"When very young I went astray from God and my mind was altogether taken with vanities and follies: such as the remembrance of them doth greatly abase my soul within me. Of the manifold sins which then I was guilty of, none so sticks upon me as that, being very young, I was whitling on the Sabbath-day; and for fear of being seen, I did it behind the door. A great reproach of God! a specimen of that atheism I brought into the world with me!"
It is satisfactory to add that this young prig of a Mather died when nineteen years of age. Except in Jonathan Edwards's "Narratives of Surprising Conversions," no more painful examples of the Puritanical religious teaching of the young can be found than the account given in the Magnalia of various young souls in whom the love of God was remarkably budding, especially this same unwholesome Nathaniel Mather. His diary redounded in dismal groans and self-abasement: he wrote out in detail his covenants with God. He laid out his minute rules and directions in his various religious duties. He lived in prayer thrice a day, and "did not slubber over his prayers with hasty amputations, but wrestled in them for a good part of an hour." He prayed in his sleep. He fasted. He made long lists of sins, long catalogues of things forbidden, "and then fell a-stoning them." He "chewed much on excellent sermons." He not only read the Bible, but "obliged himself to fetch a note and prayer out of each verse," as he read. In spite of all these preparations for a joyous hope and faith, he lived in the deepest despair; was full of blasphemous imaginations, horrible conceptions of God, was dejected, self-loathing, and wretched. Indeed, as Lowell said, soul-saving was to such a Christian the dreariest, not the cheerfullest of businesses.
That the welfare, if not the pleasure, of their children lay very close to the hearts of the Pilgrims, we cannot doubt. Governor Bradford left an account of the motives for the emigration from Holland to the new world, and in a few sentences therein he gives one of the deepest reasons of all—the intense yearning for the true well-being of the children; we can read between the lines the stern and silent love of those noble men, love seldom expressed but ever present, and the rigid sense of duty, duty to be fulfilled as well as exacted. Bradford wrote thus of the Pilgrims:
"As necessitie was a taskmaster over them, so they were forced to be such, not only to their servants, but in a sorte, to their dearest children; the which, as it did not a little wound ye tender harts of many a loving father and mother, so it produced likewise sundrie sad and sorrowful effects. For many of their children, that were of best dispositions and gracious inclinations, haveing lernde to bear ye yoake in their youth, and willing to bear parte of their parents burden, were, often times so oppressed with their hevie labours, that though their minds were free and willing, yet their bodies bowed under ye weight of ye same, and become decreped in their early youth; the vigor of nature being consumed in ye very budd as it were. But that which was more lamentable and of all sorrowes most heavie to be borne, was, that many of their children, by these occasions, and ye great licentiousness of youth in ye countrie, and ye manifold temptations of the place, were drawn away by evill examples into extravagante and dangerous courses, getting ye raines off their neks and departing from their parents. Some became souldiers, others took upon them for viages by sea, and other some worse courses, tending to disolutenes and the danger of their soules, to ye great greef of their parents and dishonor of God. So that they saw their posteritie would be in danger to degenerate and be corrupted."
Though Judge Sewall could control and restrain his children, his power waxed weak over his backsliding and pleasure-seeking grandchildren, and they annoyed him sorely. Sam Hirst, the son of poor timid Betty, lived with his grandfather for a time, and on April 1st, 1719, the Judge wrote:
"In the morning I dehorted Sam Hirst and Grindall Rawson from playing Idle tricks because 'twas first of April: They were the greatest fools that did so. N. E. Men came hither to avoid anniversary days, the keeping of them such as the 25th of Decr. How displeasing must it be to God the giver of our Time to keep anniversary days to play the fool with ourselves and others."
Ten years earlier the Judge had written to the Boston schoolmaster, begging him to "insinuate into the Scholars the Defiling and Provoking nature of such a Foolish Practice" as playing tricks on April first.
Sam was but a sad losel, and vexed him in other and more serious matters. On March 15th, 1725, the Judge wrote:
"Sam Hirst got up betime in the morning, and took Ben Swett with him and went into the Comon to play Wicket. Went before anybody was up, left the door open: Sam came not to prayer at which I was much displeased."
Two days later he writes thus peremptorily of his grandson: