The Correspondence of John Cotton (review)

John Cotton (1584–1652), luminary of New England's first generation, was both a clerical polymath and an enigma. Scholars have described Cotton's influence on church polity, his theory of personal religious experience, his role as a leading preacher and practitioner of the plain style, his understanding of typology, and his millennialism. And they have long puzzled over his involvement in several of the important controversies of his day. The letters in Sargent Bush, Jr.'s extraordinary collection help to explain the esteem in which Cotton's contemporaries held him, even as they address some of the questions that have engaged Cotton scholars.

In his learned, insightful, and substantial introduction to the volume, Bush traces four phases of Cotton's "epistolary career": Cotton's 21 years as vicar of St. Botolph's in Boston, Lincolnshire; the migration period, from the time Cotton contemplated the possibility of migration through the summer of 1633; the period in which Cotton was engaged in debate with Roger Williams and what became known as the Antinomian controversy; and the period from the late 1640s until Cotton's death in 1652, during which Bush characterizes Cotton's letters as "more miscellaneous than those of the earlier periods" but often concerned with the issue of baptism (24–25).

In Bush's assessment, Cotton was "[n]ot an original theologian"; rather "he was a careful and informed interpreter of a theological tradition that became a powerful factor in the thinking of his friends, neighbors, and descendants" (7). Therefore, Cotton's views are particularly important as articulated to his network of correspondents. These interlocutors are a varied group including notable figures such as Oliver Cromwell, Archbishop James Ussher, Bishop John Williams, Thomas Hooker, Thomas Shepard, John Eliot, John Winthrop, Richard Mather, Peter Bulkeley, Charles Chauncy, John Dod, and Nathaniel Ward, and family members such as his wife, Sarah Hawkred Story Cotton, and his son Seaborn. Bush's collection of 125 letters is wonderfully inclusive: it documents Cotton's career on both sides of the Atlantic in letters dating from 1621 to 1652. It presents all known letters written by Cotton or addressed to him. Moreover, it includes letters in various forms and from a wide range of sources: signed autograph letters, copies in Cotton's hand, copies made by various scribes, and letters existing only in published versions or in fragments in published versions. Of the 125 included letters, more than 50 have not been previously published.

The collected letters offer many revelations to their readers. One is the importance of the Puritan pastoral letter as a genre. The letters, together with Bush's analysis, show Cotton's great self-consciousness about letter writing. Cotton saw his correspondence as an epistolary ministry and consciously imitated apostolic models of epistolary composition (33, 26). Bush demonstrates that this represented a substantial portion of Cotton's ministerial labors; indeed, he notes that "a considerable portion of [Cotton's] time was spent at his desk, in written dialogue with his contemporaries, both before and after his migration to New England" (23). The collection reveals a great deal about the circulation of letters in this period as well. For example, on 21 March 1638/9, Thomas Dudley wrote to Cotton, sending his letter in the care of William Denison, who had been expelled from the Roxbury church (288). Dudley asked Cotton to "help" reconcile Denison to the church by counseling him toward orthodox views about the evidence of grace (288–89). Though Dudley suggested that Cotton need not return a written answer ("I shall vnderstand by my Brother Denison at his retourne without your trouble of wrytinge what you say, I therefore forbeare your further trouble"), Cotton replied to Dudley's letter on the verso of the sheet (289–90). Dudley found the four short paragraphs of Cotton's response tough enough going that he sought John Eliot's assistance. Eliot, in turn, made notes on Cotton's response. In his appendix, Bush...