Urian Oakes is best known for two works, his 1677 elegy on Thomas Shepard of Charlestown (son of the well-known Cambridge divine) and The Soveraign Efficacy of Divine Providence ... (1682), a sermon accounting for the colonists' heavy losses in King Philip's War. These two texts, together with his lesser-known sermons and addresses, reflect the wealth of classical contemporary knowledge for which Oakes was highly acclaimed during his lifetime. Praising Oakes's fluency in classical Latin, Cotton Mather proclaimed in Magnalia Christi Americana (1702) that "America never had a greater master of the true, pure, Ciceronian Latin & Language." In fact, Mather declared, "Considered as a Scholar, he was a Notable Critick in all the Points of Learning." Increase Mather shared his son's opinion, for he called Oakes "one of the greatest lights, that ever shone in this part of the world, or that is ever like to arise in our Horizon."

Urian Oakes...