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 (45 page)

 
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the bill for the covenant of grace; man's task was to strive to come under the covenant with Christ. This agreement that God made with Himself became for man the covenant of reconciliation. It gave the covenant of grace its power, and more, its very being.
35
If Mather's Christology was one more expression of his belief in God's power and man's helplessness, it became by the early years of the eighteenth century a vehicle for criticizing much of the preaching of his day. As early as 1712, he hinted at what he considered were the causes of the failure to convert the people of New England. The reason men did not convert, he implied in a manual he wrote to help them find their way to grace, was that some ministers"some Excellent Servants of God"led men to believe that they could enter the covenant as equals with God. That "
Form
of coming into the Covenant" has not been "without Blessed Effects," Mather admitted; but too often it had failed because men trusted their own strength in using it.
36
Mather had raised again the dilemma that had inhered in Puritan theory since its beginnings in the sixteenth century. How could men act when they were helpless to act? They could not believe by themselves; they could not enter the covenant unassisted; they could not lead good lives without divine assistance. The preaching that attempted to deal with these problems by telling men that if they believed in Christ they must demand the covenant from God had produced these civil, moral men whom Puritan ministers had complained of for a hundred years. Cotton Mather recognized them in their self-satisfaction and branded themto their faces"practical atheists." This same preaching, through its emphasis on preparation, had also stimulated scrupulosity so great as to be paralyzing in another sort of men. This group was made overly self-conscious by the dissection of the preparatory stages and by the incessant demand that they examine themselves for grace. Mather sympathized with such men and urged them to trust Christ; he also pointed out that their belief that they must have merit before God would give them grace still lingered in this group. The old covenant preaching had yielded still a third group, Mather believed: they were men who could not feel anything about religion, either love or hatred toward God, and who were not frightened by their inability to fear God. This group appears
 
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to have been a phenomenon of the third generation, psychologically far removed from the founders, and completely the children of an emergent capitalistic societythis-worldly, recognizing godliness but not experiencing it.
37
To move the men in all these groups Mather began preaching the psychology of abasement and his version of covenant theory. His psychological theory and his Christology "solved" in seventeenth-century terms the dilemmas that had long troubled lay-men and divines alike. His "solution" readily conceded that men were helpless to act; everything Mather believed about conversion hinged on the acceptance of God's omnipotence and human weakness. All he urged was that men should beg for the strength to despise themselves; they should ask for help in order to plead for salvation; their natures after all prevented them from doing it naturally. They could not even attain a saving "fear" without Christ's aid. When they were frightened by external compulsion they resolved to please God, and set about to do it "in their own strength.'' And of course because they attributed worth to their efforts ''
All
presently comes to
Nothing
."
38
Mather reached this insight after years of observation. He himself had often attempted to frighten men into converting, and never really stopped. But he did translate his hard-found knowledge into his preaching. The year before he died he declared his dissatisfaction to a large gathering in Boston that had been badly frightened by an earthquake. "I freely own to you, that I am not entirely satisfied in a
Form of Covenanting
with GOD, wherein we act our selves as
Principals
and a Glorious CHRIST is brought in only as an
Accessary.
"
39
Hence the emphasis he gave to the covenant of redemption.
But Mather did more than play up one covenant and play down another. He made this emphasis on Christ the most important technique of the New Piety. Almost all his preaching in the eighteenth century urged men to accept their status as accessories to Christ, to deny the value of the self in favor of Christ. Mather, of course, was not preaching a new doctrine in these sermons; he was not really preaching a doctrine at all. The psychological premise of his homiletics in the eighteenth century was the promise of the emotional fulfillment that awaited men who accepted the MAXIMS OF PIETY. They would ex-
 
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perience raptures and joy when Christ gathered them to Himself. What Christ required of them was apparently simpletheir full acceptance of their conditions as accessories to Him. At this point Mather's covenant theory, his Christology, and his psychology of religious experience were fused in the New Piety.
40
Mather entertained great hopes for men who covenanted in this way. With generations of ministers in New England he had long called for the reformation of society in the expectation that Christ's coming would immediately follow. And men joined together in covenant with Christ, experiencing the inspiration of the New Piety, might do much for others in their land. And thatdoing good to menoffered one more way to glorify God.
 
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15
The Failure of Reformation
Three or four years into the eighteenth century, Cotton Mather realized that his hopes for the conversion of men and their cooperation in a Christian Union were going to be delayed. The collapse of the United Brethren in England was clear, though he and others continued to use that term to describe dissenting Protestants in England and America. In New England true conversions were rare, as men seemed bent on entering the covenant on their own merits. Others pied their worthlessness as reason for remaining in an unregenerate state. None of these conditions was new, and ministers responded with the language of the jeremiad, calling for reformation and predicting destruction if men failed to come to the Lord. As old as the responses, were the results: Stoddard said, "Attempts for Reformation have been like attempts to find the Philosophers Stone."
1
Over the years of his ministry, but especially in the years before 1691, Mather delivered many conventional assessments of his people's character. In these sermons, denunciation invariably overpowered whatever inclinations he had to give reassurance that things were not as bad as they appeared. The Synod of 1679 provided the bill of indictment, and Mather
 
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followed the list faithfully, permitting himself originality only in his expressions of horror and in the fullness with which he illustrated the sins of the land. He reminded his audience that sin invariably brought afflictions and then pointed out the recent examples and predicted fresh onslaughts. Only slightly less frequently did he remark on the possibility that God would give up on New England altogether.
2
According to ancient belief, which Cotton Mather sometimes resurrected and sent forth in his sermons, Providence decreed that good would emerge finally from the sins of men and the disasters that befell them. Providence worked in its own mysterious ways, and men were bound to accept that the Lord would find a way to transform the evil and the ugly into the good and beautiful. Mather accepted this proposition with his head, but he had great difficulty in believing in his heart that any good could proceed from the decay of New England. Of course, God would have His Church elsewhere even if He decided to cast off the people. And what would the people have? Cotton Mather knew: a blasting on earth while they remained on its face and eternal torment once they left it.
3
Many ministers had preceded him with the prediction "Reformation or Desolation" but none until Jonathan Edwards succeeded in imparting a greater sense of urgency to the call for action.
4
Edwards succeeded through a mastery of language; Mather, by an analysis that touched every group in the community. The general problem of his society, as he said in a number of ways, was its drift from the true religion. Religion had decayed; the Church suffered from a loss of communicants, and hypocrites lurked among those it claimed for its own. New Englanders of his day simply could not match the piety of the founders. This decline also appeared in the lives men led away from the meetinghouse. In pointing this out, Mather did not hide his displeasure from the powerful, telling merchants, for example, that he did not like the way business was conducted in New England. This stand required courage because most of his church was made up of moderately fixed businessmen who were on the make. Cotton Mather warned them to curb their appetites: "stinted estates" were best, he said. He also opposed directly the growing mobility in New England, insisting that men should not give up honest callings to enter new ones simply
 
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to earn more money. Exploitation of the poor, sharp practices, high interest on loans all drew his fire.
5
Cotton Mather's criticism gained from his concreteness. Not content to list the familiar sins of usury, oppression, and extortion, he spoke to merchants and tradesmen with unaccustomed directness. They were, it appeared, guilty of sharp and shabby business practice. They must have eyed one another, and their customers in the audience, as he indicted them in a sermon before the General Court in 1709:
"For men to put off
Adulterated
or
Counterfeited
Wares; or, for men to work up their Wares
Deceitfully;
when the fish is naught; the Tar has undue mixtures; there is Dirt and Stone instead of Turpentine; there are thick Layers of Salt instead of other things that should be there; the Cheese is not made as tis affirm'd to be; the Liquor is not for Quantity or Quality such as was agreed for; the Wood is not of the Dimensions that are promised unto the Purchaser; or perhaps, there was a
Trespass
in the place of Cutting it; the Hay does not hold out Weight by abundance; the Lumber has a false Number upon it; or, the
Bundles
are not as Good
Within
as they are
Without; Tis an Abomination!
"
6
The failures of the younger generation seemed hardly less abominable. Young men aped modern fashions and kept out of sight unless they could wear the latest styles. They shrank too before the suggestion that they should make professions of their religious experiences, if they had any, and they avoided the Sabbath services as carefully as they put aside last year's clothing. They drank, they rioted, they pursued the gratifications of the senses wherever carnality carried them. But most grievously of all, they rejected the ways of their fathers.
7
If much of Mather's concern was expressed about men in business and men in their youth, these two groups did not constitute the entire array that angered him. Political factions who made the new charter their target, dissolute old men who had neglected their opportunities for salvation, traders who debauched the Indians with rum, and many others also earned his scorn. In this long indictment, one charge took precedence over all the restthe fragmentation of the community. The separateness of all these groups severely compromised the possibilities for a true union of Christians.
8

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