SOURCE: "The Invisible World," in The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728, Oxford University Press, Inc., 1971, pp. 139-61.

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.

While the controversy with Stoddard was brewing, but before it reached a boil, Increase Mather was thinking about another matter that affected his ideas about the Church in New England: nature and an arena beyond nature, the invisible world. In fact Mather always pursued his scientific studies in the frame of mind that inspired not only his ecclesiology but all his scholarship. His preoccupations, which were those of his generation of New English divines, remained centered on God's designs—especially...