Conclusion

Abstract

Cotton Mather’s head was filled with questions that the Bible did not answer plainly. He turned to experimental philosophy and experimental religion for insight. On the last question in his commentary on Luke’s gospel, he had reached his limits: Where was heaven? Where was Christ’s ascended and glorified body? He first contemplated a hypothesis from the Newtonian natural philosopher William Whiston, since after all it contained less “Heresy in it, than in some of his Assertions.” It seemed improbable that heaven’s location was beyond the stars—for if the mathematicians’ calculations were correct, it would constitute “an unaccountable Violence” to “the Very Nature of Body…and uniform Lawes of Motion” to travel that distance so quickly. A more likely location was just outside the world’s atmosphere, which the baroscope had estimated to be about “Fifty Miles” away. It also makes sense of Jesus’ frequent comings and goings during the forty days after his resurrection, and of Scripture passages that speak of heavenly beings observing earthly affairs and intervening in them in real time (Job 1, 1 Kgs 22, Luke 16, 2 Cor 12:2). Yet Mather was not quite ready to concede Whiston’s hypothesis. After all, a good Newtonian must consider that “Light is a Body, and yett it can pass to an amazing Distance, in a very Little Time.” He counted on experimental religion to provide a more satisfactory answer, but he would have to be patient, and “wait in a way of Beleeving & Repenting & Bringing forth Fruit unto God; for the best Satisfaction about the Matter, that is, an Experimental one, Sciss cum.” A man of his time, Mather rested considerable confidence in the capacities of empiricism to advance knowledge of the world and the Word. But like most evangelicals, he accepted the epistemological boundaries of human finitude “Fifty Miles” below heaven (or however far it is). Ultimately, his longing for enlightenment propelled a pursuit for holiness en route to eternal glorified existence, where he would finally gain certain and firsthand knowledge of the thousands of questions that animated his boundless curiosity.