Cotton Mather, the Puritan priest

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MAKERS OF AMERICA"

Cije puritan priest

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I. Introduction i

II. The Puritan Fathers : Cotton and

Introduction

Two hundred years ago there was living in Boston a man whose name is still remembered. Few nowadays know why we have heard of Cotton Mather; but even in this last decade of the nineteenth century few Yankees do not know his name. My object is to tell what manner of man he was, what manner. of world he lived in, why — with all the oddities and failings that are to us so grotesque — he seems well worth remembering. For this Cotton Mather was of those who take life in earnest ; and the life he took in earnest was, throughout the sixty-five years he passed on earth, the hfe of that New England which we who come of it like to believe the source of what is best in our own America. If, for a while, we can make ourselves see life as he saw it, we shall have done what I have in view.

Cotton Mather's diaries, together with his published works, express his views of hfe with rare completeness. So far as may be, then, I shall tell his story in his own words. In so doing, I shall doubtless expose myself to little less than the contempt of many serious students of Colonial history. The man's veracity has been seriously 1 questioned \ and one can see why. In the first place, he was the champion of a cause that, even in his own time, was hopelessly lost, — the cause of the old hierarchy of New England, that once hoped to govern the Western world in accordance with no laws but those of God and Calvin ; and not the least tragic fate of men whose cause is hopelessly lost is that victorious posterity rarely appreciates how they can have been honest. Again, Cotton Mather was a priest, and in this world priests are generally accepted in one of two ways : whoever will not bow to their authority is lost in horror of their priestcraft. Finally, Cotton Mather was a man of such passion as rarely worries a human being from the cradle to the grave : throughout his life his emotions swept him into ecstasies which he found sometimes divine, sometimes diabolical; and, having a ready tongue and pen, he gave utterance to many hasty things not always consistent with fact or with each other. Wherefore such of posterity as have not loved his memory have inclined now and again to call him by a name he would probably have been the first to use in their place, — a very great liar.

To me he seems otherwise. The better I know him, the more firmly I believe that from beginning to end he meant to be honest. Beyond doubt, like emotional people about us, — abolitionists, nationalists, what not, — he often saw things not as they were but as he would have had them. What counted for him was God's own work, what counted against him the Devil's ; and God's work, of course, was all good, and the Devil's refreshingly free from any redeeming trait. But I do not believe that he often wrote or spoke a word that he

disbelieved when it was written or spoken. He writes as follows in the Magnalia : —

" I have not commended any person, but when I have really judged, not only that he deserved it, but also that it would be a benefit unto posterity to know wherein he deserved it ; . . . yett I have left unmentioned some censurable occurrences in the story of our Colonies, as things no less unuseful than improper to be raised out of the grave, wherein Oblivion hath now buried them."

If we cannot accept him, then, as a veracious historian of all that went on before him, it is rather that his eyes were blinded than that his pen put down what he knew was error. And we may accept him, I believe more and more, as a singularly veracious historian of himself, who shows us year after year not exactly what things were, but exactly what he felt God bade him believe them.

In the chapters that follow, I shall try first to give some account of the race he sprang from, and of the place and the period in which he found himself. Then I shall try to tell, from his own point of view, the story of his own career. And I shall be sorry if I do not make it seem that there is still good ground for believing that it was a good man they buried on Copp's Hill one February day in the year 1728.

II. The Puritan Fathers : Cotton and Mather. 1585-1662

To understand the founders of New England we must recall more than tradition has preserved. All the world knows that to a rare degree the settlers of Plymouth and of Massachusetts alike were men of character. Cromwell himself is no bad type of them. Among the descendants of one of the emigrant ministers, indeed, a tradition is preserved that Cromwell, at the height of his power, once said that he had been more afraid of their ancestor at football than of "armies in the field." One may almost say that all the notables during the first generation of New England were men who might have played at football with Cromwell, and who, if they had, would probably have kept his hands full. All the world knows, too, that these men came hither to found a state where for once the laws of God and of man should coincide. But in the course of two centuries the world has forgotten that their conception of the laws of God was very different from what prevails nowadays. Yet to understand the Puritans at all we must in a general way understand their creed.

To the time of the Reformation, England, with the rest of Europe, had virtually accepted the doctrines of

Christianity as expounded by the CathoHc Church. The Reformation and the Renaissance, affecting England together, produced there a new state of rehgious thought, which was greatly fostered by the political accidents of the time. Under Queen EHzabeth the first duty of Englishmen was to fight Spain ; and Spain was the head and front of the powers that professed allegiance to the Church of Rome. Protestantism, in that sense of the word which means repudiation of Rome, was the spirit that must be nurtured. Bibles in the English language were chained to public readingdesks in the churches ; so were great folios of Foxe's Book of Martyrs : whoever could read might go and read the truth. The truth they read was not favorable to ecclesiastical authority. When the danger of Spanish aggression was passed, the Church of England found that in fostering patriotic Protestantism it had permanently strengthened a class of people not freethinking enough to discard religious authority, but firmly resolved to accept no other authority than Scripture. The Scriptural creed thus developed in England, but formulated most definitely at Geneva, was the creed of the founders of New England.

Stripped of subtlety and technicality, it may perhaps be stated as follows : ^ In the beginning God created man, responsible to Him, with perfect freedom of will. Adam, in the fall, exerted his will in opposition to the will of God : thereby Adam and all his posterity merited eternal punishment. As a mark of that punishment they lost the power of exerting the will in harmony with the will of God, without losing their

^ Magnalia, V. I.

hereditary responsibility to Him. But God, in His infinite mercy, was pleased to mitigate His justice. Through the mediation of Christ, certain human beings, chosen at God's pleasure, might be relieved of the just penalty of sin, and received into everlasting salvation. These were the elect : none others could be saved, nor could any acts of the elect impair their salvation. v/ Now there were no outward and visible marks by which the elect might be known : there was a fair chance, then, that any human being to whom the Gospel was brought might be of the number. The thing that most vitally concerned every man, then, was to discover whether he were elect, and so free from the just penalty of sin, ancestral and personal. The test of election was ability to exert the will in true harmony with the will of God, — a proof of emancipation from the hereditary curse of the children of Adam : whoever could ever do right, and want to, had a fair ground for hope that he should be saved. But even the elect were infected with the hereditary sin of humanity ; and, besides, no wile of the Devil was more frequent than that which deceived men into believing themselves regenerate when in truth they were not. The task of assuring one's self of election, then, could end only with life, — a life of passionate aspirations, ecstatic enthusiasms, profound discouragements. Above all, men must never forget that the true will of God was revealed, directly or by implication, only and wholly in Scripture : incessant study of Scripture, then, was the sole means by which any man could assure himself that his will was really exerting itself, through the mediatory power of Christ, in true harmony with the will of God.

Such, if I read the Magnaha aright, was the creed of the fathers of New England, at least as Cotton Mather understood it. To live in accordance with this, they crossed the Atlantic. To lead unmolested their lives in accordance with this, they confined the franchise to actual communicants, and dealt so summarily with whoever proclaimed other opinions, — Mrs. Hutchinson, Roger Williams, and the crazy fanatics whom they called Quakers. To preserve this unaltered, they founded Harvard College. In obedience to the implications of this, they rated far above other men the official ministers of the Gospel.

Cotton Mather sprang from a race of these ministers. His very name combined two of those most distinguished among the emigrant clergy of Massachusetts. In his chief book, the Magnalia, he has written the lives of his grandparents. And these lives, combining the historical and the domestic traditions amid which he grew to manhood, deserve our attention, if we would understand the life he strove to live throughout in accordance with these traditions.

Among the ministers who came from England in the full flush of their powers, none was more eminent than John Cotton.i Born at the town of Derby in 1585, the son of a pious and industrious lawyer, he was sent at the age of thirteen to Trinity College, Cambridge. Early chosen a fellow of Emanuel, he distinguished himself by

"an University sermon, wherein, aiming more to preach j-^^than Christ, he used such florid strains, as extremely recommended bim unto the most, who relished the wisdom of words above the words of wisdom : though the pompous 1 Magnalia, III. I. i.

eloquence of that sermon afterwards gave such a distaste unto his own rene'wed sotil^ that with a sacred indignation he threw his notes into the fire." For at this time, "such was the secret enmity & prejudice of an unregenerate soul against real holiness^ Sz such the ^orme/il which our Lord's witnesses give to the consciences of the earthly-minded^ that when he heard the bell toll for the funeral of Mr. Perkins, his mind secretly rejoiced in his dehverance from that powerful ministry, by which his conscience had been so oft beleagured: the remembrance of which thing afterwards did break his heart exceedingly. " Converted by the preaching of a certain Dr. Sibs, he signalized his regeneration by preaching at St. Maries a sermon so plain in substance and diction that "the vain wits of the University . . . discovered their vexation ... by their not Juuujnitig} as according to their sinful & absurd custom they had formerly done. . . . Nevertheless, the satisfaction which he enjoyed in his own faithful soul, abundantly compensated unto him the loss of any human favour or honour.''

Shortly after this he was invited to become the minister of Boston, in Lincolnshire, where, in spite of the Bishop's opposition, he w^as settled at the celebrated church of St. Botolph for twenty years. Throughout this period his non-conformity steadily increased : his conscience bade him discard every rite and vestment for which he could not find authority in Scripture. At length, neither his learning, nor his character, nor the moral excellence of his work, nor the friends he had made among those in power, could save him from the consequences of a charge, brought by " a debauched fellow in the town," that the magistrates under his cure did not kneel at the sacrament. The debauched fellow, in fulfilment of a prediction of "the renowned Mr. John Rogers of Dedham,"

^ Cf. page 19.

" quickly after this, died of the plague^ under an hedge, in Yorkshire ; and it was a long time ere any one could be found that would bury him. This "'tis to turn persecutor.''^

But Cotton was driven into hiding.

Doubtful whether to remain in Boston, preaching in private, he consulted an elderly divine, who gave the opinion

" 'That the removing of a minister was like the draining of a fish-pond : the good fish will follow the water, but eels, & other baggage fish, will stick in the mud.' Which things, when Mr. Cotton heard, he was not a little confirmed in his inclination to leave the land.''

So he ultimately came to New England in a ship which brought two other notable ministers, — Hooker and Stone. It was pleasantly said at the time that this ship brought New England " three great necessities : Cotton for their clothing, Booker for X\\q\x fishing, and StoJie for their building.'' Among them the three managed to solace the voyage by a daily sermon ; and in favorable weather by three sermons a day. Hooker and Stone became the ministers of Hartford : Cotton remained in

" New-Boston, which in a few years, by the smile of God, . . . came to exceed Old Boston in everything that renders a town considerable." On his arrival '• he found the whole country in a perplexed & a divided state, as to their civil constitution " ; and being requested to suggest convenient laws " from the laws wherewith God governed his ancient people," he recommended among other things '* that none should be electors, nor elected, . . . except such as were visible subjects of our Lord Jesus Christ, personally confederated in our churches. In these & many other ways, he propounded unto them an endeavour after a theocracy, as near as might be, to that which was the glory of Israel."

This theocracy came near getting him into trouble. In spite of the passionate defence of Cotton Mather, there is Uttle room for doubt that he was almost perverted by the heresies of Mrs. Hutchinson ; but he retraced his steps in time, learning for once in his hfe to conform.

" Nineteen years & odd months he spent in this place, doing of good publickly & privately, unto all sorts of men, as it became 'a good man full of faith, & of the Holy Ghost.' Here in an expository way, he went over the Old Testament once, & a second time as far as the thirtieth chapter of Isaiah ; & the whole New Testament once, & a second time as far as the eleventh chapter to the Hebrews. Upon the Lords-days & lecture-days, he preached thorow the Acts of the Apostles ; the prophesies of Haggai & Zechariah, the books of Ezra, the Revelation, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, second & third Epistles of John, the Epistle to Titus, both Epistles to Timothy, the Epistle to the Romans, with innumerable other scriptures on incidental occasions."

At last, in 1652, going to preach at Cambridge, he caught cold ; his voice failed in the midst of his sermon. It had been

"his declared wish ' That he might not outlive his work! ' . . . he had rather /^^^<?^^ than //z/^^^^rt^. . . . On the eighteenth of November he took in course, for his text, the four last verses of the second Epistle of Timothy,^ giving this reason for his insisting on so many verses at once, ' Because else (he said) I shall not live to make an end of this Epistle ' ;

1 " Salute Prisca and Aquila, and the household of Onesiphorus. Erastus abode at Corinth : but Trophimus have I left at Miletum sick. Do thy diligence to come before winter. Eubulus greeteth thee, and Pudens, and Linus, and Claudia, and all the brethren. The Lord Jesus Christ be with thy spirit. Grace be with you. Amen."

but he chiefly insisted on those words, ' Grace be with you an.' Upon the Lord's day following he preached his last sermon on Joh. i. 14,1 about that 'glory of the Lord Jesus Christ,' from \ht faitk to the sight whereof he was now hastening."

In a day of secret humiliation and prayer, he took solemn leave of " that study which had been pei-fiwied with many such days before." As he lay sick, friends came to take leave of him.

" When his colleague, Mr. Wilson, took his leave . . . with a wish that God would lift up the 'light of his countenance' upon him, he instantly replied, 'God hath done it already, brother ! ' He then called for his children, with whom he left the gracious cove?tant of God, as their neverfailing portion : & now desired that he might be left private the rest of his minutes, for the more freedom of his applications unto the Lord. So lying speechless a few hours, he breathed his blessed soul into the hands of his heavenly Lord, on the twenty-third of December, 1652, entring on the sixty-eighth year of his own age : & on the day — yea, at the hour — of his constant weekly labours in the lecture, wherein he had been so long serviceable, even to all the churches of New-England."

Cotton was

"an indefatigable student," who "judged ordinarily that more benefit was obtained ... by conversing with the dead [in books'\ than with the living [in talks\ . . . He was an early riser, taking the morning for the Muses; & in his latter days forbearing a supper, he turned his former supping time into a reading, a thinking, a praying-time. Twelve hours a day he commonly studied, & would call that a

' "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth."

scholar's day^ He read, wrote, and spoke Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. " For his logic he was completely furnished therewith to encounter the subtilest adversary of the truth." As for theology, even his "incomparable modesty" could not prevent his telling a private friend, " That he knew not of any difficult place in all the whole Bible, which he had not weighed, some what unto satisfaction. . . . And being asked, why in his latter days he indulged ftocturnal studies more than formerly, he pleasantly replied, ' Because I love to sweeten my mouth with a piece of Calvin before I go to sleep.' "

Two or three anecdotes, preserved by Cotton Mather, show that he had a vein of humour. On one occasion,

"an humourous & imperious brother" complained to him *'that his ministry was become generally either dark or flat: whereto this meek man, very mildly & gravely, made only this answer : ' Both, brother, it may be, both : let me have your prayers that it may be otherwise.'" Again, "a company of vain, wicked men, having inflamed their blood in a tavern at Boston, & seeing that reverend, meek, & holy minister of Christ . . . coming along the street, one of them tells his companion, ' I '11 go,' saith he, ' & put a trick on old Cotton.' Down he goes, & crossing his way, whispers these words into his ear: 'Cotton,' said he, 'thou art an old fool.' Mr. Cotton replied, 'I confess I am so: the Lord make both me & thee wiser than we are, even wise unto salvation.' " One can see why " the keeper of the inn | where he did use to lodge, when he came to Derby, would ' profanely say to his companions, that he wished Mr. Cotton were gone out of his house; for 'he was not able to swear while that man was under his roof.' "

In family devotions he was very short, accounting "that it was a thing inconvenient many ways to be tedious in family duties." But his Sabbath-keeping was something marvellous.

" The Sabbath he began the evening before : & I suppose," adds Cotton Mather, " 't was from his reason and practice that the Christians of New England have generally done so too.^ When that evening arrived, he was usually larger in his exposition in his family than at other times : he then catechised his children & servants, & prayed with them, & sang a psalm; from thence he retired unto study & secret prayer, till the time of his going unto his repose. The next morning, after his usual family worship, he betook himself to the devotion of his retirements, & so unto the publick. From thence towards noon, he repaired again to the like devotions, not permitting the interruption of any other dinner, than that of a small repast carried up unto him. Then to the publick once more ; from whence returning, his first work was closetprayer, then prayer with repetitions of the sermons in the family. After supper, he still sang a psalm ; which he would conclude with uplifted eyes & hands, uttering this doxology — ' Blessed be God in Christ our Saviour ! ' Last of all, just before his going to sleep, he would once again go into his prayerful study, & there briefly recommend all to that God, whom he served with a pure conscience."

Such was John Cotton, at least as Cotton Mather believed him. He left a widow. The mothers of New England were not fond of widowhood. Before long, she became the second wife of the Reverend Richard Mather, minister of Dorchester.

This Richard Mather^ was born in Lancashire, in 1596. His parents, though in reduced circumstances^ gave him a liberal education. At fifteen he went as

1 Cf. page 43. 2 Magnalia, III. IL xx.

schoolmaster to Toxteth Park, near Liverpool, where the

"difference between his own walk & the most exact, watchful, fruitful, & prayerful conversation of some in the family . . . where he sojourned, . . . caused many sad fears to arise in his own soul that he was himself out of the way. . . . But . . . about the eighteenth year of his age, the good Spirit of God healed his broken heart, by pouring thereinto the evangelical consolations of 'His great & precious promises.' "

A little later he went to Oxford ; and in 1618 he returned to Toxteth as minister. When the Bishop of Chester ordained him, the prelate startled him by requesting a private interview.

" Mr. Mather was now jealous that some informations might have been exhibited against him for his Puritanism ; instead of which, when the Bishop had him alone, what he said unto him was, ' I have an earnest request unto you, sir, & you must not deny me : 't is that you would pray for me ; for I know (said he) the prayers of men that fear God will avail much & you I believe are such a one.' "

At Toxteth Richard Mather preached fifteen years. In his private manuscripts he wrote thus of the trial by which he was finally suspended for non-conformity : —

" In the passages of that day I have this to bless the name of God for, that the terrour of their threatening words, of their pursevants, & of the rest of their pomp, did not terrifie my mind, but that I could stand before them without being daunted in the least manner, but answered for my self such words of truth & soberness as the Lord put into my mouth, not being afraid of their faces at all : which supporting & comforting presence of the Lord, I count not much less mercy, than if I had been altogether preserved out of their hands." — "But all means," adds Cotton

Mather, " used afterwards to get off this unhappy suspension were ineffectual ; for when the visitors had been informed that he had been a xmm'S>itx fifteeti years, and, all that while never wore a siirpliss^ one of them swore, ' It had been better for him that he had gotten seven bastards ! ' "

Once suspended, his thoughts turned to New England.

" He drew up some arguments for his removal thither, which arguments were, indeed, the very reasons that moved the first fathers of New-England unto that unparellelled undertaking of transporting their families with themselves, over the Atlantic ocean:

I. A removal from a corrupt church to 2, purer.

II. A removal from a place where the truth & professors of it are persecuted., unto a place of more quiet & safety.

III. A removal from a place where all the ordinatices of God cannot be enjoyed, unto a place where they 7nay.

IV. A removal from a church where the discipline of the Lord Jesus Christ is wanting, unto a church where ' may be practised.

V. A removal from a place, where the ministers of God are unjustly inhibited from the execution of their functions, to a place where they may more freely execute the same.

VI. A removal from a place, where there are fearful signs of desolation, to a place where one may have well grounded hope of God's protection."

So in 1635, after a stormy voyage, he came to Boston. The first church founded in Dorchester had followed its minister to Connecticut. Within a year, Richard Mather had gathered there a new church, where

" he continued, a blessing unto all the churches in this wilderness until his dying day, even for near upon four and t6 COTTOy AfATfiER.

thirty years together. . . He never changed his habitation after this till he went unto the 'house eternal in the heavens ' ; albeit his old people of Toxteth vehemently solicited his return unto them when the troublesome Hierarchy in England was deposed.'*

In 1669 he died of the stone, "wherein, according to Solomon's expression of it, 'the wheel was broken at the cistern.' "

"As he judged that a preacher of the gospel should hQ, he was a very hard sttidefit : yea, so intent was he upon his beloved studies, that the morning before he died, he importuned the friends that watched with him to help him into the room, where he thought his usual works & books expected him ; to satisfie his importunity they began to lead him thither; but finding himself unable to get out of his lodging-room, he said, ' I see I am not able ; I have not been in my study several days ; & is it not a lamentable thing, that I should lose so much time ? ' "

His temperament was sombre, self-conscious.

" He was for some years exercised with . . . uncertainties about his everlasting happiness. ... In those dark hours ... a gi^orious light rose unto him . . . which I find in his private papers thus expressed: ' My heart relented with tears at this prayer, that God would not deny me an heart to bless him, & not blaspheme him, that is so holy, just, and good ; though I should be excluded from his presence, & go down into everlasting darkness & discomfort.'" On his death-bed, "though he lay in a mortal extremity of pain, he never shrieked, he rarely groaned, with it ; & when he was able, he took delight in reading Dr. Goodwin's discourse about patience, in which book he read until the very day of his death. When they asked ' how he did ? ' his usual answer was, '■ Far from well, yet far better than mine iniquities deserve.'"

THE PURITAN FATHERS. ly

His last recorded words were a solemn charge to his son as to who might properly be admitted to baptism, — a question then seriously disturbing the churches of New England. The only bright touch in Cotton Mather's picture of him is that which tells how, one Saturday evening in 1661, two of his sons, both ministers, arrived at about the same time, — one from England, one from

" a Remote place where he was now Stationed in the Country ; And the Comforted Old Patriarch, sat shining like the Sun in Gemini^ & hearing his two Sons, in his own Pulpit entertain the People of GOD, with Performances, that made all People Proclaim him, An Happy Father."^

Richard Mather's first wife^ was

" Mrs. Katharine Holt; a Gentlewoman Honourable for her Descent J but much more so, for her Vertiie. . . . She sometimes told her Son, while he was yet scarce more than an Infant, but very much her Darlings That she desired of the Glorious GOD only two things on his behalf; the one was, The Grace to Fear & Love GOD; the other was, the Learning that might Accomplish him to do Service for GOD. . . . Among her Instructions, it is to be Reinembred that she mightily inculcated the Lesson of Diligence upon him, & often put him in Mind of that Word, Seest thou a Man Diligent in his Business : He shall STAND BE- FORE KINGS. . . . When he was about Fifteen Years Old, she Died Marvellously Triumphing over the Fear oj Death, which thro' all her Life she had been Afraid of.