Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 20, 2025
He goes on to enumerate them, mentioning Keeble, Sir Matthew Hale, Glanvil, Bernard, Baxter and Burton, concluding the list with "Cotton Mather's Memorable Providences, relating to Witchcraft, printed, anno 1689." Mather transcribes this also into the Magnalia.
But Cotton Mather's Magnalia, a vast book dealing with the past history of New England, was printed in 1702, only a year later than Defoe's True-Born Englishman. For more than two centuries the development of English speech and English writing on this side of the Atlantic has kept measurable pace now slower, now swifter with the speech of the mother country.
He was reading Cotton Mather's "Memorabilia," not for theology, but for gossip. It was the only chronicle of the small beer of current events in the days of the witch persecutions, and the expulsion of the Quakers, Baptists, and other schismatics.
Mather's words have been preserved to us, as he afterwards wrote them down in one of his works.
In regard to Mather's different recollection of some points, he expresses his belief that if his account, in the Minutes, "be not fully exact, it was as near as memory could bear away." He notices the fact that he finds in Mather's letter no objection to what related to matters of greatest concern.
But men of no religious faith are prone to superstitions; the man who denies God is the first to seek for guidance from the stars. Suppose there should be a devil? was Mather's thought.
I ask a little further attention to this matter, because it affords an illustration of Mather's singular, but characteristic, method of putting things, often deceiving others, and sometimes, perhaps, himself.
Yet he is not to be classed with those tricky and dishonest men, so common in our times, who play upon popular prejudices which they do not share, in the expectation of being elevated to honors and office. Mather's position, convictions, and temperament alike called him to serve on this occasion as the organ, exponent, and stimulator of the popular faith.
It thus appears that the opinion was entertained, in England and this country, that the notoriety given to the case of the Goodwin children, especially by Mather's printed account of it, had an efficient influence in bringing on the "tragical scene," shortly afterwards exhibited at Salem.
Mather's book, all ready as it was for the press, thus became labor thrown away. It was not only rendered useless for the purpose designed, but a most serious difficulty obstructed its publication.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking