Excerpts from Ten New England leaders (1901)
Author: Walker, Williston, 1860-1922
Increase Mather was born on June 21, 1639, in that
home in Dorchester into which we have already glanced
in considering the career of his father, Richard. Popu-
lar tradition represents Puritan names as Biblical or
fantastically religious to a degree not true of them in
general. If one looks over a list of Puritan emigrants
or a catalogue of early church members, one finds it
made up chiefly, in reality, of the Williams, the Johns,
the Edwards, the Henrys, the Richards, the Thomases,
in which Anglo-Saxon parents have delighted certainly
since the Norman conquest.
But occasionally you
will meet an odd exception, and the child whose story
we are beginning received his name, we are told, " be-
cause of the never-to-be-forgotten Increase, of every
sort, wherewith GOD favored the Country, about the
time of his Nativity." The boy whose name was
thus bestowed was the youngest of six children, all
sons, five of whom grew to maturity, and four of
whom entered the ministry, doing service of much
more than ordinary conspicuity. The household at-
mosphere into which he was ushered, that subtle en-
vironment which determines for so many of us what
we are to be, made the path of scholarship and of
Christian service easy for him. His father's character
and studious habits we have already considered; and
his mother had no lower ideals for. her boy. "Child,"
she was wont to say to him, " if GOD make thee a
Good Christian and a Good Scholar, thou hast all that
ever thy Mother Asked for thee."
The mother's
desires for his scholarship were early fulfilled, for, at
the age of twelve, the son entered Harvard.
**********
In Mather's case, however, his residence at Harvard
was interrupted by ill-health, and probably half his
college course, if not more, was pursued in the house-
hold and under the instruction of that ablest dialectician
among the early New England ministers, Rev. John
Norton, at first at Ipswich, and then at Boston, where
Norton succeeded Cotton in the care of the First
Church.
**********
Graduation came in 1656, and on his eighteenth birth-
day, in 1657, Mather preached his first sermon. But
the favor shown to New Englanders by Cromwell made
the home country very attractive to Harvard graduates
desirous of a career. Many had gone thither; among
them Increase Mather's two older brothers, Samuel,
who had settled over an important congregation in
Dublin, and Nathanael, who had obtained a living at
Barnstaple in Devonshire. At Samuel's invitation,
Increase now sailed for England, on July 3, 1657, less
than two weeks after the delivery of his first sermon ;
and, on reaching Dublin, entered Trinity College, where
he graduated Master of Arts in 1658. He decided pul-
pit gifts brought him into notice, and the succeeding
winter was spent by Mather in supplying the congrega-
tion left temporarily vacant at Great Torrington by the
absence of its pastor, John Howe, on chaplain's duty at
the court of Richard Cromwell. The spring of 1659 saw
his appointment, at less than twenty years of age, as
garrison chaplain on the island of Guernsey, a post
which he held till the Restoration made it untenable
in March, 1661. The young preacher was popular.
**********
It was in this time of waiting, also, on March 6,
1662, that Increase Mather married his stepsister,
Mary, daughter of John Cotton, whose widow, the
mother of the bride of twenty years of age, had mar-
ried his father, Richard Mather. She bore him ten
children; and when death took her from him, in his
old age, after fifty-two years of life together, he mar-
ried, in 1715, the widow of her nephew, the third to
bear the name of John Cotton in the New England
ministry.
**********
Already the most conspicuous minister in New Eng-
land, it was but natural that the trustees of Harvard
College should turn to Mather when the presidency of
that institution became vacant by the death of Urian
Oakes in 1681. He declined at that time. But when
death once more emptied the president's chair, he ac-
cepted the post ; though continuing his Boston pastor-
ate, a labor which was made lighter by the settlement
of his eldest son, Cotton Mather, the same year, as
colleague pastor of the church of which he was in title
"teacher " an intimate and almost fraternal associa-
tion that was to last for more than thirty-eight years,
and to be broken only by death.
**********
One event, closely connected in time with Mather's
return from England, cannot be passed by in any esti-
mate of his influence in New England the grim
witchcraft tragedy at Salem. Increase Mather's con-
nection with it was, indeed, much more remote than
that of his son Cotton. The excitement in the house-
hold of Rev. Samuel Parris, of what is now Danvers,
with which the fanatic outburst opened, had begun
in March, 1692, two months before Mather's return.
But Cotton and Increase Mather were so one in spirit,
that, in the public eye, all that the former did carried
the sanction of the latter. There can be no doubt,
also, that Increase Mather's Illustrious Providences, of
1684, contributed to the popular belief in witchcraft,
if not so powerfully as his son's Memorable Providences,
Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions, of 1689 and 1691.
Increase Mather certainly could have done much, had
he been so disposed, to check the witchcraft excite-
ment, and he was enlightened enough to argue against
the adequacy of several of the popularly accepted evi-
dences of witchcraft in his Cases of Conscience Concern-
ing Evil Spirits ; but he as certainly believed in the
possibility of compacts with the devil, and, as late as
1694, the Harvard trustees, under his leadership, is-
sued an appeal to the ministers of New England for
the collection of narratives of enchantments.
He and his son Cotton tried their best to suppress that influ-
ential, if exceedingly personal, volume, the More
Wonders of the Invisible World, of 1700, in which
Robert Calef of Boston expressed a skepticism regard-
ing witchcraft which all intelligent persons have since
come to share. But there can be no doubt that
Mather's belief in the reality of satanic possession was
conscientious; and it had the support of many of the
best men of his age on both sides of the Atlantic.
Such a man as Richard Baxter, for instance, was no
less strongly a believer in these supposedly supernat-
ural manifestations. Yet, however we may excuse
Increase Mather, the witchcraft episode is not a pleas-
ant page in his story.
**********
Mather proffered his resignation to his people. Its
acceptance was refused, though the church speedily
voted that he should preach " only when he should
feel himself able and inclin'd." So, blessed in the
kindly regard of his own congregation, and in the con-
tinued association of his son with him in his ministry
and labors, whatever disappointments he may have felt
over other circumstances of his later life, he gradually
relaxed his hold on the world of which he had been
so conspicuous a citizen. His enfeebled condition con-
fined him to the house after September, 1719; the
thought of his approaching rest in the presence of
his Lord seemed increasingly attractive to him. To
his London friend, Thomas Hollis, who had inquired
if he were still in " the land of the living," he sent the
message: "No! Tell him, I am going to it; This
Poor World is the Land of the Dying. 'T is Heaven
that is the true Land of the Living." * But, as in his
father's case, his suffering was prolonged, and he died,
after a distressing illness, but rejoicing in confidence
of entrance into the eternal city, on August 23, 1723,
at the ripe age of eighty-five. They honored him, so
his son recorded, " with a Greater Funeral than had
ever been seen for any Divine , in these . . . parts
of the World " ; and it was fitting that they should,
for the Massachusetts of that day had lost its most
gifted son.