Increase Mather

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

President of Harvard

Mather had been acting president of Harvard College in 1681-1682, and in June 1685 he again became acting president (or rector), but still preached every Sunday in Boston and would not comply with an order of the General Court that he should reside in Cambridge. In 1701 after a short residence there he returned to Boston and wrote to the General Court to think of another President for the college. The opposition to him had been increasing in strength, his resignation was accepted, and Samuel Willard took charge of the college as vice-president, although he also refused to reside in Cambridge. That Mather's administration of the college was excellent is admitted even by his harsh critic, Josiah Quincy, in his History of Harvard University. The fact that the Liberal party, which had come into control of the college, repeatedly disappointed Cotton Mather in his desire to be chosen president, along with its ecclesiastical laxness and its broader views of Church polity, forced the Mathers to turn from Harvard to Yale as a truer school of the prophets.

Related Topics:
Josiah Quincy - Cotton Mather - Yale

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The Liberal leaders, John Leverett (1662-1724), William Brattle (1662-1713)--who graduated with Leverett in 1680, and with him as tutor controlled the college during Increase Mather's absence in England--William Brattle's eldest brother, Thomas Brattle (1658-1713), and Ebenezer Pemberton (1671-1717), pastor of the Old South Church, desired an enrichment of the service, and greater liberality in the matter of baptism. In 1697 the Second Boston Church, in which Cotton Mather had been his fathers colleague since 1685, upbraided the Charlestown Church for betraying the liberties of the churches in their late putting into the hands of the whole inhabitants the choice of a minister.

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In 1699 Increase Mather published The Order of the Gospel, which severely (although indirectly), criticized the methods of the Liberals in establishing the Brattle Street Church and especially the ordination of their minister Benjamin Colman by a Presbyterian body in London; the Liberals replied with The Gospel Order Revived, which was printed in New York to lend color to the (partly true) charge of its authors that the printers of Massachusetts would print King James promised him a confirmation of the former charter: the new provincial charter granted by William and Mary confirmed all gifts and grants to colleges; in 1692 Mather drafted an ad incorporating the college, which was signed by Phips but Wa, disallowed in England; and in 1696, 1697, 1699, and 1700, Mather repeated his efforts for a college charter.

Related Topics:
1699 - William and Mary

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