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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Cotton Mather Biography MATHER, măth'ẽr, Cotton (1663–1728). A colonial divine and author, eldest son of Increase Mather (q.v.) and Maria, daughter of John Cotton (q.v.). He was born in Boston, Feb. 12, 1663. He was very precocious and was unfortunately overestimated and praised, with the result that he became morbidly self-conscious. An omnivorous reader from the first, he entered Harvard at 11 and graduated in 1678 at 15. At 16 he studied medicine, despairing of being able to enter the ministry on account of a propensity to stammering. This he conquered by methods of deliberate speech, and at 17 preached his first sermon and became an assistant to his father. He took his master's degree in 1681, refusing a call to New Haven, and became associate pastor with his father in the North Church of Boston. In 1686 he married; two years later his father's mission to England left him at the age of 25 in sole charge of the North Church, and probably the most important man in Boston. He was widely celebrated as a scholar and was the obvious leader of the conservative element among the Puritans of the day. He had also begun to take a great interest in the subject of witchcraft, his Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions appearing in 1689. During the witchcraft epidemic at Salem in 1692 he became an infatuated investigator of suspected cases, a constant adviser of the magistrates, and wrote his Wonders of the Invisible World (1693) to confute all doubters. In 1693 Mather planned his great ecclesiastical history of New England, the Magnalia, which was finished in 1697 and finally appeared in 1702. Meanwhile he was overworked and much troubled by attacks made upon him for his activity in the witchcraft crisis. He was also much worried by his father's troubles as president of Harvard, and later was disappointed in not himself receiving the position. He had family troubles, and was furthermore doomed to see more liberal forms of religious thought prevailing around him. Nevertheless, he continued to be a prominent and useful citizen, waging war on intemperance and other forms of immorality. In 1703 he married again. In 1707 a final breach with Governor Dudley greatly lessened his public influence. A few years later he was made a D.D. by the University of Glasgow, but tributes to his merits as divine, scholar, and author could not compensate for domestic unhappiness caused by various deaths and by the dissolute conduct of one of his sons. His second wife dying in 1713, he took another two years later and suffered greatly in consequence of her derangement. In 1721 by his bold stand in favor of inoculation for smallpox he aroused a storm of opposition to himself. Then came his father's death, a final disappointment with regard to the presidency of Harvard, and his own death, Feb. 13, 1728. Cotton Mather was a man of extraordinary learning, a stanch upholder of antiquity, especially in matters of theology and Church polity, a marvelously voluminous writer, an active politician, and, when not misled by excitement, a public-spirited citizen. His connection with the persecution of the witches has given him a sinister reputation, which no efforts of biographers have been able to efface; but it is certain that he was sincere in his beliefs, and not thoughtlessly cruel; and he is better remembered than any other of the early colonial divines. Few persons can now find time to read his numerous books, but no student of the period during which he lived should speak of him without gratitude. His Magnalia is full of errors, yet gives the very " form and presence" of its age and represents labors truly heroic. The most important of his works are: Poem to the Memory of Urian Oakes (1682); Wonders of the Invisible World (1693; reprinted in "Library of Old Authors," 1862); Magnalia Christi Americana (1702; reprinted in two volumes, 1820 and 1853); Bonifacius, etc., or, as it is better known, Essays to Do Good (1710; Glasgow, 1838); Parentator (Boston, 1724), a curious and interesting life of his father, Increase. His Diary (c.1687–1708) was published in 1911 by the Massachusetts Historical Society. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XV (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 238-239.
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