Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs
|
Buy Now
Richard Mather of Dorchester (Paperback)
Loot Price: R844
Discovery Miles 8 440
|
|
Richard Mather of Dorchester (Paperback)
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
|
Mather is a well-known name in the persons of Increase and Cotton
Mather. Here for the first time is a biography of the father and
grandfather, respectively, of those two great figures of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Richard Mather left few
personal records of his life in the form of letters, diaries, or
autobiographical writings. In his research, Mr. Burg sought out
little used ecclesiastical records in England, pieced together
events from inferences and deductions, and analyzed by
sociological, psychological, and anthropological methods the life
of this seventeenth-century divine. As a result, Mather here
emerges from the historical evidence in brief but brilliant
flashes, revealing a man with a desperate need to verify his own
personal worth and to make valid the way he had chosen to direct
his life and to worship his God. Through this study of Richard
Mather, Mr. Burg illuminates the struggles of the first generation
settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Mather was the author of
a considerable corpus of unpublished and published writings. Ever
seeking to enhance his reputation as a polemicist and biblical
exegete, he spent much of his time penning theological treatises
that set forth the true faith of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
While he was sought out a number of times by his colleagues to
defend the religious practices of the new colony to those who had
remained in the mother country, the task of writing the major
defenses of New England doctrine and polity was entrusted to
clerics such as John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, and Thomas Shepard -- a
situation that continually irritated the Dorchester clergyman.
Mather's career, although marked by minor victories, was in his own
estimation characterized by major defeats. It was on those defeats,
affronts, and rejections that Richard Mather built his life. The
reconstruction of his experiences -- both in England and in America
-- reveals a man of the preindustrial world whose very ordinariness
makes his life significant. His biography provides a broader
understanding of the ordinary pastors and teachers in seventeenth-
century Massachusetts Bay.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
|
|
Email address subscribed successfully.
A activation email has been sent to you.
Please click the link in that email to activate your subscription.