MATHER, COTTON (1 663-1728 ) . A colonial divine and author. eldest son of Increase Nigher (q.v.) and Naria, daughter of John Cotton (q.v.). Ile was bout in Boston. Febru ary 12, 1663. Ile was very precocious and was unfortunately overestimated and praised. witlt the result that he became morbidly self-con scious. An omnivorous reader from the first, be entered Darvard at eleven, and graduated in 1678 at fifteen. At sixteen he studied medicine, despairing of being aide to enter the ministry on aecount of a propensity to stammering. This he conquered hr methods of deliberate speech, and at seventeen preached his first sermon and be came an assistant to his father. lie took his master's degree in 1681, refused a call to New Haven, and became associate pastor with his father in the North Chureh of Boston. In 1686 he married: two years later his father's mis sion to England left him at the age of twenty live in sole charge of the '.?;')i-th Church, and probably the most important in Ifoston. lle was widely celebrated as a scholar and was the obvious leader of the conservative clement among the Puritans of the day. lie had also begun to take a great interest in the subject of witchcraft. his Mei/two/de Proridenees Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions appearing in 1689. During the witchcraft epidemic at Salem in 1692 lie became an infatuated investigator of suspected eases, a constant adviser of the mag istrates. and wrote his Wonders of the farisible World (1693) to ennfule all doubters. In 1693 Mather planned his great ecclesiastical history of New England. the Magnolia. which was finished in 1697, and finally appeared in 1702.
Meanwhile he was overworked and in an un condition of mind, partly in consequence of attacks made upon him for his activity in the witchcraft crisis. Ile was also much worried by his father's troubles as president of Har vard, and later was disappointed in not him self receiving the position. lle had family troubles, and was furthermore doomed to see more liberal forms of religious thought prevailing around him. Nevertheless he continued to be a prominent and useful citizen, waging war on intemperance and other forms of immorality. In 1703 lie married again. In 1707 a final breach with Governor Dudley greatly lessened his public influence. A few years later he was made a D.D. by the University of Glasgow, but tributes to his merits as divine, scholar, and au thor could not compensate for domestic unhap piness caused by various deaths and by the dissolute conduct of one of his sons. his second
wife dying in 1713, he took another two years later and suffered greatly in consequence of her derangement. In 1721 by his bold stand in favor of inoculation for smallpox he aroused almost a panic of opposition to himself. Then came his father's death, a final disappointment with re gard to the presidency of Harvard, and his own death, February 13, 1728.
Cotton Slather was a man of extraordinary learning, combined with pedantry, a stanch up holder of antiquity, especially in matters of theology and Church polity, a- marvelously vo luminous writer, an active politician, and, when not misled by excitement, a public-spirited citi zen. His connection with the persecution of the witches has given him a sinister reputation, which no efforts of biographers have been able to efface; but it is at least certain that. he is bet ter remembered than any other of the early colonial divines. Few persons can now find time to read his numerous hooks, but no student of the period during which he lived should speak of him without gratitude. Ills Magnolia is full of errors, yet gives the very 'form and pres ence' of its age. and represents labors truly heroic. The most important of his works are: Poem to the Memory of Urian Oakes (1682) ; Wonders of the Invisible ll'or/(L (1693; re printed in 'Library of Old Authors." 1862) ; Magnolia Christi Americana (1702; reprinted in two volumes, 1820 and 1853) ; Bonifacius, etc., or, as it is better known, Essays to Do (Mod (1710; Glasgow, 1838) ; and Parentator (Bos ton, 1724), a curious and interesting life of his father,• Increase. For his life and writings con sult the biography by his son. Samuel Slather (Boston, 1729) ; Pond. The Mather Family (Bos ton, 1844) ; Wendell, Cotton Mather (New York, 1891) ; Marvin, Life and Times of Cotton Mather (Boston, 1892) ; also Sibley. Harrar•d Graduates, vol. iii. (Cambridge, 1885) ; Tyler, History of Aune•ican Literature, vol. ii. (New York, 1881) ; Wendell, Literary History of .Inierica (New York, 1900).—Cotton Slather's son, SAMUEL (1706-85). graduated at Harvard in 1723, served as minister of the North Church, Boston, until 1742, and then, in consequence of differences concerning revivals, a separate church was formed for hint in North Bennett Street. Ile published among other works a Life of Cot ton (1729) ; A n Apology for the Lib ertie of the Churches in New England (1738) ; and America Known to the Ancients (1773).