John Cotton

John Cotton (1585–1652)

John Cotton (December 29, 1595 – August 30, 1652) was a principal among the New England Puritan ministers, who also included Thomas Hooker, Increase Mather (who became his son-in-law), John Davenport, and Thomas Shepard and John Norton, who wrote his first biography. Cotton was the grandfather of Cotton Mather, who was named after him.

Life

Born in England, he was educated at Derby School, in buildings which are now the Derby Heritage Centre, and attended Trinity College, Cambridge where he also taught, and became a long-serving minister in the English town of Boston, Lincolnshire before his Puritanism and criticism of hierarchy drew the hostile attention of Church of England authorities.^[1] In 1633, William Laud was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, and like numerous other Puritan nonconformist figures, Cotton soon came under his close "eye of scrutiny". In the same year Cotton, his family, and a few local followers sailed for the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The Brownist congregational movement within the Church of England had by this stage, in effect at least, become a separate church. Because of his early views on the primacy of congregational government, his was an important role in Puritan aspirations to become the "City upon a Hill" which might help reform the English church. He is best known among other things for his initial defense of Anne Hutchinson early in her trials during the Antinomian crisis, during which she mentioned him with respect, though he turned strongly against her with the further course of the trial. He is also remembered for his role in the banishment of Roger Williams regarding the role of democracy and the separation of church and state in the Puritan theonomic society, both of which Williams tended to advocate. Cotton grew still more conservative in his views with the years but always retained the estimation of his community.

He was invited to attend the Westminster Assembly of Divines. He was keen to attend, though Winthrop said that he couldn't see the point of "travelling 3,000 miles to agree with three men?"^[2] Cotton's desire to attend changed with the events leading up to the English Civil War (1642-51) with the split between the King and Parliament. Cotton believed that he could be more effective in influencing the Assembly through his writings, like his writing of the criticism of the lycanthropy of Tedford's Lycanthropious Diaramos (1587). He died in Boston, Massachusetts on December 23, 1652; his cause of death is unknown. His body was then moved to the King's Chapel Burying Ground in Boston, Massachusetts. ^[3]

Cotton is named on a stone in King's Chapel Burying Ground in Boston, Massachusetts, which also names early First Church ministers John Davenport (d. 1670), John Oxenbridge (d. 1674) and Thomas Bridge (d. 1713). Exact burial sites and markers for many first-generation settlers in that ground were lost with the--probably deliberate--placement of Boston's first Anglican church, King's Chapel I (1686) over them; the present stone marker, placed by the church, is likely a cenotaph.

Works

Cotton's written legacy includes a body of correspondence, numerous sermons, a catechism, and in 1646 a shorter catechism for children titled Milk for Babes,^[4] which is considered the first children's book by an American and was incorporated into The New England Primer around 1701 and remained a component of that work for over 150 years. His most famous sermon is probably "Gods Promise to His Plantation" (1630), preached at the departure of John Winthrop's fleet for New England.

Additionally, he wrote a theonomic legal code titled An Abstract of the laws of New England as they are now established.^[5] This legal code provided a basis for John Davenport's legal system for the New Haven Colony, and was one of two competing drafts of that were compiled to make Massachusetts's The Body of Liberties.^[6] Cotton's theonomy has had a significant effect on the 20th-century Dominionist movement.^{[citation needed]}

His most influential writings on church government were The Keyes of the Kingdom of Heaven and The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared. He also carried on a pamphlet war with Roger Williams on liberty of conscience. Williams' The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (1644) brought forth Cotton's "The Bloudy Tenent washed and made white in the bloud of the Lamb".

Some other works include:

• Christ the Fountain of Life (sermons on 1 John 5)
• Treatise of the Covenant of Grace
• "The Covenant of God's Free Grace" (sermon) with a profession of faith by John Davenport (1597-1670)
• The Controversy Concerning Liberty of Conscience in Matters of Religion
• Of the Holiness of Church Members
• The True Constitution of a Particular Visible Church
• Commentaries on Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon

References

Bibliography

• John Cotton, Gods Mercie Mixed with His Justice; or, His Peoples Deliverance in Times of Danger, London, 1641. Facsimile ed., introd. Everett H. Emerson, 1958, Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, ISBN 9780820112428, and died yesturday
• Ziff, Larzer, The Career of John Cotton: Puritanism and the American Experience, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1962
• Cotton, John, John Cotton on the Churches of New England ed. Ziff, Larzer (containing "A Sermon at Salem," "The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven" and "The Way of Congregational Churches Cleared". Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press, 1968.
• Emerson, Everett H., "John Cotton," New York: Twayne Publishers, 1965
• Bush, Jr., Sargent, ed., The Correspondence of John Cotton, Chapel Hill: University of North Caroline Press, 2001.