MATHER, RICHARD
(1596, Lowton, Lancashire-22 April 1669, Dorchester, MA). Education: Attended Brasenose College, Oxford, 1618. Career: Minister, Toxeth Park (now in Liverpool), 1618-33; Dorchester, MA, 1636-69.
In his youth Richard Mather, patriarch of New England's most famous ministerial family, was suspended from the ministry in England because of his Puritan leanings. A friend, Thomas Hooker*, who was already in America wrote him, "There is no place this day on the face of the earth, where a gracious heart and a judicious head may receive more spiritual good to himself, and do more temporal and spiritual good to others."
Sharing that Puritan idealism with thousands of other immigrants, Mather settled as minister at Dorchester. He soon occupied himself with the study of ecclesiastical polity, writing many tracts to explain and justify Congregationalism. Mather became one of the chief architects of the New England way. He wrote the original draft of the Cambridge Platform and led the fight for the Half Way Covenant.
Mather's interest in the covenant provides a clue to his character. He has been called a practical teacher rather than a theologian. His grandson, Cotton Mather*, said of him, "His voice wits loud and big, and uttered with a deliberate vehemency, it procured unto his ministry an awful and very taking majesty." As minister, Mather noted the rise of a third generation of New Englanders, the infant children of parents who had been baptized because of their parent's faith, but had not experienced conversion themselves. Mather came to believe that such children should be baptized into the church on the basis of the "half way" membership of their parents. In 1657 a ministerial convention at Boston ,adopted the practice, and it slowly spread throughout New England, until the Great Awakening led some churches to return to the original standard
Mather's last will and testament suggests that while he favored easing the barriers to baptism, he did not abandon the Puritan longing for virtuous offspring. " The testament tells his children of "the prayers which have been offered up, and the tears which have been shed for them." He anticipated a day when he and their mother and "those who come out of our bowels [shall] enjoy our portion in that eternal glory." The Puritan longing for familial as well as individual salvation-some have called it Puritan tribalism-helps explain the appeal of an institutional innovation that made baptism more accessible to Puritan children.
Bibliography
A: Church-Government and Church-Cove1lll1ll Discussed (London, 1643); Apologie of the Churches in New-England for Church Covenant (London 1643); With John Eliot and Thomas WeIde, The Whole Book of Psalms (Boston, 1640); A Farewel-Exhortation (Boston, 1660).
B: AAP 1,75-80; Increase Mather, The Life and Death of That Reverend Man of God, Mr. Richard Mather (Boston, 1670); Robert Middlekauff, The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 (New York, 1971); B. Richard Burg, Richard Mather of Dorchester (Lexington, Ky., 1976); T. J. Holmes, "Notes on Richard Mather's 'Church Government,'" Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 33 (1924), 291-96; B. Richard Burg, ''The Ideology of Richard Mather and Its Relationship to English Puritanism Prior to 1660," Journal of Church and State, 9 (1967), 364-77.
In his youth Richard Mather, patriarch of New England's most famous ministerial family, was suspended from the ministry in England because of his Puritan leanings. A friend, Thomas Hooker*, who was already in America wrote him, "There is no place this day on the face of the earth, where a gracious heart and a judicious head may receive more spiritual good to himself, and do more temporal and spiritual good to others."
Sharing that Puritan idealism with thousands of other immigrants, Mather settled as minister at Dorchester. He soon occupied himself with the study of ecclesiastical polity, writing many tracts to explain and justify Congregationalism. Mather became one of the chief architects of the New England way. He wrote the original draft of the Cambridge Platform and led the fight for the Half Way Covenant.
Mather's interest in the covenant provides a clue to his character. He has been called a practical teacher rather than a theologian. His grandson, Cotton Mather*, said of him, "His voice wits loud and big, and uttered with a deliberate vehemency, it procured unto his ministry an awful and very taking majesty." As minister, Mather noted the rise of a third generation of New Englanders, the infant children of parents who had been baptized because of their parent's faith, but had not experienced conversion themselves. Mather came to believe that such children should be baptized into the church on the basis of the "half way" membership of their parents. In 1657 a ministerial convention at Boston ,adopted the practice, and it slowly spread throughout New England, until the Great Awakening led some churches to return to the original standard
Mather's last will and testament suggests that while he favored easing the barriers to baptism, he did not abandon the Puritan longing for virtuous offspring. " The testament tells his children of "the prayers which have been offered up, and the tears which have been shed for them." He anticipated a day when he and their mother and "those who come out of our bowels [shall] enjoy our portion in that eternal glory." The Puritan longing for familial as well as individual salvation-some have called it Puritan tribalism-helps explain the appeal of an institutional innovation that made baptism more accessible to Puritan children.
Bibliography
A: Church-Government and Church-Cove1lll1ll Discussed (London, 1643); Apologie of the Churches in New-England for Church Covenant (London 1643); With John Eliot and Thomas WeIde, The Whole Book of Psalms (Boston, 1640); A Farewel-Exhortation (Boston, 1660).
B: AAP 1,75-80; Increase Mather, The Life and Death of That Reverend Man of God, Mr. Richard Mather (Boston, 1670); Robert Middlekauff, The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 (New York, 1971); B. Richard Burg, Richard Mather of Dorchester (Lexington, Ky., 1976); T. J. Holmes, "Notes on Richard Mather's 'Church Government,'" Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 33 (1924), 291-96; B. Richard Burg, ''The Ideology of Richard Mather and Its Relationship to English Puritanism Prior to 1660," Journal of Church and State, 9 (1967), 364-77.