The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 (114 page)

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Authors: Robert Middlekauff

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46. Biblia, Matthew, 12.
47.
Ibid
. and
passim
.
48. Cotton Mather, Triparadisus, Pt. III, Sect. XII.
49.
Christianus Per Ignem
, 7.
50. Biblia, Matthew, 12.
51.
Ibid
., Matthew, 28.
52. For an account of Puritan conceptions of reason, see Miller,
The New England Mind: Seventeenth Century
, 181-206.
53. Cotton Mather,
Reasonable Religion
(Boston, 1700), 4.
54. Miller,
New England Mind: Seventeenth Century
, 181-206,
passim
. Both Increase and Cotton Mather made virtually all of these arguments.
55. Mather,
Reasonable Religion
, 40, for the quotation.
 
Page 415
56. Locke,
Reasonableness of Christianity, passim
. Locke accepted the biblical account of the miracles.
57. John Toland,
Christianity not Mysterious
(? 1696), 127 for the quotation. Sir Leslie Stephen,
History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (2 vols
., New York, 1962; first pub. 1876), I, 78-100, is still a distinguished guide to Locke and Toland's thought on these questions, and to many sides of English deism.
58. Stephen,
History of English Thought, passim
; Stromberg,
Religious Liberalism
should be consulted about the English controversies.
59. Earl Morse Wilbur,
A History of Unitarianism In Transylvania, England, and America
(Boston, 1945), 208-70.
60. One stage in Mather's retreat from his first eager endorsements of reason can be seen in his
The Man of God Furnished
(Boston, 1708).
See especially
, "The True Child of Light," 72-83; and "Divine
Revelation
Victorious over carnal
Reason,
" 84-92. These essays should be compared with care to the entry on reason in the
Diary
, II, 144 (Dec. 1711).
61. (Boston, 1712). Mather tells of the origins of the work on iii. Increase Mather had already attacked the deists strongly in
A Discourse Proving that the Christian Religion Is the Only True Religion
(
Boston
, 1702).
62. Mather,
Reason Satisfied
, 11-14.
63.
Ibid
. 34; Cotton Mather,
Malachi (Boston
, 1717), 39-43.
64.
Reason Satisfied
, 34;
Malachi
, 40-42; and especially Mather's
A Man of Reason
(Boston, 1709). This sermon was written in 1709. In it he argues for the existence of innate ideas (3-4).
65. Cotton Mather's fullest statement on the Golden Rule appears in a sermon he gave to it, "The Measures of Equity," in
Piety and Equity United
(Boston, 1717), 1-42 (separate pagination for each sermon).
66. The quotations are from Cotton Mather,
Icono-clastes
, 18. See also,
A Man of Reason
, 13-15, for a more conventional (and earlier) warning. Since most ministers in New England did not embrace reason with Mather's eagerness, most did not go through the deflationary process he experienced. For traces of the rationalism of the new century in others, see Jonathan Russell,
A Plea For The Righteousness of God
(Boston, 1704), 22; Ebenezer Pemberton,
A Christian Fixed in His Post
(Boston, 1704), 6-7; Experience Mayhew,
A Discourse Shewing That God

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