Read The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 Online

Authors: Robert Middlekauff

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The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 (54 page)

BOOK: The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728
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Page 315
But in these sermons Mather's commitment to the New Piety is clear.
33
Traditional divinity had always held that a saint might detect the "signs" of his faith by close examination of the self. All three of the Mathers and most of their colleagues over the century had urged their flocks to scrutinize their psyches for evidence of conversion. The Holy Spirit, of course, provided the testimony a believer cravednot directly, but by illuminating the faculties of the soul. Thus the sense of assurance came from one's own spirit which had been affected by divine action. And happily the New Piety offered another way for the testing of the spirit, for if the individual discovered that he believed in piety's simple maxims, he could take comfort that he belonged to God. What seems especially suggestive here to a modern student is that Mather usually phrased this argument in terms that indicate that he understood self-examination as an affective rather than an intellectual process. For what one discovered about the self was not so much its beliefs as its power of empathy. If, for example, a man discovered that he felt Christ's blood in his soul, an almost incomprehensible feeling, he 'could begin to trust his own sanctity.
34
What all this amounted to was a scrapping of rational testsdespite the professions of belief in the Spirit's working through the means. Mather's hymns to men's "desires" for salvation were a comparable repudiation of formal theory. Here in his sermons on the New Piety, the traditional language of the faculty psychology is discarded and "desires" become blurred into inarticulate feeling through the operations of the Spirit. For, as Mather implies, if desire and feelings could tell men so much about themselves, they must have been moved by the Spirit.
35
Mather first began cautiously to say as much around 1710 when he began sounding his views of Pietistic religion more strenuously than ever before. There was nothing in these statements in direct conflict with traditional Calvinist theology. Yet excess seems inherent in emotional religionif, filled with the Holy Spirit, the emotions can be trusted with so much, the next step often seems to be to look closely for the Spirit itself. Mather hinted as much in
The Heavenly Conversation
,
36
a treatise he wrote to instruct ministers in the opportunities of "the true American Pietism." In this work he again joined his psychology
 
Page 316
of religion and his Christology, but with a .difference: the imitation of Christ by the believerhe told his readersmight lead to a direct experience of the Holy Spirit. For if a Christian shared the Savior's humility, if in response to afflictions he became more like Christ, he might find that his conformity will ''strangely fetch in a
Light
from Heaven . . .; a Light which will
Revive
you,
Comfort
you,
Direct
you; and not with meer Influences of Reason, but [Give me Leave to say it!] in the way of a
Vital Touch
, fill you with Pleasures that cannot be uttered; with Joys
unspeakable
and
full of Glory.
"
37
Mather did not repeat this suggestion in print for almost fifteen years and he does not seem to have developed it in the sermons he gave every week in Boston, and which remain unpublished. There was no reason for his colleagues to notice the comment; the bulk of his preaching in these years on the Spirit dealt with its operations which enabled believers to accept the MAXIMS OF PIETY. And in these manifestations, the light it gave presumably revealed nothing new to men, but rather confirmed one's fear of God, acceptance of Christ's mediation, and love of neighbors, tenets which were all part of the traditional gospel. Nothing Cotton Mather said in these sermons would have aroused his grandfather Richardthere was no hint that the Holy Spirit operated immediately and directly in the believer. Rather, all of Cotton Mather's comments, though emotional and concentrated on the passions, were quite tame; they portrayed the Spirit under Christ's tutelage affecting the faculties of man in a rational and logical manner.
38
But while Mather was publicly describing the Holy Spirit working in these orthodox ways, he was privately learning a great deal more from it. His
Diary
in the years around 1715 is filled with claims that God had given him extraordinary knowledge of the coming Kingdom.
39
This informationconveyed in rapturous interviews in the dead of nightdid apparently go beyond Scripture, at least in the knowledge Mather claimed of the return of Christ. But as enthusiastic as these encounters left him, he never quite fell into Antinomian frenzy. And yet he must have come close in the last five years of his life. At this time he publicly repented of his old views of the Quakers, saying to them in
Vital Christianity
40
that "God has raised you
 
Page 317
up
to chastize us for the vile Contempt and Affront which People generally cast on the Light of
God within
them
; and
for our usual and criminal Rebelling
against the LIGHT."
41
Mather more than made amends in these years. He continued to say in the conventional way that the Spirit worked through means, but he put his main emphasis on its "supernatural" and immediate effects on men's souls.
42
Still, Mather did not so far take up the religion of the Spirit as to abandon the religion of Christ (as he implied the Quakers did). In the year 1726, he carefully remarked that the Holy Ghost moved under the special dispensation of Christ, and that it left Christ's image on the soul of the believer and not its own. The believer for his part should attempt to resemble and conform to Christ as fully as possible. When the Spirit assisted the soul in a rational way, the believer obtained a testimony of his conformity to Christ. But this assurance, which Cotton Mather called "discursive," usually proved feeble and contained "much of
Darkness
" in it if the Spirit chose not to show it self in ''a more
Absolute manner.
" When the Spirit, acting to give an "Intuitive" assurance, broke ''
Directly
" into the soul, its "
Mighty Light
bears in upon the Mind of the Believer a powerful persuasion of it, that he is a Child of GOD, and his GOD and
Father
will one day bring him to
Inherit
all
Things.
"
43
The comfort the Spirit brought in this intuitive way clearly affected the entire soul and all its faculties. Mather described the rational faculties as "overpowered" with the "Thoughts" of the believers' inheritance in Heaven.
44
Understandably, a man so affected felt peace and joy, but the Spirit moved his will and passions so that he experienced raptures. Presumably even this affective process might be forced into the traditional understanding of conversion, for the Spirit is not said to be bringing new revelations to the believer, but only the assurance of saving faith. But some of Mather's colleagues must have twitched uneasily as they heard him proclaim that the Spirit spoke directly to the Christian, saying "I
have taken hold on thee, and set thee apart for Eternal Blessedness.
"
45
For Mather had in fact given up most of the restraints of reason and of the "means" in favor of the direct experience of the Spirit. Publicly he declared, "I am no pretender to Extasy,"
46
but privately he knew ecstasies
 
Page 318
in his worship. And what he urged on his flock publicly was calculated to give the most affective kind of experience a Puritan could conceivea direct immersion in the Holy Spirit.
47
It was not Cotton Mather's practice to disavow beliefs he no longer held. He did, to be sure, reject an old method of covenanting when his Christology grew extraordinarily powerful. But at the end of his life he saw no need to suggest that his grandfather Richard's view of religious experience was inadequate. He recognized that men would worship through a variety of techniques. His grandfather's ghost may have haunted him, though, as his proposals for a more spiritual worship came to be obsessive. Almost as if he were answering an unspoken reproach from Richard, he repeated the contention of the founding generation that evil conduct was utterly inconsistent with the effects of the Holy Spirit. As his grandfather had rejected Antinomian excess, so would he. However, Richard Mather, one suspects, would have deplored his grandson's position as only a step short of enthusiasm.
48
Mather continued in these years his long flirtation with still another enthusiastic concernthe appearance of apparitions and their relationship to the body and soul. He did not suggest that apparitions were ever the manifestation of the Holy Spirit. But in the stories he told of witchcrafts and possessions, he summoned up for his listeners and his readers a world inhabited by unseen powers which surely included the Holy Ghost. "Shallow Reason," he wrote in the Biblia, simply could not cope with such phenomena.
49
His own explanation of these mysteries provided further evidence of his disenchantment with rationalism and science. He had come to believe, he said, that the operation of an extraordinary spirit accounted for much that was inexplicablefrom such mysteries as the apparitions of departed saints to the puzzling capacity of birds to build nests without any apparent instruction. Mather called this spirit the Nishmath-Chajim"the breath of life"and declared that it was composed of finer particles than light itself. It sometimes appeared to the watchers over the dying, he suggested; and he speculated that perhaps it provided the medium by which original sin was conveyed from one generation to another. There is little of inherent importance, or interest, in this theory or in the incredible stories Mather told in his last years about the world inhabited by spirits. The theory
 
Page 319
and the stories, however, in offering no criticism of superstitious folklore deprecated by careful theologians, suggest the depths of Mather's growing anti-rationalism.
50
His obsession with the Spirit and with subjectivity has still another meaning. It implies a recognition that his culture by the early years of the eighteenth century had relegated religious experience to a private realm. His grandfather's generation had always encouraged worship within the community of the church. There the faithful might hear the Word and enjoy exposure to the means. Of course they were instructed to pray in their closets and to prepare themselves for the joy of the sacrament. But religious experience remained closely attached to the church where sermons were preached and men grew in grace together. Cotton Mather valued this ancient practice immensely; hence in part his attempts to invigorate the churches within a protective state, and that failing, his calls for a Christian Union and the reformation of society through pious organizations. Yet all this had miscarried as far as he could see. Piety had not revived; and the mission of New England as a covenanted community no longer seemed compelling to ordinary men. What remained was the old task of bringing men to salvation. Stripped down to its essentials that task entailed making them listen to the Holy Spirit as it spoke directly, immediately, and intuitively.
Men who heeded the Spirit would be ready for the Second coming of Christ. As Mather met the Holy Spirit in his worship, he also heard its other voice in prophecy. In these last ten years of his life he became convinced that the Lord had released the Prophetical Spirit once more; and like the Holy Spirit, it spoke in the voice it had used in the days of Christ.
 
Page 320
18
The Prophecy of Joel
The most frequent dream in Cotton Mather's life was of death. Visions of his own death haunted him from an early age, and descriptions of the deaths of sinnerstheir corruptions at last stopped, their polluted influence ended, their filthy voices silencedgave him satisfaction all his life. He recommended that sinners think about their own deaths as a tactic to reduce their pride. No man, he insisted, could resist the Lord if he believed that this day, this moment would be his last upon earth. Mather recognized how difficult it was to accept the fact that one's death was inevitable and he conceded that it was "Natural to desire Life." But a good man learned that it was also "Religious to Embrace a Seasonable Death."
1
Although death brought rest, it was not to be welcomed simply because it ended the pain that filled every life. Temperamentally, Cotton Mather was no more suited to accepting ease even in death than he was to contemplating adultery in life. The death he yearned for and encouraged men to think upon would open a new activity. Free of the flesh, the saints would eventually join a glorious Christ in the New Heavens to rule over the New Earth for the millennium. Even before that glory, the souls of
BOOK: The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728
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