Magnalia Christi Americana

Magnalia Christi Americana, ecclesiastical history of New England by Cotton Mather, published at London in 1702. The work is in seven parts: (1) the settlement of New England; (2) lives of the governors; (3) biographies of 60 famous divines; (4) an account of Harvard College, with the lives of some famous graduates; (5) a history of the Congregational Church in New England; (6) a record of remarkable providences, i.e. events in which God directly revealed His power in the colonies; and (7) a history of various disturbances in the churches, with an appendix on remarkable occurrences in the wars with the Indians (1688–98). The Magnalia reprints many of the author's sermons, biographies, and historical narratives, insofar as they could be worked into a rather loose general scheme. The unity of the whole appears in Mather's intention to exalt godliness and celebrate the triumphs of Christ in the New World. It is valuable as a historical source, and the second and third parts indicate Mather's most significant writing to be in the form of biography. The feeling that he was writing a religious epic, buried by the scholarship and digression, is seen in the epic line of the introduction, “I write the wonders of the Christian religion, flying from the depravations of Europe, to the American strand….”