resolves, I, 21-23. As he had: DII, pp. 800, 792-94. The load now: DII,pp. 703-4. Worst of all: this and the next paragraph from DII, pp. 705-8. CM may

well have sold off at this time some of his beloved books. Thomas Prince recordedthat in 1724 he bought the six-volume Biblia Polyglotta (London, 1657) from aBoston bookseller, who had bought them from CM (who had a second copy). "Har-vard Text Books and Reference Books of the Seventeenth Century," PCSM, XXVIII(1935), 393. About two weeks: DII, p.713; SLCM, p. 383; DII, p.712. The sameevening: DII, pp. 713-14. But there was: DII, p. 715. Exactly what set: SLCM,pp. 379, 384; DII, pp. 709, 712; Checkley v. Dr. Mather and Willard, ERB (7 Apr1724 ). Lydia's reasons for particularly abusing "Nancy" (Hannah) are unclear. Of allCM's children she makes the most puzzling figure in his diary. He often speaks ofher as a child particularly afflicted, but without specifying what her afflictions were.Intriguingly, within days or weeks after he mentions sending her to board else-where, a "Hannah Mather" at nearby Roxbury (where CM had some close relatives,the Walter family) gave birth to an illegitimate child. She was ordered to pay a fineof three pounds or to suffer ten stripes at the public whipping post. See MS SessionsMinutes, 1719-1728, Suffolk County Supreme Court, Boston. Whether this was CM'sdaughter I have been unable to determine. Lydia's new paroxysms: DII, pp. 715,717. Virtually week by: DII, p. 719. Whatever the case: DII, pp. 719, 723, 725,727. A historically fascinating: The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin, ed.John Bigelow, VIII (New York, 1888), 484-85; DII, p. 731. But with July: DII, pp.739, 745; CM, The True Riches (1724); DII, p. 745. CM mentions the first debt in hisdiary on 6 Jul 1724, the second on 31 Jul. The language he uses in describing themis so similar that it is possible, but I believe unlikely, that the two entries describe asingle demand against the estate. Inundated with new: DII, pp. 735, 744-45. Thenext five: Leverett's death is noted in"Diary of Jeremiah Bumstead," p. 201; forCM's conflicting characterizations of Leverett, see SLCM, p. 294, and HCR, V, 566;for the "unhappy Man," see DII, p.723; for CM's report on Harvard, see JosiahQuincy, The History of Harvard University (Boston, I860), I, 558-60; for the Over-seers' investigation, see John Maynard Hoffmann, "Commonwealth College: TheGovernance of Harvard in the Puritan Period," Diss. Harvard, 1972, p. 588. WithLeverett's death: DII, p. 723; Niel Caplan, "Some Unpublished Letters of Benja-min Colman, 1717-1725," PMHS, LXXVII (1965), 133-34; DII, p. 736. But Matherlearned: this and the next four paragraphs from DII, pp. 748-53. At the time: DII,p. 701; Sammy's admission appears in R2C, 22 Dec 1722; SML, p. 14. Like his father,Creasy had a fine handwriting, good enough for him to make something of a livingas a "writer," as he is designated in SF #16702 (18 Mar 1723)—presumably a scribeor amanuensis. Creasy, Mather was: DII, p. 753; CM, Things that Young Peopleshould Think upon (1700), pp. 8, 6; DII, pp. 736, 744. But no afflations: DII, p.753; Creasy's "Instrument" appears in CM, The Words of Understanding (1724), pp.98-105; PA, p. 158. Three days after: with one exception, this and the next fiveparagraphs are drawn from DII, pp. 755-68. The sermon on August 30, however,appears in The Words of Understanding, pp. 9, 33. On November 6: SLCM, p. 401.Writing to Robert Wodrow, Colman mentioned CM's "hard Letter" to him and re-marked that the choice of Mather "could not be obtained of the Electors]." Caplan,"Some Unpublished Letters," p. 136. On November 18: DII, pp. 774-75; on Col-man's disrelish for the presidency, see Caplan, "Some Letters"; HCR, II, cxv. For allthe: CM, attestation in Azariah Mather, Sabbath-Day's Rest (1725), p. 3; DII, pp. 764,776; CM, Light in Darkness (1724), p. 3. As the event: DII, p. 776. Late in Decem-ber: DII, pp. 777-78. This passage in CM's diary contains the inexplicable com-ment, "If this Child [Samuel], must after his two Brothers, be Buried in the AtlanticOcean." As far as is known, Creasy was the only one of CM's children to havedrowned. The entry seems a slip. As had not: DII, p. 779.

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DOCUMENTATION FOR PAGES 397-410

14. As Merry as One Bound for Heaven

A cough, a: DII, p. 775; SLCM, p. 404; Letter Book ofSamuel Sewall, (Mils. 6th ser.(1886-88), II, 223. Seemingly drained by: MS letter, Jeremiah Dummer to CM, 22

Aug 1726, AAS; SML, p. 139; Tallcott v. Dr. Mather, ERB (5 Oct L724). Sixty-twoyears old: SLCM, p. 413 Despite Mather's filiopietism: SLCM p. 413; BA, led

XII. 2.; CM, A Good Old Age (1726), p. 28. Some of these: DII, p. 696; MS letter,Thomas Hollis to Samuel Mather, 27 Jul 1727, MHS; CM, A Good Old Age, p. 21;CM's first public sermon appears in his Religious Societies (1724); "PresentationCopy of the Rev. Cotton Mather's Ratio Disciplinae," NEHGR, XXXI (1877), 111.But above all: DII, p. 778; SML, p. 139. Except his withdrawal: on "Biblia Amencana," see SLCM, p. 414; on Arianism, see SLCM, p. 4<)8; on Pietist missionaries, sec-Henry Newman to Benjamin Colman, 30 Jul 1726, MHS (typed transcript); on Winthrop, see Winthrop to CM, undated [ca. 1726], CMHS, 6th ser.. V I 1892), 423 ff.Mather also continued: DII, p. 803; SLCM, p. 381. In his final: for the petitions,addresses, and decisions of church councils, see for instance CM et al, A SeriousAddress To those Who unnecessarily frequent The Tavern (1726), and MS letter, CMto brethren of the church at Lynn, 25 Feb 1727, Essex Institute; on the pirates, seeDII, p. 729, and CM, The Vial poured out upon the Sea (1726). On one grimly: onElizabeth's marriage, see Thwing Card Catalogue, MHS, and H, II, 809; CM, PietasMatutina (1726), p. 39, and "The Occasion" (italics reversed). Mather earnestlywished: for Cutler's petition, see MS records of King's Chapel, vol. 8, MHS; on the"Excellent Young Men, "see CM, The Minister (1722), p. 45; on Prince, see SSD, II,858, and DII, p. 812, as well as DII and SLCM, passim. Mather's successors also:SLCM, p. 391; DII, pp. 762-63, 769-70. Mather viewed Sammy: CM, HorHagid-gad (1727), p. 1. Mather did not: I have followed the translation of CM's LatinPreface to Manuductio in Dr. Cotton Mather's Student and Preacher (London,1789), pp. 2-59. To the churches: SLCM, p. 411. The 1701 version appears in MAP,Reel 5. On Ratio as a substitute for a new church platform, see this version, p. 174.Age did not: BNL, 18 Feb-7 Mar 1723 (CM probably contributed the article on afever cure in the issue of 22-29 Aug 1723); on Feveryear, see Raymond PhineasStearns, Science in the British Colonies of America (Urbana, 111., 1970), p. 448; onGreenwood, see DII, p. 741, and Stearns, Science in the British Colonies, pp. 446-55,also SLCM, pp. 388-89, and I. Bernard Cohen, Some Early Tools of American Sci-ence (Cambridge, Mass., 1977), pp. 31-33. Mather was disappointed: some ofCM's complaints appear in his MS letter to John Winthrop, 10 Jan 1723, MHS; on the"Curiosa Americana" of 1720, 1723, and 1724, see George Lyman Kittredge, "CottonMather's Communications to the Royal Society," PAAS, NS XXVI (1916), 45-57. Insending his: SLCM, p. 400. In quoting from The Angel of Bethesda here and in thenext paragraphs, I follow the edition of Gordon W. Jones (Barre, Mass., 1972), anddraw some points of interpretation from his excellent introduction, pp. xi-xl. TheAngel of: on the historical significance of "Ephphatha," see Ernest G. Bormann,"Ephphatha, or, Some Advice to Stammerers," Journal of Speech and HearingResearch" XII (1969), 453-61. In the most: on CM's early interest in van Helmont,see M, p. 673. CM thought highly enough of the concept of the "Nishmath-Chajim"to print this Capsula separately as a short work also entitled The Angel of Bethesda(New London, 1722), and to have included it again in his unpublished "Tri-Para-disus." Mather saw this: for CM's remark on Ratio, see SLCM, p. 411. While writ-ing The: SLCM, p. 336; DII, p. 699; SLCM, p. 72; H, II, 739. Despite this uncom-monly: SSD, II, 1052; CM, Restitutus (1727), pp. 22-23; CM, The Balance of theSanctuary (1727), p. 24; on CM's occasional committee work and the like duringhis last year, see for instance Hamilton Andrews Hill, History of the Old South

DOCUMENTATION FOR PAGES 410-427 463

Church (Boston, 1890), I, 421; Boston Prints and Printmakers 1670-1775, PCSM,XLVI (1973), 134 ff.; Frederick L. Weis, "Checklist of Portraits in the Library of theAmerican Antiquarian Society," PAAS, NS LVI (1946), 89-90. Lacking Mather'sdiaries: CM, Restitutus, pp. 8-9; SLCM, p. 415. Mather's dominant mood: DII,p. 373; Katy's deathbed remark appears in CM's unpublished "Tri-Paradisus," MAP,Reel 7, fr. 0579; CM, Hatzar-Maveth (1726), pp. 13-14; the brazen serpent compari-son appears in Zalmonah (1725); DII, pp. 785-86; MS letter, Thomas Hollis toSamuel Mather, 27 Jul 1727, MHS. At times Mather's: MS letter, CM to ThomasPrince, 31 Jan 1726, MHS; CM's verses appear in a privately owned copy of Monu-mental Gratitude, reproduced in facsimile in Photostat Americana. Having spentmuch: CM, A Year and a Life Well Concluded (1720), pp. 7-8; CM, Restitutus, p. 23.The three paradises: on the dates of composition, see Dili, p. 91, and DII, p. 811;the text of "Tri-Paradisus" appears in MAP, Reel 7. Mather's vision of: DII,p. 805n.; SLCM, p. 377; CM's earlier views on the Second Coming appear in hisunpublished "Problema Theologicum," MAP, Reel 7. Mather now believed: trans-lation of CM's Latin Preface to Manuductio, in Dr. Cotton Mather's Student, p. 9.Mather does not: BG, 26 Dec-2 Jan 1726/7 and 5-12 Jun 1727; CM, ChristianLoyalty (1727), pp. 21-22. It began, the: CM, The Terror of the Lord (1727), p. 1;Arthur B. Ellis, History of the First Church in Boston, 1630-1880 (Boston, 1881), q.p. 198. Movables clattered as: William T. Youngs, Jr., God's Messengers: ReligiousLeadership in Colonial New England, 1700-1750 (Baltimore, 1976), p. Ill (cupsand mugs, "the Great Day"); SSD, II, 1055; CM, The Terror of the Lord, p. 2 (ships);Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, #409 (1729), p. 125 (Newbury);BG, 6-13 Nov 1727 (Guilford); BG, 30 Oct-6 Nov 1727. Mather may have: CM,Jugajucunda (1727), p. 1; on the length of the services and the size of the gather-ing, see BNL, 26 Oct-3 Nov 1727, and CM, The Terror of the Lord, pp. 1-2. Matherspoke now: CM, The Terror of the Lord, pp. 14, 6, 13, 19, 25, 27-28. Mather'swarning was: Samuel G. Drake, The History and Antiquities of Boston (Boston,1856), p. 577; on the rise in admissions, see Youngs, God's Messengers, p. Ill, andR2C. Hoping to prolong: SLCM, p. 418; CM, Boanerges (1727), p. 43. On Decem-ber 24: CM, The Comfortable Chambers (1728); MS Treasurer's Accounts of theSecond Church, MHS.

Conclusion: Copp's Hill

Cotton Mather's final: SML, p. 153; Joshua Gee, Israel's Mourning for Aaron'sDeath (1728), p. 27; Benjamin Colman, The Holy Walk and Glorious Translation ofBlessed Enoch (1728), p. 27. But to Mather: Samuel Mather, The Departure andCharacter of Elijah Considered and Improved (1728), p. 14; Gee, Israel's Mourn-ing, p. 29. With a boom: New-England Weekly Journal, 12 Feb 1728 and 15 Jan1728; DII, p. 444. At daybreak two: New-England Weekly Journal, 12 Feb 1728; onthe ultimate duration of the quakes, see Philosophical Transactions of the RoyalSociety, #409 (1729), p. 127; R2C. Saturday, February 10: SML, p. 159; Gee, Israel'sMourning, p. 30. Sunday, as he: SML, pp. 154, 156; Gee, Israel's Mourning, p. 25;Samuel Mather, Departure and Character, pp. 14-15. Monday was Cotton: Samu-el Mather, Departure and Character, pp. 15-16; Gee, Israel's Mourning, pp. 29, 27.It was of: all quotations in this and the following six paragraphs drawn from Thom-as Prince, The Departure of Elijah lamented (1728), and from the above sermons byGee, Colman, and Samuel Mather. Mather was buried: MS diary of Benjamin Wal-ker, 1726-42, MHS; "The Diary of Ebenezer Parkman 1719-1728," PAAS, LXXI(1961), 211. Taken from Mather's: MS diary of Benjamin Walker; SSD, II, 1959-60;New-England Weekly Journal, 26 Feb 1728. The procession ended: Nathaniel B.

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Shurtleff, A Topographical and Historical Description of Boston (Boston. 1871),p. 159; P, p. 211; "Diary of Ebenezer Parkman," p. 211. Immediately after Math-er's: R2C, 13 Mar 1728; MS Treasurer's Accounts of the Second Church, Ml IS; K2C,28 Jan 1732; MS letter, Samuel Mather to Samuel Mather, Jr., 18 Dec L762, MHSjSamuel's reading of the document is described, in his own hand, on the verso of aSalem broadsheet issue of the Declaration, MHS. Cotton Mather died: CM. Or-pbanotropbium (1711), p. 40; MS document, 22 Jul 1728 ("Mather Adm."). SuffolkCounty Probate Court, Boston; MS document, 17 Jun 1728 ("Dr Cotton Mather Cita-tion"), New England Historic and Genealogical Society, Boston; Julius Herbert Tuttie, "The Libraries of the Mathers," PAAS, NS XX (1910), 296; MS petition of SamuelMather to Justices of 'he Superior Court, SF #26606; MS documents, 24 Apr 1730("Mather's Quit Claim") and 25 May 1730 ("Mather's Personal Estate Divided"),Suffolk County Probate Court, Boston (see also Suffolk Probate Records 28.18). Butthere was: MS inventory of CM's estate, 5 Aug 1728, Suffolk County Probate Court,Boston (the inventory was made on 23 Jul but entered on 5 Aug).