A Puritan Father’s Lesson Plan: By Cotton Mather

Introduction: What’s a Godly Father to Do for His Children?

On Father’s Day we tend to focus on simple gifts to Dads—a tie, a silly or sentimental card—and on back-yard barbecues. All good things, to be sure. And modern fathers tend to focus their parental energy on teaching their kids how to play sports, get good grades, or lead a “balanced life.” Again, all good, but have we lost our focus on a Father’s spiritual role? Perhaps comparing a father’s focus in Puritan America will help us to answer that question. Cotton Mather’s A Puritan Father’s Lesson Plan provides just such a look.

Cotton Mather (February 12, 1663 – February 13, 1728), A.B. 1678 (Harvard College), A.M. 1681; honorary doctorate

Cotton Mather

1710 (University of Glasgow), was a socially and politically influential Puritan minister, prolific author, and pamphleteer. He was the son of influential minister Increase Mather. Mather was named after his grandfather, Rev. John Cotton. He attended Boston Latin School, and graduated from Harvard in 1678, at only 15. After completing his post-graduate work, he joined his father as assistant Pastor (age 18) of Boston’s original North Church. It was not until his father’s death, in 1723, that Mather assumed full responsibilities as Pastor at the Church.

As a child Cotton probably memorized his grandfather’s (Rev. John Cotton’s Catechism) “Spiritual Milk for American Babes” (64 Q & A’s) which was published in 1646 and is considered the first children’s book by an American. The Rev. Cotton’s Catechism was incorporated into The New England Primer around 1701 and remained a component of that work for over 150 years. Rev. Cotton Mather’s ~ Resolved ~ is the Puritan Parents’ Lesson Plan which compliments The New England Primer.

Note: Due to space and our shrinking attention span, listed below you will only find the first five of twenty-one parental resolutions for the spiritual training of children. To download all twenty-one resolutions as a complimentary Word Document, click here.

Cotton Mather’s Preamble

Parents, Oh how much ought you to be continually devising for the good of your children! Often devise how to make them “wise children”; how to give them a desirable education, an education that may render them desirable; how to render them lovely and polite, and serviceable in their generation. Often devise how to enrich their minds with valuable knowledge; how to instill generous, gracious, and heavenly principles into their minds; how to restrain and rescue them from the paths of the destroyer, and fortify them against their peculiar temptations. There is a world of good that you have to do for them. You are without the natural feelings of humanity if you are not in a continual agony to do for them all the good that ever you can. It was no mistake of an ancient writer to say, “Nature teaches us to love our children as ourselves.”

~ Resolved ~

1. At the birth of my children, I will resolve to do all I can that they may be the Lord’s. I will now actually give them up by faith to God; entreating that each child may be a child of God the Father, a subject of God the Son, a temple of God the Spirit – and be rescued from the condition of a child of wrath, and be possessed and employed by the Lord as an everlasting instrument of His glory.

2. As soon as my children are capable of minding my admonitions, I will often, often admonish them, saying, “Child, God has sent His son to die, to save sinners from death and hell. You must not sin against Him. You must every day cry to God that He would be your Father, and your Saviour, and your Leader. You must renounce the service of Satan, you must not follow the vanities of this world, you must lead a life of serious religion.”

3. Let me daily pray for my children with constancy, with fervency, with agony. Yea, by name let me mention each one of them every day before the Lord. I will importunately beg for all suitable blessings to be bestowed upon them: that God would give them grace, and give them glory, and withhold no good thing from them; that God would smile on their education, and give His good angels the charge over them, and keep them from evil, that it may not grieve them; that when their father and mother shall forsake them, the Lord may take them up. With importunity I will plead that promise on their behalf: “The Heavenly Father will give the Holy Spirit unto them that ask Him.” Oh! happy children, if by asking I may obtain the Holy Spirit for them!

4. I will early entertain the children with delightful stories out of the Bible. In the talk of the table, I will go through the Bible, when the olive-plants about my table are capable of being so watered. But I will always conclude the stories with some lessons of piety to be inferred from them.

5. I will single out some Scriptural sentences of the greatest importance; and some also that have special antidotes in them against the common errors and vices of children. They shall quickly get those golden sayings by heart, and be rewarded with silver or gold, or some good thing, when they do it. Such as,

• Psalm 11:10 “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

• Matthew 16:26 “What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

• 1 Timothy 1:15 “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”

• Matthew 6:6 “When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret.”

• Ephesians 4:25 “Putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour.”

• Romans 12:17, 19 “Recompense to no man evil for evil… Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves.”

• Matthew 6:33 “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be given unto you.”

• Pv. 3:5-6 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not upon your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him and he shall direct your paths.”

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How does Cotton Mather’s Lesson Plan compare to where fathers’ today place their focus?

Review of: Helpful Truth in Past Places: The Puritan Practice of Biblical Counseling

Note: This review first appeared on the Gospel Coalition review site.

Book Details

• Author: Mark Deckard

• Publisher: Mentor/Christian Focus Publications (2010) (208 Pages)

• Category: Church History, Biblical Counseling, Puritans

• ISBN: 978-1-84550-545-5

• Retail Price: $19.99 (Amazon Site)

Reviewer: Bob Kellemen, Ph.D., LCPC, is the Founder and CEO of RPM Ministries. Bob has pastored three churches, chaired the MA in Christian Counseling and Discipleship department at Capital Bible Seminary, and is the author of five books: Soul Physicians, Spiritual Friends, Beyond the Suffering, Sacred Friendships, and God’s Healing for Life’s Losses.

As an author and reviewer, occasionally I review a book where I think, “Now that’s a book I wish I had authored.” Helpful Truth in Past Places is such a book because it combines the timeless truth of historical theology with solid application for life and ministry today.

From the outset, author Mark Deckard crystallizes the importance of this book.

“The Puritans were masters at understanding the nature of human beings and applying Scripture in practical ways to help people with their struggles and problems. In the truest sense of the word they were psychologists, students of the inner person, before there ever was a field of secular psychology” (p. 9).

Indeed, the Puritans were soul physicians and spiritual friends who understood biblical answers to life’s three core questions. Who are people (creation)? Why do they struggle (fall)? What has God provided to help with those problems (redemption)?

In the able hands of Deckard, the Puritan pastor-theologians have much to offer believers today who desire to practice truly biblical counseling. As Tim Keller notes, the “Puritans practiced sanctification by theology rather than by psychology” (p. 11).

Deckard does a fine job briefly introducing the Puritans. In particular, he describes their ability to combine being students of the Word with being students of people. Like the Apostle Paul, they blended Scripture and soul (1 Thessalonians 2:8), truth and love (Ephesians 4:15) relationship and insight (Philippians 1:9-11).

Understanding that there is no way to cover comprehensively every Puritan, Deckard wisely selects seven representative ministers and seeks to read them “with the specific question of biblical counseling in mind” (p. 15). He explores John Flavel and the question of the mystery of providence; Jeremiah Burroughs and anxiety; John Own and mortification of sin; John Bunyan and the sense of alienation and isolation; Jonathan Edwards and affections and emotions; William Bridge and depression; and Thomas Brooks and “devil craft” (spiritual warfare).

In each case, the authors wrote not out of theory but out of lived experience. For example, when Flavel wrote on why God allows suffering, he approached his question as one who lost three wives, lost an unborn child, experienced the tragic loss of his parents, and endured ministry exile.

Flavel’s application of Scripture to life is also illustrative of methods used by the other six Puritan soul physicians. When addressing questions about the providence of God, Flavel did not simply and shallowly quote Romans 8:28 about God working all things together for good. Rather, he would engage his parishioners and readers in lengthy, in-depth interactions about extended biblical passages, such as the life of Joseph in Genesis 36-50 and the life of Esther.

Flavel also urges meditation upon such biblical truths. It is the duty of God’s people to “meditate upon these performances of providence for them, at all times, but especially in times of difficulty and trouble.” But Flavel does not leave his readers to guess how to do so. He spells out several principles or “methods” to make his exhortation practical and relevant.

For Flavel and for Jeremiah Burroughs, such principles were not quick solutions or ten easy steps. As Deckard says of Burroughs’ approach to contentment:

“Contentment can be found in Christ but as an art it must be experienced, learned, and utilized in those struggles as a larger goal beyond the relief of the struggle itself. The emphasis on mystery helps to push us back to how God works and away from the more mechanistic (follow the ten logical steps!) approaches that we try to devise for solving problems” (p. 49).

John Owen is typical of the other six authors studied and of all Puritan pastors. Whether in writing, teaching, the pulpit ministry, or house-to-house visitation, ministry was concerned above all else with the twin goals of the glory of God and the spiritual welfare of his people.

In his concluding thoughts on Owen’s ministry of helping people to mortify sin, Deckard does an excellent job helping pastors and counselors to ponder how to apply these truths today, especially to a world/culture where sin is minimized. At times, with some of the other authors, Deckard offered less of this “how might we apply this today?” In an otherwise excellent book, this is one area that could have been strengthen—helping readers to think through how Christ’s changeless truth, as practiced by the Puritans, could relate to our changing times.

Another approach that might have given this fine book additional impact could have been the inclusion of sample letters of spiritual counsel and/or accounts of personal ministry. Deckard’s choice to emphasize books allowed for great insight into a theology of Puritan biblical counseling. However, lacking specific Puritan letters of spiritual counsel or accounts of personal ministry (which are available) made it more difficult to glean how these Puritan authors, in the one-to-one personal ministry of the Word, might have related to their parishioners, and how they might have related God truth’s to their specific daily life issues.

Still, Helpful Truth in Past Places is a very valuable addition to the growing literature on the history of biblical counseling, soul care, and spiritual direction. It helps us to think theologically about suffering and sin. It encourages us with the truth that God’s Word is sufficient, relevant, and profound. For this reviewer, it accomplished the goal Deckard set for it, “it will hopefully encourage believers to revisit these and other Puritan writers in order to be better equipped in their ministry of helping others” (p. 9).

If you doubt this, then start at the end of Deckard’s book and work backwards. In the Conclusion, Deckard lists nearly three dozen applications of Puritan truths to counseling problems people face today. Truly the Puritans offer us helpful truth in past places.

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How important is it to base our present ministry models on insights from church history?