Chapter The New England Clergy of Index by Simonds History of American Literature

named, representing the vagaries of Puritan thought; many are sermons delivered on special occasions; three or four are interesting little books.

One, familiarly known under the title Essays to do Good,¹ was cordially praised by Benjamin Franklin, who declared to the son of the writer that as a youth he had derived great benefit and inspiration from the book. But the great work, the magnum opus of Cotton Mather's prolific industry, was the famous Magnalia Christi Americana, or Ecclesiastical History of New England, from its First Planting in the Year 1620, unto the Year of our Lord, 1698.

The Magnalia Christi Americana.

Something over a thousand pages of closely printed matter is included in the seven parts or volumes of this monumental work. The planting of New England and its growth, the lives of its governors and its famous divines, a history of Harvard College, the organization of the churches, "a faithful record of many wonderful Providences," and an "account of the Wars of the Lord -- being an history of the manifold afflictions and disturbances of the churches in New England" -- such is the scope of the Magnalia Christi Americana, or The Great Acts of Christ in America.

It begins like an epic:--

"I write the Wonders of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION, flying from the depravations of Europe to the American Strand and, assisted by the Holy Author of that Religion, I do, with all conscience of Truth, required therein by Him, who is the Truth itself, report the wonderful displays of this infinite Power, Wisdom, Goodness, and Faithfulness, wherewith His Divine Providence hath irradiated an Indian Wilderness."

The style is pedantic and artificial, but the spirit of the writer is perfectly sincere. Now and then the narrative grows simple and strong. There is a frequent use of Old Testament phraseology which indicates a clear perception of its poetical value. Such, for example, is the account of Hannah Dustin's thrilling experiences among the Indians, at Haverhill, in 1697. This is the story of the woman's daring escape from captivity:--

"She heartened the nurse and the youth to assist her in this enterprise; and all furnishing themselves with hatchets for the purpose, they struck such home blows upon the heads of their sleeping oppressors that e'er they could any of them struggle into any effectual resistance, at the feet of these poor prisoners, they bow'd, they fell, they lay down; at their feet they bowed, they fell; where they bowed, there they fell down dead."¹

Significance of the Work.

The Magnalia, completed in December, 1697, was published at London in 1702. It stands fitly enough as the last important literary effort of seventeenth-century colonial Puritanism. Already there were indications of a change in the current of New England religious life. The old extreme Puritan doctrines were in a decline; and Mather's huge volume was a final utterance in defense of the fathers' faith. Not only had there come a change in the form of thought; in the style of literary expression, the change was as notable. English writers no longer followed the models of the later Elizabethan essayists; their fantastic phraseology had been displaced by the direct and forceful diction ofBunyan and Dryden; the easy, natural style of Addison, Steele, and Swift was giving a new charm to English prose. Cotton Mather lived throughout the first quarter of the eighteenth century; but in all essential respects, in personality and in utterance, he belongs wholly to the seventeenth. The consummate product of the old Puritan theology, he stands as the last important representative of the type in American literature.