Cotton Mather (1663-1728) For some the name of Cotton Mather ! is almost synonymous with American Puritanism itself. The third-generation Puritan clergyman, grandson of the patriarchs John Cotton and Richard Mather, seemed almost destined by geneology to be a Puritan divine. His father, Increase Mather, was one of the most influential men of his day in both church and state. Cotton Mather seems to have inherited his father’s drive to mesh ecclesiastical and political influence. Born in 1662 and educated at Harvard, he was at age twelve the youngest stu- dent to have been admitted there. His first inclination was toward science, and he studied medicine until he turned to theology and became his father’s assistant. In his approach to nature and the rise of witchcraft and in his support of the new technique of inoculation, he continued his early “empirical” interest in the observation and recording of data. As an out- spoken opponent of Andros he was a popular figure. This popularity declined somewhat with the controversies over the witchcraft trials, the new charter, and the control of Harvard College, in which he and his father were deeply involved. He died in 1728, less than ten years before the “surprising con- versions’ would break out along the western edge of the colony. Whether Cotton Mather would have supported the awakening or not can only be conjectured. One can already see from our story that Cotton Mather 1. The biographical material for this section comes from DAB and Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Boston: Beacon, 1966). T have also had access to an excellent unpublished disserta- tion, “Cotton Mather and the Catholic Spirit,” by Joyce Ransome (Uni- versity of California at Berkeley). 76Cotton Mather 77 lived at a time of rapid change in the theological, as well as the ecclesiastical and political, condition of New England. Often regarded as a reactionary, in truth he was as much a harbinger of the new order as a guardian of the old one. Much of his life and times, the controversies in which he seemed con- stantly engaged, and his influence on American history have been discussed in other studies. We will concentrate on the aspect of his life relevant for our purposes—his place in the developing trends of American Puritanism at the turn of the century. Cotton Mather was as strict a believer in divine sov- ereignty as was Willard, but he inclined himself and those whom he influenced in the direction that Willard condemned as “moralism.” For Cotton Mather, God’s sovereignty was the sovereignty of a creator. The absolute character of God's sovereignty is derived from the fact that he created everything and therefore is the Lord over it. The Great God who formed all things, has an absolute Dominion over all his works, to do even what he pleases with them all and it becomes His creatures humbly to ‘Tremble, with all possible Resignation before His Holy Sovereignty.? The relationship of the world to God, and particularly of man to God, is that of creature to creator, of works to their maker. All Cotton Mather’s theology is derived from this basic percep- tion of the universe as a “work” of God and of God as supreme volition, the primary agent. The idea of God as an agent fit nicely with certain trends in the intellectual climate of early eighteenth-century America. The one place where it rubbed was the doctrine of predestina- tion. Many men of the eighteenth century rejoiced to assert God's volitional sovereignty over nature, but many balked at 2. The Way of Truth Laid Out, p. 50. Hereafter cited in the text of this chapter as WT.78 The Seventeenth Century asserting it over man. Cotton Mather was not one of them. Although he acknowledged that the doctrine of predestination was coming under heavy attack in his day and that some sug- gested it should not be mentioned from the pulpit,? he was never one to duck an issue. Rather, taking his cue from the Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican church,‘ he affirmed the most rigorous possible doctrine of predestination (pp. 2-4). The irony of this was probably not lost on his hearers, because the Anglican church was a symbol of liberalism and latitudi- narianism in his day. The need to attack Arminianism was deeply ingrained in the marrow of New England divines. From the founding fathers to the eighteenth century, the spiritual descendants of Arminius were considered, along with antinomians, the princi- pal enemies of truth. Cotton Mather shared in this almost hereditary need to do battle with the supporters of “free-will.” He chose to do so in the terms on which the battle would be fought, and finally lost, in Boston in the course of the eigh- teenth century. The ammunition he chose against the Armin- ians was the doctrine of predestination, which he stated in its strongest terms. ‘The Most High God, from all eternity does most Exactly foreknow and his infallible foreknowledge does imply His eternal decree to determine it; who shall and who shall not, be brought unto the enjoyment of Him in Ever- lasting Blessedness. [WT, p. 51] Mather continued, as his ancestors had, to weld together in the tightest bond the doctrine of predestination and the rejection of Arminianism, although some had suggested that belief in free will was not necessarily a rejection of the divine sover- eignty. And so it would come to pass that those who wanted to maintain man’s free will began with an attack on the doc- 3. Free Grace Maintained and Improved, p. 2. Unless otherwise identi- fied, subsequent citations in the text of this chapter are to this work. 4. Article Seventeen defends a rigorous doctrine of predestination.