Increase Mather (21 June 1639 - 23 August 1723) was a religious leader and educator in colonial New England. Unsourced Drink is in itself a good creature of God, but the abuse of drink is from Satan. External links Wikipedia has an article about:...
Biography
Name:
Increase Mather
Birth Date:
June 21, 1639
Death Date:
August 23, 1723
Place of Birth:
Dorchester, Massachusetts, United States
Place of Death:
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Nationality:
American
Gender:
Male
Occupations:
author, college president, colonial representative
Increase Mather (1639-1723), American colonial representative, president of Harvard College, and author, was the most prominent member of the second generation in Massachusetts colony. Born in Dorchester, Mass., where his father was first minister,...
Increase Mather's son Cotton Mather was much better known to succeeding generations of New Englanders than was the father, perhaps because he published much more than Increase Mather, and because he made the transition into the eighteenth century more...
The Reverend Increase Mather (June 21 1639 – August 23 1723) was a major figure in the early history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay (now the Federal state of Massachusetts). He was a Puritan minister who was...
THE LAST AMERICAN PURITAN. The Life of Increase Mather, by Michael G. Hall. Wesleyan University Press. 438 pp. $35. Three hundred years ago this April anxious spectators clustered on Beacon Hill watching a police boat shadow the square-rigger President, standing out for England....
About a year before the death of Oliver Cromwell and shortly before the subsequent unraveling of the Protestant regime in England, Increase Mather was keenly enthusiastic about his personal prospects. Like a number of other colonists during Cromwell's Protectorate, he had abandoned the New...
In the following excerpt from a work first published in 1925, Murdock recounts Mather's involvement in the witch trials and argues that Mather has been unfairly labeled throughout history as a proponent of the executions when he was instead a voice for temperance and moderation.
In the following excerpt, Lowance analyzes Mather's attempts to combine scientific knowledge with theology to formulate explanations for occurrences in both nature and society, and also praises Mather for being forward-thinking and progressive in his scientific writings.
In the following essay, Middlekauff asserts that while Mather's stated purpose in his scientific writings was to discredit scientific explanations of natural occurances, it was also this interest in science and his knowledge of the difference between appearance and reality that enabled him to help end the witch trials.