The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 (26 page)

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Authors: Robert Middlekauff

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BOOK: The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728
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the Scriptures was. The divines who urged scientific study were aware of the dangers in what they encouraged. Scholarship and natural philosophy might completely absorb a man; they possessed the attractiveness of any of the things of this world. Some men developed an inordinate taste for meat and drink and became gluttons and drunkards; some rich men valued their vanities more than their souls; some scholars failed to see beyond second causes. This last failure was understandable because God chose to work through the laws of His created universe; but to see nothing beyond second causes was atheism nonetheless, for Providence lay behind every natural event. God's power filled the order of the cosmos. So long as men remembered that nature contrived to reconcile order and arbitrary power, they would make natural philosophy a godly enterprise. So long as they regarded nature as John Cotton had, as "a mappe and shaddow of the spirituall estate of the soules of men," they might examine it confident that they did so in the faith.
2
Accepting these premises, Increase probed into the natural world with the eagerness, if not with the rigor, of the great figures of seventeenth-century science. The range of his interests grew throughout his life and included astronomy, geology and, under the tutelage of his son, Cotton, medicine. His most impressive study was of comets, which he discussed in several sermons and tracts, and in one major book,
Kometographia
, published in 1683. Much in these studies, and especially in the long work, suggests that a powerful curiosity pulled Increase into his investigation of the heavens. He explains in
Heavens Alarm to the World
that he was intrigued by the comet of 1680, the largest one he had ever seen.
3
He took the trouble to measure its "radiant Locks," presumably the blaze of the comet, and found them to be approximately sixty-six degrees long. As was his custom when he became interested in any subject, he read everything he could lay his hands on, but of course the great seventeenth-century works on comets were still to be written. Fortunately for his need of direction, Robert Hooke, the Secretary of the Royal Society, had published his work on the Comet of 1677; and Increase used it as a guide in his investigation of Halley's Comet, which had made one of its periodic visits in 1682.
4
Hooke dealt with a number of problems long of interest to
 
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astronomers. lie speculated on the density of comets: the nucleus of a comet was solid, he said, with a density as great as the earth's, while the tail or blaze partook of the nature of flame. He studied the source of a comet's light and finally decided that it was its own source. Hooke also considered the traditional questions about the nature of a cometary movement and distance of comets from the earth. Before Tycho Brahe's work became known, many scientists had argued that comets were sublunary bodies which had been drawn into the air, where they were set on fire. Skeptical of the view, Brahe measured their parallax and, discovering that it was less than the moon's, properly concluded that comets were at a greater distance from the earth. But Brahe made his own mistakes, the most notable one being his assumption that comets followed an orbit around the sun.
5
The exact course of cometary movements intrigued Hooke, perhaps more than any other issue concerning their character, and much of his study was given to a calculation of their orbits. The proposition he offered on this subject which Increase Mather found intriguing was that if exact observations of a comet's parallax could be obtained, the return of a comet might be accurately predicted.
Mather's reaction to Hooke's formulation reveals more sharply than any other single feature of his work the character of his scientific interests. He agreed with Hooke, Brahe, and Kepler, all of whom he read with care, that comets did not move within the earth's atmosphere. The argument on the basis of parallax convinced him, and he pointed to the need of precise astronomical observations from several parts of the earth. But he did not accept the views of Hooke, Brahe, and Kepler uncritically. The evidence from other astronomers, inexact as their observations were, was taken into his reckonings. He also gave weight to observations which showed the relative movements of the earth, other planets, and comets. At certain times, he noted, planets interpose themselves between comets and the earth. This suggested to Increase that comets moved "in an higher Sphere" than planets.
6
The evidence of the senses did not carry Increase as far as it did Hooke, however. Hooke described the movement of a comet as corresponding to a natural law; Increase agreed but stopped short of the inference that Hooke found compelling: the path of
 
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a comet was predictable and the return of comets could be precisely calculated. This last contention appalled Increase Mather. If it were accepted, how could the doctrine of
concursus
the faith in a God who sustained every instant of all existencestand; a created being operating according to its own laws, presumably independent of the Divine, compromised the sovereignty of God. Increase was prepared to believe that comets were generated somewhere beyond the earth's atmosphere, but not that they possessed everlasting (sempiternal) existence. And surely they followed the laws of nature, so far as men could understand these laws, only as long as God decreed. God used comets, as He did all nature for His own purposes; most commonly He chose to employ them as signs of impending events, "Ensigns" held up in Heaven for men to see.
7
What comets portended depended upon Man's course along the line of time leading to the Day of Judgment. In certain periods their appearance forecast happy events; for example, the birth of Christ had been announced by a blazing star. Eventually, Mather suggested, one might anticipate a shower of comets as the Second Coming approached. But for the most part, comets did not bring happy tidings; rather they served to warn men of disasters which awaited them should they fail to heed divine commands. New England in particular had reason to recognize the dreadful portents of comets. God had often spoken to it through these preachers of divine wrath before sending His afflictions on the land.
8
If God spoke in comets, He also acted through them, using their mysterious power as a "natural influence upon the Earth." Increase did not presume to explain the naturalness of this "influence"; rather, he contended himself with the assertion that comets "caused" droughts, infestations by caterpillars, tempests, floods, sickness, and perhaps even earthquakes. Besides signifying the coming of afflictions, which might be forestalled by repentance and then causing them when repentance was not forthcoming, they seemed also to predict apocalyptical events. Thus the second woe, the crushing blow upon the Turks, was announced by a comet; and assaults by the sixteenth-century reformers on the Antichrist in Europe were forecast. At times God chose to make their awful messages even clearer by giving comets extraordinary shapes; one in 1627, for example, assumed
 
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the form of a man's arm holding a sword about ready to descend in a crushing swipe.
9
The belief in the grotesque stories of the shape of comets, the insistence that their orbits were unpredictable, the emphasis on their emblematic quality, the belief in their capacity to produce natural disasters, seems to comport uncomfortably with the careful observations, the sane comments about the importance of parallax, the preference for Kepler and Hooke over early superstitious savants. And in fact, Increase Mather's "science" contained jarring inconsistencies. Like the best natural philosophy of the seventeenth century, Mather's
Kometographia
was intended to brighten the glory of God in men's eyes by illuminating His secrets in nature. But Increase sensed the danger that this enterprise of opening God's mind in nature would diminish the awareness of His mysterious power. Hence the crude assertion that explanations from second causes alone constituted atheism. And hence the fact that much of
Kometographia
departed from scientific concern to explain nature on the level of the mysterious. Natural explanations sufficed for limited purposes, but for genuine understanding, the final resort had to be to piety.
10
Increase offered
Kometographia
as an exercise in natural philosophy as well as in piety, though he inevitably blurred the conventional distinctions between the two. A year later he published
An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences
, which provided additional evidence of his curiosity about nature. Yet this book, too, like his studies of comets, was designed to reinforce a sense of the mystery in life, in this case by emphasizing the power of the demonic as well as the power of the Divine.
11
The exact beginnings of the book cannot be reconstructed. Such books of God's wonders, of remarkable providences, had appeared for centuries. The possibility of writing a book of this sort apparently first occurred to Increase when, in examining the papers of John Davenport, he discovered a manuscript that had been inspired by Matthew Pool's
Synopsis Criticorum
, an account of God's providences in such matters as storms, apparitions, floods, and possessions. (Whether Davenport had written the stories, or collected the accounts, is not clear.) Sometime in the year 1681, Increase evidently showed the collection to other Boston ministers, who, following his lead, decided to complete and publish the manuscript. Increase took the project over and
 
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finished it with the aid of his colleagues, who either contributed accounts of wonders or suggested books he might examine.
12
The publication of the
Essay
brought to attainment a hope Increase had declared years before in the
Discourse Concerning the Danger of Apostasy
.
13
At that time he had conceived of the collection of special providences to New England, with the intention of using them to demonstrate the special character of the Lord's chosen people in America. The collection would testify to the extraordinary blessings the Puritans had received and would contribute to the rejuvenation of the faith of the fathers.
Increase's purpose survived the passage of the years; the
Essay
's subtitle
Wherein, An Account is given of many Remarkable and very Memorable Events, which have happened in this last Age; Especially in New England
reflects it and the text occasionally refers to the special concern God felt for New England. But for the most part these expressions remain as afterthoughts to the main commentary, which concentrates on God's glorynot the glory of men in New England. Many of the wondrous examples of divine Providence occur outside New England, and do not involve New Englanders in any way. As in
Kometographia
these wonders are types of the Lord's wisdom and power; they are emblems of His goodness.
14
The book carried the same purposes as Increase's studies of comets didto undermine the authority of scientific explanation of natural phenomena and to substitute the ancient sense of divine mystery in life. To be sure, the range of subjects taken up in the
Essay
suggests a scientific curiosity which operates impartially over the varieties of nature. Sea deliverances, preservations, thunder and lightning, magnetic variations, witchcraft, demonology, storms, earthquakes are some of the subjects Increase reports on. Within this variety his intention is unvarying: to offer one level of explanation in terms of second causes, but also to insist that the Providence of God whether working through nature or outside its confines is ultimately inexplicable in this world. It is true that every case includes concrete details, suggesting the reliance upon the observation of the senses, calculated to satisfy any natural philosopher. In the accounts of preservations, boards are shattered by lightning, bricks are thrown about, positions of people tossed by wind and sea are minutely described and their injuries tabulated down to
 
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the last cut and bruise. Such details give the stories of the
Essay
their remarkable vividness; they intensify their horror and mystery. Increase wrote in the conviction that his readers would be more inclined to believe the implicit propositions about the strength and mystery of the unseen if their observed effects were fully described.
15
Though the book is offered as observation, it is not genuinely empirical. Most of the illustrious providences were reported by witnesses whose testimony Increase accepts unquestioningly; and "evidence" of all kinds is lumped together indiscriminately. Increase repeats old folk beliefelephants fear mice, the horse abominates the camel, lions tremble at the crowing of a cock; he reports instances of strange antipathies in naturemen who swoon at the sight of eels and frogs or when they smell vinegarwith the same seriousness that he discusses current scientific speculation about magnetic variation. But given his purposes, this lack of sophistication is as it should be. What Increase most hoped for the
Essay
was that it would convince men that "There are Wonders in the Works of Creation as well as Providence, the reason whereof the most knowing amongst Mortals, are not able to comprehend." Hence a story of fish that jumped into the boat of starving sailors drifting on the sea was as important as the properties of magnetsboth ultimately were "very mysterious and beyond humane capacity" to understand.
16
The
Essay on Illustrious Providences
presumed to deal with the problems of nature in its extraordinary guises; and therefore in the four chapters on witches, possessions, and apparitions Increase made no claim that these subjects, surrounded' by the occult and embedded in folklore though they were, deserved special treatment. Their study should be pursued in the way of God's illustrious providences and with the expectation that scientific explanation would carry one so far and no farther. Something of witchcraft and apparitions could be explained in terms of secondary causes just as something of magnetic variation could. But the scholar would reach the limit of such investigation soon and eventually would have to retire in the face of the demonic mystery. He could console himself with the knowledge that the Devil and his kind operated within restraints set by God who used the evil spirits for His own purposes.
17
The method of study, Increase recognized, depended upon the

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