Mather, Increase (1639–1723), and his son Cotton (1663–1728), Congregational ministers, writers, and leaders in church and society.Increase, the son of Richard Mather (1596–1669), felt himself be the heir of the founders of New England, colonies settled to demonstrate to the world the New England way in church and state. He conveyed this sense of mission to his son, who strove to live up to the ideals of his father and his grandfathers, Richard Mather and John Cotton (1584–1652), after whom he was named.

Though filled with conflict and struggle, the lives of both Increase and Cotton showed moral and intellectual growth. Increase, never satisfied with his achievements, strove throughout his life to manage his complicated psyche. A conservative in theology, he proved an innovator in politics; a devoted husband and father, he left his family for years to travel to England in defense of New England's interests; a lover of New England, he still yearned for old England. By any standard of his time his was a successful ministry: he preached for fifty years at Boston's North Church (or Second Church) and figured prominently in the political life of Massachusetts, sometimes virtually choosing its governors and magistrates. In 1688 he went to England to persuade the Crown to replace the Massachusetts charter it had revoked in 1684. A Royal charter was granted in 1697 and Increase's choice as governor, William Phips, was appointed.

When Increase and Phips reached Boston in 1692, the Salem witchcraft crisis was raging. Increase, like his son Cotton, believed in witches, as did almost everyone in the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, he acted to end the upheaval, working behind the scenes and in the open, convinced that the court trying the witches had acted improperly. His critique of the court's procedures, Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits, was published in London in 1693.

Increase Mather's influence slowly declined in the following years. He originally opposed both the Half‐Way Covenant (an ecclesiastical contrivance of 1662 that eased the terms of church membership) and the open communion instituted in Northampton by Solomon Stoddard (1643–1728/29), a long‐time opponent. In his eyes, such measures eroded the foundations of the churches. Nor was he pleased by the introduction early in the eighteenth century of ministerial associations and standing councils, an additional blow to the independence of every Puritan church and to New England's mission.

Cotton Mather's character and personality were even more complicated than his father's. His antagonist in the Salem witch hunt, the Boston merchant Robert Calef, accused him of having an “ambidexter” quality, a word intended to suggest that his attitudes were never quite what they seemed. In the Salem trials, for example, he praised the judges while criticizing their procedures.

Born in Boston, he graduated from Harvard in 1678, took an M.A. in 1681, was ordained at Boston's North Church in 1685, and in 1686 married Abigail Phillips—the first of three wives, with whom he had fifteen children.

This complicated man was a minister who shared the pulpit with his father, preaching to the poor as well as the mighty, and published 388 sermons, tracts, and books and left many others in manuscript, including the Biblia Americana, his immense Bible commentary. Unlike his father, Cotton never left New England, yet he led an active life: He played a significant role in the Glorious Revolution in Boston, which saw Governor Edmund Andros overthrown, and in the years immediately following he defended the new charter. He also defended the witchcraft trials in Wonders of the Invisible World (1693) and sought influence in the political world. But like his father, he saw his public influence decline. This was an immense disappointment, for he shared the vision of New England as an example to the world. Other disappointments included his failure to secure the presidency of Harvard after his father gave it up in 1701.

His preaching became more enthusiastical after 1700 as he attempted to convert the unregenerate and draw Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and others into a great Christian union. He studied nature—the stars in the heavens and New England's flora and fauna—and when smallpox broke out in Boston in 1721, he attempted to persuade local physicians to adopt inoculation, an early form of vaccination. Many of his efforts miscarried, but there were rewards too: His great historical work, The Magnalia Christi Americana, appeared in 1702; his submissions of scientific reports brought election to the Royal Society in 1713; and in 1726 Ratio Disciplinae, a formidable account of Congregational polity, appeared.

Both Mathers achieved much, and their lives tell much about the early history of America and Puritanism in England and America.
See also Colonial Era; Glorious Revolution in America; Protestantism; Religion.

Bibliography

Kenneth Ballard Murdock , Increase Mather, 1926.
Perry Miller , The New England Mind: From Colony to Province, 1953.
Robert Middlekauff , The Mathers, 1971.
David Levin , Cotton Mather, 1978.
Kenneth Silverman , The Life and Times of Cotton Mather, 1984.
Michael G. Hall , The Last American Puritan: The Life of Increase Mather, 1988.

Robert L. Middlekauff

Mather, Increase (1639–1723),youngest son of Richard Mather, was reared in the strict Puritan tradition of his father's household, educated at Harvard (1656), and received an M.A. from Trinity College, Dublin (1658). He preached in England at Congregational churches, until the Restoration and the return to Anglicanism forced him to quit England for his native land. He became teacher of the Second Church in Boston (1664), where he worked fervently until his death, and in 1674 was appointed a fellow of Harvard College. His intellectual activities outside of the church may be judged from his publication of some 25 books before 1683, his organization of a society to discuss scientific matters, and his central position in many types of Massachusetts activities. After having once refused the presidency of Harvard College, by placing his duty to his church before anything else, he was nevertheless appointed acting president in 1685, and the following year took complete charge with the title of Rector. During his presidency to 1701, he encouraged scientific study, while at the same time resisting all efforts to undermine the college's fundamental Congregationalism.

In 1688 he sailed for England, after having been appointed by the Congregational churches to bring a petition in the matter of the abrogated colonial charter. His interviews with James II came to naught when the king was deposed by the Revolution of 1688, but he continued to appeal to William III, and in 1690 was made an official representative of the colonial government. His work was successful, for Governor Andros was replaced by Sir William Phips, and a new charter gave the colonists some of the powers they demanded.

After his return his power waned, since many rebelled against his influence in church and state, were dissatisfied with the charter, and in time opposed the attitude of Phips and himself in the Salem witchcraft trials. The witchcraft excitement had begun before his return, but, though he avoided the matter for some time, he was accused by Calef and others of responsibility for Phips' actions. Actually, Mather's book Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits (1693) disapproved the emphasis the court put on “spectral evidence,” and generally had the attitude that it was better for a guilty witch to escape than for an innocent man to die. His rational point of view may also be seen in his championship of the unpopular cause of inoculation during a smallpox epidemic.

Although he was by no means as bigoted as later popular opinion has claimed, he was firmly convinced of the rectitude of his own ideas, and supported them by his hot temper and tremendous power, in the belief that what he did was for the public good. He was the author of some 130 books, and contributed to more than 65 works by others. His style was simple, strong, and direct, although without brilliance. The works, which sweep the entire circuit of sacred and secular themes of the day, include Life and Death of That Reverend Man of God, Mr. Richard Mather (1670); A Brief History of the War with the Indians (1676); A Relation of the Troubles Which Have Hapned in New‐England by Reason of the Indians There (1677); An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences (1684), generally known as Remarkable Providences; and many political tracts. Parentator (1724), his biography, was written by his son Cotton Mather.

Increase Mather

Increase Mather (1639-1723), American colonial representative, president of Harvard College, and author, was the most prominent member of the second generation in Massachusetts colony.

Born in Dorchester, Mass., where his father was first minister, Increase Mather was educated at home and at Boston's free school. Taking his bachelor of arts degree from Harvard (1656), he studied and preached in England and Ireland. He received his master of arts in 1658 from Trinity College, Dublin. Returning to Boston, he married Maria Cotton, daughter of John Cotton, in 1662. They had 10 children; the eldest, Cotton, was his lifetime aid. In 1664 Increase became teacher of the Second Church, which he served until his death.

Increase Mather went to England in 1688 to negotiate restoration of the colonial charter, revoked by James II. Failing in this, he returned with a charter that nullified the colonists' right to elect their governors but preserved the power of the representative assembly elected by voters. Disappointed colonists felt that he had conceded too much.

Mather believed that New England was a nation in covenant with God, preparing to witness the day when Christ comes to judge the world and establish His kingdom. He preached that only a chaste and obedient people would enter the kingdom. This sense of New England's mission determined his stand on many questions. The voice of orthodoxy, Mather finally accepted the Halfway Covenant, a compromise admitting children of unconverted second-generation Puritans to a kind of partial membership in the Congregational Church. However, a proposal architected by Mather and others in England for the cooperation of Presbyterian and Congregational churches and the tightening of centralized control over individual congregations failed.

Although Mather took no part in the Salem witchcraft trials, he had chosen the governor, Sir William Phips, who was responsible for them. In Cases of Conscience concerning Evil Spirits (1693), Mather's opposition to some of the trial procedures led Phips to close the trials. Yet Increase and Cotton Mather were implicated by their researches into demonology and their association with Phips. The Mathers' enemies used the trials to discredit them.

The worst defeat, at least for Cotton, was Increase's removal from the Harvard College presidency in 1701. Gradually Increase Mather turned more of his energy to writing. He published 130 books. Direct and simple in style, his theological work is often, in its way, scientific. He pioneered in science, organizing a society for scientific discussions and successfully introducing smallpox inoculation into the colony.

Further Reading

Cotton Mather's Parentator (1724; rev. ed. 1970) is a life of his father. The definitive work on Increase Mather is Kenneth B. Murdock, Increase Mather: The Foremost American Puritan (1925). He is discussed in Robert Middlekauff, The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 (1971). A thorough account of the New England background and the issues surrounding the Mathers is in Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (1953). □

Mather, Increase (1639-1723) and Cotton(1662-1728)

Father and son, two eminent divines of Boston, Massachusetts. The Mathers were among the first to respond to the wave of skepticism that assaulted Christianity at the end of the seventeenth century and emerged in the next century as Deism. Deism denied the possibility of human contact with what had traditionally been thought of as the supernatural. Both of the Mathers wrote books offering evidence of contact with the spiritual world as an apologetic for Christian faith.

Part of their understanding of the supernatural was supernatural evil. Witchcraft, which they equated with Satanism, was one major form taken by supernatural evil, and they saw evidence of witchcraft both among the Native Americans and members of the Boston urban community. This caused them to be seen as believers in the existence of widespread witchcraft throughout New England. Though counseling some degree of caution, especially in responding to the unsupported accounts of people claiming to be afflicted by a witch, they were early supporters of the inquiries at Salem Village (now Danvers), Massachusetts, in 1692. In fact, Increase Mather had chosen the governor, Sir William Phips, who was partly responsible for the Salem Witchcraft trials. However, as the trials proceeded, Cotton Mather especially became one of the strong forces arguing against the litigation. His personal visit with the governor was of great effect in this endeavor.

In the years immediately after the trials, as the people of Massachusetts came to see the error of what had occurred, the Mathers were accused by some of the more skeptical voices in the community, such as Robert Calef, as the real cause of the colony's disgrace. Only in the twentieth century, with the massive reevaluation of the whole of the witchcraft phenomenon in New England, has the Mathers' reputation been somewhat put into a more balanced perspective.

Sources:

Calef, Robert. More Wonders of the Invisible World; or, The Wonders of the Invisible World Display'd in Five Parts. London, 1700.

Mather, Cotton. Memorable Provinces, Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions. Boston, 1689.

——. The Wonders of the Invisible World. Observations as Well Historical as Theological, upon the Nature, the Number, and the Operations of the Devil. Boston: Benjamin Harris, 1693.

Mather, Increase. Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Provinces. Boston, 1684.

Increase Mather 1639-1723, American Puritan clergyman, b. Dorchester, Mass.; son of Richard Mather. After graduation (1656) from Harvard, he studied at Trinity College, Dublin (M.A., 1658), and preached in England and Guernsey until the Restoration. After returning to Massachusetts (1661), he became (1664) pastor of North Church, Boston, and retained that position through his life. Cotton Mather, his son and colleague, cooperated with him in many of the affairs that occupied their busy lives. They were outstanding upholders of the old Puritan theocracy and of the established order in church and state. This conservatism led to trouble with the government during the Restoration period, and Increase Mather was a particularly bitter opponent of Edward Randolph and Sir Edmund Andros over the withdrawal of the Massachusetts charter and the conduct of the royal government. In 1688 he went to England to present the grievances of Massachusetts, and, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the subsequent revolt in Massachusetts against Andros, he obtained a new charter that united Plymouth Colony with Massachusetts Bay Colony. Increase Mather looked with favor on the government of Sir William Phips . After 1692 his influence declined somewhat, but he remained powerful to the end. He was president of Harvard College (1685-1701), but he was inactive and spent little time in Cambridge. His writing reflected the concerns of his career. Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits (1693), appearing soon after the Salem witch furor, denounced "spectral evidence" in witch trials. He also wrote a biography of his father (1670); A History of the War with the Indians (1676), written just after King Philip's War; and Remarkable Providences (1684), based on an earlier work by other writers.

Bibliography: See biography by K. B. Murdock (1925, repr. 1966); study by R. Middlekauff (1971); bibliography by T. J. Holmes (1931).

Mather, Increase (1639–1723) American Puritan clergyman. The son of Richard Mather (1596–1669), who had helped define Congregational orthodoxy in 1648, he became a Boston minister in 1664 and married the daughter of John Cotton. He was a conservative President of Harvard College (1685–1701) but as colonial agent in London (1688–92) he negotiated a liberal royal charter for the state of Massachusetts. On his return he helped end the SALEM WITCH TRIALS. He was a forceful preacher against “declension” (spiritual decline) as well as a prolific author, and was the foremost minister of his generation.

Mather, Increase (1639–1723) Puritan minister in colonial Massachusetts. A powerful influence on political and religious life in the colonies, he went to England (1688–91) to renegotiate the charter of Massachusetts. He doubted the reliability of testimony at the Salem witch trials, and his Cases of Conscience (1693) helped to stop the executions.