The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 (6 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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Page 14
made comprehensible what Richard Mather was experiencing and thereby aided in the completion of the process of conversion. Richard Mather later remembered that he had been extraordinarily affected by Perkins' caution about "how farre a Reprobate may go." The danger facing the sinner was that he would confuse his own efforts with God's and become complacent. If he fell into this trap, his chances for grace were slim.
18
In several books which young Richard Mather may have read, Perkins reviewed these problems and analyzed experience in terms which troubled men were able to apply to themselves. Perkins told men that conversion did not change their substance, the stuff out of which they were made, nor did it give them new powers, or faculties of the soul, as the old language he employed put it. All conversion did was to renew what they already had; it restored a measure of the purity that Adam had possessed before his fall. Perkins likened the process to rebuilding an old house but with one difference: a house is restored piecemeal, a room at a time, a window first, and then a wall; but a man who receives grace has his whole beinghis reason, his will, his affections, all his facultiesreconstructed at once, and simultaneously. And yet this restoration occurred over a time, and could be broken down into identifiable periods.
19
Initially, a man might become sensible of his sin, feeling fear and terror in response to the accusations of his conscience. Such feelings are "no graces of God" but fruits of the law. But they do help "tame" a man's nature.
20
Anyone could achieve this much on his own, though God usually got things going. At this point a man may be likened to the breaking of dawn, Perkins said; the darkness remains, but there is light in the air. If the process is genuinely from God, the Holy Spirit next begins to work restraining the worst of the natural impulses and leading the person to moral behavior. A reprobate might proceed this far but no farther. The final step occurred when renewing grace was infused into the soul: the man was now Christ's, he had been born again.
21
By itself Perkins' description, though enlightening, was scarcely comforting. The reader of one of Perkins' tracts would find little encouragement for feelings of ecstasy. Perkins told him that in the beginning he should be afraid and should feel guilt, but at the end he should not expect that raptures would follow. But in a sense Perkins did provide tests for determining
 
Page 15
the validity of the process. Grace was ''counterfeit'' unless it grew, he said. The sinner should expect his faith to increase, and he should strive to see that it did. His very striving was evidence that his grace was genuine. Thus he should pray, listen to sermons, read the gospel, and examine himselfhis impulses, his feelings of every sort, and his thoughts. He could expect to fail his God, and his own best intentions, at various times. How he responded to his failures gave further indication of the state of his soul. If he felt grief at his failure to grieve over his sins he should be reassured. If he sorrowed because his desires to close with God were weak, he should be encouraged. Complacency, or as Puritans customarily put it "security," was a great danger and suggested that the grace he claimed was fraudulent.
22
During his conversion in 1614, Richard Mather required no help to avoid security. His heart was broken, and he craved the comfort that reaching the end of the conversion process conferred. Finally, after a prolonged period of misery, he began to feel that he was God's. He was never to feel secure, though he did enjoy the feeling of assurance, the feeling that he had been converted. Still, there were pangs of uncertainty; the last lengthy period of anxiety came after his arrival in New England and his acceptance of the Dorchester pulpit. Then for several years, he was troubled by doubts. He was characteristically quiet about his uneasiness, talking only to John Norton, the pastor of Ipswich, who gave him as much reassurance as he could.
23
Mather continued to teach throughout the period of his conversion and remained in Toxteth Park as master until 1618, when on May 18 he matriculated in Brasenose College, Oxford. His stay was short, probably a little more than a year. It is impossible to say what lasting effect, if any, Oxford had on him. If he was placed with the freshman class, he received the beginnings of the liberal arts course with instruction in the
trivium
and
quad-rivium
. Certain it is that he liked Oxford: several of his former students were there, and he enjoyed seeing them (though if they were juniors and seniors he must have had mixed feelings in greeting them); he admired the learned instructors and delighted in his studies. The only disturbing feature of Oxford life was the profaneness he encountered there. So perhaps, given his Puritan cast of mind, he was disposed to leave when he received the call from Toxteth Park to return as minister of the church. In
 
Page 16
any case, he departed his college and in 1619 took holy orders.
24
At his ordination an incident took place that reveals how highly his spiritual gifts were valued. The Church official in charge was Doctor Morton, the Bishop of Chester. When the ceremony ended the Bishop took Richard Mather aside, saying to him: "I have an earnest Request unto you, and you must not deny me, It is that you would pray for me: for I know the Prayers of men that fear God will avail much, and you I believe are such a one."
25
The Bishop might not have been so eager for Mather's prayers had he known that Mather took the holy orders of the Church of England with considerable reservations. For Mather was a Puritan and already tending to embrace openly Congregational notions of Church organization. Still he accepted the vows of the Church and continued to preach, though not to conform outwardly to all its rites and ceremonies.
26
Mather's congregation shared his scruples and made no trouble for him. But his views caused problems of a personal sort: it took time to persuade Edmund Holt of Bury to give permission for the marriage of his daughter, Katharine, to Mather. Holt did not care for nonconforming churchmen. But the marriage took place nonetheless in September 1624, and six sons followed over the next fifteen years.
27
The next few years were good ones for Richard Mather and his family. He enjoyed good health all his life, never missing an opportunity to preach the Sabbath sermon in fifty years; and his wife and children, if not so robust, at least escaped the early death that dogged people in the seventeenth century. Richard Mather's sermons for these years do not survive, but we know that he preached heavily from Samuel, Isaiah, and the Epistles of Paul. These books provided texts for many Puritan ministers in the seventeenth century. From them the preacher could remind his people of the obligations of Israel, another people highly favored by God. Many ministers seized the opportunity to liken England to Israel, urging that the English too were a chosen people with extraordinary obligations to keep the faith with the Lord. Israel had failed and Israel had suffered; the gentiles in England should profit from this example. The words of Paul suggested other kinds of lessons. The need for conversion was obvious; and Paul had insisted that men were saved by faith. But no minister could be content with simply announcing
 
Page 17
this doctrine. The converted had to be exhorted to live up to their conversions, to demonstrate their grace by leading holy lives. Faith implied a good conversation, as ministers styled the godly life. And the ordinary day-to-day constituents of gracious behavior could be extracted from Paul.
28
Richard Mather preached these doctrines plainly but with great vigor. Like most Puritan preachers of his day, he favored the plain style. His sentence structure was clear and simple; he avoided Latin words and phrases; where a homely word or phrase would most affect his simple village auditory he used it. In this way he hoped to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Without vanity himself, he sought not to impress his flock but to instruct those already in the faith and to bring those who were without it into the fold.
29
While he was going methodically through these Scriptures, he was not altogether easy inwardly. He did not conform to the Church in most ways and in 1630, when Archbishop Laud became the leading ecclesiastical official of Charles I, he knew he was in for trouble. Trouble came in the person of a visitor from the bishop, who after suitable investigation recommended suspension, which followed in August 1633. Happily, Richard Mather had influential friends who succeeded in getting him restored in November. Still, Mather refused to change his practice. Laud and his party insisted; Richard Mather like so many others in these years continued to refuse to conform and the next year he was suspended again. This time there was no possibility of a return to his pulpit without conformity.
30
Richard knew this, and after a month of soul-searching he decided to seize the opportunity of preaching on the Lord's terms rather than on the Church of England's. That opportunity, of course, lay in New England. And in the Spring of 1635, Richard Mather, his wife, and their children set out on the Atlantic, bound for the colony of Massachusetts Bay.
The voyage provided a number of new experiences and problems. The Mathers sailed on the
James
, a vessel which carried many other Puritans to America. "Our Land stomachs grew weary of ship diet," Richard Mather noted in the journal he kept while on the
James
.
31
This entry, like many others made during the passage, betrays a concern with the conditions of life on the ocean. Such interest is understandable, for Mather knew some-
 
Page 18
thing of the history of voyages. Most ended well, with ship intact and crew and passengers breathing, but even these usually brought some kind of suffering. When stomachs grew weary of salted fish and beef, the staples of ship diet, scurvy was usually not long in coming.
A woman and her child did suffer with scurvy near the end of the voyage, but Mather and most of his company came through in good health. An unusual variety of diet proved to be possible when they tired of salt fish for they had brought provisions with them"sometimes we used bacon and buttered pease, sometimes buttered bag-pudding, made with currants and raisins; and sometimes drinked pottage of beer and oatmeal, and sometimes water pottage, well buttered."
Most of the passage was like hundreds of others. Summer on the Atlantic can be surprising with treacherous storms, but the murderous gales of the winter are usually absent. The
James
ran into some bad weather about ten days out, and her passengers discovered that a tiresome diet would not be all that would keep them from the dinner table. On several of these days, rain beating in through the sides of the ship to soak the beds joined the wind in making life miserable. There were other rough days, but there were calm ones too. Some days the sun burned down so hotly than any breeze was welcomed; at still other times the heat vanished and the cold reminded Mather of December at home. When the sea ran smoothly enough, the company enjoyed watching the porpoises and dolphins that played around the ship. The crew took a porpoise occasionally, one of which when opened brought to mind a familiar country scene, the slaughter of hogs. Mather was delighted by the spectacle, and the women and children found the dissection of the porpoise"his entrails, as liver, lights, heart, guts, etc., for all the world like a swine"to be "marvellous merry sport." The guts of a pig were a comfortable sight for most, and out on the sea anything that evoked the smells and the day-to-day quality of the countryside was reassuring.
The voyage ended in an experience which in its own peculiar way was even more reassuring. On Saturday, August 15, while anchored at the Isles of Shoals (off the coast of Maine), the
James
was struck by an easterly wind which drove the rain before it. The ship's master first attempted to hold his vessel with anchors but two gave way, taking their cables with them, and a
 
Page 19
third cable had to be cut before the sea dragged the ship aground. With rocks looming through the spray, the captain next hoisted sail with the hope of escaping to the open sea. The wind destroyed the hope, tearing the sails from the masts and shredding them, "as if they had been but rotten rags."
As the sails flapped in tatters, the ship drove out of control toward a "mighty rock" standing out of the water. Ordinary men would have bid their lives farewell at this point, but the
James
was not carrying ordinary men. Mather and his fellow Puritans called on God for His mercy, and "he was pleased to have compassion and pity upon us." By God's ''overruling providence" the ship cleared the rock, and the wind and sea quieted long enough for the crew to rig the ship with fresh sails. The Lord also "sent us a fresh gale of wind" which allowed the
James
to navigate out of danger towards Cape Ann. Two days later, on August 17, 1635, the ship put into Boston.
When the Puritans on the
James
learned that the storm would not take their lives, Richard Mather reports, "O how our hearts did then relent and melt within us!" Richard Mather was more than grateful for his escapeeven at the worst moment he seems to have expected it. He had felt fear, of course, but when he remembered "the clearness of my calling from God this way," that is to New England, his fear abated somewhat. He knew that God would do with them what He wished. Christian resignation probably does not describe Mather's attitude; resignation implies a passivity, and Puritans were rarely passive. He welcomed God's actions, even if they entailed the loss of his life. But God did not claim his life; He simply demonstrated to the passengers of the
James
the ease with which He could make His claim successful and then in His mercy spare them for His other purposes. They had escaped the sea because God wished them to go to New England. This was comforting knowledge; and it strengthened Richard Mather's sense of purpose and his expectation that since Providence had steered him safely once, it would probably do so again.

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