Read The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 Online

Authors: Robert Middlekauff

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The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 (30 page)

 
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conversions aided the land, made it lovely in God's eyes. New England's fate was tied to their own, he reminded his church as he led them in the renewal of their covenant. He never exhausted this theme, nor did he repudiate the conjunction of regenerate souls and a prosperous land. But he carne to make the connection infrequently in the final twenty-five years of his service to the North Church, as his belief in the redemptive powers of the whole nation weakened. During these last years, he fastened his hopes to the elect, their powers to please the Lord and to redeem the Church in the final days of history. Therefore he gave all his heart to the effort of saving souls. He had learned, he said, that God wanted him to convert the chosen, and to that noble task, he would give the remainder of his unclean and sinful life. Many of Increase's lamentations about his own sin were conventional Puritan expressionsbut not lightly felt for all their conventionality. By his own gauge he had failed often, and now, in his last years, the final great opportunity to serve God had narrowed to the traditional objective of Protestant teaching, the saving of sinners. The objective was simple and straightforward and so was his preaching in its service. The language he chose, the texts he selected (largely from the New Testament rather than the Old Testament) all reveal the altering emphasis in his homiletics.
3
In approaching sinners, Increase like Richard before him employed the conception of the covenant of grace in carefully limited ways. Like virtually all Puritan divines, he accepted the covenant theology as a description of one way in which God dealt with man. But his method of saving souls was not to outline the terms of the covenant in the hope of enticing a sinner to take them up. He did not lay out a contract to sinners with instructions that suggested that if man did his part, by believing with heart and mind in Christ, the Lord would do His with the gift of grace. Nor did he bedazzle his listeners with the insidious language of commercepromises, seals, bargainsthat suggested the equality of God and man in an Arminian universe.
4
As Increase explained the covenant of grace, it offered not the terms of an agreement between equal parties, but provisions of total capitulation. It was not a contract in any sense familiar to his auditory. The relationship it described would hardly embolden sinners to claim God's favors by right; rather, the ar-
 
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rangement it suggested would be available only to those who accepted the cruel facts of predestination and the omnipotence of God.
The Lord of the covenant granted it, and entered it, as a master; man received it, took it up, as a "servant."
5
The man who received grace put on the "livery" of Christ.
6
The Lord Jesus is the "Captain of our Salvation,'' Increase told his listeners; we are His soldiers, and only because He has conscripted us, not because we have enlisted.
7
Increase chose these figures to exemplify man's dependence upon a power infinitely greater than himself. Men preferred their own righteousness to Christ's, he knew, and if they were to be saved they must learn that only the righteousness of Christ was sufficient. Hence the language of dependence which left no one doubting who was superior and who was inferior in the covenant.
If the covenant of grace in this preaching appears less as a business agreement than a treaty of unconditional surrender, the covenant of redemption between God the Father and Christ the Son appears in a conventional way in Increase's sermons. But the emphasis is not conventional. In fact, Increase's Christology supplied the central techniques in all his attempts to secure the salvation of souls. The Lord does not need you, Increase told his church. He saves some of you because it suits His pleasure. Of course, by your sin you have chosen to make your own salvation difficult for Him. In His wisdom He has decreed that the law must be satisfied; but since in your corruption you are helpless to satisfy its terms, He has chosen to accept the sacrifice of His Son as full payment. And if youa sinnercan believe graciously in Christ, your salvation is assured.
8
Phrased in this manner the covenant of redemption does not seem on first sight to reduce greatly a man's power to help himself, to enter the covenant of grace as an equal to a Lord who voluntarily binds Himself to fulfill its terms. But Increase not only never suggested that men enter the covenant of grace as equals, he "preached Christ" with such intensity as to suggest the total helplessness and dependence of man. Drawing on the warrior-Christ of Revelation was one way of emphasizing man's dependence and the Lord's command. Christ as a ruler over men, His subjects, is also a familiar figure in Increase's sermons. By "preaching Christ" Increase intended not only to nourish the
 
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faithful (this purpose was a favorite one in his sacramental meditations) but to bring sinners into the fold.
9
Though in these sermons Increase described the unregenerate standing helpless before the conquering Christ, he did not attempt to frighten his listeners into conversion. He wished to reduce their pride and to destroy their confidence that they could find salvation in their own righteousness without the benefit of Christ's, but he realized that by itself fear could not permanently induce submissiveness in the soul. And therefore, though he sometimes pointed to the precariousness of the unregenerate statefor example, in this sentence that Jonathan Edwards must have pondered, "Thy soul is hanging over the mouth of hell by the rotten threat of a frail life: if that breaks, the devouring Gulf will swallow thee up for ever"he did not often rely on sermons of sustained terror. What he had to establish for his sinful hearers was the fact that although Christ's human nature added to the efficacy of His sacrifice for the redemption of the elect, it in no way implied that a man could achieve as much for himself. Not surprisingly, Increase, in praising the magnificence of Christ's sacrifice, professed wonder that God as Christ should take on the nature of man with all the "sinless infirmities" of man. For in His human nature, Christlike ordinary mensuffered fatigue, and He experienced hunger and thirst. He suffered abuse at the hands of men, finally enduring the torture of crucifixion. He did not sin Himself; in His human character He possessed a holiness above all created beings including, Increase Mather took pains to point out, angels. Yet He suffered and felt much as any man did. He lowered Himself, Increase Mather explained, to give His sacrifice power, and to demonstrate His enormous capacity to assume the guilt of men. Throughout His first appearance on earth, He remained essentially "one" with God the father, and yet in His human form, ''personally distinct."
10
The demonstration of Christ's divine authority and His power should have been easy to Increase, and yet by his emphasis he indicated that he anticipated most resistance from his listeners to this proposition. The trouble in persuading men lay in their pride, their self-regarding insistence that they could lift themselves by their own bootstraps. Lest they seize the fact of Christ's human nature to demand salvation from Him on their own de-
 
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serts, Increase in sermon after sermon reminded them of how things were. Christ was not a mere man: He was not to be forced into a contract. He existed above men; His sacrifice stood "
above
Reason" and could not ever be fully comprehended in human terms.
11
The warrior-Christ may not have chosen to spill much blood, preferring to redeem men by sacrificing Himself, but He possessed the full powers of God, sitting with God as an equal. He was not a servant who stood before the throne, as men would on the Day of Judgment.
12
Typology provided one technique of persuading men of the majesty and greatness of Christ. And Increase employed it to full advantage. In particular he drew on the types to illustrate the dimensions of Christ's sovereignty. God gave evidence of His intention to save men only through the mediation of Christ, Increase said, in His use of Moses. For only Moses ascended the mountain to receive the law; and Moses was a type of Christ. Later, the High Priest went into the Temple alone, again to forecast the sole mediation of Jesus. As for Christ's wisdom and power in the salvation of menthey appear in the great figures of the Old Testament who also were types of Christ. The names were familiar to every listener in the North ChurchSolomon, Joshua, and David.
13
Thus, Increase concluded, men should enter the covenant of grace as servants standing before their Lordin full obedience and humility. Their rights in the covenant existed solely because of the rights conferred by Christ's testament for them. Every figure chosen by Increase to indicate the act establishing the covenanted relationship described Christ's supremacy and man's subordination. Men may claim the "right and title" to an inheritance, he said in a sermon on the Beatitudes, through a number of devicesgift, birth, adoption, and purchase. And in each case the "right and title" are founded in Christ's sacrifice. Believers receive the gift from the Lord; they are born of Christ and are His heirs; they are adopted by Christ, hence receive His inheritance; and finally, Christ's "purchase" by His sacrifice entitles them to Heaven. In a similar figurethough from commerce and not lawmen are "debtors," Christ their ''surety'' who pays up for them.
14
Increase Mather never conceived of grace entering the believer except as a free gift, as he said, a "favour of God." Nothing a
 
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man could do would earn it, for grace was not a "debt" to be paid over as "wages." Nor should a sinner ever believe he would come by it because of his misery, for grace was not a ''mercy" to be bestowed only on the deserving. It might go to the unworthy should giving it suit God's pleasure. Increase also distinguished between grace and love, saying that though love was the ''original grace," love might flourish between a variety of men. Lovehe insistedmay exist between "equals," "inferiors," and "superiors," subjects and rulers, but "Grace imply's Superiority." In the understandings of men, God resembles a "king," and kings "single out whom they please to be their favourites. . . ."
15
The way Increase presented the covenant of grace to his people reflected not only his understanding of Providential design but also his assumptions about the psychology of conversion. In preaching the covenant he told his listeners that they were "rebels" to be subdued by the conquering Christ. The intention of the "Plain, Practical Sermons" he preached to promote Conversion was to induce those in rebellion to surrenderto enter the covenant on the only terms possible, as abject captives of Christ.
16
Increase wanted to affect his listenersto convince them of their vile and weak charactersbut he was not content simply to move them. Throughout his ministry he spoke slightingly of the "sermon-sick," those temporarily contrite because of something they heard in church, who soon fell back into the old, evil grooves of their lives. A minister who wished to bring saving faith to others had so to reduce their will to live that their only possibility of survival lay in the acceptance of the Holy Spirit.
17
In these sermons calculated to convert, he explained the process of conversion in most men. He described this process as starkly and simply as he could without bending down to patronize his listeners. He did not presume to tell them how God and the Spirit operated; there was mystery in life, he said, and most of the Lord's ways were hidden to all but Himself. What a minister could do was to take men inside themselves. Here is the way you are, he said, what you think and feel, and why. Here are your hidden thoughts, your deceptions, your secret preferences. When you see what you really arewhat dreadful, sinful
 
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shape you are inyou have a chance. Then you can seize the opportunity to strive after Christ, and to accept grace should He offer it.
18
Sitting in the North Church, a listener learned that a man really has only one problem in this life, the problem of the self. Most men preferred their own righteousness to Christ's, Increase insisted; they hated to admit that they needed anyone else, so puffed up with pride were they. Looking at the prosperous, the complacent, and the rising entrepreneurs in front of him, Increase pointed out that pride led men to place serving themselves above glorifying God. Most men were "practical Atheists"; despite their professions of love for Christ, "the Farm or Merchandise has their hearts." To be converted they must renounce their idols, the creatures of the world, and most importantly they must deny the self, the chief idol of every sinner.
19
Like other ministers in New England, Increase knew that his congregation contained men who professed an inability to believe. God had not given them faith, they said, and though they longed to believe, they could not. Toward these men Increase adopted a stern and unforgiving attitude. Your "cannot," he told them, is a "wilful cannot." You love yourselves and your lust. If you could be converted you would not accept it, you hate conversion because you enjoy your unbelief. Do not blame the Lord for your carnal will; you have chosen your own destruction.
20
Still another sort of sinner listened too. The civil moral man who lacked capacity to examine himself rigorously and who therefore failed to detect his own corrupt spirit. This man thought that he loved Christ; he lived a life outwardly pure but inwardly he remained unclean. Far from loving Christ, he hated Him; his love was himself, and his sins.
Other kinds of listeners sat before Increase as he delivered the Word. Some felt an anxiety about their inner states, though they had long since experienced conversion and described it to the satisfaction of the Church. Some, also converted, felt little besides calm, though they had often heard the minister warn against security, as Puritans denoted the feeling of absolute certainty that one was saved. And still others approached despair, for they now recognized themselves as hypocrites in their teacher's description. Increase recognized them all and hoped that, however

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