Cotton Mather Quotes

15 Sourced Quotes

If we admit instrumental musick in the worship of God, how can we resist the imposition of all the instruments used among the ancient Jews?—yea, dancing as well as playing, and several other Judaic actions? or, how can we decline a whole rabble of church-officers, necessary to be introduced for instrumental musick, whereof our Lord Jesus Christ hath left us no manner of direction?

Cotton Mather
I will now teach my son Increase (and others of my children) the way of raising a lesson out of every verse in his reading of the Bible; and of turning it into a Prayer; and engage him (and them) unto a daily Course in reading the Bible in such a way

Cotton Mather
Instead of exhorting you to augment your charity, I will rather utter an exhortation, or at least a supplication, that you may not abuse your charity by misapplying it.

Cotton Mather
Chrysostom, I remember, mentions a twofold book of God: the book of the creatures, and the book of the scriptures. God, having taught us first of all by his works, did it afterwards, by his Words. We will now for a while read the former of these books; 'twill help us in reading the latter. They will admirably assist one another.

Cotton Mather
The New Englanders are a people of God, settled in those which were once the Devil's territories.

Cotton Mather
That there is a Devil is a thing doubted by none but such as are under the influences of the Devil. For any to deny the being of a Devil must be from an ignorance or profaneness worse than diabolical.

Cotton Mather
Religion brought forth Prosperity, and the daughter destroyed the mother.

Cotton Mather
Every man will have his own style which will distinguish him as much as his gait.

Cotton Mather
WHAT is Pain? Tis a Sensation produced on the Tension of a Nerve.

Cotton Mather
A Thigh-bone of a Toad, applied unto an aking Tooth, rarely fails of easing the Pain.

Cotton Mather
You are young and have the world before you; stoop as you go through it, and you will miss many hard bumps.

Cotton Mather
Gluttony is the cause of all diseases and of death.

Cotton Mather
Of a Distemper we commonly say, To know the Cause, is Half the Cure. But, alas, how little Progress is there yett made in that Knowledge! Physicians talk about the Causes of Diseases. But their Talk is very Conjectural, very Uncertain, very Ambiguous; and often times a meer Jargon; and in it, they are full of Contradiction to One another.

Cotton Mather
O Man, Since the Hardest and Strongest Things thou hast about thee, are so fast Consuming; Do not imagine that the rest of thy Body will remain Long Unconsumed, or that any Bones of thy Body shall not soon Moulder into Dust.

Cotton Mather
[there is an] angelical conjunction of medicine with divinity.

Cotton Mather