Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
The countless tracts, for the most part inconsequential, that issued
in an unbroken stream from the tireless Mather pens, consuming all the
italics in the printer’s case, constitute a veritable _cheval-de-frise_
to protect their authors’ literary reputations from any Philistine
attack; and behind that bristling barricade they have long bidden
defiance to casual invasion. Only a siege can reduce their stronghold
and bring them forth into the clear light of day.
Two generations of Harvard scholarship have essayed the undertaking,
but there is still wanting the detached critic who will set the
Mathers against an adequate historical background, and appraise them
objectively in relation to their times. The Harvard contributions are
excellent in their way, but a consciousness of dealing with Harvard
worthies would seem to have laid the writers under certain inhibitions.
Exposition too easily slides into apologetics. The latest study[96] is
a somewhat meticulous defense. It is an extraordinarily painstaking
document, that has added to our knowledge of Increase Mather’s life and
work, but it was unhappily conceived in the dark of the moon, a season
congenial to strange quirks of fancy. Some tangle it has cleared away,
but fresh obstacles have been added by the intrusion of a thesis to be
defended. In consequence, the interpretation of motives is colored by
special pleading, and the very necessary inquiry into the sources of
those virulent antagonisms that sprang up full-armed in the minister’s
every footprint is put aside as ungermane to a biography. It is an
unfortunate assumption for it puts aside much that is crucial. The
rehabilitation becomes too easy and complete. It proves too much. It
would have us believe that in spite of all the smoke that gathered
about Increase Mather’s militant pilgrimage through life, there was
never any fire of his kindling; that in spite of all the puddles
through which the priestly politician splashed to reach his ends, no
spot or stain ever smutched his gown. The contention may be sound, but
it puts credulity to the strain, and unless one has something of a
Mather stomach for marvels, one is likely to indulge in the luxury of
doubt.
II
The Mathers were a singularly provocative family, capable, ambitious,
certain to have a finger in every pie baking in the theocratic oven.
From the emigrant Richard with the great voice, chief architect of the
Cambridge Platform, to the provincial Cotton, the family combativeness
and love of publicity put their marks on New England history. Of the
three generations, certainly Increase Mather was the most generously
endowed with capacity for leadership; an able man, practical and
assertive, liking to be in the forefront of affairs, not wanting his
light hidden under a bushel. An arch-conservative, he justified his
ways to his conscience by the excellence of the heritage he strove
to conserve. A formalist, he satisfied his intellectual curiosity by
extolling the sufficiency of the creed of the fathers. He closed the
windows of his mind against the winds of new doctrine, and bounded
the fields of speculative inquiry by orthodox fences. He was of the
succession of John Cotton rather than Thomas Hooker, a priestly
theocrat, though never a shuffler like Cotton, less troubled by free
inquiry, less by the intellectual. All his life he was inhibited
from bold speculation by his personal loyalties and interests. As
a beneficiary of things as they were, certain to lose in prestige
and power with any relaxing of the theocracy, it would be asking
too much of human nature to expect him to question the sufficiency
of the established system of which he was the most distinguished
representative. Not to have approved it would have been to repudiate
his habitual way of thinking, his deepest prejudices, his strongest
convictions. He had been molded and shaped by the theocracy; it was
the very marrow of his bones; as well demand that pig iron turn molten
again after it comes from the matrix. The ore of which he was fashioned
was excellent, but once molded it was rigid; there would be no return
to fluidity. And so determined by every impact of environment, by every
appeal of loyalty, and by a very natural ambition, Increase Mather
became a stout upholder of the traditional order, a staunch old Puritan
Tory of the theocratic line. How could any promptings of liberalism
find nourishment in such a mind?[97] Why should one expect to find in
the works of such a man the seeds of new systems of thought or more
generous institutions? He was the outstanding figure of the theocracy
in the days of its overthrow, but intellectually he was not worthy to
unloose the shoe-strings of Roger Williams.
In his professional capacity, Increase Mather was the priest rather
than the theologian, a pastor of the flock, an expounder of the
creed, rather than a seeker after new light. As a minister his mind
was circumscribed by the thinking of John Calvin. He learned nothing
from Luther, and was bitterly hostile to those phases of Independency
that embodied the more generous Lutheran principles. No man was by
temperament better fitted to embrace the coercive spirit of the Genevan
discipline. Strong-willed and ascetic, he discovered in discipline
the chief end for which the children of Adam are created. A profound
admirer of the close-knit Genevan system, he was a Presbyterian in
spirit, a man after Calvin’s own heart, who clung to the old coercions
in an age that was seeking to throw them off. If he counseled
innovation it was in the way of strengthening ministerial authority,
never in the way of liberalizing either creed or practice. It was the
Congregationalism of the Cambridge Platform, and not that of early
Plymouth, that he upheld; and to strengthen that order he turned
earnestly to the practical work of Presbyterianizing. He was the prime
mover in summoning the synod of 1679-80, requested by the Court to
consider amongst other things what “may appeare necessary for the
preventing schismes, haeresies, prophaneness, & the establishment of
the churches in one faith & order of the gospell,”[98] and the chief
suggestions of the body, of which he was the conspicuous leader, were
a return to a stricter discipline, and a strengthening of the passage
in the Savoy Confession of faith--adopted by the synod--by borrowings
from the Westminster Confession, which “more positively set forth the
authority of the state in doctrinal questions.”[99]
In 1691, while in London, Mather had been active in the work of uniting
the Presbyterian and Congregational churches of England, under articles
that would seem to have been more Presbyterian than Congregational;
and in 1705, following the curiously spiteful controversy over the
Brattle Street Church he joined vigorously in the proposed work of
rejuvenating the New England system by engrafting further shoots
from the Presbyterian stock. One of these grafts from the London,
agreement--the principle of licensing ministerial candidates by the
association of ministers, thereby effectively preventing the intrusion
of undesired members--established itself on the Congregational system;
but another--the principle of associational control of the several
churches--was blighted by the attack of John Wise.[100] What this
desired consolidation of power in the hands of the ministers implied,
is suggested by the terms of the Cambridge Platform, which asserted
that “the work & duty of the people is expressed in the phrase of
obeying their Elders,” and that they may not “speak in church, before
they have leave from the elders: nor continue so doing, when they
require silence, nor may they oppose nor contradict the judgment or
sentence of the Elders, without sufficient & weighty cause.”[101]
Recalling that the elders of a church had been reduced in number to the
single minister, one may perhaps venture to suggest that a man ardently
working to strengthen the hands of the ministerial oligarchy by further
Presbyterianizing was no friend to Separatist-Congregationalism, nor
one in whom the spirit of humility would work any lessening of the
authority of the Lord’s stewards.[102]
In his conception of toleration Mather followed naturally in the
footsteps of John Cotton. He would tolerate all views that were not
in error, but his criteria of truth were so far from catholic as to
lead him into constant and vehement attack upon other sects. As a
responsible leader he was careful to clothe his attacks with generous
professions; but he never stepped forward to uphold the right of
free thought, or to dissuade his brethren from heresy-baiting. His
biographer is greatly impressed by the minister’s professions, and
takes them at somewhat more than face value, forgetting the ancient
saying that by the fruits of men’s lives they shall be known. Casuistry
is useful for purposes of defense, and a skillful apologist can explain
away much; but the spirit of toleration revealed in the following
passages was certainly no child of liberalism:
The “Anabaptists” had given trouble in New England. They had
installed as minister a man excommunicated from the Congregational
church, and, when their meeting-house was closed to them, they
persisted in assembling publicly before its barred doors rather
than worship unmolested in a private house. To Mather these were
attacks upon the true faith, and manifest disturbances of the
civil peace. Naturally there is some acidity in his strictures
on the “blasted Error” of “Antipedobaptism.”... He denounces
Baptists roundly enough, points to their kinship with the turbulent
Anabaptists in Europe, and writes: “Are they not generally of a bad
Spirit? Bitter enemies to the Lords most eminent Servants? yea,
to the faithfull Ambassadors, spitting the cruel venome of Asps
against them.”
He then concludes: “Nor is the modern reader likely to disagree”
with the apology by President Oakes, who wrote in an introduction to
Mather’s screed:
It is sufficiently known to those that know the Author, that he is
none of the Ishmaels of the times, that have their hand against
every man and love to be taking a Dog by the Ears ... or to be
dabling in the waters of strife.... They that know his Doctrine
and manner of life, cannot but know that the life of his Spirit
is in the things of practical Divinity, and the great Design of
his ministry is to promote the power and practice of piety in the
greatest instances.... I dare undertake ... his design ... is not
to traduce ... those that are otherwise minded, or expose them to
severities & sufferings on the bare account of their opinion.[103]
From these curious passages the unsympathetic realist is likely to draw
the conclusions that the spirit of mutual admiration came to early
birth in New England, and that it makes a vast difference whose ox
is gored. Something of the same casuistry is employed to explain away
Increase Mather’s unhappy part in the witchcraft mess.[104] The whole
matter is involved and rendered difficult by guilty consciences and the
need to save reputations, and perhaps the facts are not to be got at;
yet it is only another instance to show how quickly candor flies out
at the window when a Mather comes in at the door. One may make much or
little of the son’s statement that Increase grew more tolerant in his
later years; it would seem at best to have been only the difference
between black and dark gray. A dominating man does not take kindly to
differences of counsel. Increase Mather was a stout upholder of the law
and order in the shaping of which he had a hand, but he looked with no
friendly eye on the architects of a different order; and the bitterness
of his later years was the natural consequence of a strong, proud,