Reading Canticles in the Tradition of New England Millennialism: John Cotton and Cotton Mather’s Commentaries on the Song of Songs

Abstract

John Cotton (1584–1652) and Cotton Mather (1663–1728) are widely recognised as key figures in the evolution of American Puritanism. John Cotton was one of the theological leaders in the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and a principal architect and apologist of the New England Way. His grandson Cotton Mather rose to be a highly influential religious thinker and organiser in the phase when the Puritan social order was starting to collapse in the early eighteenth century. He helped New England Congregationalism adjust to the dramatic changes in the wake of the Glorious Revolution and make the transition into the age of the early Enlightenment, revivalism, and voluntary religion.