Cotton Mather was the most preeminent Puritan theologian, natural philosopher, and historian in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. As the most prolific writer in all of New England, with some 445 printed works and numerous others left behind in manuscript, Mather shaped both the religious developments of the Puritan founders and the scientific advances of the world of the Enlightenment. Never as prominent scholastically or politically as his father Increase, who was both President of Harvard and ambassador to England, Cotton Mather is nevertheless a more well-known figure today largely because of his direct involvement in the infamous Salem witchcraft trials. Mather should be equally remembered today for his epic history of New England, Magnalia Christi Americana, and for his efforts to develop a theologically-informed view of science and natural philosophy.

Cotton Mather was born in Boston in 1663, the eldest child of prominent second-generation minister, the Reverend Increase Mather, and his wife Maria, herself the daughter of esteemed theologian, the Reverend John Cotton. With a surname and given name taken from a distinguished line of ministers, Cotton Mather was destined for a religious life in the Massachusetts Bay colony from his earliest days. He read extensively in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew as a child, and at the age of eleven was admitted to Harvard, the youngest student ever to matriculate at the college. He excelled in his studies, and in 1678 received his bachelor's degree, whereupon he joined his father's Second Church congregation in Boston. By 1681 he had earned an A.M. from Harvard and was elected pastor of Second Church.

Scholars note a strong element of pride and vanity, extending even to self-righteousness, in the youthful Harvard student, undoubtedly the result of early academic success and membership in a prominent New England family. These characteristics caused Mather difficulty with classmates, as did his youth (even by seventeenth-century standards) and his father's own involvement in the affairs of the college as a Harvard fellow. Complicating matters further was young Cotton's pronounced stutter. Mather viewed himself as an outsider among his peers, as seen in “Ephphatha or Some Advice to Stammerers”, which he included in his scientific work, The Angel of Bethesda (New London 1722): “Indeed All that hear the Stammerer, if they have any Goodness in them, employ a Sigh upon the Sufferer. And they that have no Goodness nor Honour nor Breeding in them, are too ready to make him the Object of an Inhumane Derision.” Mather's speech impediment probably accelerated his interests in science and medicine, both as a possible career choice that would demand less public speech than a career in the ministry, and for a possible solution to his stuttering. Scholars also believe that Mather's preaching style may have been affected by his stutter, as one could tell by the copious written notes Mather used for his sermons (an unorthodox practice), and in his efforts to search for literary (careful rhythmic phrases) and linguistic (avoidance of certain sounds) devices for masking his stutter. As Mather's later Diary would indicate, his speech impediment exacerbated his sense of guilt—as a good Puritan would interpret such a “defect” as punishment for sin—but did not reduce the number of sermons he preached nor daunt his continued pursuit of a scientific understanding of stuttering.

Like his father, Cotton Mather began his writing career from the very moment he ascended the pulpit in Second Church in 1685, preaching more than seventy Sunday and occasional sermons per year. He preached on every conceivable topic, from the education of children to the execution of criminals, from early Jewish prophets to the gospel chroniclers of the New Testament. As a preacher, Mather frequently paid homage to the Puritan forefathers, but his filiopiety was never so deferential as to reduce his erudition. He could easily match his clerical predecessors with a rhetorical display of equal parts wrath and chagrin, aimed at the hearts of his backsliding congregation. Even in his earliest sermons, he had already mastered the jeremiad formula, as evidenced by the General Assembly's series of invitations to Mather to preach on election day four times by the end of the seventeenth century (1689, 1690, 1696, 1700). In 1689, at the age of twenty-six, Mather was the youngest minister ever to preach the election-day sermon, at a moment when his father was in England negotiating for a new colonial charter. As representative of the Puritan tradition and the Mather lineage, his oratory in The Way to Prosperity was so powerful that he was invited again the following year to preach the election sermon. By the time he preached again on election day in 1696, in Things for a Distress'd People to Think Upon, the still youthful minister could chant a resounding hymn of reformation and redemption:

God will Thunder with a great Thunder upon your Philistian Adversaries, and gloriously Discomfit them. The Lord had promis'd unto his People, that if they would Go up duly to Worship Him, at His Tabernacle, He would keep off the Invasion of their Adversaries . . . New England never was without its Adversaries; but at this Day, we are more Eminently under that Alarum, The Philistines are upon thee, O Land much Maligned! Now, by our Conforming our selves unto the Will of God, we shall get Him on our side; The Almighty would then soon scatter our Enemies with His Hot Thunderbolts, and Thunder them into Ruine for ever; and that Sentence which the Emperour Maximilian wrote upon his Table, we shall see written on all our Houses, and all our Vessels, and all our Fields, If God be for us, who can be against us?

Along with his impressive output of sermons, Mather wrote several other noteworthy theological tracts in his early years. He published on Puritan saints in Johannes in Eremo (Boston 1695), on Indian captivity in Humiliations follow'd with Deliverances (Boston 1697), and on King Philip's War in Decennium Luctuosum (Boston 1699). He also began a long string of works on historical and cultural issues by focusing on conflicts at home in The Boston Ebenezer: Some Historical Remarks on the State of Boston (Boston 1698) and controversies abroad in Eleutheria: Or, an Idea of the Reformation in England (London 1698).

By the early years of the eighteenth century, Mather had garnered an impressive professional reputation, despite suffering serious tragedies in his personal life. He had published three of his most cited works then, and now: Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions (Boston 1689), The Wonders of the Invisible World (Boston 1692), and Magnalia Christi Americana (London 1702). Yet he had lost five of his nine children from his first wife, Abigail Phillips. Abigail herself died in 1702 from smallpox. Mather remarried in 1703, Elizabeth Clark Hubbard, who bore another six children, but only one survived, and in 1713, Mather lost his second wife to measles. He would marry a third time in 1715, Lydia Lee George, who in later life became mentally unbalanced. Mather endured through the pain of these losses, immersing himself in his work, visiting the sick and dying of his congregation, performing marriage and funeral ceremonies (even of his own wives and children), and participating in religious societies affiliated with the New England congregational churches. Not even his prolific output of religious texts and sermons decreased. If anything, the deaths of his wives and children seemed to have broadened his interest in connecting matters of faith with developments in science.

Of all Mather's early inquiries and explorations, his involvement with witchcraft has created the most popular interest in him and has most damaged his reputation. In 1685, Mather met Martha Goodwin who was suffering from fits and seizures. After conducting some experiments based upon widely-believed understandings of the supernatural, Mather became convinced that Martha was possessed by a demonic spirit. This encounter, among others, produced his first major work on witchcraft, Memorable Providences, a book widely read in its own time. Mather's next opportunity for study of demonic possession came in 1692 during the now infamous Salem witchcraft trials. Although Mather and other ministers cautioned the judges investigating the more than seven hundred accusations of witchcraft about using “spectral evidence”—counting as material evidence the apparition (not actual presence) of a “witch” claimed to be afflicting the innocent victim—spectres were permitted as evidence and the trials went forward. By the end of the ordeal, nineteen people had been hanged for witchcraft and one man had been pressed to death by stones. Mather was then asked to write the definitive summary of the trials, producing his second work on witchcraft, Wonders of the Invisible World, a book that has forever cast a shadow over his reputation. Although Mather purports to make a reasonable historical and theological inquiry into the nature, number, and operations of “devils” in Massachusetts, he exclaims with great certainty that many “are under the Influence of the Devil,” and that any who “deny the Being of a Devil” must do so from “an Ignorance or Profaneness, worse than Diabolical.” This broad acceptance of the diabolical and strong belief in witches were not unusual for Mather's day, and certainly not confined to the American colonies. Mather's English contemporary, Daniel Defoe, also believed in the reality of the devil and what we would call supernatural events (see his “A True Relation of the Apparition of Mrs Veal”, 1706, and Political History of the Devil, 1726) and the last execution on Britain for witchcraft was in 1712. Later history has chosen to ignore such inconvenient aspects of this cultural context and Mather has been forever damned by the consequences of these particular beliefs, for which Mather provides no apology, and even defends: “I was not present at any” of the trials, but “having received a command” to write the history of the trials, “I can do no other than shortly relate the chief matters of fact,” for which “you are to take the truth, just as it was; and the truth will hurt no good man.”

Of all Mather's works, Magnalia Christi Americana, an 850-page opus that Mather worked on for seven years, stands as his most significant achievement. Both an ecclesiastical history of New England and a testament to the century-long development of orthodox Puritan theology, the Magnalia displays Mather's skills as historiographer, theologian, biographer, and rhetorician. Beginning with an epic invocation, Mather enthusiastically posits Christ as the author of Puritan faith and as redeemer of America, the inevitable receptacle of Puritan fidelity to God and the new Promised Land of spiritual fulfilment.

I WRITE the Wonders of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION, flying from the Depravations of Europe, to the American Strand: And, assisted by the Holy Author of that Religion, I do, with all Conscience of Truth, required therein by Him, who is the Truth it self, Report the Wonderful Displays of His Infinite Power, Wisdom, Goodness, and Faithfulness, wherewith His Divine Providence hath Irradiated an Indian Wilderness.

The seven books of the Magnalia provide the “illustrious, wonderful Providences” of New England as viewed through the lens of governors, magistrates, ministers, and other eminent citizens of the colonies. This approach—writing history as biography—is not altogether different from medieval hagiography, though in the hands of Cotton Mather is informed by the Puritan tradition of typology, whereby the New England forefathers serve as types (literal antecedents and symbolic fulfillments) of biblical prophets. Mather fashions the biographies of the Magnalia into a larger divine scheme that centralizes New England as the New Israel of America. This primary analogy showcases the Puritan forefathers as moral exemplars both past and present and elevates the colonies onto the world stage. Mather accomplishes this fanciful genealogy by weaving together Puritan biographies with Classical references in a richly baroque style, uncommon for Puritan writers. His method and style are at their height in his introduction to the life of John Winthrop, long-time Massachusetts Bay governor and, for Mather, “Nehemias Americanus”, the American type for the biblical Nehemiah, governor of Judea:

Let Greece boast of her patient Lycurgus, the Lawgiver, by whom Diligence, Temperance, Fortitude and Wit were made the Fashions of a therefore Long-lasting and Renowned Commonwealth: Let Rome tell of her Devout Numa, the Lawgiver, by whom the most Famous Commonwealth saw Peace Triumphing over extinguished War, and cruel Plunders, and Murders giving place to the more mollifying Exercises of his Religion. Our New-England shall tell and boast of her WINTHROP, a Lawgiver, as patient as Lycurgus, but not admitting any of his Criminal Disorders; as Devout as Numa, but not liable to any of his Heathenish Madnesses; a Governour in whom the Excellencies of Christianity made a most improving Addition unto the Virtues.

In his later career, Mather continued to preach and publish his sermons regularly and he wrote lengthy religious treatises and biblical translations. Psalterium Americanum (Boston 1718), a blank verse translation of the Psalms, has been mostly disregarded by scholars because of its “wooden” style, a result of an ineffective rendering of Hebrew poetry into English iambic pentameter. “Biblia Americana”, a translation of the entire Bible with extensive annotations, was left unfinished and unpublished at the time of his death, and so has not received much attention. Scholars have focused more on the lengthy treatises, most notably Bonifacius; An Essay upon the Good (Boston 1710), an extremely popular work in its own time, both because of its spiritual counsel for religious persons and for its practical advice for daily living. Benjamin Franklin was significantly influenced by Bonifacius; the instructive guide served as a context for Franklin's own Silence Dogood essays.

Bonifacius is also notable as a further development of Mather's scientific interests. Mather had been interested in science even in the 1680s and '90s when he was conducting experiments and examining evidence during the witchcraft hysteria. But as modern views have changed in regard to witchcraft, and as religion and science have moved further apart into distinct disciplines, the scientific context for the witchcraft trials has been lost. Unfortunately for Mather's reputation, modern scholars have not devoted as much time to Mather's more recognizably scientific knowledge. Yet in three works in particular, The Christian Philosopher (London 1720), The Angel of Bethesda (New London 1722), and Agricola (Boston 1727), Mather proved to be as deeply committed to advancing scientific hypotheses as he was in defending witchcraft persecutions. Mather makes a concerted effort to re-examine biblical truths in light of new-found knowledge of the natural world. Most significant is The Christian Philosopher, an extraordinary 300-page volume summarizing a full-range of scientific developments—from the physical to the biological sciences—from the perspective of a theologian who sees science (philosophy) and Christianity as interlocked. Mather develops this interrelationship with topics ranging from the rotation of planets to the origin of species, and with discussions of concepts like light, magnetism, and gravity:

To our Globe there is one Property so exceedingly and so generally subservient, that a very great Notice is due to it; that is, GRAVITY, or the Tendency of Bodies to the Center. A most noble Contrivance (as Mr. Derham observes) to keep the several Globes of the Universe from shattering to pieces, as they would else evidently do in a little Time, thro their Swift Rotation round their own Axes. . . . Very various have been the Sentiments of the Curious, what Cause there should be assign'd for this great and catholick Affection of Matter, the Vis Centripeta: I shall wave them all, and bury them in the Place of Silence, with the Materia Striata of Descartes, which our Keil has very sufficiently brought to nothing . . . 'Tis enough to me what that incomparable Mathematician, Dr. Halley, has declar'd upon it: That, after all, Gravity is an Effect insolvable by any philosophical Hypothesis; it must be religiously resolv'd into the immediate Will of our most wise CREATOR, who, by appointing this Law, throughout the material World, keeps all Bodies in their proper Places and Stations, which without it would soon fall to pieces, and be utterly destroy'd.

Although much of The Christian Philosopher may be seen as derivative, with its frequent quotations from well-known seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scientific works, including Newton's Principia (1687), it was the first general book on science to be published in America. The Christian Philosopher encapsulates the transition between the two centuries and anticipates later scientific developments, to which Mather was expressly devoted. He wrote letters on topics ranging from astronomy to zoology to the Royal Society of London, a British association dedicated to the advancement of science, and was elected to the Royal Society in 1713, a very high distinction. He was also instrumental in proposing to Boston doctors the new medical procedure of inoculation for smallpox, a disease that had ravaged the New World. While engaged in the pamphlet debates of the period, Mather published Sentiments on the Small Pox Inoculated (Boston 1721) and An Account of Inoculating the Small Pox (Boston 1722). In retrospect, the procedure for inoculation—which Mather was willing to employ on his own children—was no less peculiar, and for some even more sinister (injecting disease into the body, as some believed) than the exorcisms practiced on witches (removing the “disease” or demonic possession from the body), especially by early eighteenth-century standards. Yet Mather won favor for his convictions and has been vindicated, though not well-remembered for his actions.

Contemporaries of Cotton Mather and current scholars have viewed him as an orthodox theologian who exemplified the very essence of Puritan piety and self-doubt. When Mather died on February 13, 1728, the day after his sixty-fifth birthday, ministers from all of New England mourned the loss of perhaps the greatest figure in all of Puritanism. Fellow minister Benjamin Colman eulogized him as a pious Puritan who would “live a great while among us in his printed Works; but yet these will not convey to Posterity, nor give to Strangers, a just Idea of the real Worth and great Learning of the Man.” Biographers David Levin, Babette Levy, Mason Lowance, and Robert Middlekauff have all described Mather as a typical Puritan lured by temptation, fixated on sinfulness, and distracted by earthly cares. Yet each has also indicated the ambiguities in Mather's life and work, as if his private attempts to record sin were also public efforts of moral persuasion, a testament itself to Mather's intellectual prowess and rhetorical genius.

Mather must also be remembered for his expansion of the Puritan errand into a distinctly American strand of thinking, a tactic especially useful for his more nationalistic eighteenth-century heirs. As son and fellow minister Samuel said in his funeral sermon for his father, The Departure and Character of Elijah (Boston 1728), Cotton Mather “alone was able to support the Character of this Country abroad, and was had in great Esteem thro' many Nations in EUROPE.” Kenneth Silverman, in his Pulitzer-prize winning biography, The Life and Times of Cotton Mather (1985), echoed Samuel's sentiment by describing Mather as someone who “strove to become conspicuous as an American”, who in his “curiousness, epic reach, and quirkily ingenious individualism” was indeed the “first unmistakably American figure in the nation's history.” By perusing the titles of Mather's works, including his most famous Magnalia Christi Americana, and his neologisms within those works (identifying major Puritan figures with the American continent), we see his keen interest in reimagining the Puritan errand as a distinctly American mission.

Finally, too, we must acknowledge the sheer volume of publications produced by Cotton Mather. No one ever published as much as Mather did and on such a wide range of topics. If he could not match the political prowess of his father, or the homiletic instructiveness of his grandfather John Cotton, he surpassed all in his commitment to the written word. Partly to overcome speech difficulties and partly to share his extraordinary knowledge, Mather's devotion to his writing primarily emanates from his desire to maintain and expand upon the vision of the Puritan founders. This vision was decidedly historical, and Mather indeed was much more of an intellectual historian than he was a scientist or political figure, or perhaps even a minister. Not only a writer of history, he also shaped how history would be written. His historical vision, at once cumulative and prophetic, made him a significant proponent of reform, with an intellectual energy born from the same imagination that had produced his exclamatory discovery of the devil's presence in New England. As minister and scholar, Mather devoted himself to the practice of historiography, with an eye toward prophecy, with an ear for the intonations and iterations of Puritan piety, and a vision of biblical typology and sacred history as exempla for the Puritan errand and as models for a new American city upon a hill.

Citation: Silva, Alan J.. "Cotton Mather". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 June 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=2984, accessed 26 November 2024.]