 | Dealeth With Men As With Reasonable Creatures (Boston, 1720), 6-7, 14-15, 17-18, 33-34, and passim; Benjamin Colman, God Deals With Us As Rational Creatures (Boston, 1723), 1-8, 11-15, 16-19>Dealeth With Men As With Reasonable Creatures
(Boston, 1720), 6-7, 14-15, 17-18, 33-34, and
passim
; Benjamin Colman,
God Deals With Us As Rational Creatures
(Boston, 1723), 1-8, 11-15, 16-19. Colman in his
The Government and Improvement of Mirth
(Boston, 1707) expressed his distaste for those who used their "Grovling Reason" to ridicule the doctrines of revealed religion. (69)
|
| 67. Mather,
Manuductio ad Ministerium
35, 36.
|
| 68. Biblia, 2 Corinthians, 13: "Yea, so far is
Nature
from finding it [the Trinity] out, that now when
Scripture
hath Revealed it, she cannot by all the help of Art, comprehend it or Exhibit it, as she does other things; . . . ." And "though Reason be able from the Creatures, to infer an Essential power and Godhead, yett it cannot from them a Trinity; . . ." Mather admits his indebtedness at this point in the Biblia to an old book by John Arrowsmith,
Armilla Catechetica. A Chain of Principles
(Cambridge, England, 1659). Arrowsmith had served as Regius Professor of Divinity in Cambridge University. His book describes a reason beholden to revelation in dealing with the Trinity. Mather makes heavy use of examples and arguments from the following pages: 128, 130, 135-36, 137, 138. Mather seems also to have resorted to William Sherlock,
A Vindication of the Doctrine of the Holy and Ever Blessed Trinity
(London, 1690).
|
| 69.
Christian Philosopher
, 303-4.
|
| 70.
Ibid.
304. See also Cotton Mather,
Things To Be More Thought Upon (Boston
, 1713), 28-41.
|
| 71. See Chapter 17 for the evidence for this view. It is worth noting here that the Biblia, "An Essay for a further Commentary on the Sacred Scriptures" contains much on the experience of the Holy Spirit.
|
| 72. Cotton Mather,
Christianity Demonstrated
(Boston, 1710), 23, 26.
|
| 73. Cotton Mather,
The Heavenly Conversation
, "Preface".
|
| 1. Kuno Francke, "The Beginning of Cotton Mather's Correspondence with August Hermann Francke,"
Philological Quarterly
V (July, 1926), 193-95.
|
| 2. Cotton Mather,
Winter-Meditations
, 74.
|
| 3. Mather developed these ideas in many places; see, for
|
|