Mather's Biography
(continued)
Mather's mythic image still rests on his involvement in the Salem witchcraft debacle (1692-93) and on Robert Calef's libelling allegations in More Wonders of the  Invisible World (1700). Mather's most important publications on the supernatural are Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions (1689) and Wonders of the Invisible World (1693). The former mostly recounts the possessions and antics of the Goodwin children, the eldest of whom Mather observed in his own home and eventually cured through fasting, prayer, and patient reassurance. While to modern readers the narrative smacks of singular gullibility, Mather's practical tests, careful observations, and--most important--sanative procedure in indemnifying the girl's excesses, bespeak his experimental treatment of the case. The latter work aims at several purposes. On the one hand, Wonders is New England's official defense of the court's verdict and testimony to the power of Satan and his minions; on the other, it is Mather's contribution to pneumatology, with John Gaul, Sir Matthew Hale, John Dee, William Perkins, Joseph Glanvill, and Richard Baxter in the lead. Before Mather excerpts the six most notorious cases of Salem witchcraft, he buttresses his account with the official endorsement of Lt. Governor William Stoughton, with a disquisition on the devil's machinations described by the best authorities that the subject affords, with a previously delivered sermon at Andover, and with his own experimentations. Mather's Wonders, however, does not end without a due note of caution. While exposing Satan's plot to overthrow New England's churches, Mather also recommends his father's caveat Cases of Conscience (1693), thus effectively rejecting the use of "spectral evidence" as grounds for conviction and condemning confessions extracted under torture. What ties the various parts together is Mather's millenarian theme of Christ's imminence, of which Satan's plot is the best evidence. Robert Calef's accusation that Mather and his ilk incited the hysteria is, perhaps, unfounded, but Calef's charge of Mather's ambidextrous disposition seems warranted. For while Mather defends the court's verdict and justifies the government's position, he also voices his great discomfort with the court's procedure in the matter. Wonders appeared in print just when the trials were halting, but it remains, in his own words, "that reviled Book," a bane to his name.
His most enduring and, at once, most famous legacy is his Puritan epic Magnalia Christi Americana (London, 1702), an ecclesiastical history of New England in the contemporary tradition of providence literature. In seven books of  uneven length, Mather commemorates on an epic scale virtually every aspect of New England's formative period (1620-1698). From a literary point of view, Mather's Plutarchan biographies of New England's governors and ministers (book 2) are of greatest interest. Puritan heroes are juxtaposed with heroes of classical and biblical antiquity, with the former surpassing the latter by emulating their outstanding characteristics. Even though each life follows the pattern of medieval hagiography, he does not fail to mention some of his heroes' shortcomings and how they overcame them. Since its appearance, Magnalia Christi Americana has been criticized for its lack of thematic unity, bombastic style, and undigested material. However flawed by modern standards, each of the seven books develops a specific theme, unified by Mather's Virgilian theme of the mighty works of Christ in the Western hemisphere; Mather's Baroque style--though outdated by his standards of his time--is entirely consistent with his own stylistic principles delineated in Manuductio ad Ministerium (1726): to entertain with stylistic flourishes while instructing with pearls of wisdom. Finally, Mather's consistent narrative voice and rhetorical intent unifies his subject matter as the grandest of jeremiads that American Puritanism has brought forth. Out of Mather's Pietist impulse and scientific endeavor grow three strands of works, the best examples of which are his civic-minded Bonifacius (1710), his compendium of the New Sciences The Christian Philosopher (1720/1), his medical handbook The Angel of Bethesda (wr. 1723/24, publ. 1972), his manual for the ministry Manuductio ad Ministerium (1726), and his hermeneutical defense of eschatology The Threefold Paradise: "Triparadisus" (wr. 1712, 1720-27; publ. 1995). Mather's Bonifacius, An Essay . . . to Do Good represents the most comprehensive expression of his life's purpose: "Fructuosis," to be serviceable to one's fellow man. His lifelong interest in the German Pietist movement of his Frederician colleague August Hermann Francke, of Halle (Saxony), convinced Mather that specific practical advice rather than pious exhortations could engender social reform. His subsequent essays (chapters) address all classes of society and their various occupations.
In typical Renaissance fashion, Mather was at home in virtually every discipline of human knowledge, ancient and modern. Though a theologian by vocation, he was a virtuoso of science by avocation, as his " Curiosa Americana" (1712, 1714) and his Christian Philosopher (1720/1) attest. In the former, he describes in more than 23  separate epistles his pseudo-scientific observations of the American flora and fauna, ornithology, birth defects, rattlesnakes, earthquakes, Indian customs, and many other American curiosities. Perfectly consistent with European standards of the time, "Curiosa" also pioneers theories of psychogenic causes of disease and of plant hybridization, the earliest known account, which became the basis for the Linnaean system of botany. The Royal Society of London bestowed upon Mather the prestigious title of F.R.S. (1713). He was only the eighth colonial American to become a Fellow. Like Increase Mather's Illustrious Providences (1684), Cotton Mather's Christian Philosopher provides a rational foundation for Christianity, attempting to reconcile Scripture revelation with the New Sciences. But unlike his father's earlier work, Christian Philosopher moves with ease between scientific explanations and theological justifications. Above all else, Cotton Mather demonstrates the adaptability of Calvinism to a new philosophy in its progress toward the Transcendentalism of the nineteenth century.
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uneven length, Mather commemorates on an epic scale virtually every aspect of New England's formative period (1620-1698). From a literary point of view, Mather's Plutarchan biographies of New England's governors and ministers (book 2) are of greatest interest. Puritan heroes are juxtaposed with heroes of classical and biblical antiquity, with the former surpassing the latter by emulating their outstanding characteristics. Even though each life follows the pattern of medieval hagiography, he does not fail to mention some of his heroes' shortcomings and how they overcame them. Since its appearance, Magnalia Christi Americana has been criticized for its lack of thematic unity, bombastic style, and undigested material. However flawed by modern standards, each of the seven books develops a specific theme, unified by Mather's Virgilian theme of the mighty works of Christ in the Western hemisphere; Mather's Baroque style--though outdated by his standards of his time--is entirely consistent with his own stylistic principles delineated in Manuductio ad Ministerium (1726): to entertain with stylistic flourishes while instructing with pearls of wisdom. Finally, Mather's consistent narrative voice and rhetorical intent unifies his subject matter as the grandest of jeremiads that American Puritanism has brought forth. 
