The Mathers Jonathan Edwards
Increase Mather
(1639-1723)
Son of Richard Mather.
Educated at Harvard College,
from which he graduated at
the age of 17, and the
University of Dublin.
From 1685 to 1701 he was president of Harvard College.
Mather spoke out against witchcraft hysteria and wrote (1692) that letting ten witches escape was preferable to condemning one innocent person.
Cotton Mather
(1663-1728)
Son of Increase Mather.
Educated at Harvard College (now Harvard University).
Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), an ecclesiastical history of New England, ranks among the most important and scholarly works produced during America's first 100 years.
Cotton Mather
He also wrote on the subject of witchcraft.
Championed inoculations against smallpox in 1721,
Helped the American physician Zabdiel Boylston to conquer public prejudice against the practice.
Mather was the first native-born American inducted into the Royal Society of London.
His numerous books include works on history, science, biography, and theology.
The Wonders of the Invisible World (1693)
The wonders of the invisible world: being an account of the tryals of several witches lately executed in New England
an account of some of the Salem witchcraft cases
Essays to Do Good (1710);
Ratio disciplinae (1726), a discussion of Congregational church government.
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)
Born October 5, 1703, in East Windsor, Connecticut Colony.
Edwards was a child prodigy: at 10 he wrote an essay on the nature of the soul.
At 13 he entered the Collegiate School of Connecticut (now Yale University)
At 17 he graduated as valedictorian of his class.
At 26 became pastor at Northampton.
He was a notable pulpit orator.
The result of his 1734-1735 sermons was a religious revival.
A great number of conversions were made.
Edwards received 300 new members into his church.
Some of the converted were so obsessed by his fiery descriptions of eternal damnation that they contemplated suicide.
Engraving by Babson &Andrews
the Great Awakening
In 1740 the British evangelist George Whitefield visited Edwards.
Together, the two men started a revival movement that became known as the Great Awakening.
It developed into a religious frenzy engulfing all New England.
The conversions were characterized by convulsions and hysteria.
The harshness and appeal to religious fear.
“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” caused his congregation to rise weeping and moaning from their seats.
His congregation turned against him because:
He instituted disciplinary proceedings in church against young people who had been reading improper books;
He objected strongly to the Halfway Covenant, a New England church custom that permitted baptized persons to have all the privileges of church membership except communion although they had not openly professed conversion.
He became pastor of the village church and missionary to the Housatonic people in Stockbridge.
A Careful and Strict Enquiry into ... Notions of ... Freedom of Will ... (1754):
human beings do not have self-determined will that can initiate acts not known or decreed beforehand by God.
it remains one of the most famous theological works ever written in America.
In 1757, Edwards accepted the presidency of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University). He was inaugurated in 1758, but five weeks later, on March 22, 1758, he died as the result of an inoculation against smallpox, which was then epidemic.
His other works:
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746),
Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World (1754),
The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended (1758).