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“Declension Comes Home”: Cotton Mather, Male Youth Rebellion, and the Hope of Providential Affliction in Puritan New England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2018
Abstract
The theme of generational religious decline has been a staple of New England Puritan historiography. Yet while scholars have examined these issues at the larger cultural and ecclesial levels, few have looked at the small-scale manifestations of such “declension” within Puritan parent-child relationships. This article looks at Cotton Mather's perceptions of the causes of and potential solutions for male youth waywardness in colonial New England. Attempting to provide pastoral wisdom for distressed parents in his congregation, Mather also had to deal with this issue in his own home. His rebellious son, Increase, served as a very personal example of a vexing public issue, and Mather worked hard to put his pastoral ideals into “fatherly” practice. As he confronted these challenges, Mather located the causes of male youth rebellion in the perilous nature of “youth,” the failures of Puritan parents, and the inscrutable sovereignty of God. In the end, I argue that Mather was ultimately hopeful about God's work and purposes in the midst of youth declension. His belief in God's providence meant that the afflictions attending youthful rebellion could be perceived as God's means of spurring repentance and renewal, addressing parental sin, bolstering godly childrearing, and arousing youth themselves in the pursuit of righteousness.
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References
Notes
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24. Ibid., 2; Brown and Hall, “Family Strategies,” 54.
25. A son, Joseph, was born in 1693 but died shortly after birth, the victim of an abnormal colon that Mather suspected was the work of witchcraft. Another son, Samuel, was born a year after Increase, in 1700, but died in 1701 of “convulsions.” See Ford, Worthington Chauncey, ed., The Diary of Cotton Mather (reprint New York: Frederick Unger Publishing Co., 1911), 1:164,. 382 (hereafter referred to as Diary) Google Scholar.
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27. Diary, 1:307-8. Mather had several of these experiences in which he felt that God had given him a “particular faith” to trust him for a great result of some kind. Mather's biographer called this a “divinely sent intimation, perhaps conveyed through the invisible ministry of good angels, that a particular prayer would be answered.” See Silverman, , The Life and Times of Cotton Mather, 173 Google Scholar.
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30. Diary, 1:337.
31. Ibid., 1:348.
32. These God-given assurances were likely even more poignant for Mather because he sought, but did not receive, similar divine guarantees during his son Samuel's subsequent illness. Samuel did not recover. See ibid., 1:380, 382.
33. Ibid., 1:447, 508.
34. Ibid., 1:583.
35. After the loss of two other sons in infancy, another son, also named Samuel, was born in 1706.
36. Mather, , Help for Distressed Parents, 13 Google Scholar.
37. As Lombard notes, it seems that not much was expected spiritually of young children prior to the age of seven. Mather's grandfather John Cotton noted that it was fine for younger children to “spend much time in pastime and play, for their bodies are too weak to labour and the minds to study are too shallow … even the first seven years are spent in pastime, and God looks not much at it” (quoted in Lombard, , Making Manhood, 21)Google Scholar. Puritan fathers seem to have taken on a more prominent role when sons reached the age of seven, a time when boys moved from infancy to childhood. A change of clothing typically symbolized this shift to boyhood and signified a new identification with the father rather than mother. Spiritual and educational instruction seems to have been heightened after age seven as well, sometimes by the father and sometimes through other tutors. See Lombard, , Making Manhood, 28–33 Google Scholar.
38. Diary, 2:53.
39. Ibid., 2:76.
40. Ibid., 2:204.
41. Ibid., 2:278. The famous Massachusetts School Law of 1642 actually mandated that parents and masters train up young people for an “honest lawful calling.” Mather was similarly keen on the importance of parents providing a useful education for children so that that they could be “put unto some agreeable callings” ( Mather, , A Family Well-Ordered, 18 Google Scholar). He also saw it as important that parents consider children's “capacities” and “inclinations” in selecting a vocation as long as the decision was also accompanied by prayer and fasting (Illick, “Child-Rearing in Seventeenth-Century England and America,” 330). However, Mather was grieved that Increase chose a “life of Action” after receiving a “learned and polite education” (Diary, 2:299).
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43. As Helena Wall has pointed out, only in New England did parents send children away with hopes of moral reform. See Wall, , Fierce Communion: Family and Community in Early America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 103 Google Scholar.
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46. Ibid., 2:611.
47. Ibid., 2:611, 647.
48. Bosco, Ronald A., Paterna: The Autobiography of Cotton Mather (New York: Scholar's Facsimilies & Reprints, 1976), 158 Google Scholar. While some youth surely underwent spiritual crises in their teen years, youthful rebellion in this era seems to have been somewhat normative. See Thompson, Roger, “Adolescent Culture in Colonial Massachusetts,” Journal of Family History 9 (1984): 127-41CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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102. Ibid., 24.
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113. Ibid., 12.
114. Ibid.
115. As Robert Middlekauf has suggested, Mather was particular eager to remind his flock that their spiritual ability was worth nothing in the divine economy. His suggestion that parents could not save their children was directly in line with this larger pastoral theme. See Middlekauf, , The Mathers, 235-53Google Scholar.
116. Mather, Cotton, The Best Ornaments of Youth (Boston: Timothy Green, 1707), 3–4 Google Scholar.
117. Bercovitch, , The American Jeremiad, 8 Google Scholar.
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119. Mather, Cotton, Tela Praevisa (Boston: B. Green, 1724), 12 Google Scholar.
120. Diary, 2:466.
121. Mather, , Help for Distressed Parents, 19 Google Scholar. As McGee has indicated, Puritans believed that God—as a God of order—often sent afflictions that reflected the nature of the particular sins. This “boomerang principle” revealed that God wanted to alert his children to the nature of their sin through the particular “cross” that he sent. See McGee, , The Godly Man in Stuart England, 36–37 Google Scholar.
122. Mather, , A Family Well-Ordered, 46–47 Google Scholar. For a historical example of this, see Mather, Help for Distressed Parents, appendix.
123. Mather, , Help for Distressed Parents, 17 Google Scholar.
124. Ibid.
125. Ibid.
126. Ibid., 16.
127. Diary, 2:485.
128. Ibid., 2:465-66. On this theme, see also Middlekauf, The Mathers, 201-2. It is worth noting that Mather drew comfort from his other son, Samuel, who pursued godliness and, ultimately, a ministry profession. He noted, in fact, that he was the son “in whom a gracious God wonderfully makes up to me what I miss of comfort in his miserable brother” (Diary, 2:701).
129. Ibid., 2:486.
130. Mather, , Help for Distressed Parents, 19–21 Google Scholar.
131. Mather, , A Family Well-Ordered, 30–31 Google Scholar.
132. Mather, , Parentalia, 31 Google Scholar.
133. Diary, 2:76, 92, 447.
134. Mather, Cotton, A Token for the Children of New England (Boston: Timothy Green, 1700)Google Scholar.
135. See, for example, Mather, Cotton, Vita Brevis (Boston: John Allen, 1714)Google Scholar; Mather, Cotton, The A, B, C of Religion (Boston: Timothy Green, 1713)Google Scholar.
136. Diary, 2:64.
137. Mather, Cotton, Corderius Americanus (Boston: John Allen, 1708), 18 Google Scholar.
138. Mather, , Cares about the Nurseries, 76–78 Google Scholar.
139. Mather, , Early Religion Urged, 32–34, 57.Google Scholar
140. Mather, , The Wayes and Joyes of Early Piety, 48 Google Scholar.
141. Mather, , Help for Distressed Parents, 55 Google Scholar.
142. Mather, , The Duty of Children, 36 Google Scholar. See also Mather, , The Words of Understanding, 31 Google Scholar.
143. J. Sears McGee likewise suggests that the Puritans believed God was “more angered by their sins than He was by those of the ungodly.” See McGee, , The Godly Man in Stuart England, 27 Google Scholar.
144. Mather, , The Duty of Children, 33 Google Scholar.
145. Mather, , Help for Distressed Parents, 53 Google Scholar.
146. Diary, 2:323.
147. Mather, , A Family Well-Ordered, 78 Google Scholar.
148. Walzer, Michael, Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.
149. Mather, , Help for Distressed Parents, 28 Google Scholar.
150. Bosco, , Paterna, 194 Google Scholar. Brekus, , Sarah Osborn's World, 50 Google Scholar; Greven, , The Protestant Temperament, 55–61, 74-86Google Scholar. As Mark Noll so well explained, Puritan theologies were “instinctively traditional, habitually deferential to inherited authority, and deliberately suspicious of individual self-assertion” (Noll, America's God, 19).
151. Mather, , A Family Well-Ordered, 25.Google Scholar
152. In this sense, Mather possessed some of the characteristics defined by Greven as more “moderate” in nature, relying on persuasion over corporal punishment and voluntary over compulsory obedience. See Greven, , The Protestant Temperament, 159-70Google Scholar.
153. Mather, , A Family Well-Ordered, 22 Google Scholar.
154. Ibid., 25.
155. Ibid., 24.
156. Mather, , Help for Distressed Parents, 27–28 Google Scholar.
157. See, for example, Diary, 2: 92, 106-7, 150, 195, 199, 203, 231, 250.
158. Ibid., 2:49.
159. Ibid., 2:151. N. Ray Hiner suggests that Mather's intensive form of childrearing might have been a cause, rather than a remedy, of Increase's rebellion. See Hiner, , “Cotton Mather and his Children: The Evolution of a Parent Educator, 1686-1728,” in Regulated Children/ Liberated Children: Education in Psychohistorical Perspective, ed. Finkelstein, Barbara (New York: Psychohistory Press Publishers, 1979), 36 Google Scholar.
160. Ibid., 199.
161. Ibid., 665. His efforts with Increase clearly demonstrate what Richard Lovelace has described as Mather's passion for the “machinery of piety,” concrete spiritual techniques to foster the spiritual life. He urged all of his children to develop a technique-oriented faith that was driven along by various spiritual disciplines rather than a passive orthodoxy. This was one means of generating a subjective sense of spiritual assurance among children and parents. Lovelace, , The American Pietism of Cotton Mather, 110-45Google Scholar.
162. Ibid., 32.
163. Ibid., 30-31.
164. Diary, 2:76, 111, 203, 212.
165. Ibid., 2:480.
166. Ibid., 2:195, 466.
167. Ibid., 2:323.
168. Mather, , A Family Weil-Ordered, 34 Google Scholar.
169. Mather, , Help for Distressed Parents, 34 Google Scholar.
170. Diary, 2:489. 171. Ibid.
172. Mather, , Parentalia, 19–20 Google Scholar.
173. Ibid.
174. Increase Mather, , The Duty of Parents to Pray for Their Children (Boston: n.p., 1703), 39 Google Scholar.
175. See, for example, Mather, Cotton, Things That Young People Should Think Upon (Boston: B. Green & J. Allen, 1700)Google Scholar; Mather, , A Family Well-Ordered, 46–51 Google Scholar.
176. Mather, , Things that Young People Should Think Upon, 9 Google Scholar.
177. Diary, 2:765. Sarah Osborn thought similarly upon the death of her son Samuel. See Brekus, , Sarah Osborn's World, 152 Google Scholar.
178. See, for example, Mather, The Words of Understanding; Mather, Cotton, Juga jucunda (Boston: D. Henchman, 1727)Google Scholar.
179. Diary, 2:765.
180. It is interesting to note, in this regard, that youth represented the largest “harvest” of the Great Awakenings of the 1730s and 1740s. Jonathan Edwards concentrated many of his efforts toward this group, and they did (at least temporarily) engage the revivals in significant ways. See Tracy, Jonathan Edwards, Pastor; Marsden, George M., Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 150-63Google Scholar.
181. Mather, , Help for Distressed Parents, 34–35 Google Scholar.
182. Diary, 2:591-92.
183. On this theme, see McGee, , The Godly Man in Stuart England, 43 Google Scholar.
184. Ibid., 46-47.