The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 by Robert Middlekauff Page A
Authors: Robert Middlekauff
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man sinned when he entered the Church, but the Church, in acting honestly on the evidence, did not. 50
What all this implied for the character of the Church is clear: it would contain hypocrites. Mather recognized this, admitted it
Page 54
freely though he deplored it and wished to preserve the Church from taint whenever possible. Unlike several colleagues, he never claimed that hypocrites had their uses, that indeed their presence in some way strengthened the Church. Such assertions were made by divines who were even more concerned about an orderly society that he. They emphasized the advantage of having unworthy men directly under the watch of the Churchas all of the baptized, of any age, were. The Church could exhort them to live up to the promises of their baptismal covenant, and to observe the law and live decent and moral lives. Mather rarely delivered such exhortations and never rejoiced that unregenerate men within the Church were subject to its supervision. 51
Despite his demand that the Church regard prospective members with suspicion, Mather urged as early as 1644 that the children of unconverted members receive baptism. To many of his peers, such practice guaranteed that the impure would pollute Christ's Church. Despite his harsh, unforgiving attitude towards hypocrites, Richard possessed a gentle side. Certainly he found the grief of parents who dreaded the possibility that their children were unregenerate hard to bear. He spoke several times of the need to give them some comfort. But by itself this desire would not have carried him to his position on baptism. What he had was a profound organic sense, a tendency to see wholesnot just discrete partsand to conceive of the interconnectedness of things. This sense shaped his historical understanding, especially his conception of the covenant and the persistence of the Church. The New Testament, of course, held that Christ's Church would endure until the end of the world. But if all Protestant reformers agreed on the persistence of the Church they did not agree on the unity of the covenant, at best a shadowy device in the New Testament, nor did they agree on the relationship of the Church of the Jews to the Church of the Gentiles. Richard Mather's ideas on these subjects had a starkness and a clarity that gave them great power. The covenant, he was convinced, was one. Beginning with Adam, transferred to Abraham, and to the children of Israel, and extending through the New Testament history to the seventeenth century, the same covenant had endured. He conceded that it varied according to circumstances and accidents, but for substancefor the faithful of all ages within itit was unvarying. It had always contained sinners and hypocrites; no
Page 55
one could deny that Ishmael and others of Abraham's household who had been sealed into it by circumcision were of the damned. They had been in the covenant externally, he explained: they, like many after them were in it, but unable to keep it, unable to receive grace. Eventually Israel itself arrived at this dreadful condition and the Lord cast Israel off, breaking the everlasting covenant with these unfaithful. When the everlasting covenant was shattered through the apostasy of Israel, the Lord chose a new people for His own, and the reformed saints everywhere in the seventeenth century survived as the chosen. 52
It was the children's being in covenant that qualified them for baptism, Richard always believed, not their parents' fitness for the Lord's Supper. In the 1640's when he first argued for the baptism of children of unregenerate members, he may have expected many of them, and perhaps their parents also, to convert. He preached on the growth of grace in these years, insisting even as he begged men to come to Christ, that grace would show itself in those who had received it. It would grow, revealing itself in the attitude and the behavior of the saint. 53
As the problem of membershipand baptismcame to a head late
What all this implied for the character of the Church is clear: it would contain hypocrites. Mather recognized this, admitted it
Page 54
freely though he deplored it and wished to preserve the Church from taint whenever possible. Unlike several colleagues, he never claimed that hypocrites had their uses, that indeed their presence in some way strengthened the Church. Such assertions were made by divines who were even more concerned about an orderly society that he. They emphasized the advantage of having unworthy men directly under the watch of the Churchas all of the baptized, of any age, were. The Church could exhort them to live up to the promises of their baptismal covenant, and to observe the law and live decent and moral lives. Mather rarely delivered such exhortations and never rejoiced that unregenerate men within the Church were subject to its supervision. 51
Despite his demand that the Church regard prospective members with suspicion, Mather urged as early as 1644 that the children of unconverted members receive baptism. To many of his peers, such practice guaranteed that the impure would pollute Christ's Church. Despite his harsh, unforgiving attitude towards hypocrites, Richard possessed a gentle side. Certainly he found the grief of parents who dreaded the possibility that their children were unregenerate hard to bear. He spoke several times of the need to give them some comfort. But by itself this desire would not have carried him to his position on baptism. What he had was a profound organic sense, a tendency to see wholesnot just discrete partsand to conceive of the interconnectedness of things. This sense shaped his historical understanding, especially his conception of the covenant and the persistence of the Church. The New Testament, of course, held that Christ's Church would endure until the end of the world. But if all Protestant reformers agreed on the persistence of the Church they did not agree on the unity of the covenant, at best a shadowy device in the New Testament, nor did they agree on the relationship of the Church of the Jews to the Church of the Gentiles. Richard Mather's ideas on these subjects had a starkness and a clarity that gave them great power. The covenant, he was convinced, was one. Beginning with Adam, transferred to Abraham, and to the children of Israel, and extending through the New Testament history to the seventeenth century, the same covenant had endured. He conceded that it varied according to circumstances and accidents, but for substancefor the faithful of all ages within itit was unvarying. It had always contained sinners and hypocrites; no
Page 55
one could deny that Ishmael and others of Abraham's household who had been sealed into it by circumcision were of the damned. They had been in the covenant externally, he explained: they, like many after them were in it, but unable to keep it, unable to receive grace. Eventually Israel itself arrived at this dreadful condition and the Lord cast Israel off, breaking the everlasting covenant with these unfaithful. When the everlasting covenant was shattered through the apostasy of Israel, the Lord chose a new people for His own, and the reformed saints everywhere in the seventeenth century survived as the chosen. 52
It was the children's being in covenant that qualified them for baptism, Richard always believed, not their parents' fitness for the Lord's Supper. In the 1640's when he first argued for the baptism of children of unregenerate members, he may have expected many of them, and perhaps their parents also, to convert. He preached on the growth of grace in these years, insisting even as he begged men to come to Christ, that grace would show itself in those who had received it. It would grow, revealing itself in the attitude and the behavior of the saint. 53
As the problem of membershipand baptismcame to a head late
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