and Massachusetts Bay were united into one virtually self-governing colony. This great accomplishment effected, Mather returned to Boston in May of 1692. At once he became embroiled in the witchcraft affair that made 1692 and 1693 so dolorously memorable. When the trouble had passed, and the great jail delivery had released the prisoners, Mather found himself losing power. The forces of liberalism were steadily growing in strength, and Mather was compelled to watch the gradual encroachments of a new order. With his brilliant son Cotton, he was pushed to one side, and, saddened by a change that he was powerless to prevent, he spent his last years in preaching. He died in August, 1723. BIBLIOGRAPHY EDITIONS. Aside from the many printed sermons and addresses, which evidence Mather's contemporary fame, his chief work as a man of letters is to be found in the socalled History of King Philip's War (1676), available in S. G. Drake's London reprint (1862), and in the Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences, published in 1684, and available in 1856 and 1890 London reprints, from which a representative selection appears in this volume. The Further Account of the Tryals of the New England Witches, only a part of which seems to have been written by Mather, is included in the 1862 London edition of Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World. The Massachusetts Historical Society has published a volume of Mather's letters, Collections, fourth series, vol. 8. BIOGRAPHIES. The only biographical and critical treatment of Mather that is in any way adequate is Kenneth B. Murdock's Increase Mather, Cambridge, 1925. This is an admirable study not only of Mather himself, but of the times in which he lived, and should be read by any one interested in the history of early New England. The "Modernist" may find it too sympathetic with a point of view which it is today fashionable-in some quarters to ridicule; but the scholar will delight in the exactness of its information and the amplitude of its range. NOTES DISCOURSE CONCERNING PRAYER 58. b. 18. Feriendi licentiam petit, etc. He who made Moses sought from Moses leave to smite him. b. 30. Homine probo, etc. Nothing is more powerful than a just man praying. SAMUEL SEWALL (1652-1730) Sewall's position in America is much like that of his contemporary Pepys in England. Both were busy men of affairs, keenly ob servant of all that was happening around them, and placed by their fellows in positions of responsibility, where they discharged. their obligations with great credit to themselves and profit to their countries. But both would have been forgotten, save by particular students, had they not written voluminous diaries, which have proved to be among the most readable documents in the "personal" literature of their race. Sewall was born at Horton, England, in 1652, and was taken to America in 1661. A few years later he entered Harvard College, from which he graduated in 1671. He then began the study of theology, was elected to a resident fellowship at Harvard, and in 1674 became the college librarian. Leaving academic life soon thereafter, he turned his energies to business, and before long established himself as one of the leading traders and merchants of the growing colony. At the same time his abilities were so generally recognized that he was forced into public office, first as member of the Board of Assistants (1684-1686), and from 1692 to 1728 as judge of the Supreme Court of the colony. During the last ten years of this term he was Chief Justice, and from 1715 to 1728 was also Probate Judge for Suffolk County. Sewall's most notorious connection with the Massachusetts Bar came during the troublesome year 1693, when he was appointed a member of the Special Court of Oyer and Terminer, organized to try persons accused of witchcraft. He concurred in sentencing nineteen persons to be hanged, and at the time was convinced of the entire rectitude of all the proceedings. Later, howhe had serious misgivings, and in December, 1696, did public penance for his error (see entry in his diary, "Copy of the Bill," etc. p. 64, this volume). ever, Though Sewall wrote but little that was intended for publication, his pamphlet, The Selling of Joseph, a Memorial, (1700) deserves mention as one of the earliest antislavery documents in America. His fame, however, rests on the Diary, which, when finally printed, proved far more interesting than most of the ostensible "literature" of the period. He died in Boston on January 1, 1730, respected and beloved by the entire colony. BIBLIOGRAPHY Both Sewall's Diary and Letter-Book have been published by the Massachusetts Historical Society, the former in the Collections, Series V, vols. 5, 6, 7, Boston, 1877-1882; the latter in the Collections, Series VI, vols. 5, 6, Boston, 1886. There is no good life of Sewall in existence, but from the LetterBook and Diary the student can glean most of the important facts concerning him. On the general condition of New England during Sewall's life, see Kenneth Murdock's Increase Mather, Cambridge, 1925. NOTES THE LETTER-BOOK 60. As indicative of Sewall's varied interests, as well as of the condition of the colony at the time, these selections from Sewall's Letter-Book seem well worthy of reproduction. Sailing Orders This is a characteristic Sewall document: a mingling of good business sense and sincere piety. Letter to Ezekiel Cheever Addressed to Cheever and Nathaniel Williams, well-known schoolmasters of Boston. Letter to Henry Flint Probably the Flint who was tutor at Harvard from 1699-1754. See Sewall's Diary for August 26, 1708, p. 65 above. Letter to Samuel Storke 61. Sewall's daughter Judith was about to be married. In this letter, with the accompanying "memoranda," her father orders that part of her trousseau which it was apparently impossible to secure in Boston. Letter to Samuel Mather This letter to one of Increase Mather's sons, who had settled as Presbyterian minister at Witney, Oxfordshire, shows the author in his most genial mood. Sewall had gone to England in 1688, when Increase Mather was trying to secure a new charter for the colony. There he had met Samuel; and now, forty years later, he still has in mind the pleasant incidents of that visit. "The Reverend Mr. Samuel Mather of Windsor," referred to in a. 30, p. 62, was the Congregational minister at Windsor, Connecticut. ___He and Sewall had been classmates at Harvard, both graduating in 1671. THE DIARY C2. The selections here reprinted are based upon the Massachusetts Historical Society's edition, referred to above. It is obviously impossible in this place to explain all of Sewall's references to persons and events. The student who wishes to check up on all the facts will turn to the notes and other explanatory matter in the complete Diary, where he will find but little left unanswered. b. 9. A female Quaker. Such an entry suggests that the Massachusetts authorities had some provocation for the stern measures they adopted towards the Quakers. 63. b. 11. George Burrough. This record of the most famous of the witchcraft executions is interesting in view of Sewall's own part in the matter. b. 27. Giles Corey. Corey, after having pleaded "not guilty," "refused to put himself upon his trial," and was executed in the barbarous fashion provided by English common law for such persons as "stood mute." His wife Martha was hanged as a witch at the same time. 64. a. 44. Josiah Willard .. put on a wigg. A casual reference to one of Sewall's particular aversions. 65. a. 13. Mr. Henry Flint. See Sewall's letter to Flint, p. 60, above. b. 25. I went to Madam Winthrop's. Sewall's account of his courtship of Madame Winthrop is the most remarkable feature in the entire Diary. 69. b. 49. This . . . daughter of musick. For many years Sewall was precentor in the church at Boston. 70. b. 17. I had moved to be published. Had requested permission to publish the banns of marriage. COTTON MATHER (1663-1728) The story of Cotton Mather's life has virtually no parallel among the biographies of American leaders. It is a story of devotion to a cause which Time and Fate had destined to be a losing cause; a story of unceasing and unselfish labor; of enormous productivity in that field of letters in which Mather was interested; of widespread interest in civic and scientific as well as in religious affairs; a story of a life made happy by great accomplishments, and saddened by bitter disappointment and tragic loss. He was born in Boston, on February 12, 1663, the grandson of two of the colony's most distinguished ministers, John Cotton and Richard Mather, and the son of Increase Mather, to whom Massachusetts was to owe as much as to any of her early citizens. The records of his boyhood show him to have been a lad precocious beyond even the normal precocity of his family. He graduated from Harvard in 1678, and three years later took his master's degree, having chosen to write his thesis on the subject, "The Hebrew vowels are of divine origin." (See the selections from his Diary printed in this volume.) The close of the same year saw him installed as assistant to his father, the minister of the Second Church of Boston, which was already the largest and most influential church in the colony. Seven years later, when his father went to England, the younger man became the active head of the parish, in which capacity he served till his death in 1728. The intensity of the young man's spiritual life is attested by the many records of fasts, of trances, of ecstatic moments of vision and supernatural communion, which make his Diary more than an ordinary record of events. It is not surprising, therefore, to find Mather convinced that the witchcraft outbreak of 1692 was a direct visitation of Satan's malign power. Believing this, it was inevitable that he should turn all his ability to the task of defeating the onslaught of the arch-enemy. He was by this time probably the most influential person in Massachusetts. The special court appointed to deal with witchcraft sought his advice, and it is clear that he advocated a policy of root and branch extirpation, though he says in his Diary that he was not in favor of conviction upon "spectral representation." His notable work, Wonders of the Invisible World, published in 1693, at a time when the colony was doubting the sanity of further prosecutions, was essentially an attempt to justify his actions in the premises, and to show how clear was the evidence for diabolical persecution through the agency of witches. When the trouble died away, Mather found himself opposed by the more liberal among the Puritans of Boston. He was twice passed by in favor of less orthodox candidates for the Presidency of Harvard, and though he had been chosen a Fellow of the college as early as 1690, he never realized his ambition of succeeding his father in the President's chair. In 1697 he completed his largest single work, the Magnalia Christi Americana, an attempt to justify the old order which was passing, and to convince his readers of the necessity of maintaining the Puritan theocracy unmodified. When, about the turn of the century, Harvard passed definitely into the control of the liberals, Mather began the planning which was to result a little later in the establishment of Yale College. Mather's work as minister and writer occupied his best energies during his entire life. He found time, nevertheless, for much medical and scientific investigation, with the result that in 1713 he received notice of his impending election as Fellow of the Royal Society of England. In 1721 he vigorously urged the desirability of inoculation against smallpox-with results which entries in the Diary make clear were not entirely favorable to himself. He was an old man by this time; but despite his advancing years, and despite the heavier burdens laid upon him by the death of his wife Abigail in 1702, the insanity of the wife whom he married in 1715, after a second had followed the first to the grave, and the deaths of thirteen of his fifteen children, he kept himself steadily at work till the end in 1728. Mather's enemies and critics-and there have been many of them-have not failed to point out that he was tyrannical and intolerant, vain, pedantic, and superstitious. а an They have with some justice-represented him as an opponent of that spiritual enfranchisement which Massachusetts was destined to enjoy despite all attempts at resistance. But when the final balance is cast these shortcomings of Mather's pale beside his many and varied accomplishments. He was faithful, beloved, and successful minister of a large church; he was a learned and indefatigable writer and student; he was early advocate of temperance, of missionary activity, and of popular education. Above all he was a sturdy warrior in the old conflict between the forces of light and the many powers that make for darkness. That he erred, as Jonathan Edwards was to err half a century later, in trying to maintain a theocracy when the people no longer would tolerate a theocracy, detracts only slightly from the magnificence of his unselfish attempt. BIBLIOGRAPHY Of the nearly five hundred published works credited to Cotton Mather, only three will concern the average student. The Wonders of the Invisible World is best available in the 1862 London edition, published by J. R. Smith as one item in the Library of Old Authors. The Magnalia Christi Americana, first published in London in 1702, has not been reprinted since a two volume edition appeared at Hartford, Connecticut, 18531855, with editorial and biographical material by T. Robbins, L. F. Robinson, and others. The Diary has been edited by Worthington C. Ford, for the Massachusetts Historical Society, and published as volumes 7 and 8, seventh series, of the Society's Collections. In connection with a study of the Diary, Charles Deane's "The light shed upon Cotton Mather's Magnalia by his Diary," Proceedings, Mass. Hist. Soc., VI, 404-414, is interesting. Further, Kenneth B. Murdock's Selections from the Works of Cotton Mather, N. Y. 1925, the only recent edition of Mather's most significant prose, should be available to every student of the period. The reader who finds himself desirous of learning more about the witchcraft disturbance, will consult C. W. Upham's Salem Witchcraft, 2 vols, Boston, 1867; W. F. Poole's "Cotton Mather and Salem Witchcraft," No. Amer. Rev., cviii, 337-397; and the Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, ed. G. L. Burr, N. Y. 1914. The only good life of Mather is Barrett Wendell's Cotton Mather, the Puritan Priest, N. Y. 1891, 1925. NOTES THE DIARY The selections here printed are based on Ford's edition, referred to above. The student who would understand the Puri tan temper, or the spiritual condition of early Massachusetts, or Mather himself, will find the entire work a treasure-trove of information. 71. a. 45. The Divels, in a most preternatural manner. In view of Mather's later connection with the witchcraft agitation, this entry in his Diary is of unusual interest. was b. 2. The visions of the afflicted . . spectral representation. One of the moot points in witchcraft cases whether a person should be condemned upon "spectral evidence," i.e., upon the statement of a sufferer that his torments were caused by the spectre, or shape, of the witch on trial. It was common for persons to testify that "the shape of soand-so afflicted me," or that "the spectre of so-and-so flew in at my window." Though Mather says that he "ever testified against" accepting spectral evidence, the plain fact is that much of the evidence presented in witchcraft cases was of this nature, and was admitted as valid by the court. 72. a. 11. A very likely Slave. This casual entry indicates that slavery was not only a legal but a perfectly respectable institution. a. 18. Isaac Watts. Isaac Watts (1674- 73. a. 8. Inoculation. The devastating nature of the early smallpox epidemics is known to all readers of colonial records. Mather, who was a student of medicine as well as of theology, was strongly in favor of inoculation, an oldworld anticipation of vaccination. Some such practice had been successful in Africa and in parts of Europe; Mather did his best to popularize it in America, and performed the operation, successfully, upon several persons. But the bulk of public opinion was against him. THE WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD This work is a compound of fact, imagination, superstition, and bigotry—in just what proportions it is now impossible to determine. Before dismissing it all as nonsense, however, the student should read the essay, "Were the Salem witches guiltless?" in Barrett Wendell's volume, Stelligeri and other Essays. b. 45. The shape of the prisoner. A characteristic piece of "spectral evidence." MAGNALIA CHRISTI AMERICANA 77. The first edition of Mather's largest single work came out in London, in 1702. It had been in process of preparation since 1693, and had been virtually completed in 1697. Superficially, it is an historical treatise, and as such, it possesses a considerable value. But Mather wrote it with a propagandist's as well as an historian's enthusiasm. Fundamentally, the book was Mather's great attempt to justify the Puritan theocracy in New England. Fully to appreciate the way in which he labored to effect this justification, one must examine a copy of the work at first hand. The excerpts here reprinted are based on the American edition of 1855, published at Hartford by Silas Andrus and Company, and edited by various persons. The Bostonian Ebenezer This early pamphlet on temperance is part of section 5 of the Appendix to Book I of the Magnalia. The Life of Mr. Thomas Hooker 78. This selection forms part of the Appendix to the first part of Book III. Thomas Hooker (1586-1647) was one of the ablest of the early colonial ministers. At the time of his death he was minister of the church at Hartford, The Life of Mr. Ralph Partridge 79. This constitutes Chapter 11 of Book III. It is reprinted entire, and shows Mather's fondness for puns as well as for more solid matter. Partridge was minister at Duxbury. The Life of Mr. John Eliot 80. So important was Eliot's work, that Mather gave the entire third section of Book III to an account of his life and accomplishment. Part III of this exhaustive account is entitled "Eliot as Evangelist." John Eliot (1604-1690), the "Apostle to the Indians," came to New England in 1631, and settled as minister of the church at Roxbury. He was one of the compilers of the Bay Psalm Book, but his chief work was the translation of the entire Bible into the language of the Massachusetts Indians. Completed in 1658, the translation was not entirely in print till 1685. THE NEW ENGLAND PRIMER No selection of early American Literature would be complete without excerpts from the most famous school-book issued in the new world, the New England Primer. Published first ca. 1690, the Primer remained a general favorite till 1830, by which time probably six million copies had been brought out. As one edition after another appeared, it was inevitable that minor alterations should be made; but during the entire hundred and forty years the essential nature of the book remained the same. To call these crude verses and A-B-C rimes poetry, would be to overstate the case lamentably. Yet as a document in the history of American culture the Primer has far more importance than many a work which possessed greater intrinsic merit. BIBLIOGRAPHY For bibliographical information the student should consult Charles F. Heartman's The New England Primers issued prior to 1830, N. Y. 1922. The selections in this volume are from an undated copy which was probably issued shortly after the Revolutionary War. The frontispiece is a crude wood-cut of Washington. SARAH KEMBLE KNIGHT (1666-1727) Had Mrs. Sarah Kemble Knight not written her Journal, her claim to the gratitude of posterity would have rested largely upon the fact that she served as school-mistress to Samuel Mather and Benjamin Franklin, both of whom, as lads in Boston, learned the three R's before her desk. But the publication of her account of a trip from Boston to New York, and back to Boston, a trip she made late in 1704 and early in 1705, took her out of the catalogue of school ma'ams, and put her very definitely in the relatively brief list of persons who in old New England both knew how to write and found obvious pleasuse in practising the art. She was born in Boston, in 1666, the daughter of Captain Thomas Kemble, a mariner who once at least felt the sting of Puritan discipline when he was confined for two hours in the stocks, fit punishment for the "lewd and unseemly" act of kissing his wife in public after returning from a three years' cruise at sea. She married Richard Knight, also a Bostonian, who may or may not-have been dead when she made her adventurous trip to Manhattan Island. That she was a widow shortly thereafter is sure. When she returned from New York she opened a school in Boston; not long afterwards she was mistress of an inn in New London, Connecticut. Here she died in 1727. Her humour, geniality, and pleasantly objec tive way of taking what fate sent without seeking to find the hand of God in every incident, strike a new note in Puritan New England-even the New England of 1725. BIBLIOGRAPHY The Journal was first published in 1825, by T. Dwight, who had access to the original manuscript. It has been twice reprinted since then, in 1865 at Albany, and in 1901 at Norwich, Connecticut. No adequate biographical treatment of Mrs. Knight has yet appeared. JONATHAN EDWARDS (1703-1758) Edwards' claim to distinction is at least three-fold: He was a master of English prose, able to write in such a vigorous, clear, and moving fashion, that in comparison with him most other early American writers seem turgid and inept; he was one of the greatest preachers who have ever spoken the English tongue; he was one of the few Americans who have made any significant contribution to the philosophical thinking of the modern world. On any one of these three counts he would be entitled to a high place among the writers included in the present volume. The bare facts of his life are easily stated. Born in 1703, in East Windsor, Connecticut, he had the good fortune to come of a family already distinguished for its probity of life and intellectual attainments. The son and grandson of New England ministers, he early decided upon the same career for himself, and at an age when most boys are busy only about the recreations of youth, Edwards was studying philosophy and theology. When he graduated from Yale College in 1720 he had already been recognized as a man of brilliant promise; after two years of further study, and a brief pastorate in New York, he was called back to Yale as a tutor, where he remained till 1727. This last year saw the beginning of Edwards' significant work in the pulpit. His grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, was minister of the church at Northampton, one of the most influential churches in New England outside of Boston. An old man, and wishing to retire, he secured the election of Edwards as associate pastor; two years later the young man found himself in sole charge of a large and growing parish. Here he was to win his great fame as a preacher; here too he suffered the defeat which cast a shadow over the latter years of his life. Sternly consistent in his Calvinistic theology, Edwards made it his first task to preach what he called the "pleasant, bright, and sweet" doctrine of damnation. Holding up before his congregation prospects of an eternity in hell fire such as the selections in this volume make amply vivid, he had the satis |