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Clio in the Wilderness: History and Biography in Puritan New England*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Kenneth B. Murdock
Kenneth B. Murdock
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

In the spring of 1697 the Reverend John Higginson of Salem finished writing a laudatory “Attestation” for Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana. Higginson was enghty-one. He had lived in New England for nearly seventy years, and sixty of them had been devoted to the ministry. He had, he worte, “seen all that the Lord hath done for his people” in the Puritan colonies and rejoiced that a younger colleague had recorded it in a volume of history and biography, because he was sure that the book was, in substance, purpose, and scope “according to truth” and would be of “maninfold advantage and usefulness”. In elaboration of this he listed in his “Attestation” some ways in which he thought the Magnalia would serve “great and good ends”.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , September 1955 , pp. 221 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1955

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References

1. Mather, Cotton, Magnalia Christi Americana (Hartford, 1855), I, 15.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., I, 15–16.

3. Ibid.

4. Haller, William, The Rise of Puritanism (New York, 1938), especially pp. 100 ff., 302–303;Google ScholarMiller, Perry and Johnson, Thomas H., The Puritans (New York, 1938)Google Scholar, Chapters I and V; Murdoek, Kenneth B., Literature and Theology in Colonial New England (Cambridge, Mass., 1949)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Chapter III.

5. Mather, , Magnalia, I, 16.Google Scholar

6. Cicero, , De Oratore, II, 9, 36.Google Scholar Cotton Mather quotes the substance of Cicero's sentence but changes its order, which more nearly corresponds to that in Jonson's, Ben “The Mind of the Frontispice to a Booke” The Poems of Ben Jonson, ed. Newdigate, Bernard H. (Oxford, 1936), p. 125.Google Scholar The “frontispice” is that of Sir Raleigh's, WalterHistory of the World (London, 1614)Google Scholar, a book Mather probably knew.

7. Murdock, , Literature and Theology, pp. 67–70.Google Scholar

8. Trans. U. Huber Noodt (Bern, 1948) from De Bioqrafie: Een Inleiding (Amsterdam, 1946)Google Scholar.

9. Ibid., 17, 27–30.

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11. See the Oxford New English Dictionary on Historical Principles, s.v. “biography”.

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13. Maurois, André, Aspects of Biography, trans. Roberts, S. C. (New York, 1929), p. 134.Google Scholar

14. Ibid., p. 31.

15. Miller, Perry, “‘Preparation for Salvation’ in Seventeenth-Century New England”, Journal of the History of Ideas, IV (06, 1943), 253–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16. Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XXXV (1951), 310–444.Google Scholar

17. Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XXVII (1932), 361.Google Scholar

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19. Ibid., Fifth Series, V, 38, 39, 46, 47.

20. Ibid., Seventh Series, VII, 438.

21. Norton, John, Abel Being Dead Yet Speaketh (London, 1658), p. 4.Google Scholar

22. This phrase comes from the title of Samuel Danforth's election sermon, May 11, 1670, printed in Cambridge, Mass., 1671, as A brief Recognition of New-Englands Errand into the Wilderness. See Miller, Perry, “Errand into the Wilderness” in William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, X (01, 1953), 3–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Note the discussion of the meaning of “errand” on p. 3 and passirn.

23. Winthrop, John, “A Modell of Christian Charity” Winthrop Papers (Boston, 1931), II, 295.Google Scholar

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26. Bradford, William, History of Plymouth Plantation 1620–1647, ed. Ford, Worthington C. (Boston, 1912) I, 156.Google Scholar

27. Ibid., I, 28.

28. Mather, , Magnalia, II, 43.Google Scholar

29. Ibid., I, 239.

30. Mather, Cotton, The Triumphs of the Reformed Religion in America: The Life of the Renowned John Eliot (Boston, 1691), p. 6Google Scholar and dedication.

31. Mather, , Magnalia, I, 233.Google Scholar

32. Miller, , “Errand into the Wilderness” p. 14.Google Scholar

33. Bradford, , History of the Plymouth Plantation, I, 29, 60.Google Scholar

34. Ibid., I, 3–4.

35. Johnson, , Wonder-working Providence, p. 23.Google Scholar

36. Norton, Abel Being Dead, passim.

37. Mather, Cotton, Pietas in Patriam: The Life of his Excellency, Sir William Phips (London, 1697), p. 3.Google Scholar

38. Mather, , Magnalia, I, 29.Google Scholar

39. Ibid., I, 113, 114.

40. Ibid., I, 118, 131.

41. Mather, Cotton, Johanmes in Eremo (Boston, 1695), p. 15.Google Scholar

42. Increase Mather, “To the Reader” in Cotton Mather, Johannes in Eremo, p. 7.

43. For the Mathers on Chauncy see Williams, George H., “An Excursus: Church, Commonwealth, and College” in The Harvard Divinity School: Its Place in Harvard University and in American Culture, ed. Williams, George H. (Boston, 1954), pp. 296–299.Google Scholar

44. Miller, Perry, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century, second printing (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), pp. 76ff.Google Scholar

45. Mather, , Magnalia, I, 19.Google Scholar

46. Ibid.

47. Johnson, , Wonder-working Providence, p. 63.Google Scholar

48. Mather, Samuel, The Figures or Types of the Old Testament (Dublin, 1683).Google Scholar

49. Darbyshire, J. R., “Typology” in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James, Hastings (New York and Edinburgh, 1922), XII, 500.Google Scholar

50. Mather, Samuel, The Figures or Types, p. 131.Google Scholar As Samson was confounded with Nisus so Moses was confused with Mercury “out of some broken remembrances and traditions, though corrupted with fabulous Inventions⃜ They call their Mercurius, Interpres Divum, and paint him with a Rod twined with Serpents”. (p. 117) So famous was Noah's story that (repeating the formula) “the Heathen have some broken Remembrances and Traditions of it … their Bacchus … with a little alteration… comes from Noah, Noachus, Boachus, and Janus from the Hebrew Jagin, vinum … they had heard about his planting a Vinyard…” (p. 90) Hence Cotton Mather contrives a double parallel: to Janus, alias Noah was ascribed a double face “because of the view which he had of the two worlds, the old and the new. The covenant which God established with Noah, was by after-ages referred unto, when they feigned Janus to be the president of all covenant and concord ⃜ Moreover, the mythical writers tell us, that in the reign of this Janus, all the dwellings of men were hedged in with piety and sanctity; in which tradition the exemplary righteousness of Noah seems to have been celebrated …” Without more ado Mather turns to a man “who, when 'tis considered that lie crossed the sea with a renowned colony, and that having seen an old world in Europe… he also saw a new world in America… where he with his people were admitted into the covenant of God; whereupon an hedge of piety and sanctity continued about that people as long as he lived; may therefore be called the Noah or Janus of New-England. This was Mr. Francis Higginson”. (Mather, , Magnalia, I, 355)Google Scholar.

51. Keach, Benjamin, Tropologia, or A Key to Open Scripture Metaphors (London, 1681–1682) Book IV, p. 391.Google Scholar

52. Mather, , Magnalia, I, 69.Google Scholar

53. Ibid., I, 17.

54. Ibid., I, 16.

55. Johnson, , Wonder-working Providence, p. 248.Google Scholar

56. The quotations from Dr. Oppenheimer are from the New York Times for Desember 27, 1954.