Magnalia Christi Americana

Transcription

Cotton Mather is one of the most interesting and most misunderstood figures in the history of Boston. Probably Boston's most prolific writer, over the course of his lifetime he wrote over 300 books, many of them small books of prayers and devotionals, his sermons, but still a major accomplishment. His father, of course, was Increase Mather, the great leader of the Puritan movement in the late 17th century. His two grandfathers were equally learned; Richard Mather who is the pastor in Dorchester, and John Cotton who was the great intellectual leader of the Puritan movement. So, Cotton Mather has a very distinguished theological pedigree and he writes one of his great books, the Magnalia Christi Americana, which is a chronicle, an account of the great works of God and forming New England. It's really one of the first histories of New England. And he also writes about the natural world, he's a great student of this natural world around us. In fact, in the 1710s he becomes a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, the leading scientific organization in the English-speaking world, as he's been sending them accounts and documents and actual stuff from the New World as he's trying to explore the scientific curiosities. He has a microscope through which he studies amoebas and other things which are barely understood by the leading scientific minds of the day. Now at the same time, of course, he becomes a minister. He goes to Harvard, he actually enters Harvard when he's about 10 years old. He's younger than the other students and if you just think about it, here he is, younger than the other students, his father is one of the leading ministers here, and the other Harvard students don't really take kindly to him because Cotton Mather is always conscious of his own intellectual superiority to those around him. And the one career the really seems suited for him is the ministry because that does require great intellectual power, a great understanding of scripture and theology, which he certainly has, a great philosophical mind. However, he has a real drawback, a real stumbling block to a career in the ministry: he has a stutter, he stammers. And a minister is required to speak for several hours at a stretch and Cotton Mather stutters. So, when he does finish at Harvard, and he is one of the most brilliant students in the history of the university, the only position open to him is as the assistant pastor at his father's church. His dad hires him to be his assistant and of course Increase Mather, at this time, is at the height of his career and Cotton Mather, if there were actuarial tables in the 17th century, might have consulted them and seen that one day he might be the pastor of the North Church. Of course, Increase Mather lives for another sixty years after this. Increase Mather dies early in the 1720s in he's about 90, and Cotton Mather follows him to the grave just a few years later. So, his whole life was spent in the shadow of his father, and plus his whole life is spent in the shadow of himself. He is one of the most brilliant men of his era and has a way of alienating people. As I said, he has one foot in this world of science and another in the world of Puritan theology. During the witchcraft outbreak he, in fact, wrote the book in the 1680s on witchcraft, and at the Salem trials he advanced the idea of spectral evidence being a useful thing, that is if God would not allow a good person's image to be used by a witch, or a good person to become possessed by the devil. Therefore, if you see the visage of someone acting in witch-like way that's a sign that they are in fact witches. Interesting idea, and spectral evidence is part of the prosecution of witches in Salem in 1692. The Mathers, of course, were also involved in the prosecution of Quakers in the 1660s. And routing out of evil is always something a minister should be interested in, and Cotton Mather is very much so as he's also interested in the good of New England, the good in all of its ways. Now, probably Mather's most influential book was called Bonifacius, the essays to do good. And later in life Benjamin Franklin, who had known Cotton Mather as a young man, as a teenager in Boston, wrote about what an influence that book had on him. He wrote to Mather's son that it was that book that gave him a turn of thinking that influenced his whole life, that it made him conscious of wanting to be a good citizen, of wanting to do good. And Franklin said to Mather's son, who also was a Boston minister, that if I have been a useful citizen it is because of that book. The book that Cotton Mather wrote back in 1700 influenced the course that Franklin would take for the rest of his life. So, Cotton Mather, an interesting, complicated figure, married four times, buried most of his children, sad life, productive life, really makes a greater impact on Boston, I think, than he would have understood.