The Kingdom, The Power, & The Glory: The Millennial Impulse in Early American Literature -- Questions for Discussions, Research, and Writing

The following questions are designed to help each student focus on crucial issues in each text during the initial reading process, stimulate class discussion, and suggest essay topics for term papers. For the most part, the answers to these questions require no other reading than the General Introduction and close analysis of the selections themselves. Nevertheless, each set of question is followed by a brief list of secondary sources taken from the Selected Bibliography to accommodate the documentation of research papers. The blank spaces below each question allow for brief written responses and brainstorming exercises to outline research papers

Religio Peperit Divitas, & Filia Devoravit Matrem: Cotton Mather and the Moderate Gospel of Wealth

Cotton Mather's role as a religious, political, and social leader has held a fascination for me ever since I was first exposed to the works of the great Puritan divine during my studies under the late Dr. Otho T. Beall at the University of Maryland, College Park. This study pursues two aims: to examine Max Weber's theory of the Protestant Ethic in selected works of Cotton Mather, and to remove some of the popular misunderstandings of Mather's role in Puritan New England.Englis

Theopolis Americana: An Essay on the Golden Street of the Holy City (1710)

Theopolis Americana: An Essay on the Golden Street of the Holy City was published in Boston in 1710. It is based on a sermon delivered to the Massachusetts General Assembly on May 9, 1709, by Cotton Mather (1663–1728) who was then (along with his father Increase Mather) pastor of the Second or Old North Church in Boston. The work is an extended interpretation of Revelations 21.21: “The street of the city was pure gold.” Mather makes a twofold application of the verse—“publishing” (as he says) “A TESTIMONY against the CORRUPTIONS of the Market-Place. With Some Good HOPES of Better Things to be yet seen in the AMERICAN World.” Mather enumerates and condemns all forms of commercial dishonesty and business corruption—including the kidnapping of Africans into slavery. He also gives us a sense of the accommodations of the old theocracy (20 years after the Glorious Revolution and 18 years after the witchcraft crisis) with the new horizons of the eighteenth century, telling the Assembly: “In two or three too Memorable Days of Temptation that have been upon us, there have been Errors committed. You are always ready to Declare unto all the World, That you Disapprove those Errors. You are willing to inform all Mankind with your DECLARATION; That no man may be Persecuted, because he is Conscientiously not of the same Religious Opinions, with those that are uppermost. And; That Persons are not to be judg’d Confederates with Evil Spirits, meerly because the Evil Spirits do make Possessed People cry out upon them.” Finally, and as expected, he applies the lesson to the place of America in the grand drama of redemption, holding out the hope that the churches of New England will play the leading role in the accomplishment of the new heavens and new earth. The text of this online electronic edition was prepared by Reiner Smolinski and appeared in his The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: The Millennial Impulse in Early American Literature (Dubuque, IA: Kendall-Hunt, 1998). It is based on, and preserves all the features of, the first printing of 1710. The work is approximately 10,000 words, and occupies 43 pages (printable as 22 letter-size sheets) in this edition

The Threefold Paradise of Cotton Mather: An Edition of Triparadisus

No other American Puritan has fueled both the popular and academic imagination as has Cotton Mather (1663-1728). Colonial America\u27s foremost theologian and historian, Mather was also one of its most powerful voices advocating millennialism. His lifelong preoccupation with this subject culminated in his definitive treatise, Triparadisus (1726/1727), left unpublished at his death. In it, Mather justified his ideological revisionism; his response to the philological, historical, and scientific challenges of the Bible as text by English and continental deists; and his hermeneutical break from the orthodox exegeses of his father, Increase Mather, and Joseph Mede. In his critical introduction to this edition of Triparadisus , Reiner Smolinski demonstrates that Mather\u27s hermeneutical defense of revealed religion seeks to negotiate between the orthodox literalist position of his New England forebears and the new philological challenges to the scriptures by Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Isaac de La Peyrere, Benedict de Spinoza, Richard Simon, Henry Hammond, Thomas Burnet, William Whiston, Anthony Collins, and Isaac Newton. In Triparadisus Mather\u27s hermeneutics undergoes a radical shift from a futurist interpretation of the prophecies to a preterite position as he joins the quasi-allegorical camp of Grotius, Hammond, John Lightfoot, and Richard Baxter. The Threefold Paradise of Cotton Mather also challenges a number of longstanding paradigms in the scholarship on American Puritanism, history, literature, and culture. Smolinski specifically calls into question the consensus among intellectual historians who have traced the Puritan origin of the American self to the Errand into the Wildernessand the idea of God\u27s elect. He also challenges the commonplace argument that New England represented the culmination of prophetic history in an American New Jerusalem for the Mathers and their counterparts. As an important link between Mather\u27s premillennialism in the late seventeenth century and Jonathan Edwards\u27s postmillennialism in the Great Awakening, Triparadisus provides important biographical insight into Mather\u27s last years, when, liberated from his father\u27s interpretations, he put forward his own. CONTENTS Acknowledgments xi List of Illustrations xiii Abbreviations of Cotton Mather\u27s Works xv PART I: INTRODUCTION I. The Authority of the Bible and Cotton Mather\u27s Triparadisus: A Discourse Concerning the Threefold Paradise 3 2. The New Hermeneutics and the Jewish Nation in Cotton Mather\u27s Eschatology 21 3. The Bang or the Whimper? The Grand Revolution and the New World to Come 38 4. When Shall These Things Be? Cotton Mather\u27s Chronometry of the Prophecies 60 5. Note on theText 79 PART II: THE TEXT The First PARADISE 93 The Second PARADISE 112 The Third PARADISE 153 An Introduction 153 I. The Present Earth, perishing in a CONFLAGRATION 155 II. Plain Praedictions of the CONFLAGRATION, in other Passages of the SACRED SCRIPTURES, besides the Petrine Prophecy 159 III. What may be called, A Digression, [But is none] offering, A Golden Key to open the Sacred Prophecies 162 IV. The Sibylline Oracles, concerning the CONFLAGRATION 194 V. Traditions of the CONFLAGRATION, with All Nations, in All Ages 199 VI. SIGNS of the CONFLAGRATION coming on 202 VII. The CONFLAGRATION described 219 VIII. The CONFLAGRATION, How Reasonably to be look\u27d for 231 IX. The NEW HEAVENS opened 244 X. The NEW EARTH survey\u27d 268 XI. A National Conversion of the Iews; Whether to be look\u27d for 295 XII. WHEN shall these Things be! WHEN the Grand REVOLUTION to be look\u27d for? 319 Notes 349 Appendix A: Manuscript Cancellations and Interpolations 425 Appendix B: Editorial Emendations 467 Appendix C: Biblical Citations and Allusions 469 Selected Bibliography 479 Index 505 Note: Book is xx + 526 pages; PDF file is 29 Mbytes

The Kingdom, the Power, & the Glory: The Millennial Impulse in Early American Literature: General Introduction

This anthology, The Kingdom, The Power, & The Glory: The Millennial Impulse in Early American Literature, seeks to redress some of the problems of access to texts of early American literature by providing a thematic approach to one of colonial America’s most trenchant ideologies: the rising glory of America. The selections included represent a wide spread of authors and texts that discuss America’s place in the millenarian cosmologies from the colonial to the Federalist period (c. 1600-1800). The texts address such issues as the great migration, the transformation of the howling wilderness into an agricultural Eden, the jeremiad, King Philip’s War, Salem witchcraft, the Great Awakening, the French-Indian War, the Revolution, and Manifest Destiny. The mortar for these seemingly unrelated building blocks is provided in my introduction, which discusses the colonists’ millenarian sense of mission and destiny within the progressively unfolding cycles (or rather gyres) of a historical continuum

Phaenomena quaedam Apocalyptica ad aspectum Novi Orbis configurata. Or, some few lines towards a description of the New Heaven

SAMUEL SEWALL (1652-1730) is best remembered as a colonial judge during the Salem Witchcraft trials, as a significant diarist, and as an ardent millenarian, who published a number of eschatological tracts on his favorite obsession. Apart from his political achievements in the colonial judicature, Sewall published a number of significant works. The Selling of Joseph (1700) is one of the earliest abolitionist documents in American history. His famous Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674-1729 (1878-82) is a Puritan document par excellence and a window on a crucial period in the development of the colony. His millenarian tract Proposals Touching the Accomplishment of Prophesies Humbly Offered (1713) highlights Sewall’s eschatological theories amplified in his earlier Phænomena quædam Apocalyptica . . . Or, some few Lines towards a description of the New Heaven (1697, second ed. 1727). Reprinted here in an online electronic text edition (based on an original copy held by the American Antiquarian Society), Phænomena is something of an exegetical conundrum that encapsulates the most significant eschatological theories of the day. Writing in defense of America’s place in Christ’s cosmography of the millennium, Sewall responds to Joseph Mede’s legerdemain denigration of the New World as the location of Hell. More significantly, Sewall writes the equivalent of an American martyrology, advocates the conversion of the Indians as remnants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, and reaffirms America’s future place in Christ’s millennial kingdom, at a time when the Mathers and many of their colleagues looked toward Europe and the Holy Land for the fulfillment of their fondest hopes. Often misunderstood, Phænomena illustrates the intricate connection between prophetic exegesis and New England politics, between eschatological speculations and self-representation and policies toward the Indian populations of North America.https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeaamericanstudies/1007/thumbnail.jp

The Wonders of the Invisible World. OBSERVATIONS As well Historical as Theological, upon the NATURE, the NUMBER, and the OPERATIONS of the DEVILS.

Cotton Mather’s mythic image rests largely on his involvement in the Salem witchcraft debacle (1692–93) and on his Wonders of the Invisible World (1693). The 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, Matthew Hale, John Dee, William Perkins, Joseph Glanville, 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.https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeabook/1003/thumbnail.jp

A Divine and Supernatural Light, Immediately imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God, Shown to be both a Scriptural, and Rational Doctrine

The early stirrings of the Great Awakening were intensified by Edwards’ famous sermon A Divine and Supernatural Light, Immediately Imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God (1734). Through a fascinating process of canceling out his opponents’ positions, Edwards clearly defines the workings of God’s grace in the human soul. He distinguishes between “Common Grace” (intrinsic to virtually all unregenerate), which acts upon the mind of natural man and assists the faculties of the soul in their natural course; and “Special Grace” (intrinsic to true saints only), which acts in the human heart and unites with the mind of the saint as a new supernatural principle of life and action that restores human faculties to their proper place. God’s spiritual light therefore does not consist of making impressions on the Imagination nor does it teach any new dogmas; it only gives a due apprehension of God’s beauty. Hence a saint with indwelling grace does not merely believe rationally that God is glorious, but has a due sense of God’s glory in his own heart. Whereas the head can merely sustain a speculative or notional knowledge of beauty, the heart delights in the idea of it, and the will prompted by the affections for the highest good embraces the virtuous act. In Edwards’ illustration, the unregenerate can rationally attain a sense of God’s beauty, but only the sanctified can attain full conviction and immediate evidence of God’s grace: one can have a rational sense of the sweetness of honey, but the true sense of its taste can only be attained through experience. Edwards’ distinction is echoed in what Samuel Taylor Coleridge would call primary and secondary beauty

The Wonders of the Invisible World. Observations as Well Historical as Theological, upon the Nature, the Number, and the Operations of the Devils (1693)

I. Some Accounts of the Grievous Molestations, by DÆMONS and WITCHCRAFTS, which have lately annoy’d the Countrey; and the Trials of some eminent Malefactors Executed upon occasion thereof; with several Remarkable Curiosities therein occurring. II. Some Counsils, Directing a due Improvement of the terrible things, lately done, by the Unusual & Amazing Range of EVIL SPIRITS, in Our Neighbourhood: & the methods to prevent the Wrongs which those Evil Angels may intend against all sorts of people among us; especially in Accusations of the Innocent. III. Some Conjectures upon the great EVENTS, likely to befall, the WORLD in General, and NEW-ENGLAND in Particular; as also upon the Advances of the TIME, when we shall see BETTER DAYES. IV. A short Narrative of a late Outrage committed by a knot of WITCHES in Swedeland, very much Resembling, and so far Explaining, That under which our parts of America have laboured! V. THE DEVIL DISCOVERED: In a Brief Discourse upon the TEMPTATIONS, which are the more Ordinary Devices of the Wicked One. An online electronic edition, based on the Boston first edition of 1693, of Mather\u27s classic and popular work on witchcraft and the Salem trials of 1692-93. Edited, with an introduction, by Reiner Smolinski

God’s Controversy with New-England (1662, 1871)

Presented here is Wigglesworth’s manuscript poem God’s Controversy with New-England (1871)—courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Composed in 1662 on the occasion of a terrible drought, the poem is a versified jeremiad bewailing the backsliding of the rising generation. Thus, God uses nature’s drought as a secondary cause to punish the exsiccation of the spirit among the offspring of New England’s patriarchs, whose children were either unable (or unwilling) to accept the Half-Way Covenant (1662) governing church admission. More than that, God’s Controversy encapsulates the Federal Covenant between God and Saints, whose chastisement, paradoxically, is a sign of God’s loving kindness for the whole colony