Cotton Mather

It is clear to me that Mather is definitely a leader; however I feel that Mather uses a lot of personal goals and personal greed to get what he wants out of the people of New England. I feel that even though he is highly intelligent and knows exactly what is to be done with this "country" in order for it to prosper, he also knows just what to say in order to manipulate the people to do what he wants. For example, on page 153, the text reads, "And Mather, like his predecessors, was convinced that nothing could more successfully 'animate' his readers to piety than examples of irtuous behavior drawn from the lives of saintly men." This demonstrates how Mather knows exactly what to do or say in order to get people to do what he wants. Even though, it is clear that Mather used a little bit of this manipulation, the real manipulation is the fact that Mather used a historical figure to resemble the New England personage to present to the people what he was looking for as a Puritan minister. I was really interested to see how much of a good person Mather was strictly for the fact that although he seemed consumed in making sure he was the best leader possible, he also made sure that higher individuals were leading by example and that everyone was following the rules of God as well. Another thing in this reading that struck me was that in the very beginning it seemed that Mather was almost being put on a pedastal and then towards the end we see how Mather's biography was never actually glorified. We see this on page 160 when the text says, "The subject of a Mather biography was never glorifed in and for himself but for the ulterior purpose of glorifying New England's primitive past, and this required that he be dealt with as an idealization rather than as an individual." In other words, Mather seemed to be more of an idea, rather than a person.