Increase Mather

Increase Mather (June 21, 1639 – August 23, 1723) was a Puritan educator and clergyman.

His personality

Increase Mather was a great preacher with a simple style and a splendid voice, which had a "Tonitruous Cogency," to quote his son's phrase. His style was much simpler and more vernacular than his sons. He was an assiduous student, commonly spending sixteen hours a day among his books; but his learning (to quote Justin Winsor's contrast between Increase and Cotton Mather) usually left his natural ability and his education free from entanglements. He was not so much self-seeking and personally ambitious as eager to advance the cause of the church in which he so implicitly believed.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

That it is a mistake to consider him a narrow churchman is shown by his assisting in 1718 at the ordination of Elisha Callender in the First Baptist Church of Boston. Like the most learned men of his time he was superstitious and a firm believer in presagious impressions; his Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences: Wherein an Account is Given of many Remarkable and very Memorable Events which have Hapned in this Last Age, Especially in New England (1684) shows that he believed only less thoroughly than his son in witchcraft, though in his Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits (1693) he considered some current proofs of witchcraft inadequate. The revulsion of feeling after the witchcraft delusion undermined his authority greatly, and Roberts Calef's More Wonders of the Spiritual World (1700) was a personal blow to him as well as to his son. With Jonathan Edwards, than whom he was much more of a man of affairs, and with Benjamin Franklin, whose mission in England somewhat resembled Mather's, he may be ranked among the greatest Americans of the period before the War of Independence.

Related Topics:
1718 - Witchcraft delusion - Jonathan Edwards - Benjamin Franklin - War of Independence

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~