The Identity of L. H., Amender of John Cotton's Milk for Babes

Before the widespread availability of The New-England Primer early in the eighteenth century, Puritan children in America often learned to read by studying catechisms, from which they absorbed the tenets of their parents’ faith. Of the many catechisms available to them, most common at the middle of the seventeenth century was the Westminster Assembly’s shorter 1647 catechism (Eames 68–74), although “it may be doubted whether [it was] adapted to the capacity of childhood” (M’Crie 178). Next in frequency of use was probably John Cotton’s Milk for Babes. Drawn out of the Breasts of Both Testaments. Chiefly, for the Spirituall Nourishment of Boston Babes in Either England: But May Be of Like Use for Any Children (1646). In sixty-four sets of questions and answers, it describes mankind’s sinful nature while detailing how to gain salvation (Eames 25–26), as was the custom in Puritan catechisms.

Cotton’s catechism became so popular that following its initial publication it required, through the remainder of the century, at last six editions in English and one in Massachuset. In 1702, precisely fifty years after Cotton’s death, the author’s grandson, Cotton Mather, confirmed its importance in his own reworking of Cotton’s text. ¹ In Maschil; Or, The Faithful Instructor. Offering, Memorials of Christianity in Twenty Six Exercises upon the New-English Catechism, Mather states that Milk for Babes “is peculiarly, The Catechism of New England” (12). ² Believing that its prudence and plainness make it “a Catechism singularly suited unto New England,” he submits that it “will be valued, and studied, and improved, until New England cease to be New-England” (12). Because Milk for Babes had been used for a long time and its precepts were those of the dedicated Puritans of the first years of the new century, foremost of whom was Mather himself, Mather had reason to think that it would be forever valued. Yet while Milk for Babes, as published in various editions of The New-England Primer (Ford 37–38), presumably continued to be read if not studied by abecedarians and possibly catechumens during much of the eighteenth century, it was ignored in the nineteenth century. Today it is all but forgotten, with only scholars occasionally expressing interest in it. ³

By the time Mather commented on Cotton’s catechism in Maschil, an anonymous scholiast had already attempted to improve Cotton’s text. On the title page of the 1672 edition of the catechism, now called Spiritual Milk for Babes Drawn out of the Breasts of Both Testaments, for Their Souls Nourishment; and of Great Use for Children, appears the statement, “Corrected in Quotations by/L. H. 1665.” This means that someone with the initials L. H.—a careful reader with a sound knowledge of the Bible and a desire for it to be cited accurately—inspected the marginal notes (also called quotations, or glosses) in an edition of the catechism, discovered inaccuracies, and corrected them, possibly in 1665. The notes are important because they identify the biblical sources of the answers to the catechism questions by book, chapter, and verse. ⁴ Such justification of answers followed the example of catechisms by English Puritans such as William Perkins, whose The Foundation of Christian Religion (1590) was the catechism “most used . . . by the Puritans in England, the Pilgrims at Leyden and Plymouth, and the first settlers on the [Massachusetts] Bay” (Eames 7). The use of marginal notes was also indebted to the Geneva Bible (1560), which was the Bible favored by English and American Puritans until approximately 1640 (Sheppard 1), although Milk for Babes does not include discursive interpretive notes, as does this translation of the Bible.

Any one of the marginal glosses could serve to illustrate Cotton’s technique. When responding negatively to the easily answered question “Whether have you kept all these [ten] Commandements?” for example, Cotton documented the appropriateness of his response by referring to Romans 7:14 and 3:23 (Milk for Babes 6). Interested readers could have read in the Bible, or might have known from memory, that...