Cotton Mather > Quotes

“That there is a Devil, is a thing doubted by none but such as are under the influences of the Devil.”
― Cotton Mather, On Witchcraft

“The Jews have a saying worth remembering: "Whoever doesn't teach his son some trade or business, teaches him to be a thief." As soon as ever I can, I will make my children apprehensive of the main end for which they are to live; that so they may as soon as may be, begin to live; and their youth not be nothing but vanity. I will show them, that their main end must be, to, acknowledge the great God, and His glorious Christ; and bring others to acknowledge Him: and that they are never wise nor well, but when they are doing so. I will make them able to answer the grand question of why they live; and what is the end of the actions that fill their lives? I will teach them that their Creator and Redeemer is to be obeyed in everything, and everything is to be done in obedience to Him. I will teach them how even their diversions, and their ornaments, and the tasks of their education, must all be to fit them for the further service of Him to whom I have devoted them; and how in these also, His commandments must be the rule of all they do. I will sometimes therefore surprise them with an inquiry, "Child, what is this for? Give me a good account of why you do it?" How comfortably shall I see them walking in the light, if I may bring them wisely to answer this inquiry. -A Father's Resolutions, www.spurgeon.org/~phil/mather/resolvd...”
― Cotton Mather

“Wilderness is a temporary condition through which we are passing to the Promised Land.”
― Cotton Mather

“If we admit instrumental musick in the worship of God, how can we resist the imposition of all the instruments used among the ancient Jews?—yea, dancing as well as playing, and several other Judaic actions? or, how can we decline a whole rabble of church-officers, necessary to be introduced for instrumental musick, whereof our Lord Jesus Christ hath left us no manner of direction?”
― Cotton Mather

“Ah, children, be afraid of going prayerless to bed, lest the Devil be your bedfellow.”
― Cotton Mather

“Ye monsters of the bubbling deep,
Your Maker's praises spout;
Up from the sands ye codlings peep,
And wag your tails about”
― Cotton Mather

“The New-Englanders are a People of God settled in those, which were once the Devil's Territories; and it may easily be supposed that the Devil was exceedingly disturbed, when he perceived such a People here accomplishing the Promise of old made unto our Blessed Jesus, That He should have the Utmost parts of the Earth for his Possession.”
― Cotton Mather, THE WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD

“Nor would I have you to mistake in the point of your own liberty. There is a liberty of corrupt nature, which is affected both by men and beasts, to do what they list; and this liberty is inconsistent with authority, impatient of all restraint; by this liberty, Sumus Omnes Deteriores;[109] ’tis the grand enemy of truth and peace, and all the ordinances of God are bent against it But there is a civil, a moral, a federal liberty, which is the proper end and object of authority; it is a liberty for that only which is just and good; for this liberty you are to stand with the hazard of your very lives; and whatsoever crosses it is not authority, but a distemper thereof. This liberty is maintained in a way of subjection to authority; and the authority set over you will in all administrations for your good be quietly submitted unto, by all but such as have a disposition to shake off the yoke, and lose their true liberty, by their murmuring at the honour and power of authority.”
― Cotton Mather, COTTON MATHER: Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Volume 1

“Wrestle with the Lord. Receive no denial. Earnestly protest, Lord, I will not let thee go, except thou bless this poor child of mine, and make it your own! Do this, until, if it may be, your heart is raised by a touch of heaven, to a particular faith; that God has blessed this child, and it shall be blessed and saved forever.”
― Cotton Mather, A Family Well Ordered

“11. The doleful winter broke up sooner than was usual. But our crippled planters were not more comforted with the early advance of the Spring, than they were surprized with the appearance of two Indians, who in broken English bade them, welcome Englishmen! It seems that one of these Indians had been in the eastern parts of New-England, acquainted with some of the English vessels that had been formerly fishing there; but the other of the Indians, and he from whom they had most of service, was a person provided by the very singular providence of God for that service.”
― Cotton Mather, COTTON MATHER: Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Volume 1

“The wiser people being troubled at these trifles, they took the opportunity of Governour Winthrop’s being there, to have the thing publickly propounded in the congregation: who in answer thereunto, distinguished between a theological and a moral goodness; adding, that when Juries were first used in England, it was usual for the crier, after the names of persons fit for that service were called over, to bid them all, “Attend, good men and true;” whence it grew to be a civil custom in the English nation, for neighbours living by one another, to call one another “good man such an one;” and it was pity now to make a stir about a civil custom, so innocently introduced.”
― Cotton Mather, COTTON MATHER: Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Volume 1

“§ 10. If the reader would know, how these good people fared the rest of the melancholy winter, let him know, that besides the exercises of Religion, with other work enough, there was the care of the sick to take up no little part of their time. ’Twas a most heavy trial of their patience, whereto they were called the first winter of this their pilgrimage, and enough to convince them and remind them that they were but Pilgrims.”
― Cotton Mather, COTTON MATHER: Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Volume 1

“He was a person for study as well as action; and hence, notwithstanding the difficulties through which he passed in his youth, he attained unto a notable skill in languages: the Dutch tongue was become almost as vernacular to him as the English; the French tongue he could also manage; the Latin and the Greek he had mastered; but the Hebrew he most of all studied, “Because,” he said, “he would see with his own eyes the ancient oracles of God in their native beauty.”
― Cotton Mather, COTTON MATHER: Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Volume 1

“And several more such abominable things, too notorious to be denied, even by a Randolphian impudence it self are in that book proved against that unhappy government. Nor did that most ancient set of the Phoenician shepherds, who scrued [sic] the government of Egypt into their hands, as old Manethon tells us, by their villanies, during the reigns of those tyrants, make a shepherd more of an abomination to the Egyptians in all after ages, than these wolves under the name of shepherds have made the remembrance of their French government an abomination to all posterity among the New-Englanders: a government, for which, now, reader, as fest as thou wilt, get ready this epitaph: Nulla quaesita Scelere Potentia diuturna.[”
― Cotton Mather, COTTON MATHER: Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Volume 1

“which Varo distinguished unto Incognit and fabulous, preceding the historical, and we should shortly have as wretched narratives of the first persons and actions in this land, as Justin gives of the Jews, when he makes Moses the son of their Joseph, and the sixth of their kings, or when he makes them expelled from Egypt, because the gods would not otherwise allay a plague that raged there; or such as are given by Pliny, when he makes Moses a magician; or Strabo, that makes him an Egyptian priest; if no speedy care be taken to preserve the memorables of our first settlement;”
― Cotton Mather, COTTON MATHER: Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Volume 1

“They then sent their agents to view the country, who returned with so advantageous a report, that the next year there was a great remove of good people thither: on this remove, they that went from Cambridge became a church upon a spot of ground now called Hartford; they that went from Dorchester, became a church at Windsor; they that went from Watertown, sat down at Wethersfield; and they that left Roxbury were inchurched higher up the river at Springfield, a place which was afterwards found within the line of the Massachuset-charter.”
― Cotton Mather, COTTON MATHER: Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Volume 1

“Have not many of us been Devils one unto another for Slanderings, for Backbitings, for Animosities? For this, among other causes, perhaps, God has permitted the Devils to be worrying, as they now are, among us. But it is high time to leave off all Devilism, when the Devil himself is falling upon us: And it is no time for us to be Censuring and Reviling one another, with a Devilish wrath, when the wrath of the Devil is annoying of us.”
― Cotton Mather, On Witchcraft

“There was a time when the court of election being, for fear of tumult, held at Cambridge, May 17, 1637, the sectarian part of the country, who had the year before gotten a governour more unto their mind, had a project now to have confounded the election, by demanding that the court would consider a petition then tendered before their proceeding thereunto.”
― Cotton Mather, COTTON MATHER: Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Volume 1

“The self-denying gentleman, who had imployed his commission of governour so little to the disadvantage of the infant-colony at Connecticut, was himself, ere long, by election made governour of that colony.”
― Cotton Mather, COTTON MATHER: Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Volume 1

“Well, it was not long before the Council of Plymouth in England had, by a deed bearing date March 19, 1627, sold unto some knights and gentlemen about Dorchester, viz: Sir Henry Rowsel, Sir John Young, Thomas Southcott, John Humphrey, John Endicott, and Simon Whetcomb, and their heirs and assigns, and their associates for ever, that part of New-England which lyes between a great river called Merrimack, and a certain other river there called Charles’ River, in the bottom of the Massachuset-Bay.”
― Cotton Mather, COTTON MATHER: Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Volume 1

“yea that we never assemble without a Satan among us. As there are some Divines, who do with more uncertainty conjecture, from a certain place in the Epistle to the Ephesians, That the Angels do sometimes come into our Churches, to gain some advantage from our Ministry. But be sure our Demonstrable Interpretations may give Repeated Notices to the Devil, That his time is almost out; and what the Preacher says unto the Young Man, Know thou, that god will bring thee into Judgment! THAT may our Sermons tell unto the Old Wretch, Know thou, that thy Judgment is at hand.”
― Cotton Mather, On Witchcraft

“He was, indeed, a governour, who had most exactly studied that book which, pretending to teach politicks, did only contain three leaves, and but one word in each of those leaves, which word was, MODERATION.”
― Cotton Mather, COTTON MATHER: Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Volume 1

“Since the Devil is come down in great wrath upon us, let not us in our great wrath against one another provide a Lodging for him.”
― Cotton Mather, On Witchcraft

“He has sometimes said that he could be willing to walk twelve miles on his feet, on condition he might have an opportunity to preach a sermon: and he seldom did preach a sermon without tears.”
― Cotton Mather, COTTON MATHER: Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Volume 1

“But though I know that the reverend elders of this church, and some others, do very well apprehend that the church cannot enquire into the proceedings of the court; yet, for the satisfaction of the weaker, who do not apprehend it, I will declare my mind concerning it. If the church have any such power, they have it from the Lord Jesus Christ; but the Lord Jesus Christ hath disclaimed it, not only by practice, but also by precept, which we have in his gospel, Matt xx. 25, 26. It is true, indeed, that; magistrates, as they are church-members, are accountable unto the church for their failings; but that is when they are out of their calling. When Uzziah would go offer incense in the temple, the officers of the church called him to an account, and withstood him; but when Asa put the prophet in prison, the officers of the church did not call him to an account for that. If the magistrate shall in a private way wrong any man, the church may call him to an' account for it; but if he be in pursuance of a course of justice, though the thing that he I does be unjust, yet he is not accountable for it before the church.”
― Cotton Mather, COTTON MATHER: Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Volume 1

“The people have a negative upon all the executive part of the civil government, as well as the legislative, which is a vast priviledge, enjoyed by no other plantation in America, nor by Ireland—no, nor hitherto by England it self.”
― Cotton Mather, COTTON MATHER: Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Volume 1

“4. A certain gentleman [if nothing in the following story contradict that name] was employed in obtaining from the Grand Council of Plymouth and England, a Patent in the name of these planters for a convenient quantity of the country, where the providence of God had now disposed them. This man, speaking one word for them, spake two for himself: and surreptitiously procured the patent in his own name, reserving for himself and his heirs an huge tract of the land; and intending the Plymotheans to hold the rest as tenants under him.”
― Cotton Mather, COTTON MATHER: Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Volume 1

“The gentleman that succeeded Mr. Endicot was Mr. Richard Bellingham, one who was bred a lawyer, and one who lived beyond eighty, well esteemed for his laudable qualities, but as the Thebans made the statues of their magistrates without hands, importing that they must be no takers;”
― Cotton Mather, COTTON MATHER: Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Volume 1

“Jewish proverb, Ne Habites in urbe ubi caput urbis est Medicus:”
― Cotton Mather, COTTON MATHER: Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Volume 1

“So they jogged on for many years; and whereas, before the year 1644, that worthy gentleman, George Fenwick Esq., did, on the behalf of several persons of quality, begin a plantation about the mouth of the river, which was called Say-brook, in remembrance of those right honourable persons, the Lord Say and the Lord Brook, who laid a claim to the land thereabouts, by virtue of a patent granted by the Earl of Warwick; the inhabitants of Connecticut that year purchased of Mr. Fenwick this tract of land.”
― Cotton Mather, COTTON MATHER: Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), Volume 1