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 (96 page)

BOOK: The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728
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29.
Ibid
. II, 523.
30.
Ibid
. II, 194.
31.
Ibid
. II, 330.
32.
Ibid
. II,
passim
.
33. Cotton Mather,
A Short Life, Yet Not A Vain One
(Boston, 1714), 13.
34. I have discussed at some length several of these problems of Mather's inner life, incuding "deadness" in "Piety and Intellect in Puritanism,"
William and Mary Quarterly
, 3d. Ser., XXII (July 1965), 457-70.
35. Cotton Mather,
Diary
, I, 83 for the quotation. See I, 81-84 for a list of the objects of his ejaculatory prayers. Mather tells of beginning his vigils in I, 421-22. I have discussed his "daily spiritualizing" in "Piety and Intellect." For an example see his
Agricola
(Boston, 1727).
36. For his "particular faiths", see "Piety and Intellect." The
Page 399
quotations are from Mather's
Parentator
, 189-90;
Diary
I, 343, 355, 400. For a repetition of the conversion process,
Diary
, II, 696.
37. For the quotation,
Diary
, II, 69. Although Cotton Mather was an inventive man, he did not originate most of these techniques of worship. Many indeed were hundreds of years old, and he read about them in medieval and Reformed commentaries. There were also Puritan models close at hand, as his life of John Eliot,
The Triumphs Of The Reformed Religion, In America
(Boston, 1691) reveals. An English writer, whom both Increase and Cotton Mather seem to have read, also may have been suggestive. See Isaac Ambrose,
Prima: The First Things
(London, 1654) and
Media: The Middle Things
(London, 1657).
38. The events mentioned in this paragraph often occupy his attention in the
Diary
and in his preaching.
39. See "Piety and Intellect" for his imitation of Christ. See, too, Chapters 18 and 19 for this and the other topics noted in this paragraph.
BOOK: The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728
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