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 (62 page)

BOOK: The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728
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Page 363
been more disturbed by the conflict over the New North than he was over smallpox.
The New North had been formed in a way that displeased himand his son as well. In 1713 with the Old North, the church of the Mathers, badly overcrowded, a number of members appealed for lawful dismissal in order that they might build a meetinghouse of their own. Cotton Mather did not like the idea, seeing in it the ambitions of prideful men who wanted the status of well-located pews, but he went along. Increase, however, was "greatly wounded" by the secession and his son had considerable difficulty in restraining his father's attacks on the secessionists. Cotton managed to deal with both sides tactfully and the removal was managed without irreparable damage. The secessionists built the New North Church and things quieted down.
30
Seven years later they blew up within the New North in a way that distressed Increase Mather even more. The issue was the call extended by the churchover the protests of a minorityto Peter Thacher, then of the Weymouth Church, to join the Reverend John Webb, as pastor. Webb approved the invitation, but the Mathers, Colman, Benjamin Wadsworth, William Cooper, and Thomas Prince did not. And apparently the Weymouth Church contained members who believed that Thacher had not been properly released. By themselves the splits within these churches would have been troubling. What made them of particular concern to Increase and therefore to Cotton was that Webb and Thacher wrapped themselves in the principles of the Cam
bridge Platform
declaring for the autonomy of particular churches. They also cited Increase Mather's
A Disquisition Concerning Ecclesiastical Councils
(1716) as further justification for their conduct in not consulting the neighboring churches. Their opponents in the New North responded by saying that "men can make a nose of wax of the Platform and bend it as they please." Increase Mather, whose own long nose was twisted in the affair, expressed his indignation over Thacher's ordination by declaring that the entire procedure was "an heinous Transgression of the Third Commandment; the like of which was never before known in New England, no, nor in the Christian World. . . ."
31
There is no doubt that Cotton Mather shared his father's sen-
 
Page 364
timents but he kept remarkably quiet throughout the episode. Two things embarrassed him. First, the fact that the critics of Thacher and Webb within the New North were not for the most part men in full communion (that is, full Church members) and secondly, the evidence that part of his own church planned to secede and join the minority in the New North to establish still another church. The New Brick Church resulted from the efforts of these seceders and dissidentsagain to the outrage of Increase Mather. But again Cotton soothed his father and eventually preached the sermon at the dedication of New Brick in May 1721.
32
From September 1722, when Increase Mather suffered a stroke, until his death on August 23, 1723, in his eighty-fifth year, Cotton had to do more than console his father over secession from the church, for Increase suffered terrible pain during his last months. Samuel Sewall reported several of the old man's cries, and Cotton Mather later explained that his father had endured emotional as well as physical distress. Good man though Increase Mather was, there were days when he doubted that he had God's grace and he lamented the bitter fate ahead of him. These days saw the son attend the father with loving assurance.
33
Two days after Increase Mather's death, Cotton preached one of the funeral sermons. And he spent much of the next two months writing
Parentator
, his biography of Increase, a restrained assessment of his father's life. Despite the book's reticence and Cotton's professed intention of sticking close to the evidence, it is a revealing document. It does not offer a full statement about Increase's psychological workingsno Puritan biography ever did that. It acknowledges that Increase possessed human frailties, but Cotton Mather does not describe them himself. Instead, he quotes extensively from his father's diary. This is an unrewarding exercise, for Increase's record of his own sins is completely conventional. In his diary he accused himself of misusing time and of unfruitfulness, weaknesses that Cotton laid to the remainder of indwelling sin.
34
What
Parentator
reveals is the detachment the son was able to attain on his father. His love and admiration for Increase were great but they did not prevent him from seeing his father's mistakes. To be sure, the mistakes do not for the most part expose flaws of character so much as errors of judgment;
 
Page 365
and in any case Cotton Mather did not disclose all he knew or thought about them. He gently reproached his father for defying Richard Mather over the Half-Way Covenant and he declared that his father had been mistaken in persecuting the Quakers. These admissions were easy to make because Increase himself had conceded that he had been wrong. But Increase had never changed his mind about the conversion of national Israel as a pre-condition of the Second Coming and in
Parentator
, Cotton at least hinted at the deficiencies in his father's view. He also admitted that his father's pastoral visits had not been frequent enough to suit his church, a serious charge against the conduct of his ministry. However, most of the book extols Increase's great services and his piety. Although it was written in sadness, it was not marked by shattering grief. This is the final mark of Cotton's detachment. His father had died full of years and after great achievements. Increase had served his calling well, and Cotton had no doubt that heavenly bliss awaited him.
Cotton Mather could not regard the death of his son, Increase Mather II, lost at sea, which he learned of in August 1724, with such assurance. Young Increase had already brought him humiliation and guilt; now he brought grief. Eleven of Cotton Mather's children had already died; Increasehis adoring father sometimes called him Cresywas the twelfth; and a daughter, Elizabeth Mather Cooper, died in 1726, leaving him just Hannah and Samuel. The death of young Increase shook him as badly as any, despite his belief that his son had brought shame on the Mather name. What especially troubled Cotton was the fear that his son might have died unregenerate.
35
While he grieved for Cresy he had reason to grieve for himself and the dreadful condition of his wife. He had remarried after the death of his second wife in 1713 (a year that saw three of their children die). His third marriage, to Lydia Lee George, was a disaster. Along with a new wife he soon took on the administration of the estate of her widowed daughter, Katherine George Howell. This estate was badly encumbered with debts, a fact that the widow Howell's creditors soon brought home to him. For several years the responsibility for these debts oppressed him so much that he considered selling his library to pay them. He counted upon friends to bail him out but they "keep at a Distance from me," and his wife's family upon whose
 
Page 366
benefit he took on the debts behaved "like Monsters of Ingratitude." His fears became so great at one point that he thought he might end his days in debtors' prison. Finally, after seven years of anxiety, several loyal members of his church came to his aid and paid off the debts.
36
While all this was going on, his wife began to display symptoms of madness. It is, of course, impossible to say with certainty today that she was insane, but Mather came to think so and her behavior was extraordinary. They had married in 1715; the first signs of her unbalance seem to have appeared two years later. By the next year, 1718, and periodically for the last ten years of Mather's life, there was no doubt that she was deranged. At times, Cotton Mather feared that evil spirits had taken possession of her. In these periods, she raged at him and the two children of his second marriage who lived at home. Mather's inclination was to hush the whole business up but the grotesque scenes that occurred in the household could not be concealed. In one of the first, he reported that his wife had abused him because "my Looks and Words were not so very kind as they had been." When he could stand her "prodigious Paroxysms" no longer, he retired to his study and his wife fled to a neighbor where, he was convinced, she told lies about him. To make matters worse, his wife rummaged through his papers, hiding some and spilling ink on others. During one of these trying periods, a time when he was also burdened with debt, and worried over Cresy, he thought of Job and like Job referred to himself as a Brother to Dragons. But more often he thought of Christ's martyrdom.
37
There is little doubt that his unhappiness strengthened his faithand his faith made his unhappiness supportable. As he feared affliction, he also gloried in it. Yet his love of his God was no mere rationalization, no simple device to deal with the disappointments of this world. He said in these years that he felt "on the borders of paradise," and meant that the world was near its end and that Christ would soon come. This statement was sung, sung in piety and in love of God. Matherdespite all his griefcontinued to love his God with a remarkable intensity. He rarely accused himself of security and "deadness" in these years. There seemed too little time for such indulgence.
38
Mather's sense that he was approaching the end of his life grew strong late in 1724 and early in 1725 when he fell sick for
 
Page 367
weeks at a time. Like his father, he had predicted his own death long before, but this time there was something different in his feeling. And because of the difference''I seem to be upon a new Song''he decided in order to save time to reduce the number of entries he made about do-good in his
Diary
. He did, however, introduce a new category, "Precious Thoughts," the extraordinary "Insights" into the mystery of Christ and His Kingdom given by the Lord. The most precious of his thoughts, of course, concerned the Holy Spirit and its manifestations in prophecy. Mather continued to yearn with all his soul for the Prophetic Spirit to show itself in an unmistakable way; and his appeals to the Lord for a pouring out of the Spirit remained as passionate as ever through his illness and his despair over his wife and son. And when on occasion he was so sick that these prayers took more energy than he had, and he could neither preach nor write, he at least found the strength to sing hymns celebrating the glory of the Lord.
39
In the winter of 1727-28, he was again sick and weak, and on February 13, 1728, he died. As a young man he had seen visions, and he continued to see them as an old one. He had also had dreams of the end with the Spirit pouring out on all flesh. He died, an old man, still dreaming those dreams.
 
Page 369
NOTES
Chapter 1
1. Richard Mather, The Summe of Seventie Lectures Upon The First Chapter of the Second Epistle of Peter, Lecture 3, [30 June, 1646], 21. Mss. in American Antiquarian Society (henceforth abreviated A.A.S.)
2. Increase Mather,
Awakening Truth's Tending To Conversion
(Boston, 1710) 67-69.
3. Increase Mather,
A Discourse Concerning Faith and Fervency in Prayer
(Boston, 1710), 82.
4. Increase Mather,
Practical Truths Tending to Promote the Power of Godliness
(Boston, 1682), 200. See also Urian Oakes,
New England Pleaded With
(Cambridge, Mass., 1673), 11-13; Urian Oakes,
A Seasonable Discourse Wherein Sincerity and Delight in the Service of God Is Earnestly Pressed Upon Professors of Religion
(Cambridge, Mass., 1682), 4-5, 9, 17; William Stoughton,
New Englands True Interest Not to Lie
(Cambridge, Mass., 1670), 20-25.
5. "The Diary of Michael Wigglesworth, 1653-1657," edited by Edmund S. Morgan,
Publications
of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, xxxv, 311-444 (Boston, 1951). The quotation is from 385. For a full account of Wigglesworth's life see Richard
Page 370
Crowder,
No Featherbed to Heaven: A Biography of Michael Wigglesworth, 1631-1705
(East Lansing, Mich. 1962).
6. William Perkins,
A Declaration of the True Manner of Knowing Christ Crucified
(London, 1611), 27.
7. Increase Mather,
The Life and Death of That Reverend Man of God, Mr. Richard Mather
(Cambridge, Mass., 1670) contains biographical details. See also, Kenneth Ballard Murdock,
Increase Mather: The Foremost American Puritan
(Cambridge, Mass., 1926), 11-18, and the sources cited there.
Life and Death
relies heavily on an autobiographical account left by Richard, now apparently lost.
8.
Life and Death
, 2-3.
9. For an excellent discussion of Puritan educational ideas, see E. S. Morgan,
The Puritan Family
(revised ed. New York, 1966), 87-108.
10.
Life and Death
, 3.
11.
Ibid
. 4.
BOOK: The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728
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