Powerful preacher, political negotiator for New England in the halls of Parliament, president of Harvard, father of Cotton Mather, Increase Mather was the epitome of the American Puritan. He was the most important spokesman of his generation for Congregationalism and became the last American Puritan of consequence as the seventeenth century ended. The story begins in 1639 when Mather was born in the Massachusetts village of Dorchester. He left home for Harvard College when he was twelve and at twenty-two began to stir the city of Boston from the pulpit of North Church. He had written four books by the time he was thirty-two. Certain he was God's chosen instrument and New England God's chosen people, he disciplined mind and spirit in service to them both. Tempted to "Atheisme" and unbelief, afflicted early by nightmares and melancholy, then by hope and joy, he was a pioneer in recognizing the excitement of the new sciences and sought to reconcile them to theology. This well-wrought biography, the first of Increase Mather in forty years, draws on the extensive Mather diaries, which were transcribed by Michael Hall.

Vols. 1,3,5-8,10-14,17-21,24-28,32,34-35,38,42-43,1892-1956 are its Transactions.

The Wall and the Garden was first published in 1968. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The election day sermon in colonial New England was an annual, formal address by a minister of the gospel to the newly assembled legislature of the colony. The tradition began in the Massachusetts Bay colony in 1634, and it continued, in Boston, for 250 years. In this volume, Professor Plumstead presents a collection of nine of the Massachusetts election sermons, chosen from among the surviving Massachusetts sermons which were printed between 1661 and 1775. They are not chosen as representative but, rather, as the best, judged on a basis of literary excellence and ideas and points of style relevant to later developments in American literature and history. There are changes in style and theme in the 105 years between the first and the last selection, and, in his brief introduction to each of the sermons, the editor discusses these changes and the sermon's relationship to the tradition as a whole. In a general introduction, Professor Plumstead provides background information about the history and significance of the election sermons. As he makes clear, the election sermon tradition offers a vantage point for seeing both continuity and change in colonial intellectual history. The sermons in this collection will complement colonial studies by bringing the reader close to the spirit of the times. The title of the volume, The Wall and the Garden, derives from the frequent use by colonial preachers of the metaphors of the garden and the wall to describe the colonies and their spiritual enemies.

Primarily consists of: Transactions, v. 1, 3, 5-8, 10-14, 17-21, 24-28, 32, 34-35, 38, 42-43; and: Collections, v. 2, 4, 9, 15-16, 22-23, 29-31, 33, 36-37, 39-41; also includes lists of members.