The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 (40 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 basis lay in what Mather and other evangelicals in America and Europe called "PIETY." (They rarely wrote the word in the lower case.) Mather wrote and preached about the "MAXIMS OF PIETY" from early in the century to the end of his life. His inspiration may have come from Europe; certainly he corresponded with European Pietists, including August Francke of Halle, and read their works avidly. But Piety was not just another import received by an American provincial who hoped to emulate the customs of the sophisticated world. If Cotton Mather had been born too late in the seventeenth century to believe that his country would serve as the model for the reformation of Europe, he lived before Americans turned to Europe for the correct fashions in theology. The fact that European reformers now emphasized the New Piety pleased and reassured him; but he began thinking in its language out of frustration and hopes that had arisen in his American experience.
48
Though "PIETY" never received a single definition which Mather consistently followed in his writings, he clearly meant it to describe an attitude of mind and the substance of belief. He customarily phrased both as the "MAXIMS OF PIETY," which he reduced to three, a fear of God (including a rational and affecting belief in Him), a full acceptance of the righteousness of Christ as justifying men, and the love of one's fellow man as a way of honoring God. Piety would save a man and bind him to good men everywhere; it cut through the tangle of sects and divisions among churches. It represented a saving ecumenicalism, and men who lived according to its maxims could leave the old strife behind forever.
49
Just how fully Cotton Mather committed himself to it as a basis for unity appears clearly in his castigations of the sectarian spirit which sought to crush the New Piety. If we prefer a man not of the "Best Morals" who supports our notions of Church polity to one of eminent piety but of a different ecclesiastical persuasion, we are guilty of the sectarian spirit, Mather argued. To be sure, New England must hold to the primitive Churchto unpolluted administrations in its forms and worship. For Cotton Mather, as for his father and grandfather, purity resided most clearly in a regenerate membership. Baptism might be extended to the children of half-way members and even to adults who lacked any connection to the Church but who strove to ex-
 
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perience grace, but full membership must be reserved to the visibly gracious. Cotton Mather developed new techniques by which men could examine themselves; he urged that assurance was not required before taking Communion; he exhorted churches to stretch rational charity to the limits in judging those who offered themselves for the Lord's Supper. But in all these extensions of old limits, he clung to the ancient proposition that grace was visible and that the identification could be made by the Church. He expected these good men, once properly identified, to gather themselves under a covenant in a church. A voluntary covenant remained indispensable in his theory to an instituted church. To this requirement he continued to give his full support, though he badly clouded the issue by periodically insisting that church forms were human inventions and that the law of nature was the surest guide available to men interested in forming churches. If such aberrant statements did not represent his deepest commitment to traditional theory, they did reveal the direction his mind was taking early in the eighteenth century. He could never admit that at some level the fathers' devotion to the traditional polity conflicted with his own sense of the importance of Christian love as the fundamental obligation of the elect. Yet he insisted in these opening years of the eighteenth century that love of God, of Christ, and of one's fellows defined a Christian's beingnot loyalty to the Congregational Church and the Congregational State. Reaching this position without directly repudiating the foundersand his fathercost him psychically almost as much as an open break would have. By 1715 his own practices were absolutely clear: the old polity distinguished New England from the worldit was New England's "
crown,
" but the crown without the "Jewels" of the vital Piety, the catholic love towards all who have the same faith, carried the rust of sectarianism.
50
The union of the faithful transcended the fact that in ecclesiastical terms they followed ''very different persuasions." Piety cut across these distinctions; it required that love be shown to dissenters; it supplied a basis for the joyful unity of all in Christ.
51
Thus a line of thought that began in 1691 with an argument for ministerial cooperation between Congregationalists and Presbyterians ended with a plea for the unity of all Christians. Whatever their differences, men who shared the faith of the MAXIMS
 
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OF PIETYPresbyterians, Lutherans, even Episcopalians and Antipaedobaptistsshould join in the Union. They should not unite with the expectation that they could eliminate all sectarian marks before the reappearance of Christ; only a Donatist could entertain such an extravagant hope. But they could share the faith. They could serve one another; in fact they should not confine their love to only those who shared the glorious MAXIMS, but extend it to those outside, to heathens, pagans, yes to enemies.
52
Mather found a sanction for this ecumenicalism in the failures of the past. Providence had blasted earlier attempts at union because they had not rooted themselves in the everlasting gospel. In the sixteenth century, for example, some reformers had sought to build on private judgment alone, other insisted on Scripture unenlightened by interpretation. Both groups ignored the true basis in Piety. And in their error they had missed the experience of every successful religion on earth. Those religions ''in Vogue" presently, or in the past, Mather said, had subscribed to the cardinal tenets of the Christianity he advocated. Had not all of them testified to the propositions that God deserved the highest love of men and that men united in this love should treat one another with kindness and affection? The three non-Christian persuasions which attracted the allegiance of most men, Judaism, Muhammadanism, and Paganism, all paid homage to the idea of a savior who would mediate between God and man. The Jews, whose religion was but the "First Essay" of Christianity, had only to return to the faith of their fathers in the Old Testament to discover anticipations of Christ. The Muhammadans conceded miraculous power to Christ and thereby acknowledge His divinity even though they are too corrupt to worship Him. As for the Pagans, Platotheir ancient spokesmanpredicted the coming of a being so perfect, so just, that he could only have meant Christ.
53
The implications for New England of Mather's vision of a Union forecast in Plato and Muhammad, correcting the imperfections of the Protestant Reformation, and transcending all ecclesiastical traditions, were revolutionary. The New England of Cotton Mather's understanding had been reduced from the runner of the errand, from the City on the Hill, to a part and only one part of a Glorious Christian Union. Chastened by the Act
 
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of Toleration, by the new charter, by the need to define rights in English, as well as in Christian, terms, Cotton Mather had found it impossible to conceive of his country as the redeemer of the English Nation. It had much including a covenant with the Lord; and it should hold fast to the purity of its churches and their worship. It should recognize how these gifts distinguished it from much of the profane world. But it should see its faith and its hope in the context of a united religion.
Cotton Mather did not arrive at these views in an abject frame of mind. Working out his ideas about the MAXIMS OF PIETY was an enthusiastical process. And his fervor increased as he perceived the potential of a faith that at last broke down old forms even as it healed long-festering wounds. The foundations of the earth would some day shatter; even the ordinances of Heaven would alter; but not the New Piety which embraced eternal truths. Hence when it prevailed it would "introduce" into the world "the Kingdom of God."
54
 
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13
The Psychology of Abasement
Although Cotton Mather knew that Christ would return with His Kingdom at a time of His own choosing, he also believed that men must prepare. They must hold Christ's Church in readiness, maintaining its purity and supporting its ordinances; and surely ministers must never cease their attempts to convert the elect. None of these acts, in fact nothing that men could do, Mather had to admit, would affect the timing of Christ's reappearance in history. And yet he could hope that the efforts of good men might move the Lord. Logic, Scripture, theology all testified against his hopes but did not dampen them. The Lord worked in mysterious ways, Mather told New England, and in fact had chosen since the defection of the children of Israel to deepen the mystery surrounding His dealings with men. Did He not often reward the wicked with temporal riches and plunge the good into poverty? Did He not sometimes ignore the best efforts of faithful servants?
1
Mather regarded the spread of the Christian Union as a necessary part of the preparation for the Second Coming. Throughout the last twenty-five years of his life this conviction helped suppress most doubts he had about the importance of ecclesiasti-
 
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cal differences. What he had come to see by the opening of the eighteenth century was that the important fact in cosmic history was not the organizational distinctions which had long held men separate from one another, but the saving faith that joined them in Christ. Hence in all his dreams about a united Christendom, he always returned to the point from which Protestantism had begun: the problem of the individual.
A minister charged by his calling to convert the unregenerate and to nourish the faithful faced difficult problems in a society pledged to Calvin's version of the universe. Just as his father and his grandfather, and hundreds of ministers before them did, Cotton Mather listened to troubled men asking the questionwhat could a man do for himself in a world of predestination? By Cotton Mather's time the answer that the "preparationists" formulated almost a century before was widely accepted. Unable to agree on much, even Increase Mather and Solomon Stoddard agreed that men must "prepare" themselves for conversion. By preparation theylike Ames, Preston, Perkins, Thomas Hooker, Richard Mather, and John Norton before themmeant moral actions men might take before grace was infused into their souls. All these divines broke the conversion process into discernible stages which occurred over time. All agreed that a man predestined for Hell might traverse a number of them. Hooker helpfully explained this possibility by distinguishing between "legal'' and "evangelical" preparation.
2
The law, he wrote, should inform all men of correct standards of conduct, and simple examination of the self would produce contrition in those who deviated from those standards. Man might even feel terror when the law successfully informed him of his departures from morality; and humility might follow. According to Richard Mather grace sometimes assisted these natural operations of the soul; grace thus might have a hand in legal preparation. But the sinner not chosen for salvation would go no farther and would fail of union with Christ. Usually he would not even realize that he had failed to rise out of his corruption and, secure in the external morality that accompanied legal preparation, would consider himself converted. The world was full of these civil, moral men.
3
Evangelical preparation, on the other hand, carried the sinner to union with Christ. Its early stages resembled legal preparation with the sinner suffering the pangs of contrition and humility.
 
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The difference occurred when the Holy Spirit, which sometimes stimulated these feelings, ceased to act on the soul and joined with it in holy union.
4
Although all the preparationists argued that no man could save himself, all placed their emphasis on the necessity of seeking salvation. Preparation involved human exertions. Though a man could go only so far by his own efforts, and though only a few would be saved (the odds were a thousand to one against the individual, Thomas Shepard estimated), every man must try. Every man must prepare himself as fully as he could, getting himself into the right frame of mind. And since the condition of the inner man affected the conduct of the outer, he ought to pay attention to his behavior too. No one could consider himself truly informed of his sins, and contrite and humble because of them, if he persisted in evil actions.
5
In histories of the New England mind, Cotton Mather has appeared as the third generation's leading exponent of preparation. These studies hold that he pushed the doctrine farther than anyone else until his position became almost synonymous with that of the Arminians. As an imperative to action, preparation seems totally consistent with Mather's disposition to be up and doingand with his insistence that the Lord intended for every man to be as energetic as possible in His service. There are in Mather's writings, and in the sermons he preached to his flock, numerous exhortations to seek Christ. The figures Mather used suggest that a man should be in perpetual motion until he was converted, indeed after that glorious event as well. Try to believe, Mather urged, strive, struggle, wrestle with the Lord; work, struggle with the flesh and the Devil, expend ceaseless energy until you are sure. There are also statements accompanying these exhortations that assure the individual that if he tries to believe and finds in examining his soul that he can, he has faith.
6
Despite these intriguing propositions which apparently abandoned the determinism of Calvin, Cotton Mather cannot be convicted of Arminianism. Nor was he devoted to the doctrine of preparationa set of ideas that he actually rejected. Although most of his friends, including his father, were preparationists, he did not conceal his distaste for the doctrine, arguing that it was a mistake for men even to talk about preparing themselves. Of course men should "look" to God and seek His mercy. But,

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