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 (17 page)

BOOK: The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728
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Page 85
restoration, his ministers and his bishops began demanding conformity to the established Church and its ways.
18
Increase held out as long as he could, but the commander of the Guernsey garrison was neither a Puritan nor a patient man. For a time there was doubt that Increase would escape arrest, and then that he would be paid. Discouraged, he finally gave up in March 1661. Return to New England was all that was leftshort of a repudiation of what he regarded as the true Church polity. He sailed for Boston on June 29, 1661 and was greeted with joy by his father.
19
It seems likely that his step-sister, Maria Cotton, also greeted him with warmth. She was the daughter of the great John Cotton whose widow had married Richard Mather in August 1656. Increase may have carried the aura of a hero to Maria; in any case she came to love him and they were married in March 1662. Cotton Mather, the first of six children, was born to them in the following February. Maria was a happy choice, an ideal Puritan wife, kind, devout, fruitful of childrena loyal and devoted spouse who supported her husband in all his works.
20
The works came hard and fast in the next few years. Increase was called to the Second Church (the old North Church) in Boston in 1664, a post he occupied until his death. He soon established himself as a voice of authority throughout New England. His sermons were well attended and many were published at the instigation of admiring parishioners. Most of these publications of the 1660's and 1670's have genuine intellectual distinction, if not originality. They included works of scholarship as well as of piety; they speak to individuals but most often to all New England. They betray the intensity of Increase's sense of personal mission during these yearsin 1675 he declared that "untill my work be done, I am immortall," a sense that he conveyed to men of power in Church and State.
21
Men who counted in both realms respected him, though they did not always like him, and they came increasingly to call upon him for public service. The first opportunity appeared in the Synod of 1662, convened to ponder the problem of baptism. Increase's part was on behalf of a lost cause, the adherence to the traditional policy of baptising children of members in full communion, while the majority of the Synod chose the way of extension of baptism to the children of half-way members, so designated because they had been baptised
 
Page 86
but not received at the Lord's Supper. Increase joined John Davenport in opposing the Synod but in time changed his mind and became an eager defender of the Half-Way Covenant, as the Synod's solution was labeled.
22
Although he doubtless switched sides in this controversy out of altered convictions, the change ensured his availability for further services. For most of the ten years after his acceptance of the new baptismal arrangement, he found little opportunity to serve outside the pulpit. He preached regularly in Boston, and occasionally filled in for colleagues of neighboring churches. Richard Mather invited him to Dorchester several times a month and clearly enjoyed Increase's sermons as fully as anyone in the colony.
23
The death of Richard in 1669 left Increase desolate. He was physically ill at this time, but the melancholy he experienced after his father died does not seem to have arisen from physical sources. He felt sadness, of course; Richard, a warmly understanding man, had been precious to him. The sadness deepened three months later when Increase's younger brother Eleazar, who occupied the pulpit in Northampton, died.
24
The loss of Richard seems also to have left Increase with a vague feeling of guilt. He had not failed his father in any direct sense, but he yearned to prove himself useful, perhaps in some service resembling Richard's during the days of controversy with the English Presbyterians. While Increase tried to handle these desires, his melancholy grew worse as he discovered himself doubting the very genuineness of his faith.
The physical illness continued to be serious from the fall of 1669 until the spring of 1670. His depression lasted even longer, troubling him seriously for at least two more years. During this time, he performed the conventional acts in search of a cure, praying, fasting (which probably weakened him further), and going to the healing waters of Lynn, Massachusetts. The crisis passed gradually, leaving its mark in the shape of an intense desire to get the best out of himself before his life ended. He expressed his hope in his Diary in January 1670. ''I
wish!
I
wish!
I
wish!,
" he wrote, "that I might do some special Service for my dear God in Jesus Christ. . . . I would feign do good after I am dead." And, "After I have finished my doing work, I would feign suffer and do for the sake of my dear God, and for Jesus
 
Page 87
Christ." The desires to do good and to suffer never left him. To survive he required both; and somehow he obtained the assurance during these years that they would be granted to him.
25
Although Increase's recovery followed, he continued to suffer as he gave his Lord public service. His service was great and made him the most powerful minister in New England for the next thirty years. He took a leading part in the Synod of 1679, writing the preface to its "Result," and presided over its second session in 1680. A few years later he encouraged the Boston meeting and the General Court to resist attempts to deprive the colony of its original charter. When resistance failed, and the charter was abrogated in
Quo Warranto
proceedings in 1683, he continued to defend New England's autonomy. This fight carried him to England in 1688, where he remained until 1692, when he returned with a new charter which provided greater self-government for Massachusetts Bay than any royal colony in America enjoyed. And during sixteen of these years, from 1685 to 1701, he held the honored position as head of Harvard College.
26
The suffering that blotted these services and their distinction bewildered Increase at times. He could not lay it all at the Devil's door. The source of his discomfort at the Synod of 1679 was Solomon Stoddard, who did not share his views on qualifications for the Lord's Supper. Stoddard was a decent and good maneveryone recognized that, even Increase, who did not conceal his belief that Stoddard, for all his sanctity, was misled. The dissatisfaction with the charter of 1691, of which he was justly proud, came from other good men who did not appreciate the difficulties of his achievement. He, an American provincial, had spent four years at two English courts and had emerged with almost everything a loyal son of the founders could desire. Yet his success was flung back into his face as failure and weakness by men who argued that nothing less than the restoration of the original charter could be accepted. Service at Harvard also brought pain. To secure its charter and to protect it from Anglican infiltrators seemed essential to Increase. But what seemed to concern the Corporation, and the General Court that supervised the College, was that he reside in Cambridge, and give up commuting from Bostonwhere his church still needed him. This tangle eventually forced his retirement from Harvard, amidst petty bickering and backbiting.
27
 
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Despite the fact that Increase sometimes encountered what he took to be the same meanness of spirit, the gossip, and the squabbling in his church, he took profound satisfaction in his ministry. Increase took up his duties as teacher of the North Church in Boston on May 27, 1664, and preached until just before the end of his life in 1723. The church was a large one and grew under Increase's tutelage. On most Sabbaths his auditory numbered around 1500 souls. Except for his first few years as pastor, Increase enjoyed good relations with his church. His first years, however, were made worrisome by a low salary and his growing family. His church and its deacons may have believed that poverty would inspirit him; in any case they did nothing as his debts and anxieties mounted. Mather, as was his custom, drew a perverse pleasure from his penury, comforting himself with such reflections as "when I am gone, my poor people will believe that the grief which I sustained by their neglect of me and mine, was unprofitable for them."
28
He gained security soon after this entry when several wealthy members of his church came to his rescue, helping him pay his debts and raising his salary.
29
In his ministry, Increase performed the usual tasks of a Puritan clergyman, but with one difference. He slighted the pastoral functions, visiting the sick and catechizing the young, in favor of studying and preaching. During most weeks he preached on the Sabbath and on Thursday. For at least two years in the 1670's he attempted to follow a regular schedule of instructing his own children, preaching, studying, and meeting his flock. He even laid out a routine for each day. On the Sabbath he preached and gave instruction in his own family. The next day he gave to the study of Scripture, reading several commentators and theologians. Tuesday was much like Monday except that he seems to have instructed candidates for the ministry part of the afternoon, at least in the summer. He spent all of Wednesday in his study; and on Thursday he revealed some of the fruits of this labor in his sermon. But in the early part of the morning before he preached, he studied. Late in the afternoon after his lecture, he met with other ministers "to promote what shall be of publick advantage."
30
The last two days of the week were given to his books and to preparation for the Sabbath. On days preceding the celebration of the Eucharist, Increase ordinarily fasted.
31
There was not much time reserved for pastoral visits in this
 
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schedule, and there were murmurings about this lack. When Cotton Mather joined his father as pastor, he took the responsibility for this side of ministerial life, and the criticism may have been silenced. Increase Mather obviously believed that his greatest contribution to his God came in his sermons to his flock; and hence the long, hard hours spent in his study. His sermons reflect this effort in their tight construction and solid substance.
32
Although Increase did not hold to this schedule all his lifethere were too many interruptions which carried him out of his routineit reveals his respect for the need of scholarship. When he gave up the systematic division of his day he did not give up his studies. Politics and government called him; the social life of Boston consumed an increasing part of his time as he grew older; and he traveled in New England and out of it, but he managed to find time for study and for writing.
Near the end of his life Increase Mather likened the heart of man to a mint "in which evil thoughts are coined continually."
33
This phrase represented one pole of his thought about men, their infinite capacity for evil, and lust for sin. Throughout his life Increase also preached, as his father had before him, on the need of men to grow in grace. He meant that men could change, they could improve. To be sure, no real alteration of their character was possible without God's help through grace; and, of course, no man could secure grace of his own efforts. To grow in grace implied that once the soul had been infused with God's gift, it should continue to improve. Puritans as different as William Perkins and Thomas Hooker agreed that in this process of improvement a gracious man could take a hand. Perkins said the best evidence that a man had grace was its growth. Once he had grace his helplessness ended. He could act effectively and God expected him to act.
34
Over a lifetime a man should strive to strengthen his faith by worship, study, good works. If he tried he could expect God's aid. By living in faith he would lose a part of his love of himselfhe would love God more and make every act of his life an expression of his love of God. Ordinary acts, Increase included even eating and sleeping, should be accomplished with one's attention on God; and work and good works should be a testimony to the greatness of God.
35
As a man grew in grace he grew dead to the world; and as the
 
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creatures lost their savor to him so also did the self. His whole being was turned to Godhis will, his understanding, his affections. His love of the Lord, his rejection of the world did not leave him somber or joyless, but vanities no longer could please him. As he grew in grace, his very manner changed: he had gravity without heaviness and patience without weakness.
36
Richard Mather's character was cut closer to these specifications than Increase's, though they shared many similar experiences and, by any standard, held the same values. The central event of their psychic lives, conversion, wracked them both and left each of them filled with doubts about its genuineness. Although Richard's recovery did not carry him into complacency, his assurance was sooner achieved and more certain than Increase's. Each proved an extraordinary minister by the lights of the world, but Increase endured secret dissatisfation in the midst of success. Richard departed the world in peace, full of years and wisdom; Increase, full of years, but haunted by fear that he was damned.
37
Although Increase proved more imaginative than Richard, he was also more literal. Age and experience softened Richard's personality while they failed to alter Increase's. Life mellowed Richard but it left Increase unripenedunyielding in matters of the law, self-righteous in his rectitude, and incapable of exercising what was called Christian charity.
The tendency of Increase's character was to push thought and feeling to their extremity. Thus even his literalness assumed a peculiar intensity and in dealings with men, a harshness. This unbending quality inevitably found expression in his language and in his style. Most of his expression, of course, did not depart from the conventions of his generation, and resembled the usage of his father. But Richard's mind had rarely strayed far from the idioms of the Scripture and Puritan theology, and though for many of Increase's purposes these were appropriate, the urge to express his intensity had to be met too. Here he bade his father's practice farewell.
Richard Mather had been a devoted practicer of the plain style all his life. His sermons followed the classic Puritan structureText, Doctrine, Propositions, Usesand yet managed to convey his strong feeling and his subtle sense of what motivates human beings. A similar simplicity of structure and style appeared in
BOOK: The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728
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