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John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians before King Philip’s War
No previous work on John Eliot's mission to the Indians has told such a comprehensive and engaging story. Richard Cogley takes a dual he delves deeply into Eliot's theological writings and describes the historical development of Eliot's missionary work. By relating the two, he presents fresh perspectives that challenge widely accepted assessments of the Puritan mission.
Cogley incorporates Eliot's eschatology into the history of the mission, takes into account the biographies of the proselytes (the "praying Indians") and the individual histories of the Christian Indian settlements (the "praying towns"), and corrects misperceptions about the mission's role in English expansion. He also addresses other interpretive problems in Eliot's mission, such as why the Puritans postponed their evangelizing mission until 1646, why Indians accepted or rejected the mission, and whether the mission played a role in causing King Philip's War.
This book makes signal contributions to New England history, Native American history, and religious studies.
Cogley incorporates Eliot's eschatology into the history of the mission, takes into account the biographies of the proselytes (the "praying Indians") and the individual histories of the Christian Indian settlements (the "praying towns"), and corrects misperceptions about the mission's role in English expansion. He also addresses other interpretive problems in Eliot's mission, such as why the Puritans postponed their evangelizing mission until 1646, why Indians accepted or rejected the mission, and whether the mission played a role in causing King Philip's War.
This book makes signal contributions to New England history, Native American history, and religious studies.
352 pages, Hardcover
First published April 30, 1999
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June 29, 2020
Excellent book for real academic study. Dr Richard Cogley presents his arguments well and backs them up with a clear understanding of the research that has come before him. Excellent detail is given about the beginning of the first mission in America. It is written in a scholarly way but there are enough cool facts to keep the pages turning. It would be nice if a cheaper version was available.
Some cool quotes from the Book:
"Shepard gave two main reasons for the saints' skepticism about conversion. The first was the elders' lack of missionary experience: 'we have not learned as yet that art of coining Christians, or putting Christ's name and image upon copper metal.'"
"The elders were nevertheless confident that a few Indians would soon experience conversion. Shepard wrote in September 1647 that "the power of the Word has taken place in some, and that inwardly and effectually, but how far savingly time will declare." He and Eliot were particularly impressed by the natives' "tears of repentance." Shepard observed proselytes "weeping abundantly" during prayers and sermons, and Eliot noticed that his servant, as well as Cutshamekin shamekin and Wamporas, cried when they were censured for their transgressions. "Indians are well-known," Shepard remarked, "not to be much subject to tears, no not when they come to feel the sorest torture, or are solemnly brought forth to die."
==> There are also some really interesting things in this book about the view the Puritans had concerning Postmillianiasm. I hope this quote is not too large. But it really reveals the attitudes the Puritans had during and after the Cromwell period. The quote starts here:
Eliot believed that the execution of Charles I was an event of world-historical historical significance. The regicide indicated that the institution of monarchy was to be "dashed in pieces" in "all places whatsoever." Eliot thought that the destruction of the universal dominion of kings would reverse a process of degeneration that stretched back to the age of the biblical patriarchs. He surmised that Nimrod, the shadowy figure of Genesis 10, had invented the institution of monarchy in defiance of God's will; from this impious foundation, the polity spread to other ancient peoples, including the Israelites, who, in a verse Eliot cited in The Christian Commonwealth, asked Samuel "to make us a king to judge us like all the nations" (1 Samuel 8:5). The conclusion that monarchy was a human contrivance is absent in the surviving ing texts of Cotton's lectures on Revelation and Canticles and in his other sources. For Eliot, the subsequent history of kingly rule in Israel, Europe, and elsewhere confirmed his judgment about the human provenience venience of the institution: monarchs were "terror[s] to men" because they governed with their own interests, and not those of God, in mind. Charles Stuart, "too high to stoop to the Lord Jesus, to be ruled by his command," was a case in point. Eliot anticipated that the destruction of monarchical government would be accompanied by the collapse lapse of other man-made polities, particularly religious ones, that were sustained by "the strongest iron sinews of civil states." God had consigned signed all institutions "contrived by the wisdom of man" to obliteration in order to replace them with their millennial scriptural counterparts. parts. "We wait for the coming of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus," he wrote in The Christian Commonwealth, "who ... will reign over all the nations of the earth in his due time. I mean, the Lord Jesus will bring down all people, to be ruled by the institutions, laws, and directions of the Word of God, not only in church government and administration but also in the government and administration of all affairs in the commonwealth. And ... when all things among men are done by the direction of the word of his mouth, his kingdom [the millennium] is then come among us."
Some cool quotes from the Book:
"Shepard gave two main reasons for the saints' skepticism about conversion. The first was the elders' lack of missionary experience: 'we have not learned as yet that art of coining Christians, or putting Christ's name and image upon copper metal.'"
"The elders were nevertheless confident that a few Indians would soon experience conversion. Shepard wrote in September 1647 that "the power of the Word has taken place in some, and that inwardly and effectually, but how far savingly time will declare." He and Eliot were particularly impressed by the natives' "tears of repentance." Shepard observed proselytes "weeping abundantly" during prayers and sermons, and Eliot noticed that his servant, as well as Cutshamekin shamekin and Wamporas, cried when they were censured for their transgressions. "Indians are well-known," Shepard remarked, "not to be much subject to tears, no not when they come to feel the sorest torture, or are solemnly brought forth to die."
==> There are also some really interesting things in this book about the view the Puritans had concerning Postmillianiasm. I hope this quote is not too large. But it really reveals the attitudes the Puritans had during and after the Cromwell period. The quote starts here:
Eliot believed that the execution of Charles I was an event of world-historical historical significance. The regicide indicated that the institution of monarchy was to be "dashed in pieces" in "all places whatsoever." Eliot thought that the destruction of the universal dominion of kings would reverse a process of degeneration that stretched back to the age of the biblical patriarchs. He surmised that Nimrod, the shadowy figure of Genesis 10, had invented the institution of monarchy in defiance of God's will; from this impious foundation, the polity spread to other ancient peoples, including the Israelites, who, in a verse Eliot cited in The Christian Commonwealth, asked Samuel "to make us a king to judge us like all the nations" (1 Samuel 8:5). The conclusion that monarchy was a human contrivance is absent in the surviving ing texts of Cotton's lectures on Revelation and Canticles and in his other sources. For Eliot, the subsequent history of kingly rule in Israel, Europe, and elsewhere confirmed his judgment about the human provenience venience of the institution: monarchs were "terror[s] to men" because they governed with their own interests, and not those of God, in mind. Charles Stuart, "too high to stoop to the Lord Jesus, to be ruled by his command," was a case in point. Eliot anticipated that the destruction of monarchical government would be accompanied by the collapse lapse of other man-made polities, particularly religious ones, that were sustained by "the strongest iron sinews of civil states." God had consigned signed all institutions "contrived by the wisdom of man" to obliteration in order to replace them with their millennial scriptural counterparts. parts. "We wait for the coming of the kingdom of the Lord Jesus," he wrote in The Christian Commonwealth, "who ... will reign over all the nations of the earth in his due time. I mean, the Lord Jesus will bring down all people, to be ruled by the institutions, laws, and directions of the Word of God, not only in church government and administration but also in the government and administration of all affairs in the commonwealth. And ... when all things among men are done by the direction of the word of his mouth, his kingdom [the millennium] is then come among us."
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