Main currents in American thought An interpretation of American literature from the beginnings to 1920
ambitious man, thwarted in his dearest projects.
If he contributed nothing to a more liberal theology or church
organization, it is idle to expect him to have contributed to political
speculation. As a leader of the theocracy he meddled much in practical
politics, but it would seem that he was quite unread in the political
philosophers and wholly ignorant of major principles. The great English
liberals of Commonwealth times and later left him untouched. He bought
and read many books, but almost none of a political nature.[105]
Hobbes, Harrington, Sidney, Milton, Filmer, Locke, were as much out
of his intellectual ken as were the speculations of Roger Williams.
Interest in political theory had ceased in Massachusetts with the
banishment of the great Independent, and the principles of liberal
thinkers like Harrington and Milton would have awakened little sympathy
in so stalwart a theocrat as Increase Mather. He was a practical
man, an administrator and mentor, a stern _castigator morum_ to the
commonwealth, and as a college president he had been trained in a
school little notable for its sympathetic consideration of the views
of subordinates. He got on ill with his Harvard tutors, and one of the
unseemliest squabbles of his later years grew out of the bitterness
sowed between a “strong” administrator and his teaching staff.[106] A
man accounted less pious, concerned with ends more patently worldly,
might well be reckoned dictatorial and domineering; but Puritan
righteousness, perhaps, is not to be judged by profane standards, nor
the same severity of judgment applied to politicians laboring in the
theocratic vineyard, that is applied to the common breed.
Perhaps the happiest years of Increase Mather’s arduous life were those
spent in London as agent of the theocratic party to secure such terms
as he could for the settlement of New England. It was a congenial task
and a congenial field. His love of diplomacy and his fondness for
England were both gratified. He mingled there on terms of equality with
the intellectual leaders of English Nonconformity, and matched his wit
with men high in station. He proved himself a skillful manager, but
the threads were too tangled for any Puritan diplomat to smoothe out,
and he fell short of his hopes. The terms of the charter as finally
drafted satisfied few of the Boston theocrats, and his nomination of
Sir William Phipps for Governor was certainly ill-judged. Sir William
had been converted to the true faith by Increase himself and was
reckoned by him a chosen vessel of the Lord; but he turned out to be no
better than a cracked pot, and with the coming of Dudley the political
influence of Increase Mather was finally broken. He was maneuvered
out of his position as president of Harvard and later suffered the
mortification of seeing the post fall into the hands of Leverett, the
old tutor now become an influential politician, with whom he had been
bitterly at outs. “Doubtless there is not any government in the world,”
he wrote, “that has been laid under greater obligations by a greater
man than this government has been by me. Nevertheless I have received
more discouragement in the work of the Lord, by those in government,
than by all the men in the world besides. Let not my children put too
much confidence in men.”[107] It is not pleasant to be ousted from
one’s position by politicians, and if one is certain that the slight
intended for the servant falls on the Master, it is scarcely to be
borne. If waves of black pessimism swept over him in those unhappy
later years when his ambitions were hopelessly frustrated, there was
provocation enough. He had outlived his age and the ablest of the
native-born theocrats had become a byword and a mocking amongst the
profane of Boston.
Not a great man, as the world reckons greatness, Increase Mather
may scarcely be accounted a great Puritan. As a theologian he was
wanting in speculative vigor, and as a pastor he was wanting in
self-denying love. It is not necessary to set him over against Roger
Williams or Jonathan Edwards or William Ellery Channing, to reveal his
intellectual and spiritual shortcomings. One has only to place him
beside so rugged and honest a Puritan as Samuel Hopkins, who in true
Christian humility, utterly regardless of his own fame, gave his life
to theology and the care of the poor and the outcast, to realize how
conventional a soul was Increase Mather, how incurious intellectually,
how ambitious and self-seeking. Men loved Samuel Hopkins even though
they might vigorously reject his doctrine, as they loved Roger Williams
and Ellery Channing; but few seem to have loved Increase Mather. One
might respect his abilities, but he was too austerely forbidding to
like, too overbearing to awaken the spirit of good will. Ideas in
the abstract held no interest for him. His biographer has happily
recalled Mather’s forgotten interest in scientific inquiry, and for
this slight relief from the intolerable drab of his life-story one
may be grateful. Yet one must not build too high on an insubstantial
foundation. In the England that Mather loved, and toward which
he was strongly drawn--hoping that opportunity would offer for a
pulpit there--pottering over natural philosophy had become a mark
of distinction, and a man so envious of repute would have wished to
approve himself to those whom he admired. Though he lived in Boston he
would not have it thought that he was provincial.
Of the miscellaneous literary output that flowed from his pen in
an abundant stream, little need be said. It is of concern only to
minute historians of the local. That he was master of an excellent
prose style, clear and straightforward, is sufficiently evident; if
his matter had been so good, his legitimate fame would have been far
greater. The work on which his reputation largely rests is _An Essay
for the Recording of Illustrious Providences_, printed at Boston and
London in 1684, and twice reissued in the nineteenth century under the
title _Remarkable Providences_. It is an amusing book of old wives’
tales, not singular at all for the times, but characteristic rather;
an expression of the naïveté that crops out in Winthrop’s _History
of New England_, and other writings of the emigrant generation, but
now become a fashion amongst the lesser lights of the Royal Academy
and English Nonconformists. It suited to a nicety the Mather love
of marvels, and Increase constituted himself a generous repository
of all the chimney-corner tales of the countryside. To call such a
book “a scientific and historical recording of phenomena observed
in New England,” as his biographer has done, is to gall the back
of a thesis with hard riding.[108] In one chapter only does Mather
suggest the spirit of scientific inquiry; four out of the twelve deal
with witchcraft and kindred topics; and the rest are made up of such
instances of divine providence as great fish jumping out of the sea
into the boats of starving sailors adrift, of the freaks played by
lightning and tornadoes, and of God’s punishments on wicked Quakers.
At the time it was a harmless enough book, but in the light of after
developments it was scarcely so harmless. The emphasis laid upon
witchcraft was an unfortunate, if unconsidered, influence in preparing
the psychology of New England for the Salem outbreak, and the minister
later reaped a bitter harvest from it.
“Not many years ago,” he wrote in the preface to _Illustrious
Providences_, “I _lost_ (and that’s an afflictive _loss_ indeed!)
several moneths from study by sickness. Let every God-fearing reader
joyn with me in prayer, that I may be enabled to redeem the time,
and (in all ways wherein I am capable) to serve my generation.” That
Increase Mather sincerely desired to serve his generation according to
his lights, none may deny. His labors were appalling, his reputation
was great, and when he died the light of the old churches went out.
The spirit of Presbyterianism went to its grave in New England, and
not till a hundred years later did the new light--which was no other
than primitive English Independency--shine out in the life and work of
William Ellery Channing. After two centuries Unitarianism recovered
for the Massachusetts churches the spirit of early Separatism that had
been lost since the days of the Cambridge Platform. Channing finally
uprooted the vine that Increase Mather had so laboriously tended.
III
Of the unpopularity that gathered about the name of Mather after the
fall of the theocracy, the larger portion fell to the lot of the son,
the eccentricities of whose character made him peculiarly vulnerable to
attack. In his youth the spoiled child of Boston, in middle life he was
petulant and irritable, inclined to sulk when his will was crossed.
In the career of no other New England Puritan is the inquisitorial
pettiness of the Genevan system of theology and discipline revealed
so disagreeably. The heroic qualities of an earlier age had atrophied
in an atmosphere of formalism, and Boston Calvinism of the year 1690
had become a grotesque caricature of a system that in its vigor had
defied the power of Rome and laid kingdoms at its feet. Embodied in
Cotton Mather it was garrulous, meddlesome, scolding, an echo of dead
voices, a shadow of forgotten realities. The common provincialism had
laid its blight upon it. The horizons of the New England imagination
grew narrow, and Puritan anthropomorphism unconsciously reduced the
God of the Hebrew prophets to the compass of a village priest, clothed
in stock and gown, and endowed with the intellect of a parish beadle.
In the egocentric universe wherein Cotton Mather lived and labored
the cosmos had shrunk to the narrow bounds of a Puritan commonwealth,
whereof Boston was the capital and the prosperity of the North Church
the special and particular object of divine concern. The mind of
Increase Mather had been enlarged by contact with English life; the
mind of the son was dwarfed by a village world.
Cotton Mather is an attractive subject for the psychoanalyst. Intensely
emotional, high-strung and nervous, he was oversexed and overwrought,
subject to ecstatic exaltations and, especially during his celibate
years, given to seeing visions. In the carefully edited _Diary_ which
he left for the edification of his natural and spiritual children, at
the beginning of his twenty-third year, is an apologetic entry--“_Cum
Relego, Scripsisse Pudet!_”--that Professor Wendell has put into
English thus:
A strange and memorable thing. After outpourings of prayer, with
the utmost fervor and fasting, there appeared an Angel, whose face
shone like the noonday sun. His features were as those of a man,
and beardless; his head was encircled by a splendid tiara; on his
shoulders were wings; his garments were white and shining; his robe
reached to his ankles; and about his loins was a belt not unlike
the girdles of the peoples of the East. And this Angel said that he
was sent by the Lord Jesus to bear a clear answer to the prayers of
a certain youth, and to bear back his words in reply. Many things
this Angel said which it is not fit should be set down here. But
among other things not to be forgotten he declared that the fate of
this youth should be to find full expression for what in him was
best; ... And in particular this Angel spoke of the influence his
branches should have, and of the books this youth should write and
publish, not only in America but in Europe. And he added certain
special prophecies of the great works this youth should do for
the Church of Christ in the revolutions that are now at hand.
Lord Jesus! What is the meaning of this marvel? From the wiles of
the Devil, I beseech thee, deliver and defend Thy most unworthy
servant.[109]