SOURCE: "New England Epic: Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana," in ELH, Vol. 33, No. 3, September, 1966, pp. 337-50.

In the essay below, Bercovitch describes Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana as a metaphoric account of life in Puritan New England and compares the work to those of Vergil and John Milton.

On July 4, 1700, in the solitude of his diary, the heir to the dispossessed dynasty of Puritan New England lamented the emergence of a new era in America. "I saw, to my Sorrow," he wrote,

that there was hardly any but my Father, and myself, to appear in Defence of our invaded Churches. Wherefore I thought I must cry mightily unto the Lord, that He would mercifully direct my feeble, but faithful, Endeavors in an evil Generation.

I also thought, that since it be the Purpose of Heaven that the Apostasy shall go on [I] may be in danger of a Stroke...