Cotton Mather, scholar, clergyman, and author, was the oldest son of Increase Mather, one of the leading figures in the Puritan theocracy in Massachusetts. The younger Mather was so precocious that he entered Harvard College at the age of twelve and was graduated at fifteen. Because he stammered, he felt unqualified to preach and therefore began to study medicine. After a few years, however, he overcame his speech handicap and became the assistant to his father at the Second Church, Boston. Ordained in 1685, he remained in the service of the Second Church for the rest of his life.

Mather was disappointed in many of the major quests of his life. Partly because he associated himself politically with the unpopular royal governor, Sir William Phips, partly because of the diminished prestige of the Puritan clergy, and partly because of his own often unpleasant personal qualities...