The Correspondence of John Cotton (review)

The Correspondence of John Cotton. Edited by Sargent Bush, Jr. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001; pp. xviii + 548. $80.00.

Scholars of the seventeenth century have recently begun to focus much attention on the international and transatlantic character of the Puritan movement. Before the mid-1980s, most of those interested in Puritanism investigated the growth of Calvinism in particular nations or cities and spent little or no time evaluating the ways in which the communities of the Puritan diaspora related to one another. The work of Francis Bremer and others, however, has reversed this trend, and today scholars are more careful to look at the diverse modes of communication between individual Puritans. Letter writing was one immensely powerful communication tool for the Puritans as they struggled to defend their doctrines and sustain their faith in the face of persecution and isolation. What remains of their correspondence contains invaluable information about the ways in which the movement conceived of and organized itself. Sargent Bush's excellent new edition of John Cotton's letters offers the reader rich new information about the interdependence of Puritan communities as they sought to preserve themselves from the dangers of both left-wing enthusiasm and right-wing formalism.

John Cotton (1584-1652) is best known as a major player in the Antinomian Controversy that rocked the Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1636 to 1638. His prominence as a Puritan leader, however, had been achieved long before he arrived in New England, and his career in Boston flowered for years after the controversy died down. Cotton rose quickly in the ranks of the Puritan clergy after his Cambridge student days. During his ministry in England, he came to know most of the leading lights of the Puritan movement and, as the keeper of what Francis Bremer called a "Puritan finishing school," taught and advised in his home many young men who would go on to become leaders of the movement in Old and New England. Cotton maintained these friendships throughout his life, and his correspondence with former students was a source of comfort during many personal and doctrinal trials. Eventually silenced at his church in Lincolnshire, Cotton was forced to seek asylum as the Teacher of the church in Boston. Cotton came perilously close to losing his reputation when Anne Hutchinson and other followers misinterpreted his teachings on grace, but he survived the controversy and lived to shape the colony as it matured. Bush discusses the details of Cotton's life in a thorough introduction, and he also situates his career in reference to the major events and issues of Puritanism.

Bush includes all known letters to and from John Cotton; each letter is preceded by notes on provenance and date, a list of alternative editions, and an explanatory headnote. Some of the letters have appeared in print elsewhere, but Bush's edition is chiefly valuable for the many documents he makes available for the first time, including a 1634 letter from Cotton on determining church membership that foreshadows the Half-Way Covenant (1662), as well as many letters that shed new light on the Antinomian Controversy and other radical movements. The letters display a range of rhetorical styles and tones.

In his introduction and notes, Bush emphasizes Cotton's understanding of the rhetorical importance of letter writing to the growth of Puritanism. Although the sermon is justly considered the most important rhetorical instrument of the movement, pastoral and personal epistles are also highly significant. Cotton saw parallels between his own age and the age of the apostles, as both were characterized by small bands of pure Christians dispersed in a hostile world. As the letters of Paul and others had been a chief means of comfort and spiritual exhortation for the first Christians, so for Cotton they helped strengthen the resolve of Puritans as they faced hostile forces. Cotton records very little about his personal life; these letters were meant to be serious contributions to the furtherance of...