Cotton Mather

Cotton Mather's mythic image rests on his involvement in the Salem witchcraft debacle (1692-93) and on his Wonders of the Invisible World (1693)-an official defense of the court's verdict and a testimony to the power of Satan and his minions. Mather excerpts the six most notorious cases of Salem witchcraft and 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. What ties the various parts together is Mather's millenarian theme of Christ's imminence, of which Satan's plot is the best evidence. Though 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.

Volume 1 (Genesis) of Cotton Mather' Biblia Americana (1693-1728) is particularly valuable because Mather addresses some of the most hotly debated questions of his age: Are the six days of God's creation to be taken literally? Can the geological record of the earth's age be reconciled with biblical chronology? Were there men before Adam? Why are the religions of the ancient Canaanites, Egyptians, and Greeks so similar to the revealed religion of Moses? Did God dictate the Bible to his prophets, and how many (if any) of the books of the Pentateuch did Moses write? Such questions were as relevant during the early Enlightenment as, indeed, they are to many believers today. Edited, introduced, annotated, and indexed by Reiner Smolinski, Mather's commentary on Genesis is as rich in its critical texture as it is surprisingly modern in its answers to many central concerns of the Christian faith. Published in North America by Baker Academic, Grand Rapids

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries, undergraduate students, and independent scholars. The Age of Enlightenment profoundly enriched religious and philosophical understanding and continues to influence present-day thinking. Works collected here include masterpieces by David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as well as religious sermons and moral debates on the issues of the day, such as the slave trade. The Age of Reason saw conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism transformed into one between faith and logic -- a debate that continues in the twenty-first century.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to insure edition identification: ++++British LibraryW029424Caption title: The silent sufferer. Introduction signed: Cotton Mather. 'The refuge of the distressed' has a separate pagination, but the register is continuous. Boston: Printed by S. Kneeland, 1721. 2],34,28p.; 12

Scheduled to appear in 10 volumes, this scholarly edition of Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana (1693-1728) makes available for the first time the oldest comprehensive commentary on the Bible composed in British North America. Combining encyclopaedic discussions of biblical scholarship with scientific speculations and pietistic concerns, Biblia represents one of the most significant untapped sources in American religious and intellectual history. Mather's commentary not only reflects the growing influence of Enlightenment thought (Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Newton) and the rise of the transatlantic evangelical awakening; it also marks the beginnings of historical criticism of the Bible as text in New England. Volume 1 (Genesis) of Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana is particularly valuable because Mather addresses some of the most hotly debated questions of his age: Are the six days of God's creation to be taken literally? Can the geological record of the earth's age be reconciled with biblical chronology? Were there men before Adam? How many animals fit into Noah's Ark? Was Noah's Flood a local or global event? Why are the religions of the ancient Canaanites, Egyptians, and Greeks so similar to the revealed religion of Moses? Did God dictate the Bible to his prophets, and how many (if any) of the books of the Pentateuch did Moses write? Such questions were as relevant during the early Enlightenment as, indeed, they are to many believers today. Edited, introduced, annotated, and indexed by Reiner Smolinski, Mather's commentary on Genesis is as rich in its critical texture as it is surprisingly modern in its answers to many central concerns of the Christian faith.