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Updated: May 20, 2025
My father appears to have been the owner of but one book, Cotton Mather's, "Essays to do Good," which I still possess and, alas, could never read through. Of course the title of the volume at the date of its republication, 1808, had been greatly reduced. No Mather would be satisfied with a title much less expansive than the contents, nor wanting some Latin interlardings.
In considering Cotton Mather's connection with the case of the Goodwin children, and that of the accusing girls, at Salem Village, justice to him requires that the statements, in my book, of the then prevalent notions, of the power and pending formidableness of the Kingdom of Darkness, should be borne in mind.
This passage, strikingly illustrative, as it is, of Mather's characteristic style of appearing, to a cursory, careless reader, to say one thing, when he is really aiming to enforce another, while it has deceived the Reviewer, and led him to his quixotic attempt to revolutionize history, cannot be so misunderstood by a critical interpreter.
Mather's sermon, prefixed to this narrative, is a curious specimen of fanatical declamation. "Witchcraft," he exclaims, "is a renouncing of God, and the advancement of a filthy devil into the throne of the Most High. Witchcraft is a renouncing of Christ, and preferring the communion of a loathsome, lying devil before all the salvation of the Lord Redeemer.
We can be sure that there was neither sleeping nor jesting allusion to such an irreverence in Mr. Mather's, Mr. Welde's, or Mr. Cotton's meetings. In many rigidly severe towns, as in Portsmouth in 1662 and in Boston in 1667, it was ordered by the selectmen as a proper means of punishment that a "cage be made or some other means invented for such as sleepe on the Lord's Daie."
Ford's The Lady's Trial , v, I: 'One can ... pick a pocket, Pad for a cloak or hat'; and also Cotton Mather's Discourse on Witchcraft , chap, vii: 'As if you or I should say: We never met with any robbers on the road, therefore there never was any Padding there. p. 250 sport a Dye. To play at dice. 'To sport', generic for 'to parade' or 'display' was, and is a very common phrase.
Vanity, flattery, credulity, want of logical discernment, and the struggles between political factions, in the unsettled, uncertain, transition period, between the old and new Charters, are enough to account for much that was wrong, in one of Mather's temperament and passions, without questioning his real mental qualities, or, I am disposed to think, his conscious integrity, or the sincerity of his religious experiences or professions.
For an able vindication of the British Colonial policy, see "Political Essays concerning the Present State of the British Empire." One of the early teachers in Boston taught school more than seventy years. See Cotton Mather's "Funeral Sermon upon Mr. Ezekiel Cheever, the ancient and honorable Master of the Free School in Boston."
Such, then, so far as I can gather, was Cotton Mather's plan for the management of witchcraft investigations; such its impracticability; and such the dangerous and injurious consequences to himself, of attempting to put it into practice. He never fully divulged it; but, in the Advice of the Ministers and various other writings, endeavored to pave the way for it.
Cotton Mather's sermon and others on Morgan and his crimes, which were preached by Increase Mather and Joshua Moodey, were printed and sold in vast numbers, passing through several editions. Morgan's dying words and confessions were also printed and sold throughout New England by chapmen.
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